How Celsius is building a resilient brand in the energy drink category

After years of robust growth, there are signals of fatigue in the energy drink market as consumers cut down on spending and make fewer trips to convenience stores, the category’s leading retail outlets. But so far Celsius has avoided the worst of it. The country’s No. 3 energy drink brand, behind Red Bull and Monster, has defied category tendencies by leveraging some of the fastest-growing trends in food and beverage—health and wellness and flavor innovation. According to Kyle Watson, chief marketing officer of Celsius, this is helping to build a resilient brand. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, check us out on Spotify and hear us on Amazon Music/Audible. This is our RSS feed. Tell a friend! “We’re building a brand, looking at it in a way where we’re not just a beverage, and we’re not just a function, we’re really a brand that resonates with people in a different way,” Watson said during the most recent edition of Ad Age’s Marketer’s Brief podcast. “We continue to try to build this emotional connection to our brand so that people aren’t looking at it as just something they’re going out and purchasing.” Celsius’s second-quarter revenue increased 23% to $402 million. For comparison, larger rival Monster Energy’s sales increased 2.5% to $1.9 billion during the same period. Both companies experienced a sequential slowdown from the first quarter, when Monster grew by 11.8% and Celsius by 37%. “Essentially any energy brand could replicate the same ingredients, the same flavor profiles, similar design on pack,” Watson said. “I think what’s important to really drive this category, and especially drive a brand, is a lot more than just the product, and that’s really what we’re looking to do with our brand.” Celsius’s advantages date back to its founding in 2004. While traditional energy drinks emerged from bars as popular alcohol mixers at the time, Celsius came out of gyms, where it was initially marketed for its calorie-burning properties. The market has since come to Celsius, especially with sugar-free offerings now the rage. Celsius has evolved by updating its packaging to emphasize flavors and shifting from a prescriptive health message to positioning the drink as part of a healthy lifestyle. This has expanded occasions and the age range of Celsius drinkers, she Watson. Distribution muscle from strategic investor PepsiCo has also helped. “Our brand went from very niche, and then with the evolution of consumer preferences and buying habits and mindset, we became much more relevant, and we had a much bigger opportunity to play in the category, as the category really was evolving,” Watson said. See all of the Global Automotive Marketing Awards winners here The brand is also telling its stories in new ways, with the belief it can get more from those aging into—and out of—the category. A robust program uses ambassadors and influencers on college campuses, including a newly announced name, image and likeness program for college football athletes it calls “the essential six.” “College life is so demanding from balancing academics with whatever sports they have, with whatever extracurricular jobs to get themselves through college,” Watson said. “So I think that’s where this energy usage occasion comes into play within their life stage, and that’s where we really want to make sure that we’re capturing them and appealing to them emotionally.”

How Celsius is building a resilient brand in the energy drink category

Featured Stories