Vitaminwater

When vitaminwater launched in 1996, it created an entirely new category: vitamin-infused water. Its minimal, pharmaceutical-inspired packaging and irreverent voice made it an icon. The Simpsons parodied it. LVMH bought a 30% equity stake in it. The Coca-Cola Company, the world's largest beverage maker, saw its future in it. The company bought the privately held maker of Vitaminwater in 2007 for $4.1 billion. This was Coca-Cola’s largest acquisition ever and their first move into the non-carbonated business.

But 20 years later, the category leaders faced an explosion of copycat products. Competition eroded sales, market share, and brand strength. vitaminwater needed a path back to its leadership status. The leadership team asked us to help them revitalize the brand with a new positioning and new brand identity system.

Vitaminwater’s competitive advantage was not its health enhancements. Smaller competitors had the same easy access to those. Vitaminwater’s advantage lay in its flavors. It offered a greater flavor variety – by a mile. Smaller competitors couldn’t make the economics of a large flavor array work. It would be too costly from an inventory standpoint, too cumbersome for their sales teams to manage, and too cannibalizing of individual SKU sales. However, vitaminwater was backed by Coca-Cola’s platform. This meant vitaminwater could maintain a large array of flavors, add more, and frequently swap them for new flavors to drive interest and volume.

We argued that vitaminwater should shift its differentiation from healthy enhancements – the category table stakes – to variety. Consumer insights show that flavor was the main motivator of purchase and brand loyalty.

Our proposed brand platform, “Life-enriching variety” spoke to vitaminwater advantage and the consumer belief variety is the real vitamin of life. Our identity solution builds off their iconic label, bold tone of voice, and endless variety of flavors.

Vitaminwater’s leadership has leaned into the strategy in the years since our proposal. The flavor line up now has everything from run of the mill, approachable flavors, like iced tea, to limited time options, and unique fruit-forward blends, like kiwi-strawberry. Recent unique flavors include the 2019 launch of vitaminwater fire and vitaminwater ice. Fire features a spicy watermelon lime taste and utilizes hints of jalapeno to create a tingling sensation on the tongue.