ITC has launched a coconut cola in India. It's called BNatural, it's sugar-free, it's made with tender coconut water, and at ₹60 for a 250ml can it sits around 50% above Coke Zero. It isn't trying to out-Coke Coke. It's trying to build a premium, more permissible space next to it. Whether that works is too early to call, and I wouldn't pretend otherwise.
Prasad Narasimhan at the brandgym wrote it up well. What struck me when reading it is how this isn’t really about cola. The traps facing BNatural are the same ones we see UK food and drink challengers walk into all the time.
1. "Better-for-you" describes a shelf, not a reason to choose you
The brandgym asks the question: what exactly is Coconut Cola? A cola, a coconut drink, a healthy soft drink, a premium refresher, an afternoon lift? If your brand team can't answer that in one sentence, the shopper won't bother working it out for them. Vague positioning will still get you some trial. People pick things up because they sound interesting. But what it doesn't get is the second purchase.
Brand books full of words like "premium", "natural" and "a healthier alternative" don't tell anyone why they should reach for you over the thing they already buy. A simple rule of thumb is to finish the sentence "people buy this when they …." will help you to focus on a need or occasion. And if you can’t answer that, then ask some shoppers why they buy you.
Coke Zero got this right. It offered the Coke taste with less guilt, a clear trade that people understood immediately. In their article, the brandgym also flagged the opposite risk: products that end up not indulgent or healthy enough end up not satisfying either need.
2. Win one occasion before you try to win them all
BNatural isn't going to beat Coke, Pepsi and Thums Up across every cola moment. It doesn't need to. The brandgym suggests it picks one, such as the mid-afternoon reset, the office fridge or the café table, and owns it properly. This matters more for a challenger than a leader. Big brands have the budget to be everywhere. A challenger spread across every occasion ends up being invisible in all of them.
It's also how you get listed. A UK grocery buyer doesn't want to hear that your drink is "for everyone". They want to know which shopper mission it serves and where it sits on fixture. A clear occasion answers both.
Great strategy is about sacrifice - so the hard part isn't picking an occasion. It's saying no to the others, because they all seem plausible.
3. Branding can't rescue the PRODUCT
Most food and drink categories need the product to taste great - that’s table stakes. People will try something unusual once. They'll only come back if it's good. The brandgym's point is that the coconut should be the signature note for BNatural, with the drink still recognisably a cola, rather than the whole flavour.
And for BNatural, at a 50% price premium, the second purchase is a conscious decision. A premium price tells people to expect more. A product that's merely fine looks worse at a premium than it would at parity even if the packaging looks beautiful. There needs to be a justifiable reason why people will come back to the brand. Cravendale branded milk for example, is roughly double the price of standard fresh milk. But on the front of pack they talk about “filtered for freshness” and a 21 day shelf life. These are “price shields” - features that shoppers can use to justify the premium they’ve just paid.
What to take from it
Three questions worth answering before any launch money is spent:
Can you say in one sentence what job the brand does, and for whom?
Which single occasion will you own first, and what are you deliberately leaving alone for now?
Does the product beat what people use today?
If any of those answers is fuzzy, sort it out first. It's a lot cheaper than a relaunch.
Working on a launch or a repositioning? At Big Black Door we help food and drink brands answer these questions before the money goes out: what job the brand does, where it should win first, and what needs fixing before launch. If you'd like a straight second opinion, get in touch.