The energy drink space is crowded, with heavyweights like Red Bull, Monster Energy and Celsius dominating the marketplace.
What that means for a challenger brand, like Accelerator Active Energy, is that it needs to find ways to be more creative and more nimble to stand out, said Vice President of Marketing Zach Schotz.
“Our brand awareness is low. That’s just the truth of it,” Schotz said. “It makes every small decision big on how we can get more awareness.”
From Schotz’s time at sports drink brand BodyArmor, he learned that having a celebrity endorsement can greatly increase brand awareness when tied to equity shares. More than just a typical ambassador relationship, if those celebrities naturally enjoy the product and have a stake in the success of the company, the marketing performs even better, Schotz said.
To that end, Accelerator has landed partnerships with National Football League stars Travis Kelce and Jalen Hurts, professional tennis player Paula Badosa, President Donald Trump’s granddaughter Kai Trump, Major League Baseball star Aaron Judge and model Olivia Dunne.
“It’s this instant credibility that we’re able to get from these partners, especially if they’ve never heard of (the brand) before, but they know the partner,” Schotz said. “It’s not a coincidence that Kansas City is one of our most successful markets.”
Accelerator founder Lance Collins had a relationship with Travis Kelce, which is how the football star became involved with the brand, Schotz said.
Ambassadors Co-Create Flavors
The ambassadors co-create flavors with Accelerator, which helps to show consumers that the partnerships are authentic and not just transactional, he said. For example, Dunne talks about how cotton candy is one of her favorite treats, which is why she helped launch a cotton candy flavor for the brand, Schotz said.
“It immediately became No. 1 on e-com and then when it rolled out to retail, it was our No. 1 velocity SKU there,” Schotz said. “We did the same thing with Kai Trump with Blue Raz Slush this year, which had an incredible launch on Amazon.”
Another activation with Dunne was having her promote “National Olivia Day” on June 11. Anyone with the name Olivia could buy an Accelerator, submit her receipt, and the brand would send a Venmo payment of $2 for it.
“That was a fun culture moment,” he said. “Livvy leaned in and promoted it and we were able to see people go to the store and actually buy the product and drive trial.”
Accelerator Also Taps Micro-Influencers
Beyond working with well-known influencers, Accelerator also is making a point to work with collegiate athletes from smaller schools or lesser-known sports, he said. In the era of NIL — or name, image and likeness, which now allows brands to compensate collegiate athletes for endorsements — many brands are going after successful college athletes as marketing spokespeople.
The smaller-scale route operates more like a micro-influencer program, in which the brand sends product for posts, he said. This gives Accelerator content geared to its target market (18- to 25-year-olds) that highlights its current marketing initiatives, Schotz said.
“A lot of these athletes have anywhere from 1,000 to maybe 25,000 or 50,000 followers,” Schotz said. “Working with them is how we’re getting content. We’ll get them to make content at retail, push to our Amazon, if we have Prime Day, any large activation, we can have them amplify whatever campaign we have going on.”
Accelerator Boosts Sales 4% to 10% with Package Refresh
The brand will target athletes where it has physical store distribution, such as QuikTrip, Hy-Vee, Cub Foods and a subset of Walmart stores. Stores that sell the beverage are mostly in the central part of the country, including Texas, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota and not on the coasts.
“That dictates a lot of our marketing as far as like, ‘OK is this driving awareness to the right person specifically to consumers that can purchase at retail?’” Schotz said. “If they can’t, then making sure it is Amazon, which has been our largest channel.”
Some of its digital marketing vendors have pushed the brand’s content nationwide, but Accelerator wants to shift its paid digital ads and other field tactics to focus on the parts of the country where shoppers can buy its product at the shelf, not online.
“As objectives go, we still need to hit our consumer where they are and drive awareness on a regional level versus fully national,” Schotz said.
The brand also recently redesigned its packaging to be more colorful so it will “pop” on the shelf, compared to its previous white can. This change increased sales 4% to 10% year over year across its flavors. Its Tropical Punch can, which went to a full green can from white, is now one of its top three sellers. This was the largest change of all its flavors, he said. Its Peach Paradise and Cherry Limeade flavors also had large increases in sales volume and good feedback on social media, he said.
