If you’re getting into the $4 billion hard seltzer segment in 2021 with a glut of new offerings, you better go hard.
For New Belgium Brewing Company, that amounts to the biggest investment behind a brand launch in the company’s history for Fruit Smash, the Fort Collins, Colorado-headquartered craft brewery’s irreverent seltzer line, which began hitting retailers earlier this month.
The declaration from New Belgium is clear: “Say bye to basic seltzering,” the brand’s website proclaims.
To separate Fruit Smash from the sea of clear boozy bubbles, New Belgium has enlisted comedians Chad Kroeger (real name Tom Allen) and JT Parr from the Chad Goes Deep video series — they went viral trolling the San Clemente City Council with requests for a 12-foot statue in honor of the late Fast and Furious star Paul Walker be erected on the pier — to champion the new seltzer line.
“They just represent that brand to us,” senior brand manager Dave Knospe told Brewbound.
The campaign will play out on social and connect television with a faux infomercial starring Chad and JT that is expected to hit social in the coming weeks and follow with TV with 30- and 60-second spots in April or May.
“To launch a brand with connected TV at New Belgium is a brand new concept and it’s a huge step for us,” Knospe said.
With that sort of backing, Fruit Smash is expected to be New Belgium’s top innovation brand of 2021 “by a healthy margin,” Knospe said.
Fruit Smash began hitting retailers on March 1. In New Belgium’s home state of Colorado, the brand is already the “third fastest moving” hard seltzer brand, according to Knospe. That performance has exceeded early expectations.
“For us, we’re a new brand, so that feels like a pretty big win,” he said. “I think we’re getting cautiously optimistic of what it can be, it’s the space that we’re entering.”
Fruit Smash is available now in a variety 12-pack of three flavors: Pink Lemonade, Tropical Punch and Berry Blast. Each gluten-free 12 oz. serving is 4.7% ABV and 100 calories.
The long-term view is that Fruit Smash has the potential to be a brand on par with the Voodoo Ranger beer brand and any incremental growth would be a boon for a company (+30.7%, to $299.5 million in off-premise dollar sales year-over year) that outpaced the overall beer category (+14.7%) and craft segment (+13.9%) in 2020, according to market research firm IRI.
Year-to-date through February 21, portfolio-wide New Belgium dollar sales in off-premise retailers are up 41%, to more than $49 million), making the company the 11th best-selling beer vendor of 2021 thus far, IRI reported. At this early stage in 2021, New Belgium’s Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA is now the top-selling IPA (+69.3%, to more than $16.8 million) in off-premise retailers and the second best selling craft beer offering overall.
“If this thing takes off, there’s no reason it couldn’t be the size of a Voodoo Ranger for us, or even bigger, honestly,” he said. “That seems crazy to say. And it’s tough because I work on Voodoo Ranger as well and that’s my other baby.”
Beyond ad campaigns, New Belgium sees an opportunity to stand out in a field of mostly colorless hard seltzers with a colorful liquid from real fruit juice and a presentation with a personality, not unlike the Voodoo Ranger brand.
“There’s this modern, sleek, minimalist look about seltzer,” Knospe said. “And even in seltzer communications, it’s just so serious. ‘We’re like the purest of pure liquids,’ and it’s like, OK, that’s cool, and that is a definitely a compelling part of seltzer to me — it’s light, it’s refreshing, it’s fun, it’s all that. But what’s driving it is these occasions of youthful, 21- to 29-year-old drinkers that are just loving these fun fruity flavors and just having a blast with it.”
However, Knospe said while the consumers were having fun with hard seltzers, it didn’t look like the brands were embracing fun. Fruit Smash is attempting to flip that script, including the fake infomercial shoot with the Chad Goes Deep crew, which Knospe said pokes fun at the segment and itself.
“It seems like an opportunity to just be more real about who we are, what we are, and the product that we’re actually releasing,” he said.
That brand ethos manifests itself on packaging, including a dinosaur wearing sunglasses and skateboarding on the Tropical Punch can, a shark wearing a backward baseball cap on the Berry Blast package and a gold chain wearing cockatoo rollerblading on the Pink Lemonade. Knospe said it’s all about infusing a personality into the space that few brands have thus far willing to do.
“Even when you get to shelf now, the Fruit Smash box is bold and colorful, and it’s in the sea of white packaging,” he said. “The can is not a slim can; it’s a normal beer can, with a bunch of color.”
New Belgium will also work with comedians Melissa Ong and Joey Avery, who the company is giving “a lot of creative license to go out and create content that we think their fans will like” while incorporating Fruit Smash, Knospe said.
The infusion of personality into the seltzer space is aimed at reaching what New Belgium believes will be a new generation of seltzer drinkers.
“Is it cool to drink a White Claw or a Truly? It is now,” Knospe said. “But will it always be when it’s the standard? I’m not sure. So we can be this younger alternative for this next generation of drinkers.”