The machinery of modern consumer marketing has become so efficient at generating attention that it occasionally forgets what attention is actually for.
The recent shutdown of Unwell Beverages, the canned drink venture backed by the podcaster Alex Cooper, offers a useful reminder. Ms. Cooper, whose "Call Her Daddy" program commands one of the largest audiences in audio, brought to the enterprise exactly what beverage startups are told they need: an engaged following, social media velocity and the kind of cultural relevance that marketing textbooks describe in breathless terms. What she could not supply, it appears, was a reason for anyone to buy the product twice.
This is not, to be fair, a problem unique to Ms. Cooper or to creators generally. The beverage industry has spent the better part of a decade perfecting the machinery of trial — the influencer post, the frictionless checkout, the limited-edition flavor drop that compresses years of brand-building into a single weekend of sales. What none of this machinery can do is make someone reach for the same can again when the novelty has faded and they are simply thirsty.
The strongest beverage categories have always understood this, even if they rarely articulate it. Coffee owns the morning. Beer owns the game, the cookout, the happy hour. Tea, depending on the culture, owns energy or comfort or ritual. The recurring error among new entrants is to begin with a celebrity or a trending ingredient and attempt to reverse-engineer an occasion around it. (Consumers have proven stubbornly resistant to being reverse-engineered.)
The metrics thateli investors and generate trade press — first-week velocity, social impressions, retail placement — are poor predictors of what happens six months later, when the launch is over and the product must survive on its own merits.
Celebrity drives attention. Distribution creates availability. Trends spark curiosity. None of these, however, can manufacture the only decision that ultimately matters: buying it again.
Original story published in campaignlive.com: "Why Alex Cooper’s Unwell Beverages shutdown proves brands keep confusing hype with demand | Campaign US"