MarketTrip - VitaminWater Creates Loyalty, Community...and Now Suspicion

There's something fishy going on at Glaceau...at least as far as its VitaminWater product lineup goes. Consumers are starting to talk about it and some folks are getting pretty upset.

It seems, at least people are speculating, that Glaceau has been messing around with the formula for "Revive" - its popular Fruit Punch flavor. It looks a little funny (less deep red/purple) and it tastes a little different too...

It's just a hunch...based on people's observations and recollections of taste but VitaminWater devotees tend to know their water well so they're probably on to something. So what's the deal if it's true?

We can only speculate (the company hasn't made any announcements) but speculate we shall...

In the past 12 months, the VitaminWater offering has grown from 6 or so flavors to a veritable rainbow spectrum of 16 flavors/colors. New flavors/colors include "Defense" (Cran-Apple) in burgundy, "Endurance" (Peach-Mango) in...well, peach and "Charge" (Lemon-Lime) in a greenish-yellow hue. This brand expansion has highlighted, from a marketing perspective, just how tied to color the VitaminWater flavors are. Flavor colors key to label colors...yellow to yellow, pink to pink, etc...(except for Lemonade which has a blue label).

But it's in the purple shades that the lineup has grown most conspicuously...there are now three purple flavors (the original "Revive," "Formula 50"- grape, and "XXX" - Acai-blueberry-pomegranate).

I'm speculating that it got to be a bit too crowded in the purples for the marketing folks when they realized that really all that differentiated "Revive" and "XXX" visually was the label on the bottle (XXX got a black label). Their solution (perhaps) was to lighten "Revive" so that it more neatly fills the middle ground between "Formula 50" (pale purple) and "XXX"... Perhaps this change in hue had a subtle effect on taste.

Ok. So it was a marketing decision...only problem is that people noticed and most questioned in my totally unscientific poll don't really like the result. They used words like "betrayed" and "wronged" to describe their feelings... Now, this isn't on the same level as Coca-Cola's New Coke fiasco*...more like the Old Becky/New Becky switcheroo on Rosanne or Dick York in place of Dick Sargent on Bewitched. It's unsettling and largely inexplicable but something people know they'll get used to and then not think much about moving forward.

People will get over it and VitaminWater likely won't really lose any drinkers...but since it involves something as choice-critical as flavor which in the beverage biz is the very heart of consumer loyalty (much more so than giveaways or points programs), if true, it seems like a really risky move on Glaceaus' part.

*or brilliant move. Some view Coke's switch as a well conceived marketing ploy. I don't buy it...