How Fever-Tree Became the Leader of the $9.5Bn Premium Mixers Category

We’re joined by the CMO of Fever-Tree, Jeremy Kanter in this episode. Fever-Tree is a global brand that sells premium drink mixers designed to complement the world’s finest spirits 🥂✨. We discuss, 1 - How incumbents view innovation, 2 - The signs that a category is ripe for disruption, and 3 - What it truly takes to build an authentic premium brand. As Jeremy reveals in this episode, customers often don't think about your products as obsessively as you do; They make decisions based on what’s top of mind for them, and their previous experiences with the brand. So, if you want your customer to ‘stick’📌& have a ‘high lifetime value’, then you need to ask yourself if your product is superior to the rest. Fever-Tree has an obsessive focus on using the best ingredients and processes, which has allowed them to deliver a noticeably superior & better-tasting drink than their competition. They recently overtook Schweppes to become the top tonic water in the US. Jeremy tells us how we need to be “unreasonable” about quality and not accept the category norms because it’s the job of marketers to find innovative ways to add value. We dive into what it takes for a brand to be recognized as “premium” in its category, and how to mobilize ‘advocates’ to build the grassroots support your brand needs, especially in its initial stages 🌱🤝. Jeremy's marketing model begins with an exceptional product, developing channel/ritual advantages, cultivating advocates, and only then moving to broader advertising & comms. If you are in a crowded category and want to stand out with a premium & differentiated brand, then this episode is for you! 🌟🚀Watch the video version of this podcast on Youtube ▶️: https://youtu.be/8HRwwHaR_rE          📚 Chapters:(00:00:00) - Intro(00:03:45) - Favourite Challenger Brand 👊(00:08:55) - What is Fever-Tree? 🍷(00:18:10) - When is the right time to innovate in a category?(00:23:30) - How to build a premium brand? 💸(00:31:15) - Customer advocacy: Fevertree’s Playbook 📖(00:36:20) - Does a Grassroots Approach Always Work?(00:42:00) - Fever-Tree’s Marketing Model 🌎(00:45:30) - Lightning Round ⚡🖊️Mentioned in the show:CMO of Beavertown episodeMonzo bankCognitive bias page El Bulli - Best restaurant in the worldFavorite challenger brand: Bare Biology Scratch is a production of Rival, a marketing innovation consultancy that develops strategies and capabilities that help businesses grow faster. Scratch is hosted by Eric Fulwiler, and he’s joined by Jeremy Kanter of Fever-Tree in this episode.Find Rival online at www.wearerival.com, LinkedIn, Twitter. Find Eric on LinkedIn.Find Jeremy on LinkedIn.Say hi at [email protected], we’d love to hear from you. Rival is a marketing consultancy for brands that want to challenge convention in their category. We’re on a mission to understand what challenger brands do differently to grow in categories that are being disrupted, and use a challenger playbook to deliver outsized impact through an integrated, tech-enabled approach. Past guests include CMOs from Mastercard, GE, Shell, Hyperloop, Adobe, PepsiCo, and Papa Johns.If you’re interested in learning more about marketing from successful CMOs, we compiled a list of the top 5 CMO podcasts to listen to in 2024; check it out here 🔗  https://www.wearerival.com/content-hub-articles/cmo-podcasts-you-cannot-afford-to-miss-in-2024