Whereas other drinks are aimed at before and during sport, the after-sports sector was only served by ‘macho man’ protein drinks and not led by a brand of any fame. We wanted to be the first user friendly entry level brand in that sector.
We knew that Lucozade was selling around 15 million units a year, so we wanted to get it right and spent a long time on formulation. We broke even in our second year and that’s due to the product’s credibility and our passion.
Athletes are spreading the word that it works. We started by sending packs to Nicosia for the 2004 Athens Olympics in order to penetrate an influential area. We could see that many sports sectors were already catered for, yet athletics wasn’t. After some thought, we chose Dean Mason, the number one decathlete and gold medal winner in the Commonwealth Games, to represent the brand.
Dairy drinks have a low-value reputation though, with half a litre of bottled milk costing less than a bottle of water. We knew that by being king of our own fixture, we’d be more motivated. Light users buy it once a week, medium users twice weekly, and heavy users buy it daily. Average spend online is £40.33 for six cases. We’ve added 83% incremental sales to the dairy fixture.
We’ve made mistakes, of course. Our mini magazine ‘Fit for Sport’ didn’t meet the needs of our niche audiences; cyclists are only interested in cycling, runners only in running. It was like sending a magazine on American football to a cricketer or Man Utd supporter. We trialled a more focused newsletter, which we sent just to runners and the click-through shot up to 50%. Now they’re all tailored more individually.
It was tough getting going – we were out there in all weather. We gained loyalty though sampling even at 3am on a winter morning. Drinking it post-sport, athletes found they could go further.
We’re using the web and promotional coding to boost sales. The English Institute of Sport is backing us, and from 31,000 regular users in April 2007 our followers grew to 113,206 registered on our database by September 2008.
Our target is to have 250,000 registered users this year. We don’t have the money to carry out clinical trials, but various sports universities are undertaking this on our behalf. Two years down the line, who knows where we’ll be?
Sportsmen are notoriously good at spotting sports drink fakes, and following is lazy, so create your own space by niche targeting. What you need is to be part of something much bigger – a passion, a cause.
Jeremy Martin is co-founder and MD of For Goodness Shakes.
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