Expanding a beverage portfolio into new realms of mood modulation

The Challenge
A leading beer and spirits company sensed modern consumers shifting away from classic alcoholic beverages toward mood-enhancing alternative beverages. They wanted to understand emerging consumer needs and the broad opportunity to elevate their portfolio beyond beer by pioneering mood-enhancing beverage brands.

The Approach
WG began by immersing into the world of mood alterations with leading-edge consumers and creators to discover the deep needs, desired experiences, and emerging set of solutions. After identifying high potential innovation spaces, Waterson Garner developed and quantified a segmentation model that represented the biggest whitespace opportunities for mood beverage market development.

The Opportunity
Our approach revealed that the opportunity for mood beverages has evolved beyond classic and over-simplified moods and into a need for transformative experiences that address deep stress, foster creativity, and advance cognitive ability. Waterson Garner developed disruptive brand concepts against these top opportunity spaces, leading to an overall corporate shift to “Beyond Beer” and multiple new product launches.