Rise of Spiked Sparkling Water | sliStudios Digital Marketing

Industry News
Beverages

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If you haven’t heard of spiked seltzer, you might not be running with the right crowd.

Boasting effects similar-to the buzz-inducing ABV as most light beers, Spiked Sparkling Water has quickly attracted a loyal following among millennials for its low carbohydrate, sugar and calorie counts.

This beverage is a carbonated sparkling water spiked with nearly 5% alcohol by volume (ABV).

Hard seltzer was a $60 million industry heading into last summer, according to Nielsen data. Now by some estimates, the industry is hovering around $500 million in sales – Drinker’s tastes and priorities are shifting in a major way.

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Beer, wine and mixed drinks have traditionally dominated the adult beverage industry, beer being the front-runner. But the low-carb movement is shaking up the industry as consumers shift to healthier alternatives, especially hard sparkling water.

To see just how big this movement is, LikeFolio dug into consumer tweets to see how much they’re talking about enjoying hard sparkling drinks:

Consumers are talking about buying hard sparkling drinks more than ever - LIKEFOLIO

The chart above shows increased purchase intent mentions for consumers drinking and purchasing hard sparkling water. This surge, coupled with impressive sales numbers for hard sparkling water brands in 2018 indicates strong growth across the board.

What’s driving this shift in consumer behavior?

Carbs.

Health-conscious consumers are avoiding sugars more and more, especially in their drinks.

To investigate this trend towards health-conscious decision making, we looked deeply at consumer tweets that mentioned both beer and either “fat” or “carbs”:

article-spikedsparkling-mentions
As you can see, the volume of tweets showing concern for beer’s nutritional value (or lack thereof) has risen dramatically, with an especially sharp increase in mentions within the exact time frame that hard seltzer mentions began to skyrocket.
This becomes even more striking when we look at Purchase Intent for the dominant low-carb beer, Michelob Ultra, against newcomer and leader of the hard sparkling movement, White Claw:
Beverage Trends from Ultra Light Beer to Spiked Sparkling Water

Key takeaways.

There is a clear consumer preference for healthier alcoholic beverages. People are avoiding carbs in their drinks, and hard sparkling drinks fill the need.
Men will need to be exposed more to hard sparkling water, and adopt it as a drink of choice, in order to transition from a new trend in the alcoholic beverage industry into a full-blown movement.

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