SOFT drinks in Scotland are hugely important to retailers’ profits and are being influenced by three main trends according to Irn-Bru brand owner AG Barr’s head of marketing Adrian Troy.
Quoting Nielsen Scantrack figures to January this year Troy said total retail sales of soft drinks in Scotland had reached £802m with impulse sales accounted for £223m and sales being positively affected by growth in shopper diversity, continuing shopper desire for good value and growth of soft drinks purchasing in convenience outlets.
Troy said summer is key for the entire soft drinks market and retailers need to ensure their soft drinks fixtures are set up to reflect seasonal sales increases if they want to maximise profits. Over the 2014 summer period, the total soft drinks category was up 13% in Scotland with water, juice drinks and drinks categories as ‘other flavoured carbonates’ seeing the biggest summer increases.
The firm plans to put significant marketing support behind its portfolio of brands including: Irn-Bru, the most valuable non-alcoholic Scottish take-home brand in Scotland; the Barr Family soft drinks range, which it says continues to perform strongly with year-on-year growth of 8%; Rubicon, said to be the UK’s number-one exotic juice drink brand; Strathmore, which it says is growing by 80%; and the energy drinks brand Rockstar, which it says has six of the top 10 fastest selling big can flavours.
Soft Drinks is one of the most profitable categories in a c-store, so retailers should ensure their soft drinks fixture is highly visible, well-presented and located in a high footfall area between the door and the till, Troy said.
Sub-categories and brands within them should be grouped together with best-selling brands then positioned at eye level and in many cases multi-faced. Chillers and fixtures should be re-stocked regularly, especially during summer months to take advantage of increased impulse purchases. If a product has to be frequently restocked its number of facings should be increased.
• This month sees the roll out of Coca-Cola’s new strategy that unifies the Coca-Cola portfolio of products – including Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Coca-Cola Zero and Coca-Cola Life.
The new approach sees Coca-Cola Zero integrated with Coca-Cola, Diet Coke and Coca-Cola Life under one brand – Coca-Cola.
Coca-Cola advertising will feature the full range of Coca-Cola variants.
The lower and no-calorie and lower and no-sugar Coca-Cola variants will be presented in the final frames of all Coca-Cola television advertising.
Media investment in the lower and no-calorie and lower and no-sugar variants of Coca-Cola will be doubled in 2015.
The branding on every Coca-Cola can and bottle will be in the same style, with different colours distinguishing each variant. And on-pack communications will include clearer descriptions of the characteristics of each variant.
