Innovation spotlight: Clawtails by White Claw

Welcome to Innovation Spotlight! Each month we’ll spotlight a brand that’s capitalizing on a current consumer trend with a new product innovation.

This month we researched Clawtails, White Claw’s latest launch into ready-to-drink cocktails. Read on to get our analysis of the product's in-market potential, the audiences it appeals to, as well as what you can learn from it to innovate smarter. 

After its release nearly a decade ago in 2016, White Claw has become a major player in the hard seltzer category. 

Now the brand is taking on ready-to-drink (RTD) cocktails with its latest release for the summer, Clawtails. Marketed as “Not a seltzer. Not a cocktail. It’s a Clawtail.” — these drinks leverage the brand recognition of White Claw but deliver traditional cocktail flavors that are premixed and ready to drink. 

They’re made with real juice, are lightly carbonated and contain 7% alc/vol (slightly higher than White Claw’s seltzers, which are traditionally 5% alc/vol). 

Kevin Brady, Vice President of Marketing at White Claw’s parent company Mark Anthony Brands Inc., said of the new release, “White Claw has always been at the forefront of the ready-to-drink category by bringing drinkers more of the flavors they love in convenient and delicious varieties. ClawTails™ is an entirely new way to enjoy every social gathering with a line of drinks that offers a fun and refreshing twist on the classics.”

Clawtails come in four well-known cocktail variations: 

• Mango Margarita

• Blackberry Mojito

• Strawberry Cosmo

• Tropical Mai Tai

The RTD category has seen tremendous growth in the last decade, and it’s projected to grow another 12% between 2023 and 2027. 

Consumers love the convenience, portability, consistency and flavor options of RTD beverages, including seltzers, cocktails and canned wines. 

White Claw is a major player in this space, known for its hard seltzers. With such strong brand recognition, it makes sense White Claw would expand into canned cocktails eventually. 

We love the fun name that plays with its existing brand, while also offering something new — and the vibrant packaging caught our eye. But what do consumers think? Let’s find out!

1. Relying on the strength and recognition of an existing brand: White Claw is a big brand in the RTD alcoholic beverage space already, and all those associations consumers have with the brand are easily transferred onto this new product line. While there is a lot of competition in canned cocktails, White Claw is able to attract buyers based on the strength of its name alone. 

2. Playing it safe with flavors at first: Each of Clawtails’ initial four flavors has relatively broad appeal and none are polarizing, which is helpful in enticing shoppers to try the variety pack. Respondents commented that they were drawn to the variety pack because it gave them the opportunity to try each flavor and to offer something for everyone. This is a smart move to encourage trial, and the brand can launch more unique flavors once it has established itself in the new category.

3. Incremental sales potential: Innovating in adjacent categories is a great way to drive incremental sales of your brand, as the likelihood the new product line is less likely to cannibalize your core portfolio. And that’s the case here — Clawtails is incremental for the White Claw brand (Impact To Parent Brand Purchase Frequency: 56.6% vs. 54.7% norm), which means it's likely to grow White Claw sales overall rather than steal sales from other White Claw brands.

What’s the potential?

Clawtails fall in the top 20% of RTD beverage innovations in the US on both breakthrough potential and trial potential — putting it in the “scale and sustain” section of our concept potential assessment framework.

That’s an incredible result for this new product line!

Let’s unpack more about why this innovation scores this way.

What’s driving breakthrough potential? 

We use two key measures to determine breakthrough potential:

1. How different a product is (distinctiveness)

2. How superior a product is compared to what’s already available in market (advantage)

Clawtails score in line with the RTD category in distinctiveness (Distinctiveness T2B: 66.3% vs 64.6% norm) overall, with certain groups seeing the product as more distinctive than the category. Males, frequent buyers of the category and early adopters (defined as those who claim to try new RTD alcoholic beverages before others) see it as significantly more distinctive compared to the norm. 

Overall, Clawtails is seen as having an advantage over other RTD alcoholic beverages (Advantage T2B: 52.7% vs. 46.4% norm). That advantage is higher among adults under 50, males, frequent category buyers and early adopters.

These scores make sense to us. Clawtails aren’t seen as significantly different — because there are many canned cocktails on the market and the four flavors are traditional cocktails that consumers are used to seeing in multiple ways across alcohol categories. 

But it’s important that Clawtails are seen as significantly better than other options on the market. It’s due to the strength of the White Claw brand and its reputation in the RTD category that consumers expect White Claw’s cocktails to be better than other options. 

Also importantly, over three quarters of respondents believe that Clawtails delivers on the main things they need and expect from the RTD alcoholic beverage category (Meets Needs T2B: 77.3% vs. 67.9% norm). That number gets even higher for both regular category buyers (88.9%) and early adopters (91.4%). 

Which means that overall, consumers believe that Clawtails will meet their needs — and that expectation only increases with a consumer’s familiarity with the RTD category (and we can assume, their familiarity with the White Claw brand as a result).

What’s driving purchase likelihood?

Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they would be likely to buy Clawtails if available at a reasonable price (Purchase Likelihood T2B: 62.8% vs. 58.8% norm), which is in line with the RTD category. 

We see the same trend here as we did in distinctiveness and advantage, with adults under 50 and males citing higher purchase likelihood than adults 50+ and females. Consumers who buy the category at least once every 2-3 weeks and early adopters have the highest purchase likelihood. 

What about each individual flavor? All four flavors scored quite well in purchase likelihood, with Strawberry Cosmo coming out on top with 65% of people saying they would be likely to purchase and only 19% saying they would not be likely to purchase. Blackberry Mojito was the least likely to be purchased, though more than half (56%) still said they would be likely to buy. 

The flavors were the most exciting element of Clawtails for respondents. People found the flavors appealing overall and specifically appreciated the variety — noting that there was something for everyone in the variety pack. 

The use of real fruit juice, the bold colors of the packaging and the White Claw brand were also highlighted. 

Respondents said things like: 

• "I like the fun flavors of the cocktails that they have to offer. They sound like summer in a can."

• "I like the variety pack so I can taste the different flavors and decide which is my favorite. I also like the pack so I have options when I have friends over."

• "They feel like an upgrade from standard hard seltzer."

• "I love the whole idea and the cocktail flavors offered. White Claw is a brand I've heard most about. Alcohol level at 7% is not too high. Love this made with real fruit juice."

• "I think the packaging looks great and the different flavors seem very appetizing and I really like the colors."

Of course, you can never appeal to everyone. Some respondents mentioned that they didn’t like cocktails generally, thought the 7% ABV was too low, suspected the drinks would be too sugary or thought the packaging was too busy. 

Finally, when asked which occasions respondents would be likely to enjoy Clawtails, enjoying at a social gathering emerged as the most likely: 

• To share with friends or family at a social gathering: 42%

• To unwind and relax after a long day: 40%

• As a special treat: 38%

• To kickstart a fun night out: 35%

White Claw’s move into a related category makes sense to us, and it clearly makes sense to consumers too! 

Are there related categories you’re looking to expand into? Zappi’s connected Innovation System makes identification, assessment and testing of such cases much easier. Get a demo to learn more. 

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