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AdMiration feature: Jif’s “JIF JIF JIF JIF”

Kim Malcolm & Kelsey Sullivan — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 19:36:52 GMT

For this week’s AdMiration feature, we looked at consumer response to Jif’s “JIF JIF JIF JIF” ad — part of the brand's first major refresh campaign in 30 years.

Read on to get our 3-2-1 snapshot of the ad (3 facts, 2 learnings and 1 reflection) and learn how their ad was received based on our data.

The ad: Jif’s “JIF JIF JIF JIF”

The ad opens with the familiar Jif logo as a dramatic, choir-backed version of “O Fortuna” begins to build.

The brand’s iconic red, blue and green stripes then start transforming, with the word “Jif” repeatedly appearing and evolving into action-oriented words like “dip,” “sip” and “mix,” rapidly cutting between a series of snacking and meal occasions from Jif being spread, dipped, mixed and incorporated into everything from classic snacks and fruit to smoothies, yogurt bowls and savory dishes like peanut butter ramen.

The fast-paced food shots are interspersed with social-style visuals and close-ups of the product and continues to accelerate as more uses for Jif flash across the screen.

The ad closes by bringing the focus back to the Jif name and its recognizable logo, landing on the campaign's “Every Jif’ing Thing” slogan.

3-2-1 snapshot

3 facts

This was a strong ad from Jif, landing in the top 15% of US ads for ability to drive short-term sales and the top 10% for its ability to drive brand equity over the long term (Sales Impact: 87, Brand Impact: 91).
It stands out from other advertising in the category (Ad Distinctiveness: 4.1 vs. 3.7 norm) and reads as an ad that could only be for Jif, with an incredible 87% of people remembering the Jif brand after watching the ad (Unaided Brand Recall: 87% vs. 70% norm).
The key message that there are multiple ways to use Jif peanut butter is seen as clear and believable (Clarity: 4.4 vs 4.2 norm, Believability: 4.4 vs 4.1 norm), ultimately resulting in increased consideration for Jif! (Purchase Uplift: 31% vs. 22% norm) — a fantastic win for the brand’s intended refresh campaign.

2 learnings

A well-branded ad can still be entertaining. There's a real playfulness to the execution of this spot, which largely revolves around many Jif brand cues. From the sweeping variations of the red, blue and green stripes, to the Jif logo changing to “DIP,” “SIP” or “MIX” as the different ways to enjoy Jif peanut butter are shown and the action unfolds, this spot proves that a well-branded spot filled with brand cues can also be entertaining while clearly getting the message across. And people were certainly entertained, with Like as the dominant emotion throughout, spiking whenever there’s a close up of food with peanut butter with some sharing “Loved the product versatility shown. Clever use of words associated with Jif label colors" and “I think it was a good way to use visuals and the song at the same time. It is a very appealing ad."

Music is a great element for setting the tone. Without the reimagined version of “O Fortuna” Jif used in this spot, the ad would have a very different feeling to it. The track gave the ad a fun, upbeat, catchy and high-energy tone, which many viewers praised (Musical Appeal: 4.2 vs. 3.8 norm). People specifically called it “catchy,” “peppy,” “dramatic” and “fun,” and liked how it worked together with the visuals. The song choice also helped generate humor and make the ad memorable, with some sharing: "I loved the music, it made it more dramatic and I loved seeing all the different meals that you could include peanut butter in" and "I enjoyed the whole ad. The catchy jingle and the different things each word was for.”

1 reflection

Is there an opportunity to reintroduce your product or brand for more occasions?

While Jif peanut butter has been around for 68 years, making its nationwide debut in 1958, it’s been more than 30 years since the brand has launched a refresh campaign.

Aside from the passage of time, the brand noted an opportunity to reintroduce themselves based on research conducted with consumers. They found that while 85% of consumers can identify their brand from its three colored stripes without seeing its name, that recognition is heavily associated with PB&J, with Jif showing up in only 4% of overall snacking occasions.

With this information, the opportunity for a refreshed introduction was clear: The peanut butter people already know and love can be used for much more than the traditional PB&J sandwich.

The goal for Jif with this campaign, and for any brand with a similar campaign, was to successfully deliver this new message. And they knocked it out of the park. The message that there are multiple ways to use Jif peanut butter was seen as clear and believable, a key indicator of success for a refresh, with some describing the message as: “That Jif peanut butter can be used in a lot of different ways” and “That Jif goes with anything.”

What’s more, the most consistent positive comment people mentioned was seeing so many different ways to use and enjoy Jif, making its versatility one of the biggest likes people expressed. Many people liked being told how and when to use the product, moving well beyond traditional peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and into snacks, meals, desserts, smoothies, dipping, cooking, and more in an engaging, clear manner — resulting in nearly two-thirds agreeing that Jif is “great for everyday snacking” after watching the ad.

This is exactly what a brand aiming to reintroduce themselves wants to see. Ask yourself: Is there an opportunity to reintroduce ourselves for new occasions? Have we seen new consumer behavior that indicates an opportunity? And how can we effectively communicate that?

About the campaign

This ad is part of Jif’s “Every Jif’ing Thing” campaign — the brand’s first major refresh in 30 years.

The spot was developed by PSOne, the Power of One solution for The J.M. Smucker Co., and creatively led by BBH USA.

And the refresh is based on research. Jif’s research found that while 85% of consumers can identify the brand from its three colored stripes without seeing its name, that recognition is heavily associated with PB&J.

Ryan Morand, brand experience at The J.M. Smucker Co. shares, “People know and love Jif for PB&J, but that is only part of the story. With ‘Every Jif’ing Thing,’ we are taking one of the brand’s most iconic assets and using it to inspire new behaviours, new recipes and new occasions, while keeping the unmistakable personality that has made Jif a household favourite.”

The refresh campaign was designed to celebrate and showcase the many ways consumers can enjoy Jif peanut butter today, from everyday snacking occasions to the traditional PB&J. This work builds on the brand’s history of continually expanding the role it can play in consumers’ lives (Think: 'Save the Celery').

Shelly Kowal, Marketing Director at The J.M. Smucker Co. shares, "We're excited to introduce a refreshed look for Jif that better celebrates the role the brand plays in consumers' everyday lives. This is our first major design update in more than 30 years, and we approached it with real intention. We wanted to honor the iconic elements people know and love while bringing new energy to the shelf. Jif has evolved from being one of the key ingredients in a PB&J to also serving as a delicious complement to so many snacking occasions, and this new branding celebrates that."

The campaign is set to run across broadcast, streaming, TV, online video, Meta, TikTok and Pinterest.

A deep dive into the ad’s performance

Jif delivered a refresh campaign that works on both fronts, with their ad landing in the top 15% of US ads for ability to drive short-term sales and the top 10% for its ability to drive brand equity over the long term (Sales Impact: 87, Brand Impact: 91).

It’s a distinctive ad that stands out in the category, allowing it to drive great reach and be noticed and remembered (Distinctiveness: 4.1 vs. 3.7 norm, Claimed Attention 4.2 vs. 3.9 norm, Brand Distinctiveness 3.9 vs. 3.7 norm).

What’s more, it’s seen as an ad that could only be for Jif, with an incredible 87% of people remembering Jif after watching the ad in a clutter reel (Unaided Brand Recall: 87% vs. 70% norm). People primarily identified the brand from the Jif logo, color scheme and the packaging — an important win considering the packaging was just redesigned!

A critical piece of the campaign, the message that there are multiple ways to use Jif peanut butter is seen as clear and believable, with some describing the message as: “That Jif peanut butter can be used in a lot of different ways” and “That Jif goes with anything.”

Even better, the most consistent positive comment people mentioned was seeing so many different ways to use and enjoy Jif. People liked that the ad moved beyond traditional peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and showed Jif in snacks, meals, desserts, smoothies, dipping, cooking, and more.

In fact, several people specifically said the ad gave them new ideas for using peanut butter or inspired them to try combinations they hadn't considered before. And after watching the ad, nearly two-thirds agree that Jif is “great for everyday snacking” — great news for a brand trying to introduce themselves into more snacking occasions!

When it comes to what people felt while watching the ad, Like is the dominant emotion throughout — spiking whenever there’s a good close up of food with peanut butter, but Love comes out on top at the end as the music reaches its conclusion and we see the full table of food — ultimately leaving people on a high note of Love (Love: 34% vs. 27% norm).

Ultimately people liked that the ad was fun, exciting, entertaining, upbeat, playful, catchy and high-energy.

And the music was also frequently praised (Musical Appeal: 4.2 vs. 3.8 norm). People called it catchy, peppy, dramatic and fun, and liked how it worked together with the visuals, which helped make the ad memorable.

Some respondents shared:

“I enjoyed the whole ad. The catchy jingle and the different things each word was for. Dip a pretzel in. Sip a smoothie with it in there, make a s’more with peanut butter. You can just do a lot with it."

"Loved the music in the background. Loved the product versatility shown. Clever use of words associated with Jif label colors."

"I loved the music, it made it more dramatic and I loved seeing all the different meals that you could include peanut butter in."

"I think it was a good way to use visuals and the song at the same time. It is a very appealing ad."

“It was high energy and caught my attention."

All of this ultimately led to increased consideration for Jif (Purchase Uplift: 31% vs. 22% norm) as well as more positive associations toward the Jif brand (Brand Appeal: 4.1 vs. 3.9 norm)!

Final thoughts

Jif said “Allow us to reintroduce ourselves” and consumers fully embraced it — a fantastic win for a brand that’s been around for over 65 years.

What did you think? Let us know by interacting with our coverage of the ads on LinkedIn.

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The power of love in advertising

Katie Sweet & Kim Malcolm — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:35:07 GMT

We know that many of the most effective ads make people feel something. Ads that land in the top 25% for overall emotion are twice as likely to drive immediate sales. That’s because people may forget individual details of an ad, but they’re more likely to remember how an ad made them feel, and those feelings (positive or negative) can transfer onto the brand.

And love is the strongest positive emotion there is. So it’s always an important emotion in advertising.

But when we say that brands should target “love” in their ads, people sometimes assume we mean they need to go straight for the heartstrings and deliver a touching story with a swelling soundtrack, like a sweet story with a puppy or an emotional reunion between a child and their deployed parent. That approach absolutely can evoke love, but it's not the only way to do it.

Some of the best-performing ads we've featured in AdMiration over the years prove that humor can be just as powerful a route to love. But generic slapstick or a cheap laugh for laughter's sake isn’t the way to do it. Humor that’s built on a real human truth, a fresh observation or genuine affection for a character or brand can evoke love too.

Here's a look at the different ways brands have earned love in AdMiration-featured ads — heartwarming and otherwise.

1. Pure heartwarming storytelling

This is the classic route, and it works because humans are wired to connect with stories.

Budweiser's recent Super Bowl ads are a masterclass in it. This year's "American Icons" follows a Clydesdale colt who befriends an injured baby bird, cares for it, and watches it grow — only to reveal the bird is a bald eagle, soaring above the now fully-grown horse as a nearby farmer tears up. It's unhurried, sentimental and leans fully into Americana — timed to Budweiser's 150th anniversary and the brand's 250-years-of-America messaging.

People really love it (Love: 55% vs. 27% norm), but a different brand telling the same story might not resonate as strongly or generate as much love. Budweiser has earned the right to this approach over years. Last year's "First Delivery" told a similarly tender story of an underestimated young Clydesdale proving himself by rescuing a runaway keg (Love: 48% vs. 27% norm).

Budweiser has built such a consistent emotional signature at the Super Bowl. Neither ad relies on a joke, a twist or even much product visibility — just an earnest story that people love.

These are exactly the type of stories people may think of when they think about ads that evoke love.

2. Emotional journeys that resolve on a high

But not every heartwarming ad stays warm the whole way through like those Budweiser examples — and that's often exactly why it works. Some great ads take viewers through a range of emotions before landing on love, and that range is what keeps people watching.

Dunkin's 2025 holiday spot "The Little Holiday Munchkin" is a great example. It follows the journey of a discarded donut hole through laughter, surprise and even a little sadness before a young boy sees the value of the donut hole. The ad ends with a lot of love — and it feels totally earned because we went through a whole journey of emotions to get there.

Waitrose's Christmas ad "The Perfect Gift" does something similar with a different structure, perfectly mirroring the beats of a classic rom-com — the meet-cute, the falling-in-love montage, a moment that threatens the relationship and a big romantic gesture at the end. Because the structure leverages a story arc people already know and root for, the dip in the middle makes the eventual high note land even harder.

In both cases, the lesson is the same: love can often hit hardest when it's earned through a journey, not handed to viewers in the first five seconds.

3. Humor with heart underneath

But love can come from laughs too. Nature Valley's "Jealousy" is a great example: a raccoon puppet tries to steal a hiking family's granola bar, gets told no, then straightens up and suddenly say, "Okay, okay! What if I did a little dance?" It's a genuinely silly, funny premise — but it also reads as sweet and endearing, generating strong scores in both laughter and love simultaneously (Love: 35% vs. 27% norm, Laughter: 19% vs. 7% norm).

PG Tips' "At Home With Monkey" from last year takes this even further. The ad brings back the brand's iconic Monkey mascot in a reality-TV-style "at home with" spot alongside his wife, Alice (played by Emily Atack), full of banter, inside jokes and a few playful jabs about their relationship. People were charmed by the warmth and familiarity between Monkey and Alice, describing it as feeling like "watching a comedy drama" rather than an ad. The relatable, lightly-bickering-married-couple dynamic (paired with a well-loved mascot, which we’ll talk more about next), produced a lot of love for the ad (Love: 34% vs. 21% norm), as well as laughs (Laughter: 17% vs. 7% norm).

In both ads the funny moments get people laughing, but that humor is built on something relatable or endearing enough that warmth follows right behind it. And that’s a very powerful combination for advertising.

4. Beloved brand assets and mascots

Distinctive characters and assets can become a shortcut to love once a brand has built up enough history with them. Once you have a brand mascot that people love, you can put them in funny situations and still evoke love at the same time.

In Pillsbury's "Big Biscuits" and PG Tips' "At Home With Monkey," love spikes every time the brand's mascot appears onscreen. Dulux's "Life is What You Paint It" uses Dorothy the same way, with love peaking both times she shakes paint out of her — as a puppy and later as an adult dog.

M&M's "What Have I Done" from earlier this year is another example of how incredibly efficient mascots can be at producing emotional moments. The ad shows Yellow M&M popping a new M&Ms POP’d Caramel into his mouth with a “Mmm!” The young man sitting next to him takes note, saying, “I didn’t know M&Ms liked eating M&Ms.” Yellow responds, “Who’s eating M&Ms?” He then notices the bag of M&Ms POP’d Caramel he’s been eating out of and yells in horror. Red and Orange M&M enter the room and fall to the floor screaming “What have you done?!”

The ad is just 15 seconds long and it makes people feel both love and laughter and successfully introduces a new product. Because people already love the M&M characters and love seeing them in funny situations, the ad doesn’t have to set up a heartwarming moment or tell a long, engaging story. It can deliver the product news in a funny and engaging way and people still love it, because they already know and love the characters.

5. Music as an emotional amplifier

Music doesn't create love on its own, but it can intensify whatever emotion is already building, so it’s important to use it wisely.

Miller Lite's 50th-anniversary spot "Legendary Stories" is a great example of music setting the tone. The ad pairs a black-and-white montage of decades of Miller Lite drinkers with David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" and narration from Christopher Walken, and the choice of song does a lot of the work to land the emotion. It conveys the feeling of nostalgia and celebration immediately, matching the vintage, retro feel of the photos on screen. It creates a vibe that leaves people feeling love (Love: 35% vs. 27% norm).

Coca-Cola's "Bubbling Up," the first ad in its FIFA World Cup campaign this year, shows a different way music can build love: gradually, through mounting anticipation. The ad follows a woman in a crowded elevator as World Cup excitement quietly spreads through a city — starting slowly, then pulling more and more people into the same feeling as it builds. Love and "like" run neck and neck for most of the ad, but once the music hits its chorus, love breaks away and peaks at its highest point of the entire film.

The lesson from both ads is that music can set the emotional pace and make the feelings in the ad stronger, whether that's an instant wave of nostalgia or a slow-building swell that pays off right when the love does.

6. Consistency that compounds love over time

Finally, we touched on this when we mentioned Budweiser earlier but it’s worth a deeper dive — love doesn’t have to be built in a single ad, it can be built over years or even decades, until a whole platform becomes shorthand for an emotion.

Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign is the clearest example of this. Since launching in 2004, it's tackled the same core idea — that real beauty shouldn't be defined by narrow, unrealistic standards — through dozens of different creative executions.

We’ve watched the platform expand from "Real Beauty Sketches" to "The Code" to last year's "Change the Compliment," which reframes how adults praise young girls, shifting the focus from "you're so pretty" to "you're so brave" or "so smart."

Each new chapter finds a fresh angle (AI, social media, everyday compliments), but the underlying belief and tone never change, which means every new ad gets to lean on all that the brand has spent building over 20 years rather than building it from scratch.

“Change the Compliment” scored incredibly high on love (Love: 50% vs. 27% norm). And while it’s clearly a heartwarming ad in its own right, it feels more credible and powerful because Dove is the brand behind it.

The takeaway

An ad that doesn’t make people feel is more likely to be unsuccessful. And love is an incredibly strong emotion, so it’s worth targeting with your ads. But don't assume the only route to love is a heartwarming, sentimental story. Humor can get you there too — as long as it's rooted in something true, relatable or genuinely affectionate rather than a cheap laugh.

The ads that combine laughter and love tend to outperform ads that only make people laugh, because the love is what people carry with them after the joke fades.

Whether you get there through a twist, a mascot, a soundtrack or two decades of brand consistency, the goal is the same: make people feel something they won't forget — and make sure your brand gets the credit for it.

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Why America loves dirty soda: The consumer psychology behind the trend

Kirsten Lamb — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

9% of consumers now call the dirty soda their favorite drink.

A combo of soda, flavored syrups, creams, fruit purees and citrus juice — dirty soda was created in Utah as a luxury-yet-affordable beverage for people who don’t drink alcohol or caffeine.

The drink’s rainbow layers and infinite customization options helped it gain viral reach across TikTok. And it was further popularized by the hit reality tv show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Cast member Layla Taylor shared, "Six out of the seven days of the week, I'm having at least one 44-ounce soda... I'm probably only going to live to be like 50, but it makes me happy."

In this post, I take a look at the dirty soda trend — exploring the consumer psychology, marketing and business models surrounding the beverage’s trending status.

What is dirty soda?

From its origins to current dirty soda consumer trends, let’s take a look at the definition of a dirty soda and why it’s gained popularity.

A brief history

A dirty soda is a non-alcoholic beverage made by combining a soda with flavored syrups, citrus and a splash of cream or creamer. Originally created by Nicole Tanner, owner of Utah-based soda shop Swig, in April 2010, the dirty soda was conceptualized as a luxury, customizable alternative to alcohol and coffee. The original dirty soda was a Dr Pepper mixed with coconut syrup.

Swig's dirty sodas immediately became popular with the local Mormon community, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who make up around half of Utah’s population. The dirty soda was served up via drive-thru, bringing an affordable and accessible sweet treat to Utah residents struggling with the financial fallout of the Great Recession.

Chains like Quench It! and FiiZ Drinks then took the soda nationwide, with the latter opening up stores in over 70 locations. Experts predict the category will reach $2.6 billion by 2033.

Why now?

Dirty soda became mainstream in early the 2020s thanks to TikTok and reality shows like The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. After the show's release in 2024, Yelp searches for dirty soda increased by 600% year over year, reaching an all-time high in May 2026 — a 229% increase from May 2025.

Chains like Swig, Quench It! and FiiZ demonstrated the growing demand for customizable beverages among consumers — leading to the nationwide growth of beverage-only QSR concepts. The high gross margins also make the dirty soda appealing on the business side.

Major chains and brands are now rivaling niche and small-scale dirty soda QSRs with their own dirty soda lines, validating the category. Keurig Dr Pepper recently released more than 35 new drink varieties, inspired in part by the dirty soda trend. The company said, “A decadently ‘dirty’ fan-favorite returns—Dr Pepper's iconic 23-flavor blend combined with refreshing, summery coconut flavor for a smooth, creamy indulgence available for a limited time starting in April.”

Why consumers love dirty soda

In a financially-challenging climate, the dirty soda lets consumers indulge for less while making them feel like they’re part of a viral trend.

The consumer need it fulfills

Why is dirty soda so popular? The rise in sobriety or sober curiosity among young consumers is a huge driver of the dirty trend. Four in ten consumers now follow a sober curious lifestyle, with many young people cutting out or reducing their alcohol consumption for physical and mental health reasons. Recent Gallup research shows a 10% drop in alcohol drinking among U.S. adults aged 18 to 34 over the last decade.

Unique, indulgent and a fun form of self expression, the dirty soda has become more than a drink to Gen Z and millennial consumers. Dirty sodas let consumers experiment with unique flavor stacks from Dr Pepper and vanilla syrup to Mountain Dew and coconut cream. Similarly to the trending matcha latte, the layered colors and creams featured in a dirty soda make the beverage instantly Instagrammable/fun to share across TikTok and Instagram.

Little treat culture lets consumers experience small indulgences without the stress and anxiety of overspending. 7% of Americans say they're actively stressed about money, while 55% say their finances are getting worse. Costing $4.00 to $5.50 per drink, dirty sodas give consumers a fun, indulgent customized drink at a far lower price point than a specialty coffee or a cocktail.

"Low-cost items (ideally in the $1–$5 range) hit the sweet spot for budget-friendly joy. Don’t forget to make it eye-catching, though: visual appeal in little treats matters just as much as flavor. Treats that pop on social media drive FOMO and foot traffic. Whether it’s a colorful lemonade, a mini cinnamon roll or a pizza bite shaped like a cupcake, today’s little treat needs to taste great, look great and feel like a win." - Samantha Des Jardins, Smart Brief

Dirty sodas also allow consumers to enjoy a sweet treat without committing to dessert, allowing them to get a hit of sugar with less fat and calories. This aligns with many of consumers health-focused goals — 82% of U.S. consumers say they put wellness first, with 52% looking to lose weight.

Dirty soda also serves as a social and daily ritual for many consumers. 28% of consumers say they buy dirty sodas from restaurants or specialty shops multiple times per week. Heading to the drive thru together, making mocktails at home or experimenting with different flavor combinations: dirty sodas give consumers an affordable way to hang out.

The consumer psychology

Similar to other specialty beverages, dirty soda allows consumers to express themselves through endless customizations with soda shops like OG dirty-soda QSR Swig offering over 100 customizations. From menu favorites to self-mixed creations, consumers’ go-to dirty sodas often become their signature drinks.

Self-expression is an identity-based driver that allows consumers to fulfil an innate need to express their genuine authentic selves. This makes them drawn to consumable goods that allow them to express themselves, their uniqueness and create personal meaning — even in the seemingly smallest of choices.

The drink’s virality also acts as social proof of the drink’s quality and desirability. Virality acts as a cognitive shortcut, allowing consumers to quickly judge whether a product is worth it through others’ assessment of it.

Limited-edition and seasonal flavors also create FOMO, pushing consumers to experience limited-edition flavors while they have the chance. Seasonal menus and limited-edition products and packaging also bring in an element of collectability, deepening consumers’ connection to a product and strengthening their identity formation as a dirty soda lover.

The easy habit formation connected to “soda runs,” choosing flavors and enjoying the quick dopamine hit of soda’s sugar and caffeine content, quickly turns soda drinking into a solidified habit.

The branding behind the trend

Dirty soda brands’ fun, treat-and-express-yourself branding that promises consumers adventure, luxury on a budget and personalized customization have been a core driver of the drink’s popularity. Here’s how soda shops have scaled their businesses with the right brand positioning, design and messaging.

Brand positioning

Dirty soda brands are built on beverage innovation — delicious, fully customizable and elaborate. Beverages are at the center of the brand, rather than an overthought as can often be the case with traditional QSRs. Aromatech writes: "We’ve seen everything from ube-matcha dirty sodas (thanks, oat milk trend) to pickle-flavored Mountain Dew concoctions (thank you Sonic) that sound terrible but apparently taste amazing.

Of course we will also encounter tropical fruit mixes (mango, passion fruit, dragonfruit) as these are Instagram-friendly flavors that photograph well and taste like vacation. What’s more interesting is the craft cocktail influence that we can start to see here and there. Fresh basil in a berry soda? Lavender in lemonade? All serve as deliberate attempts to enhance the category beyond sugar water with cream."

Soda shops like Swig and Fiiz Drinks position their brand around the ultimate customizability: consumers can swap out sodas bases with hundreds of syrups, creams and citrus juices.

Swig’s signature dirty soda creations come in 36 menu-approved combinations with popular bases like Dr Pepper, Diet Coke and Mountain Dew, while their custom add-ins include over 30 different flavored syrups, purees and creams. The franchise regularly rolls out themed seasonal menu items, showing their creativity in the space.

Source: Swig

Brand personalities are typically playful, warm and creative. Playful naming conventions add to the fun feel of the dirty soda. Swig’s lineup includes names like: Cherry Bomb, Beach Babe and Buttery Beer. While Sodalicious’ menu includes playful names like Blue Bombshell, 2nd Wife and Just Dew It.

Brands also lean into local community positioning, reflecting Utah’s family-focused roots. Sodalicious’ Instagram profile reads: "Serving happiness to you and Your Mom since 2013, one cup at a time.🥤 Open at ALL drive thru locations in ID, AZ, and UT! Sodalicious = Happiness."

Source: Sodalicious

Many soda shops position their drinks as offering a premium experience without premium prices, attracting cash-poor Gen Z and millennial consumers or large families on a budget. A customized soda often costs consumers less than $5.00, but offers the luxe, fun feel of a craft cocktail.

Visual identity

Dirty sodas also draw in consumers with bright color palettes. From layered fruit combos poured over ice in transparent cups to bold block colors like cobalt blues and bubblegum pinks, the dirty soda is far prettier than the average QSR soda in a paper cup.

Bright saturated colors immediately give consumers an immediate dopamine hit before consumers even read the label. Joe Burns, writing for Fast Company, shares: “Bright colors, bold fonts, and eye-popping patterns are psychological triggers, engineered to light up your brain’s pleasure centers like a well-timed notification.”

Bold hues stand out from products and branding with dull or minimalist color palettes, making the brain's attention system immediately snap into place — motivating novelty seeking and exploration.

Source: Restaurant Drive

Red and brown are another classic color combo that immediately gives brands like Swig its signature vintage soda feel. The combo creates an eye-catching visual contrast while evoking the comforting warmth-inducing nostalgia — reminiscent of Coca Cola and Dr Pepper’s traditional brand colors.

Source: Swig

Dopamine-based and nostalgia-backed packaging are immediately Instagrammable with consumers. Food and drinks with an artistic or highly-visual presentation can drive sales by up to 30%. Other research found that products offering multi-sensory experiences, such as products offering a highly visual experience alongside intense flavor, typically encourage consumers to pay more.

Cool store aesthetics add to the Instagram effect. The dirty soda’s “dopamine dressing,” often extends to cafes, coffeeshops and drive-thrus — bold paint choices, fun art, vintage-style chalk menu boards and neon signs make consumers want to snap and share the decor as much as their drinks.

Messaging

One of the main focuses of dirty sodas’ messaging is the endless customization options available to consumers. The unique combination of sodas, purees, creams and citrus gives consumers nearly infinite flavor combinations to choose from. Soda shops invite consumers to experiment and explore by creating and trying out new flavor combos with every visit.

Source: Crumbl

Personalized refreshments and making the dirty soda, “your own,” is also a core part of many brands’ messaging. The extensive customization options let consumers make totally unique signature drinks. Consumer-favorite FiiZ invites consumers to enjoy, “Your drink. Your way.”

Other brands focus on, “Treat yourself messaging,” aligning with the “little treat” trend that’s so big with financially-stressed Gen Z and millennial consumers. 54% of consumers consider retail therapy self-care, with 63% of consumers noting that food and beverages are their go-to choice of retail therapy.

Community building

Social status, belonging, experimentation and flavor exploration: online communities allow dirty soda brands to build momentum on a budget.

Source: People

TikTok creators are one of the biggest drivers behind the dirty soda trend. Online creators posting under the #DirtySoda build brand momentum with first-sip reactions, secret menu reveals, new recipes and go-to signature drinks. Much of the early success of dirty soda brands like Swig and Sodalicious’ can be credited with online creators posting their daily soda runs. Olivia Rodrigo was credited with, “making dirty soda trendy,” when her post with a Swig dirty soda spiked traffic to the brand’s site in December 2020.

User generated content (UGC) is also big in the space with users frequently sharing their favorite personalized combinations, often reshared by brands or used to inspire limited-edition menu creations. Combined, popular creators and online users have generated over 700,000 video mentions and more than 1.4 million total views from #DirtySoda across TikTok.

Local influencer partnerships support many brands’ local, family brand messaging — growing brands’ local audiences. Take SodaRush, which partners with local sports teams and small-scale influencers to help promote their brand store openings.

Soda shops also create a strong community feel around their brands with regular rewards. Many soda shops offer referral programs and loyalty apps, rewarding customers for making repeat purchases and recommending the brand across their social networks. Recent data shows that loyalty apps and rewards can increase average visit spend by up to 20%.

The economics of dirty soda

From average margins to the psychology behind why consumers are willing to pay more, let's review the economics of the dirty soda.

Pricing strategy

When it comes to dirty soda pricing, syrups and creams give sodas a luxe feel while protecting company margins. Soda shops frequently command premium pricing on inexpensive ingredients, with soda typically delivering a profit margin of around 85%. Brands can also upsell with flavor additions and toppings like ice cream and candy or liquor.

Messaging focused on artisan flavor profiles and customization drives much of consumer interest with brands easily justifying luxury price tags that still feel like affordable treats to consumers.

"To put this in perspective, that’s a markup potential of 500-800%. One successful operator reported generating $30,000 in a single week selling dirty sodas, with over $70,000 in revenue over just 2.5 months. These aren’t unicorn numbers: they’re achievable with proper execution." - Food & Beverage Magazine

Many soda shops and drive-thrus increase average order values by selling cupcakes, cookies and other sweet treats and offering sweet treats and soda bundles.

Limited-time offers (LTOs) allow for QSRs to differentiate from competitors while driving consumer spending. Megan Tallman, vice president of Coca-Cola Freestyle and Foodservice Innovation at Coca-Cola, says:

“Consumers who purchase an LTO are spending more. On average, they’re spending $3 more per trip."

Many soda shops and drive-thrus increase average order values by selling cupcakes, cookies and other sweet treats and offering sweet treats and soda bundles.

Business model

Beverage-based business models are one of the most affordable forms of QSR with beverage drive-thrus coming out on top for labor costs and gross margins.

According to QSR Magazine, beverage-first drive-thrus typically keep their labor costs under 18-20% compared to 30%+ for standard fast-food restaurants. While gross margins typically exceed 85%. Fast preparation is another pro of these business models. Because there’s zero need for complex kitchen equipment, speed-of-service stays under 60 seconds per car.

Source: QSR Magazine

Low food waste is another key benefit. However, single-use plastic, glass containers and metal cans can also contribute substantially to packaging waste — highlighting the need for strong sustainability measures.

Due to their lower operational costs than standard QSRs, dirty soda businesses allow for easily scalable operations and franchise expansion. Swig currently has over 170 locations across the U.S. in 17 states.

Why consumers are willing to pay more

Dirty sodas offer consumers something few traditional QSR food and beverage choices offer: personalization and customization. A standard burger, fries and soda offer consumers little creative freedom, making dirty sodas’ customizability attractive and worth the price tag for many consumers.

The personalization and customization options encourage strong repeat purchase behavior, particularly among younger consumers. 70% of Gen Z consumers say they want customizable food and beverage options, motivating them to return to brands that fulfill the need.

People also pay more for the experience of making and drinking a dirty soda, prioritizing experience over ingredients. Getting to play with different flavor combinations and enjoy the aesthetically-pleasing visuals of layers of rainbow-colored sodas and syrups makes picking up a dirty soda feel like an event rather than a simple sugar and caffeine hit. The multi-sensory experience and premium presentation add to dirty soda’s “little treat” feel that helps soothe consumers’ stress and anxiety and improve wellbeing.

Fast order times and the convenience of many companies’ drive-thru setup delivers frictionless dopamine, giving consumers a fast, easy dopamine hit without the wait.

Dirty soda’s trending status and cool aesthetic also acts as social currency, with consumers willing to pay to be part of a viral trend by sharing their soda on Instagram and Facebook. Consumers are willing to pay more for product hype that creates perceived value, true and community.

The advertising playbook

Here are some of the winning mechanics behind some of the most successful dirty soda businesses.

Social media strategy

TikTok recipe trends have been behind much of dirty soda’s success. Sensory preparation videos are one of the most effective current beverage marketing trends. These videos show creams, syrups and sodas being layered over ice in slow motion and are a great way to reveal new menu items and improve brand reach.

Brands can attract more interest from consumers and improve your chances of going viral by aligning your content with current beverage trends. Experiment with trending drink trends, like testing whether coffee creamer and lime curdle in Diet Coke, to drive engagement by sparking curiosity and debate in the comments.

You can also build up anticipation for seasonal flavor launches with tailored videos, memes and graphics that build excitement and curiosity among consumers in the months leading up to their launches.

To improve reach, prioritize Instagram reels. Reels deliver 36% more reach than carousels and 125% more reach than single-photo posts, making them one of the best formats for improving brand and product discoverability.

Some of the most effective reels include customer reaction videos. Put together short 15-20 second reels showing customers’ first sips of unique combos or limited-edition sodas. Reaction videos build trust through authenticity, often feeling more genuine than paid influencer promos.

Creator marketing

Up to 65% of consumers are open to trying emerging flavor trends when exposed to them through creator collaborations. Partner with local food creators who can create unique, interesting flavor profiles for your drinks and improve your reach by featuring them on their menus.

Lifestyle influencers are another partnership with strong potential. Lifestyle influencers can help popularize different variations of the dirty soda by showing the drink and branded packaging as part of their everyday routine, whether they post a self-care soda run or an energy-enhancing post-workout blend.

Family creators are another great fit for soda shops looking to lean into the homegrown, family-friendly brand positioning that made OG stores like Sodalicios and Sipp so popular. “Parenting” currently has over 24.2 million Instagram posts and 3.6 million Tiktoks.

As a chic alternative to coffee and alcohol, dirty sodas are the perfect beverage for college audiences. Look for influencers with a strong following among Gen Z college students. Entice creators with branded deals and improve engagement and drive sales by offering student deals and 2-4-1s for friends looking to enjoy a soda in their lunch breaks from school.

Campaigns that worked

Many soda shops have found success with exclusive seasonal flavor drops. FiiZ’s collaboration with HI-CHEW unveiled an exclusive Orange Creamsicle flavor made with orange Fanta, ice cream puree and cream, topped off with whipped cream and HI-CHEW’s Orange Creamsicle’s candy.

Gated exclusivity is another way brands help pull consumers into their digital ecosystems. Many soda shops like Swig encourage consumers to download the app by only sharing exclusive seasonal menu items with app users.

Secret menus are another big creator of brand and product buzz. Swig's reported "Secret Menu," comprised of fan and staff-created combos like "The Dirty," "Bloody Wild," and "Big Al," isn't on the printed menu — existing solely through word-of-mouth and the socials, making ordering off of it feel totally exclusive.

User-generated recipe content and go-to orders have been another hit for brands, allowing them to show off fans’ favorite and most experimental flavor combinations, building excitement and encouraging consumers to try out new variations of the dirty soda in store.

Loyalty rewards are another big driver of repeat business. Soda shops like Sodalicious and FiiZ frequently run loyalty programs in dedicated rewards apps, making it easy for consumers to rack up their digital points and exchange them for a free soda or money off.

Referrals have also supported brands word-of-mouth by inviting customers to gift friends and family a free soda via text link. While other brands build their reputation by running regular social media competitors, asking fans to tag multiple friends in a dedicated Instagram or Facebook post for their chance to win.

Retail or menu strategy

The high margins and consumer draw has led to several major chains featuring dirty sodas on their menus.

McDonald's new line of specialty drinks includes a Dirty Dr Pepper made with vanilla and cold foam alongside Sprite Berry Blast — a Sprite infused with sweet blue raspberry syrup. While Dunkin’s new Dirty Soda combines coffee milk and Pepsi with a sweet cold foam.

“Our fans have an obsession with beverages – to them, drinks are more than just drinks. And soon, our beverages won’t just be a reason you come to McDonald’s, they’ll be the reason.”
- Alyssa Buetikofer, Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer, McDonald’s USA

For many franchises and niche dirty soda shops, the bigger the customization options, the greater the success. Give consumers the chance to indulge, experiment and explore with large customization menus that allow them to swap out different sodas, fruit syrups, creamers and garnishings.

Signature drinks create an air of exclusivity and differentiate your shop from other brands and homemade recipes. Use outside-of-the-box flavor profiles or unique combinations to make your drink feel rarer and more exclusive.

Rotate limited-time offerings to keep your menu feeling fresh to consumers and to encourage high-frequency repeat visits to your shop. 81% of guests are more likely to visit during an LTO with an average LTO increasing sales by 20%.

Train staff and configure apps to offer recommended drink upgrades like turning a dirty soda into an ice cream float or adding botanics. Snack and drink combo bundles can also boost your average order value and satisfy consumers’ sweet cravings — adding a sweet or savory bakery item to a beverage purchase typically increases average ticket size by up to 20%.

As we’ve seen, convenience is a big draw of the dirty soda. Make ordering and picking up drive-thru orders as easy as possible with mobile ordering and automatic basket adds of consumers’ favorite past orders to speed up order times.

What brands can learn

Here’s what brands can learn from the dirty soda craze.

Lessons for CPG brands

As we’ve seen, one of the biggest draws of dirty sodas is the customization potential. Customization creates emotional ownership and gives consumers a sense of agency and control over their beverages: drinks feel experimentary and personalized to their needs, creating a stronger emotional tie between consumer and product.

With margins of up to 85%, dirty soda perfectly demonstrates how everyday products made from affordable ingredients can become premium experiences. Layered drinks, colorful hues and enhanced flavor profiles combine to give dirty sodas a unique, premium feel not often found in other beverages or food products.

The success of the dirty soda across socials shows the inherent virality of a great aesthetic. Packaging should be designed with social sharing in mind — bold colors, cool graphics and playful fonts can all add to the shareability of a product.

Product extensions keep consumers engaged without reinventing the category. Dirty energy drinks, functional blends (including CBD, hydration shots, or calming magnesium powders), dirty ice cream floats and dirty lattes are also strong pulls for consumers looking to experiment with new flavor profiles or effects.

Lessons for QSR brands

Dirty sodas show that beverage innovation can drive traffic independently of food. Unlike many other classic QSR menu items, premium beverages offer enticing customization options — drawing in experimental consumers looking for more control over their menu orders.

They also highlight that operationally simple products can produce strong margins. Affordable-to-produce beverages can still feel like premium items with the right branding and product styling and a more adventurous flavor profile than standard menu items.

52% of consumers say they consider the availability of limited-time offers important when choosing a restaurant. Dirty sodas show us the power of LTO and seasonal creations for driving urgency and repeat custom.

Digital ordering also makes personalization easier to scale. Make it easy for consumers to add and amend their favorite orders by automatically adding past orders and upsell options to their menu view.

Lessons for marketers

One of the biggest takeaways for marketers is to create products consumers want to show off. Dirty soda’s impressive layered formulations, clouds of cream and fruit and citrus are an essential part of their virality.

Design menus and campaigns that encourage repeat experimentation with extensive ingredient and combination options and LTO seasonal items.

Use Zappi to test messaging around identity, not just functionality. Many brands have seen success with messaging centered around dirty sodas’ personalized customization options, using messaging like, “Make it yours,” or, “Your soda, your way,” to create interest.

It’s also essential to validate pricing before launch to understand consumers’ willingness to pay. What price point makes your soda seem like a treat-yourself luxury vs an overpriced treat? Trial premium pricing with real consumers to find out when risk starts to outweigh reward.

With much of dirty sodas’ success being attributed to viral TikTok trends, this trend highlights how far a brand and product can go with the right creator partnerships and a strong social media presence. Use creator content as a discovery engine rather than relying on expensive paid advertising to improve your reach and bring in new customers.

The future of dirty soda

A fully customizable, affordable indulgence that perfectly aligns with Gen Z and millennial’s little treat culture, the dirty soda is easily one of the most popular beverage trends of 2026. The dirty soda craze teaches us that a great aesthetic, endless personalized customization options and viral status can take a beverage concept from Utah fave to national obsession.

Andrea Ramirez, consumer market insight manager at Torani, predicts flavor innovation in the syrups and beverage spaces will move towards more elaborate flavor profiles and sophisticated flavor combos, including ingredient influences from around the world, event-inspired beverages (think: solar eclipses and festivals) and functional ingredients like CBD, prebiotics and vitamins.

Innovation Spotlight: REESE’S PIECES with Chocolate Cookie

Vik Trifonova & Katie Sweet — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

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 REESE’S PIECES with Chocolate Cookie, the brand’s first US innovation in a decade — and a bet that texture is what makes a decades-old candy feel new again.

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.

REESE’S PIECES with Chocolate Cookie

REESE’S PIECE with chocolate cookie has three layers: a crispy chocolate cookie center, the peanut butter flavor the brand is known for, and the candy shell that makes REESE’S PIECES recognizable on the shelf. The flavor remains the same, just with an added crispy texture.

Hershey announced the product this summer with pouches, with king size following later this year. It’s priced at $5.99 for a 7.6 oz pouch.

Hershey is explicit that it’s the first US REESE’S PIECES innovation in 10 years, and that the launch is a response to consumers wanting more texture in their snacks. As Melissa Blette, senior brand manager for Reese’s, put it: “Reese’s has always been known for its signature peanut butter and chocolate combination, and with this innovative product, we're excited to give consumers a fresh way to experience it.” The product had already been running in Canada in limited quantities since 2024.

Why is it interesting?

Texture was the defining theme of the 2026 Sweets & Snacks Expo — “texture is the new flavor,” as 210 Analytics put it presenting the National Confectioners Association’s State of Treating report.

Nestlé USA’s 2026 Food & Beverage Trends report quantifies how much more texture lands with younger people: 75% of Gen Z and 80% of Millennials say texture is a primary influence on what they crave in a snack.

But this is interesting for another reason as well. Last year Hershey’s launched REESE’S OREO Cup with Mondelēz. That product made over $188 million in retail sales in its first year, becoming Reese’s number one innovation of 2025 and bringing new and younger consumers to the brand.

REESE’S PIECES with Chocolate Cookie is the same idea (peanut butter plus cookie plus crunch) without the partner, the license or the co-branding.

So we know a cookie center works. The question is whether Hershey can have the same impact without Oreo’s cookie in it. Let’s find out!

Key takeaways

1. A small change to a product people already love is one of the safest bets in innovation. We see this pattern often with seasonal innovation where new shapes and colors of familiar favorites perform very well. People don’t have to decide whether they’ll like it, only whether they want to try it. As one respondent put it: “I like the classic Reese’s Pieces format, but with the chocolate cookie in the middle.”

When you have a product people already love, one well-chosen change tied to a trend can do more than a big revamp. REESE’S PIECES with Chocolate Cookie scores well above the norm on both distinctiveness (78% vs. 73% norm) and advantage (61% vs. 53% norm), with a strong unpriced trial potential (69).

2. Tapping into a trend can keep your brand relevant with younger consumers. Crunch is a young person’s trend and we see this reflected in our data: under-45s and over-45s are close on whether the product is different ((Distinctiveness: 81% vs. 75%), but far apart on whether it’s better than what’s already available (Advantage: 71% vs. 46%) and even more split on whether they’d buy it (Priced Purchase Likelihood: 69% vs. 41%). So we can see older consumers aren’t really put off by the product — they’re simply less interested in buying a new one just for the crunch. Reese’s picked a texture trend that skews young but the flavor its existing buyers come for is exactly the same. That’s what makes trend-led innovation less risky for an established brand to stay relevant.

3. When you rarely change your product, the change itself is the novelty. REESE’S PIECES kept the peanut butter and chocolate combination it’s known for and added one thing: a crunchy cookie center. That produced a breakthrough potential of 83 and distinctiveness above the norm (78% vs. 73% norm). The ten-year gap gave people a reason to pay attention to something they already liked the sound of: “their first innovation in 10 years is genius,” “that's very exciting to me,” “It’s a milestone being the first innovation in 10 years to REESE’S PIECES in the US.”

At the same time only 23% describe the product as innovative — the lowest-scoring attribute we tested. So the excitement isn’t really about the innovation but more about the brand doing something new.

That’s an asset heritage brands often undervalue. When people know your brand well, they notice when something changes. If you’re always launching something, you risk your innovations landing as noise rather than news.

What’s the potential?

We use two key measures to determine a product’s success in-market: breakthrough potential and trial potential. Trial potential measures a product’s purchase likelihood, while breakthrough potential measures:

How different a product is (distinctiveness)
How superior a product is compared to what's already available in market (advantage)

REESE’S PIECES with Chocolate Cookie has a breakthrough potential of 83 — a strong result for what is a twist on a product people already know. It’s driven by two things working together: people see the product as both different from what’s already out there and better than it.

The distinctiveness score is the first half of that (78% vs. 73% norm) — well above the average US candy and confections innovation and impressive for a product whose flavor hasn’t changed.

Advantage clears the norm too — and that’s the biggest gap we saw anywhere in the test (61% vs. 53% norm). People appreciate what’s been added and they think it’s an improvement to what’s already available.

Unpriced trial potential is strong at 69 and it only drops to 48 once people see the $5.99 price tag. This is expected, though it suggests the price might be a little high for a product in this format.

Who finds REESE’S PIECES with Chocolate Cookie most appealing?

Distinctiveness is fairly consistent across the groups we looked at — men (82%), under-45s (81%), women (75%) and over-45s (75%), with early adopters highest of all (88%). But only men, under-45s and early adopters land well above the 73% norm. For women and over-45s, the product is no more distinctive than the average candy innovation.

On the other hand, we see a sharp divide with advantage. Adults under 45 are by far the most convinced this product is better than what's already available (71% vs. 53% norm), with early adopters just behind (70%) and men also above the norm (64%). Women sit at 58%, in line with it, while over-45s drop to 46% — below the norm.

We see the same pattern when we look at priced purchase likelihood. Under-45s are the most willing to buy (69% vs. 58% norm), followed by early adopters (66%). Men (63%) are more likely to buy than women (54%), though both sit in line with the norm. And again, over-45s fall to only 41%.

It’s the same story throughout: this product lands hardest with younger, more experimental shoppers — the exact audience Hershey says REESE’S OREO brought to the brand and exactly what we would expect for a texture trend that resonates best with younger consumers.

What do people like about REESE’S PIECES with Chocolate Cookie?

Overall, REESE’S PIECES with Chocolate Cookie is associated first and foremost with crunch — precisely the one thing Hershey changed. That matters because the brand hasn’t touched this product in a decade and chose texture as the element to change.

When we asked what people liked about the idea, we saw a similar pattern:

The crunch

Texture was the most specific thing people were excited about, especially because REESE’S PIECES don’t normally have it. Several respondents pointed out that a crunch element is new for the brand.

People said things like:

“I like that there's a crunch element to it; there usually isn't in Reese's and that seems interesting (in a good way). I think it would taste good.”
“I like the crunchy cookie center while keeping the classic peanut butter chocolate flavor plus the resealable pouch is really convenient.”
“It combines 3 different types of textures and flavors.”

The fact that nothing was taken away

The second theme is reassurance. What people appreciated was that the peanut butter is still there so nothing is being sacrificed.

People said things like:

“I like the classic Reese’s Pieces format, but with the chocolate cookie in the middle.”
“I like that it retains some of the original chocolate and peanut butter. Also, I like the hard candy shell.”
“New twist to a familiar and favorite product.”

The news itself

The “first innovation in 10 years” line was in the concept, and people repeated it back as their reason for being interested. For a well-known brand, a decade of not changing is what makes the change feel like an exciting event.

People said things like:

“Everything! Their first innovation in 10 years is genius. Chocolate cookies and peanut butter — yummm!”
“I love that it's a new product, which Reese's has not done in 10 years! That's very exciting to me. I'm a fan of cookies and cream flavors so this is right up my alley.”
“I like the fact that you still get that great peanut butter and chocolate, while enjoying more crunch. It’s a milestone being the first innovation in 10 years to REESE’S PIECES in the US.”

Loyalty to the brand

Reese’s loyalists describe trying new launches as a habit — they buy whatever the brand puts out purely because they like everything else it makes.

People said things like:

“It is my favorite brand so I will definitely buy and try this product.”
“I love Reese’s, it's my favorite candy. I always try the new products that Reese’s comes out with.”
“Although I haven’t tried it, it seems like a good combination. Everything Reese’s puts out is great.”

Final thoughts

Reese’s has spent decades as one of America’s best-loved candy brands, and a 10-year gap in REESE’S PIECES innovation clearly did it no harm at all. But the crunch has given people something to talk about again — and it’s landed hardest with the younger, more experimental shoppers Hershey has spent the last year working to bring in.

Looking to understand how consumers will respond to your new innovation ideas before launch? You can test and optimize your innovative new concepts with Zappi’s connected Innovation System. Get a demo to learn more.

And to make sure you never miss one of our Innovation Spotlights, subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter.

How smart marketers use brand health data to grow revenue

Jennifer Phillips April — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Many brand tracking programs generate plenty of data but still struggle to answer the question that matters most: What should we do next based on this data?

Brand health metrics are most useful when they’re connected to business outcomes. For example, Nielsen found that a one-point increase in brand metrics like awareness and consideration is associated with an average 1% increase in sales. And for large organizations, a 1% increase on a billion dollars is significant.

But the goal isn’t to draw a straight line from a single metric to revenue, because it’s not that simple. Brand tracking ROI comes from understanding how changes in awareness, consideration, preference and brand equity relate to customer behavior and commercial performance over time.

In this article, I’ll look at how to turn those brand signals into smarter decisions about investment, acquisition, pricing and growth.

Brand tracking assessment worksheet

Fill out our worksheet to make sure you're aligning brand measurements with continuous signals that matter.

Why brand health metrics often get ignored

Teams can track brand health data like awareness, consideration and preference, but those numbers don’t automatically tell a CMO what to do next. Instead, they sit in a spreadsheet, and it’s up to someone to turn them into action.

Reporting without action

The point of data is to help you make more informed decisions. If your brand health dashboard shows awareness rose from 58% to 63%, that’s interesting. If you do nothing with that information, it’s not helpful. But if you are able to use that data to dig deeper and uncover that awareness grew in the markets with increased media spend, that’s useful.

Focusing solely on metrics instead of outcomes

Brand health tracking often includes umbrella metrics like “increased awareness,” but that can sound fuzzy. What business outcome does “awareness” support?

Different growth concerns call for different metrics.

A challenger brand with low awareness may need to expand mental availability and reach.
An established brand with high awareness but low consideration may have a relevance, differentiation or perception problem.
A premium brand may care more about preference, differentiation and pricing power than adding another point of awareness.

There’s no “one-size-fits-all” brand health metric. Instead, it’s best to identify your goal and then use the appropriate brand signals to tell you whether you’re moving in the right direction.

Misalignment between brand and finance teams

It’s not surprising that marketing and finance teams evaluate performance through different lenses. Brand and insights teams value awareness, consideration and equity, while finance focuses on revenue and market share.

It’s essential to build a bridge between these viewpoints so brand metrics don’t appear as a “nice to have” but as critical to long-term success. Connecting brand metrics and revenue can also help finance teams understand how changes in brand health contribute to brand revenue over time.

In fact, brand health metrics can offer evidence that finance cares about if you have the right data and know how to interpret it. Once teams agree on the outcomes they’re trying to influence, the next question is which brand metrics can provide the most useful signals.

Which brand health metrics actually matter for revenue

Not every brand metric matters equally at every stage of growth. The most useful question to ask is what does this metric tell us about our ability to generate demand, win customers or protect revenue?

Brand awareness

Brand awareness metrics tell you whether enough potential buyers know your brand exists. That makes it particularly important when growth depends on reaching new customers, entering a new market or increasing adoption in an existing one.

But keep in mind, more awareness doesn't always translate into more customers. If awareness climbs while consideration stays flat, the problem may lie elsewhere.

For instance, if your brand awareness rises from 60% to 75% after a big campaign, but consideration stays flat at 25%, that may signal reach may no longer be the biggest barrier to growth. The next step is understanding what is keeping those consumers from considering the brand.

Brand consideration

Brand consideration metrics get closer to potential demand by showing whether consumers who know your brand would seriously consider choosing it.

Nielsen's research supports the commercial importance of this relationship. Its analysis found that gains in awareness and consideration are associated with future sales and can improve the efficiency of lower-funnel marketing activity.

Tracking consideration over time can provide an early signal of where future demand may be strengthening or weakening, allowing marketers to respond before the full effect appears in sales.

Brand preference

Brand preference shows how you stack up when customers have other options. If plenty of people consider your brand but relatively few prefer it, getting onto the shortlist isn't the problem. A more useful question is why they're choosing someone else.

Brand salience

Knowing your brand and thinking of it when it's time to buy aren't the same thing. Brand salience measures the latter. Ehrenberg-Bass calls this mental availability: how easily a brand comes to mind in a buying situation.

That makes salience different from simple awareness. A customer may recognize your brand but fail to think of it when a specific need arises. Tracking salience can help identify the buying situations where your brand is mentally competitive — and where competitors are more likely to come to mind.

Brand equity

Brand equity captures the additional commercial strength created by what consumers think and feel about your brand.

For marketers, that makes brand equity measurement more than a long-term brand score. Understanding the relationship between brand equity and revenue can help teams assess whether the brand is positioned to generate demand, support premium pricing and contribute to future growth.

Turning brand metrics into revenue decisions

Tracking brand health tells you where your brand stands in the minds of consumers. The next step is using those signals to decide where to invest, what to change and which opportunities to pursue.

The key is to look for patterns across metrics rather than treating a single movement as an instruction. A drop in consideration, for example, doesn't automatically mean cut media spend. It signals what's changed and gives you something specific to investigate.

Media investment decisions

Brand health data can help marketers identify where additional media investment is likely to have the greatest impact.

For SoFi, putting consumer data into the hands of decision-makers has helped the company make faster advertising decisions and build confidence in brand investment. CMO Lauren Stafford-Webb says, “We’ve been able to grow our investment in the brand through the confidence we get from the Zappi data.” SoFi also reports improving overall ad effectiveness by more than 20% while working with Zappi.

The important point isn't that one brand metric dictates how much to spend. Brand data gives marketers evidence to use alongside campaign performance to decide whether to invest more, adjust the work or investigate further.

Customer acquisition strategy

Rising acquisition costs aren't always an acquisition-channel problem. Weak awareness, consideration or relevance can make performance marketing work harder because fewer consumers already know or want the brand.

Zappi’s Brand Health Tracker methodology uses consideration as an indicator of sales potential. Looking at changes in consideration alongside acquisition data can help marketers identify where potential customers may be dropping out before purchase.

Looking at brand health alongside marketing performance metrics gives marketers more context. If consideration is falling and customer acquisition cost (CAC) is rising, for example, the next step might be investigating changing brand perceptions rather than simply optimizing ad spend.

Connecting brand health with commercial outcomes such as sales or penetration helps teams determine whether those relationships are consistent enough to inform future decisions.

Pricing decisions

Brand health can provide useful context for pricing decisions, particularly when measures such as preference, differentiation or perceived value are strengthening or weakening.

But brand tracking shouldn't replace pricing research. If brand health suggests consumers see your brand as distinctive and worth paying more for, the next step is to test that hypothesis.

Zappi's pricing research measures acceptable price ranges, willingness to pay a premium and how proposed prices affect purchase intent. Used together, the two types of research answer different questions: brand health can tell you whether consumer perceptions appear to support premium pricing; pricing research can tell you what consumers are actually willing to pay.

Market expansion decisions

Overall brand health can hide major differences between markets and audiences. Before expanding, look at how well the brand is known, considered and perceived among the people you want to reach next.

If your brand has 70% awareness nationally but only 30% among the audience you're targeting in a new market, then the national number makes the brand look expansion-ready while the segment-level data tells a different story.

Tracking the new market over time can then show whether growing awareness is translating into consideration and whether the brand’s competitive position is strengthening.

Product launch decisions

Brand health can also provide context for innovation decisions. A promising product concept still has to fit what consumers expect and believe about the brand launching it.

Look at the associations consumers already have with your brand. Do they support the benefit your new product promises? Does the brand have credibility in the category or occasion you're entering? And are there perceptions that could create a barrier to trial?

Connecting brand tracking with innovation research gives teams a fuller picture. Marketers can see whether the concept resonates with consumers while brand data helps you understand whether your brand is well positioned to deliver it.

A framework for connecting brand health to business outcomes

Connecting brand health to revenue doesn't mean proving that a two-point increase in awareness caused a specific sales increase. Instead, look for consistent relationships between what consumers think, what they do and what happens in the business.

Leading indicators

Brand health metrics can provide early signals that demand is strengthening, weakening or getting stuck. The important step is identifying which signals matter for your particular growth objective. If you're entering a new market, awareness may be critical. If awareness is already high but sales are lagging, consideration, preference or brand perceptions may tell you more.

Intermediate indicators

What customers actually do can tell you a lot. If the data shows consideration is climbing, interesting. It gets more interesting if you see that branded search is climbing a few months later. If the data continues to show this connection, you’ve found a relationship worth investigating.

Business outcomes

Finally, compare those patterns with the outcomes the business ultimately cares about.

Zappi recommends viewing brand tracking data alongside outcomes such as sales lift and brand penetration to translate changes in brand health into actionable growth levers.

Common mistakes when using brand health data

Brand health data is less useful when teams review individual numbers without considering the broader picture. Its power comes from understanding those numbers in context.

Looking at metrics in isolation

As I mentioned above, no single brand metric tells the whole story.

Instead, the value lies in looking at how the metrics move in relation to business performance. Seeing awareness rise while consideration falls tells a different story than seeing both metrics rise together. And looking at any number alone doesn’t give enough context for what to investigate next.

The same principle applies across research programs. Connecting brand health with advertising or innovation data can help teams understand whether changes in consumer perceptions correspond with what they're putting into the market.

Overreacting to short-term fluctuations

It’s easy to overreact to monthly fluctuations, but true change is often only reliable after seeing months of data. By building a longitudinal view, teams can distinguish meaningful changes from normal variation.

Zappi recommends accumulating about three months of data before drawing conclusions.

Ignoring competitive benchmarks

Brand health is relative. Holding steady may look reassuring until you discover that a competitor is gaining awareness, consideration or mental availability much faster.

Competitive benchmarks put your results in context. Stable consideration in a stable category may warrant little action. Stable consideration while a challenger rapidly gains ground is a different business problem.

Measuring too infrequently

If brand health is measured only periodically, teams may miss important changes between studies. Continuous tracking gives marketers an up-to-date view they can access when a business question arises, rather than waiting for the next scheduled research cycle.

For example, a competitor launches a major campaign or your team introduces new creative. With continuous data, you can check whether brand metrics are beginning to shift and compare the change with the longer-term trend.

Zappi's Brand Health Tracker collects data continuously and updates KPIs monthly. That doesn't mean teams need to make decisions every month. It means the data is there when they need to assess what's happening.

Building a revenue-oriented brand health program

All of this said, connecting brand health to revenue requires more than choosing the right metrics. Teams also need agreement on what they're trying to achieve.

Align stakeholders around growth outcomes

Start with the business decisions your brand tracking needs to support. Marketing, insights and finance may use different measures of success, but they should agree on the outcomes they're trying to influence.

The metrics that matter change with the business goal. If you’re entering a new market, you likely want to track awareness and consideration. Established brands protecting their margins may care more about preference, differentiation and pricing power.

This shifts the conversation from which metrics should go on our dashboard to what we need to know to make better growth decisions.

Supercell offers a good example of making brand tracking part of everyday decision-making. The company uses Zappi to track five live games across 10 markets, with teams able to access the data directly rather than relying on an insights specialist to pull reports.

Global Marketing Intelligence Lead Leandro Delarue says Supercell wanted a tracker that was “simple, easy to connect with our everyday discussions.”

Establish metric-to-outcome relationships

Effective brand growth measurement means looking beyond movement in individual metrics to see what tends to happen next. Does consideration typically fall before sales do? Does stronger brand equity show up alongside greater pricing power? Once you know what's typical for your organization, you have a better basis for deciding when to act.

Move from reporting to forecasting

Once you understand those relationships, brand tracking can become an early-warning system rather than a record of what has already happened.

If consideration has historically weakened before branded search or sales decline, for example, a new downward trend gives marketers an opportunity to investigate before the full commercial impact appears. The same principle applies when brand signals begin moving in a positive direction.

Continuous measurement makes this more useful because teams can compare new signals with historical patterns.

The goal is to move beyond reporting what happened to understanding what may happen next and what the business should do about it.

Turn brand health into better business decisions

Brand health metrics earn their place in the business when they help teams make better decisions. The goal isn't simply to know that awareness increased or consideration fell. It's to understand what changed, what it could mean for growth and whether the business should respond.

Continuous tracking makes those connections easier to see over time — and gives teams current data when an important decision arises.

Zappi's Brand Health Tracker helps marketers continuously measure brand performance, benchmark against competitors and turn brand health data into insights they can act on.

Brand tracking assessment worksheet

Fill out our worksheet to make sure you're aligning brand measurements with continuous signals that matter.

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AdMiration feature: RYZE Superfoods’ “What would happen if you felt a little bit better every day?”

Vik Trifonova & Kim Malcolm — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

For this week’s AdMiration feature, we looked at consumer response to RYZE Superfoods’ “What would happen if you felt a little bit better every day?” ad, part of the brand’s “Feel Better Every Day” campaign.

Arriving just in time for back-to-school season, it follows a tired teacher through her day with an adorable animated mushroom along for the ride.

Read on to get our 3-2-1 snapshot of the ad (3 facts, 2 learnings and 1 reflection) and learn how their ad was received based on our data.

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The ad: RYZE Superfoods’ “What would happen if you felt a little bit better every day?”

The ad opens to a softly lit study where a desk is covered in a collage of printed photos and handwritten notes. An animated mushroom character, Rye, stands on the desk looking through the collection. The pictures capture moments from someone’s life like family photos, childhood memories and personal achievements.

One photograph then comes to life, transporting viewers into the memory itself. A teacher walks between her students in an elementary school classroom, visibly tired.

The focus shifts to her desk, where a mug of RYZE Mushroom Coffee sits beside a stack of books and school supplies. Spotting the yawn, Rye nudges the mug — which reads “best teacher ever” — toward her, and she picks it up and takes a sip.

After the sip, the mood lifts noticeably. The classroom transitions into a creative activity, with children gathered around a colorful handmade banner that reads “You’re Doing Great Things!”

Once the lesson is over, the story moves outdoors to a running track, where the same teacher crosses the finish line as friends and family cheer from the sidelines.

That moment freezes into the photograph viewers saw at the very start, and the film returns to the desk. Rye wipes away a tear as on-screen text appears: “Inspired by a real story to inspire your own journey.”

The ad closes with the product alongside the RYZE brand name and a saying it’s available at Target.

3-2-1 snapshot

3 facts

The ad lands in the top 15% of US ads for driving short-term sales and the top 25% for building long-term brand equity (Sales Impact: 86; Brand Impact: 75).
Love reaches 40% (vs. 27% norm), driving Overall Emotion to 66 (vs. 57 norm) — and it peaks every time Rye the mushroom appears on screen.
Despite already being the most-picked brand in the category pre-exposure at 28%, the ad drives consideration for RYZE resulting in 64% consideration after viewing — a 36-point Purchase Uplift (vs. 22% norm).

2 learnings

A story can carry your product’s benefits better than a claim. This ad has no dialogue, voiceover or an explicit product claim but it still teaches people about the product. New Information scores 4.1 (vs. 3.7 norm), well above the norm for a film that never explains what mushroom coffee is or what it does.

Over half associate RYZE with providing natural energy (53%) and supporting a healthy lifestyle (52%) after watching the ad. And all of that is simply inferred from watching a tired teacher’s day get better: "The way the teacher was 'tired' and ended up energizing her students and running a race showed how she overcame the doldrums by drinking this coffee."

That’s worth remembering for any brand whose promise is hard to assert. “Feel a little bit better every day” is subjective by nature. It can’t be demonstrated in 60 seconds so asserting it outright might invite skepticism. But showing it through a story, inspired by real life, sidesteps that.

Build an asset that shows what your product does, then pair it with your brand at every opportunity. Rye is the biggest driver of Love in the ad, viewers rate him at an incredibly high 4.6 for Character Appeal (vs. 3.9 norm) and he’s the strongest brand cue, mentioned by 33% of people. But Unaided Brand Recall sits below the norm at 63% (vs. 70% norm), simply because people can’t make the link yet.

That gap is what you’d expect this early with a brand new DBA and it's no reason to rethink him. No rival in the category has anything like Rye, people like him and he resonates very well, so he’s a great asset for the brand to keep using (Brand Distinctiveness: 4.1 vs. 3.7 norm).

What makes him especially smart is that he appears in the mug, nudges it toward the teacher, then stays with her through the rest of her day. In other words, he’s a visual stand-in for the product, showing how it works without a word being said. As one viewer put it: “The mushroom guy. He’s just precious. And it gets the message across well, he’s just there to help you be the best whatever you are.”

So Rye has all the makings of a great DBA. He’s loved, he represents the product and its benefits perfectly and helps the brand stand out. What still needs repetition is the link between Rye and the RYZE name, which is why the asset should appear alongside it consistently and often.

1 reflection

When your brand enters a new stage, does your advertising follow?

RYZE spent 5 years selling direct, growing to a business Forbes estimates at over $300 million a year. Like most brands in this space, it did this largely with creator testimonial content — people explaining how the product benefited them. Then in January of this year RYZE landed in more than 1,900 Target stores for the first time.

Those two sales channels require different approaches. Selling direct works as a closed loop by showing the product working, clicking and eventually buying. There’s no competitor in the frame and no decision to make beyond yes or no, which is why demos and testimonials work so well there.

A shelf is a comparative environment. Your product sits alongside every rival at once, in front of someone who isn’t necessarily searching for you. So your brand has to come to mind quickly and positively. That’s why the shift from creator content to a brand-building film like this one makes sense at this stage of RYZE’s growth.

The job changes from explaining the product to building something people recognize and relate to. As one viewer put it: “I adore the little mushroom character and relaxing music in the background. I can also relate to the afternoon slump which I seem to feel more and more lately.”

For any growing DTC brand, it’s worth asking: is your advertising evolving as fast as your brand?

About the campaign

The ad is part of RYZE’s “Feel Better Every Day” campaign, directed by Bertie Ellwood and produced by Object & Animal. Built around a series of small, everyday turning points, the campaign follows ordinary people as RYZE becomes part of a subtle shift in how they move through their day — they’re more awake and more like themselves.

It marks a clear change in how RYZE talks to its audience. Inspired by real stories, the campaign avoids traditional testimonials and instead uses the mushroom mascot to guide people toward positive shifts in energy and confidence.

RYZE Superfoods was founded in 2020 by Harvard graduates Rashad Hossain and Andrée Werner, and sells a blend of six organic mushrooms combined with arabica coffee.

The Boston-based brand grew entirely online and now RYZE is the best-selling mushroom coffee brand in America, launched in more than 1,900 Target stores with three exclusive latte flavors alongside its signature instant coffee and sticks.

A deep dive into the ad’s performance

The appetite is there

Convincing people to try something they’ve never had before is one of the hardest jobs in advertising. RYZE has an advantage going in though as the appetite is already there.

63% of viewers say they’re very or extremely interested in foods and drinks offering functional health benefits, and 87% are at least somewhat interested.

The demand for adaptogens, probiotics and mushrooms is clearly there. So the job is less about persuading anyone that functional benefits are worth having, and more about being the brand they think of — and trust enough to buy.

“What would happen if you felt a little bit better every day?” makes a strong case on both counts, landing in the top 14% of US ads for driving short-term sales and the top 25% for building long-term brand equity (Sales Impact: 86; Brand Impact: 75).

The mascot-brand link is still forming

Most DTC brands in this space, including RYZE, built their businesses on testimonial content showing real people explaining how the product benefits them. That approach earns clicks, but it doesn’t build the recognition a brand needs once it’s on a shelf.

So an ad that shows us the benefit through an emotional journey instead of claiming the benefit is a very different move for the brand.

And it pays off, with every cut-through measure beating the norm (Ad Distinctiveness: 4.2 vs. 3.7 norm; Brand Distinctiveness: 4.1 vs. 3.7 norm; Claimed Attention: 4.1 vs. 3.9 norm; Uniqueness of Brand Impressions: 4.1 vs. 3.9 norm). As one viewer put it: “It wasn't just another wellness or coffee ad; it was different in a good way.”

Rye, the mushroom, is doing the heavy lifting here and viewers rate him highly, with Character Appeal at 4.6 (vs. 3.9 norm) — the strongest measure in the whole test!

The mushroom is also what cues the brand more than anything else, even the brand name itself (33% vs. 13%). Here’s what some people say about him:

“When I saw the little mushroom walking around in the ad I knew it was Ryze.”
“That little mushroom person says it all.”
“The little mushroom represents Ryze mushroom products.”

But that’s also why Brand Recall sits below the norm at 63% (vs. 70% norm). Some viewers didn’t connect the ad to RYZE until the final frames:

“The name RYZE at the end was the only thing that made me think it was for this product”
“The only thing I saw was the tag at the very last frame.”
“I am unfamiliar with the brand so only knew the brand when it was shown.”

RYZE is still introducing itself to a mainstream audience and Rye is a brand new asset, so it’s no surprise that people remember the distinctive character but can’t link it to the brand yet.

What matters is that he’s already the most recalled, most distinctive and most-loved thing in the ad. The link between Rye and RYZE is the part still to build and that can only happen through broad use and repetition.

The mushroom drives the emotional response

Emotion is the ad’s real strength. Love reaches 40% (vs. 27% norm) — a 13-point gap that drives Overall Emotion to 66 (vs. 57 norm).

The music and the mascot are clearly adding to that warmth, and to the audience’s enjoyment of the ad overall (Musical Appeal: 4.2 vs. 3.8 norm; Character Appeal: 4.6 vs. 3.9 norm; Enjoyment: 4.2 vs. 3.9 norm).

Here’s what some people said about them:

"The little mushroom dude is just precious. When he was wiping his eyes the second time I saw it, I almost did too."
“I adore the little mushroom character and relaxing music in the background. I can also relate to the afternoon slump which I seem to feel more and more lately.”
“The mushroom character was cute. The music sounded soothing. Family images were nice.”
“I like the music in the ad and the mushroom is really cute to watch.”

The second-by-second trace shows just how much Rye is driving that Love. The first spike comes within the opening seconds, as soon as he appears on the desk. A bigger one follows a bit later with the close-up of his face.

The pattern repeats all the way through — every time the mascot appears, Love ticks up — and the reverse holds too: the classroom scene where he’s off screen doesn’t drive as much warmth.

When he returns to nudge the mug toward the teacher, Love recovers instantly. It then climbs again through the race and reaches its highest point of the film as the teacher crosses the finish line and Rye flies alongside her.

In other words, Love rises whenever the ad shows the result of drinking RYZE and dips in the only scene that shows life before it. As one viewer put it: “The way the teacher was 'tired' and ended up energizing her students and running a race showed how she overcame the doldrums by drinking this coffee.”

There’s a low, steady thread of Surprise running underneath too, as viewers work out who this little mushroom is and what he’s doing in someone’s memories.

The storyline does the explaining

What this ad does exceptionally well is teach people about the product without ever explaining it.

New Information scores 4.1 (vs. 3.7 norm), a strong result for a film with no dialogue, no voiceover or any specific product claims. As one viewer put it: “I thought it showed a very meaningful message, without having to actually say anything, and I loved it.”

On top of this, over half associate the brand with “providing natural energy” (53%) and “supporting a healthy lifestyle” (52%), meaning the benefits at the heart of the brand are landing.

Measured against a competitive set of mushroom and functional coffee brands, RYZE was already the most-picked at 28% pre-exposure, which usually leaves an ad with less room to move.

But here purchase consideration still grew considerably post-exposure to 64% — a 36-point Purchase Uplift (vs. 22% norm)!

Final thoughts

What a charming spot from RYZE! It’s proof that a mascot and a good story can sell a whole new category without saying a single word.

What did you think? Let us know by interacting with our coverage of the ads on LinkedIn.

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Connected insights: What they are and how to use them

Kelsey Sullivan — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Every consumer research project creates an opportunity for brands to learn. But what happens to those learnings once the project is over?

Too often, the data from these consumer insights projects live in separate reports, platforms or teams, making it difficult to connect what you've learned from one project to the next.

Connecting your insights changes that. By doing so, organizations can move beyond one-off answers to build a body of consumer knowledge that gets more valuable with every test.

In this article, I'll explore what connected insights are, why they matter and how organizations can move toward a more connected approach.

What are connected insights?

Consumer insights are most valuable when they don't exist in isolation.

Every concept test, advertising test, packaging test or other piece of consumer research contains information that can help a business make better, more confident decisions. But when research is treated as a series of individual projects, value can be lost once a project is complete.

Connected insights are the process of bringing together consumer research data across projects, teams and business units over time so organizations can learn from their collective research and make better decisions.

Instead of treating every research project as a standalone answer, connected insights allow organizations to build a body of consumer knowledge that they can learn from.

For example, imagine a brand is testing a new product concept. Rather than looking only at how that concept performed, a connected approach could allow the team to compare it with similar concepts tested in the past, identify which elements have consistently driven interest and understand which ideas have performed best with particular audiences.

With that in mind, connecting insights can also change the role of the insights function. Rather than being an order-taker that delivers answers one project at a time, an insights team can become a strategic partner that uses connected consumer knowledge to influence decisions across the business.

Connected insights vs. disconnected research

Here’s a snapshot of the differences between disconnected and connected insights:

Disconnected research can still produce valuable insights. The problem is that the learning often stops when the project does.

Connected insights create the opportunity for each new piece of research to add to what an organization already knows. And when that knowledge is consistently connected, organizations can begin to identify patterns, establish benchmarks and make more informed decisions about what to do next.

Let’s take a deeper look at the benefits of connecting your insights.

The benefits of connecting insights

When data is connected across projects and teams, organizations can move from asking what consumers think about an individual idea to understanding what they have learned about their consumers over time.

This shift introduces many benefits, including the ability to:

1. Learn from your entire research history

Every research project adds another piece to the puzzle. When those pieces can be connected, teams can look across their research to identify recurring patterns and trends.

Instead of asking, "What did consumers think about this concept?" teams can begin asking questions such as:

What types of concepts have performed best for us historically?
Which attributes consistently drive interest?
What have we learned from previous launches?
Which creative approaches tend to elicit a positive response?
How do different audiences respond to different ideas?

This is where connected insights can unlock meta-learning — using a collection of research data to generate higher-level learning that can inform future strategy.

"We are getting smarter and smarter over time by connecting all our data across brands, countries, categories, to give us meta learnings with Zappi."
- Stephan Gans, SVP Chief Consumer Insights and Analytics Officer, PepsiCo

2. Make research more actionable

Research is most useful when it helps teams decide what to do next.

Connected insights can give teams greater context around new research by allowing them to compare current findings with previous results. That can help identify what should be retained and where an idea has the greatest opportunity.

Rather than treating research as a verdict on whether an idea is "good" or "bad," connected insights support a more iterative approach: test, learn, improve and test again.

3. Identify what works — and what doesn't

A single study can tell you what happened. A connected body of research can help you understand what happens repeatedly.

Over time, organizations can build a stronger evidence base around the elements, messages, concepts or creative approaches that tend to resonate (or not resonate) with their audiences.

This can make consumer research less about answering isolated questions and more about building institutional knowledge.

4. Move faster

When teams can access relevant historical research and apply existing learnings to new projects, they don't have to start from scratch every time.

Connected insights can also make iterative research more practical. Rather than waiting until the end of an innovation or advertising process to conduct research (which we don’t recommend) teams can use consumer feedback throughout development and act on what they learn before it gets too late in the process.

5. Give insights a more strategic role

Connecting insights also offers the opportunity to level up the insights function.

Insights teams running one-off, reactive projects have historically been seen as “order takers.” The process of connecting insights changes that, almost naturally transitioning insights teams to being seen as strategic partners — with systematized processes and democratized access that allows teams to learn over time and better inform approaches that benefit the business.

The Connected Insights Framework

Now let’s get into our framework.

We developed the Connected Insights Framework to help organizations understand where they are on that journey and identify the changes needed to move toward a more consumer-centric approach. The framework includes four stages — Disconnected, Fragmented, Connected and Accelerated.

Here’s a closer look into each level:

Level 1: Disconnected

At the Disconnected level, insights are largely project-based and reactive.

Individual people conduct research, projects are organized ad hoc and technology is used infrequently. Data is disconnected and stakeholders typically have access to insights only when they are needed for a particular project.

Consumers are consulted occasionally and sit at the periphery of decision-making.

The mindset: "We need research to answer this question."

Level 2: Fragmented

At the Fragmented level, research becomes more structured, but information remains siloed.

Some areas of the business might be starting to connect learnings, but not globally. One region of the business may be connected or one business unit might be connected, but they aren’t yet connected to each other. Technology is also used more frequently, but data remains siloed and stakeholders have only partial access to insights.

Consumers are involved on a recurring basis, but their impact on decision-making remains sporadic and uneven.

The mindset: "We have a research program."

Level 3: Connected

At the Connected level, consumer insights becomes a strategic function.

Work is systematized, technology is consistently used and data is connected across the organization. Stakeholders have democratized access to insights, while consumers are integrated on an ongoing basis and sit at the heart of decision-making.

At this stage, connected insights can create a competitive advantage because consumer knowledge is no longer trapped within individual projects or teams.

The mindset: "Everything we learn makes the next decision smarter."

Level 4: Accelerated

At the Accelerated stage, insights are no longer simply connected — they are continuous, harmonized across functions and increasingly AI-enabled.

AI automates routine analysis, continuously surfaces relevant insights and dramatically increases the speed at which organizations can make informed decisions.

People and processes are integrated across teams and data is real-time and democratized across the organization, while consumers can participate on demand and co-create with the business.

The result is a shift from insights informing individual decisions to consumer intelligence continuously shaping the direction of the organization. This stage is one where consumer insights can help unlock new markets and competitive advantage.

The mindset: "Consumer intelligence continuously shapes where the business goes next."

Ultimately, becoming a connected insights organization doesn't happen simply because research data is placed in one platform.

It requires a broader shift in how an organization works with its people, processes, technology, data and consumers.

Connected insights examples

Connected insights can sound like an abstract concept until you see what it looks like in practice.

Here are two examples from McDonald's and Johnsonville that show how connected research can change the way organizations approach innovation and advertising.

McDonald's: Connecting research to improve innovation

McDonald's has built a test-and-learn approach to innovation that allows the team to learn from previous research rather than treating every concept test as a standalone evaluation.

Previously, concepts were tested slightly differently, making it difficult to compare results across ideas. The team wanted a more reliable way to understand which ideas had potential, identify opportunities for improvement and move through innovation more quickly.

Using Zappi, McDonald's established a standardized research approach with consistent audiences, markets, tagging and benchmark norms. By testing innovation in the same way and storing the resulting data in one place, the team can compare results across studies and conduct meta-analysis.

That means the team can look beyond an individual concept.

“For a new shake flavor, I analyze the drivers of interest and purchase in all the shakes we’ve tested before. I can see how consumers play those concepts back, & what they want us to do differently. There’s a lot I can do easily with the data set.”
- Matt Cahill, Senior Director of Insights Activation, McDonald’s

For example, when evaluating a new shake flavor, McDonald's can analyze the drivers of interest and purchase across previous shake concepts and use that learning to inform future innovation.

The result is a shift from testing to "earn a good score" toward testing to learn, improve and find the best version of an idea.

The connected insights lesson: Every test becomes an input into the next test.

Read the full story here.

Johnsonville: Connecting research throughout creative development

Johnsonville demonstrates how connected insights can support an iterative approach to advertising.

Traditionally, the brand's ad testing happened once, late in the creative process. By that point, there was often little opportunity to act on the findings. Johnsonville instead began using consumer feedback iteratively throughout ad development.

For its Keep It Juicy campaign, the team tested creative from early to late stages. An initial rough cut performed well on sales impact but was weaker on brand impact, signaling that the brand needed to work harder in the ad.

That feedback shaped the next stage of development. As the creative evolved, diagnostics helped the team determine what to keep and what to cut — even identifying an individual cartoon clip that ran slightly too long. By the time the final audio was added, the scores held steady, giving the team confidence in the finished creative.

“I used to test with consumer data once at the end of the campaign - it was expensive, slow, and by the time results came in, there wasn't much to act on. With Amplify, it's cost-effective and fast, so we can test and iterate multiple times.”
- Karen Kraft, Associate Director of Consumer Insights, Johnsonville

The campaign ultimately won a Silver Effie Award, while the iterative testing approach became embedded in Johnsonville's broader ad development process.

The connected insights lesson: Consumer feedback becomes more valuable when it is connected to the entire development journey, not just the final decision.

Read the full story here.

Connected insights tools

The right technology should help organizations standardize research, connect data and make consumer learning accessible and actionable across teams.

A connected insights platform should make it possible to:

Standardize research so results can be compared across studies
Centralize research data so insights aren't trapped in individual reports or files
Create consistent taxonomies and benchmarks that make cross-study analysis possible
Connect research across projects, brands and teams
Democratize access to insights so more stakeholders can use consumer learning
Identify patterns across historical research
Use AI and automation to accelerate analysis and translate data into insights

This is where a connected insights platform like Zappi can help.

Zappi’s connected insights platform

Zappi brings different types of consumer research — including advertising, brand tracking and innovation research — into one platform, enabling brands to build a more consistent and connected body of consumer knowledge.

As we’ve covered here, the value of a connected insights platform isn't simply having research in one place. It's being able to connect what you've learned in the past with the decisions you're making today.

“I call that getting a head start. Why wouldn't you want a head start with all this knowledge that we had before? It's just going to make your outcome better.”
- Matt Cahill, Senior Director of Insights Activation, McDonald’s

That's what turns individual research projects into connected insights — and ultimately turns consumer research into something that becomes more valuable for brands over time.

Zappi’s connected consumer insights platform does just that, connecting consumer learnings across time so teams can build on previous research, complete with standardized frameworks and benchmarks that make results comparable with centralized access.

Learn more about our connected insights platform.

Wrapping up

Consumer research shouldn't have an expiration date. When research is connected, every study can contribute to a larger body of consumer knowledge — helping teams spot patterns, make better decisions and learn faster.

That's the real opportunity behind connected insights.

With the right processes and technology, organizations can make every piece of research work harder and ensure that what they learn today helps them make smarter decisions in the future.

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How matcha moved from tradition to trend

Kirsten Lamb — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Matcha has become one of the biggest trending products in 2026. The matcha market is currently worth $5.5 billion in 2026, with experts predicting the market will hit $8.9 billion by 2033.

A historic Japanese tea, steeped in ceremony and luxury, the product has become a staple in coffee shops, skincare lines and bakeries across the east and west.

In this post, I take a look at how matcha’s unique branding, pricing and marketing has perfectly intersected with consumer psychology — taking an ancient ingredient from niche luxury to modern necessity.

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What is matcha?

Matcha is a bright green tea powder, ground from the leaves of shade-grown green tea leaves. Just like other teas, farmers create matcha using the leaves of the tea plant Camellia sinensis. Matcha stands out from other types of green tea because it's grown under the shade of bamboo mats, where the leaves work hard to create extra chloroplasts in order to collect more light. This gives matcha its unique vibrant green shade.

A brief history

Organic Matcha brand Matchaful notes that the earliest records of matcha can be traced all the way back to the Tang Dynasty in China, which spanned the 7th–10th centuries. Throughout this period, the Tang Dynasty steamed tea leaves and formed them into bricks, making for easy transportation and trade. Traditional preparation involved roasting and breaking down the leaves then mixing the freshly-made powder with water and salt.

The earliest matcha tea ceremonies arrived during the Song Dynasty, which reigned from the 10th–13th centuries. Following his studies in Buddhist monasteries in China, a Japanese Buddhist Monk, called Eisai, brought green tea leaves to Japan along with the traditional Chinese Buddhist ways of preparing them.

Eisai planted his seeds on the temple grounds in Kyoto, home to Kamakura Shogun. The preparation methods and quality of leaves were considered the best in all of Japan, with Eisai and his fellow monks brewing up the tea in very small quantities — solidifying the matcha's reputation as a luxury status symbol.

Matcha only became mass-produced during the Muromachi period (1336-1573) with tea farmers across Japan growing the tea in the shade of the bamboo to maximize its health benefits.

In 1500, the ritual of matcha as we know it was created by Murata Juko. Juko personally brought together the fragmented elements of the traditional Japanese tea-drinking habits and formalized them into an official ritual. This was later popularized by Zen Master Sen-no-Rikyu, the best-known figure of the Japanese Tea Ceremony.

Sen-no-Rikyu identified four basic principles of the Japanese tea-drinking ceremony:

Harmony (wa)
Respect (kei)
Purity (sei)
Tranquility (jaku)

This ceremony is formally known as “Chado” or “Sado,” translated as “The Way of Tea.”

Thanks to international expositions, matcha was adopted in the West in the late 19th century. It later became a global consumer favorite in the 2010s. Starbucks is credited with its early adoption, with the franchise rolling out specialty coffees and teas including their first matcha formulation: the Green Tea Latte, in 2006.

In 2026, tea revenue is up more than 70% across Starbucks’ coffeehouses — solidifying matcha’s mainstream status. The multi-billion dollar industry now features thousands of global brands from quirky DTC (direct to consumer) brands to big-name retailers, matcha has become a central ingredient across both traditional and unexpected product categories, including snacks and beauty.

Why now?

Wellness is trending. 79% of global consumers say wellness is important to them, with over 40% making it a top priority. Spending on fitness, supplements and top-tier nutrition is on the rise — crowning the wellness space a $2 trillion industry.

And this interest is a core part of the growing trend towards functional beverages. McKinsey reports: “This trend has been fueled by the shift toward food as preventative medicine, as consumers are becoming more aware of how food and beverage choices affect their health. Rather than only thinking of healthy food as foods that are free from certain components, such as gluten or sugar, consumers are now looking for foods that include high-value components, such as protein, nootropics, or turmeric.”

For increasingly health-conscious consumers, it’s out with sugar-heavy soda and in with probiotic-fueled, nutrient-rich teas, coffees and sparkling beverages — highlighting why matcha is popular. Consumers are looking for genuine beverage innovation beyond marketing gimmicks.

Outside of innovative functional beverages, consumers are looking for a gentler caffeine hit, with many looking to replace their lattes and black coffees with the calm-inducing buzz of green tea and matcha's L-theanine and caffeine that offer zen-like focus without the sharp drop.

And consumers want their beverages to be both pretty and functional. The bright green hue of matcha racks up the views and likes on TikTok and Instagram — delivering visuals built around the café chic aesthetic, beverage artistry and wellness-focused Clean Girl cool.

For many consumers, healthy beverages like matcha have become part of their everyday health rituals,. bBringing comfort, nourishment and status. Whether it's whisking up some bright-green organic matcha powder from a premium brand for their followers on TikTok to quietly investing in full ceremonial-grade Japanese tea tools including a ceramic bowl, bamboo whisk and scoop and iron kama or kettle.

Why consumers love matcha

With 20% of American consumers aged 18-29 keeping matcha in their rotation, here are some of the main reasons for the growing matcha trend.

The consumer need it fulfills

Matcha has become a social ritual. Go-to Gen Z and millennial coffeehouse Blank Street reports that the daily matcha run serves as a daily social ritual for many consumers. Consumers snap their green-hued teas and lattes with friends and share them across socials.

Younger consumers love matcha for its cult health and wellbeing-promoting status as much as they do for its social-friendly aesthetic. Stephanie Gravalese, writing for Forbes, says: "TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are full of videos about matcha that, more often than not, aren't really about matcha. Performative matcha is the idea that drinking or preparing the tea has become less about the beverage itself and more about what it signals. Scroll long enough and you'll catch it — a man at a café in wired headphones, or a soft-spoken creator bent over a bowl of green tea.

In the captions, this drink and what it means are turned into something else. It's a shorthand for taste, sensitivity, and belonging. The posts are tagged with phrases like "matcha boyfriend,' "soft masculinity," and "performative matcha," sometimes admiringly, sometimes with a wink."

Beyond its Instagram-cool status, many consumers genuinely love matcha for the health, energy and wellbeing benefits the tea provides. Matcha perfectly balances consumers’ need for functional nutrition with their desire for an everyday wellness-enhancing indulgence.

Moving away from “performative matcha,” consumers love the energy and nutrient hit they get from their matcha powders and blends. Typically organic, natural and antioxidant rich, many consumers have replaced their standard morning coffees with matcha for the tea’s added health benefits.

Matcha also serves a unique energetic need. Unlike coffee, which gives consumers' an energy boost that often comes with jittery-inducing anxiety, matcha relaxes as it energizes thanks to calm-promoting L-theanine. The meditative matcha tea ceremonies popularized across TikTok bring additional wellbeing benefits, allowing consumers to blend meditation with the benefits that come with drinking freshly-brewed matcha.

The consumer psychology

Many consumers are immediately drawn in by matcha’s visual appeal. Matcha’s bright green shade serves as a visual hook, sparking consumer curiosity — instantly reading as Instagrammable. Whisked-up powders in a bowl made of fine china, a slow-motion pour of a matcha latte over ice or a green-hued batch of cookies: matcha is far more aesthetic than consumers’ standard black tea or coffee.

Consumers typically have a premium perception of matcha. High-end brands, organic formulas, Japanese lineage — all of these qualities give weight to consumers’ perceptions of matcha as a premium product, allowing them to easily justify spending upwards of $8.00 for a barista-made blend or $30.00 for a ceremony tea kit for their home matcha brews.

Matcha enjoys the health halo effect. The health halo effect holds that a food or beverage's health status is overestimated because of one or two core features. In matcha's case, consumers' perceive matcha's antioxidant rich green is a huge signifier of the drink's lasting, holistic health benefits — driving its consumption.

Matcha is also a status symbol. Cool, health-conscious and intentional: consumers use the drink's popular nutrient-dense green to show friends and followers they take their health seriously. Matcha’s status is further reinforced by its popularity with consumers’ favorite health and wellness creators across socials, with the #matcha racking up over 15 billion views.

Matcha’s growth can also be tied to its ability to drive habit formation. Research shows that habits built around tactile multi-staged rituals, like the Japanese-inspired tea-making ritual facilitated by bamboo whisk, spoon, and Japanese-style kettle, become more deeply anchored into consumers' habit-adoption. This helps to drive long-term habit adoption and matcha purchasing trends.

Matcha’s ritual and visual appeal also fuels consumers’ identity formation and self expression. It allows consumers’ to enrich and demonstrate their identities as health-conscious, wellness-focused and chicly on trend.

The branding behind the trend

Let’s take a look at the unique brand positioning, visual identity, community building and messaging behind matcha’s rising popularity and how these intersect to influence matcha consumer behavior.

Brand positioning

Many matcha brands have leaned into aspirational lifestyle brand positioning to help promote and sell their matcha products. The height of luxury wellness: matcha looks to offer consumers both health and status.

Matcha combines the functional with the aesthetic. Offering consumers' a paced caffeine buzz and a huge hit of anti-oxidants in one. Not competing with alternative beverages on price or convenience, Matcha brands lean into aspirational lifestyles and aesthetics — justifying their premium price points for beverages, bags and tins.

Premium craftsmanship is another core part of matcha’s brand positioning. Popular matcha brands mimic the positioning of luxury wine and specialty coffee brands, focusing their messaging on premium ingredients and craftsmanship. Brands' artisanal storytelling highlights traditional shade-growing techniques, dubbed oishta saibai, which grows leaves under shade for up to 30 days or hand-picking the first leaves of the harvest — known as ichibancha.

Source: GOLDE

Premium tea brand GOLDE presents their Pure Matcha powder as, “Ceremonial stone-milled matcha in Uji, Kyoto,” emphasizing the high-end processing, ingredients and origin.

Their product description reads, "The foundational green superfood for energy, focus, and cellular health for all. Pure Matcha goes beyond Ceremonial Grade: freshly shade-grown and cold-processed in Uji, Japan for maximum antioxidant and amino acid content."

Many brands spotlight the rich heritage of matcha, emphasizing their centuries-old growing and production techniques while still giving their matcha blends and products a modern slant. Founded by YouTuber Emma Chamberlain, Chamberlain Coffee offers organic ceremonial-grade matcha powders in flavors like classic matcha and vanilla matcha. They also sell flavored cold brews alongside an Instagrammable modern tea ceremony kit that comes with matcha, a glass mason jar, electric whisk and reusable straws.

Other brands highlight their matcha’s clean, natural ingredients. Drawing in health-conscious consumers with claims on high antioxidant counts, organic practices and additive-free blends.

GOLDE highlights the unique benefits of their ceremonial-grade matcha, “The foundational green superfood for energy, focus, and cellular health for all. Pure Matcha goes beyond Ceremonial Grade: freshly shade-grown and cold-processed in Uji, Japan for maximum antioxidant and amino acid content.”

Source: GOLDE

Other matcha brands lean into the functional luxury beverage trend. Companies frame matcha as luxurious self-care, matcha teas and tea rituals become an essential part of consumers’ meditative, self-care routines. The mental health and wellbeing benefits, coupled with the physical health benefits, make modern matcha products worth their luxe price to consumers.

Moon Juice’s beverage branding leans into indulgent self-care focused, matcha-based blends with added cognitive benefits. The brand’s formulas include ingredients like Lion’s Mane and magnesium, alongside matcha, to enhance focus, executive function and memory. The brand’s Cosmic Matcha, labeled an adaptogenic matcha latte, includes vegan collagen and “Beauty Dust,” made of a unique berry and herb blend.

Visual identity

Source: Yuki Matcha

Many brands package up their matcha in minimalist packaging, putting the focus on their products’ premium ingredients. Packaging Europe says, "Minimalism involves simplifying elements and the stripping back of those elements left. Shapes, forms, illustrations, colours, and types that feel unnecessary or useless are left out. Only the bare minimum is kept that still can convey the brand message.

Luxury minimalism strips back to a minimum, allowing us to concentrate on what is necessary. It is based on the functionality and aesthetic of objects, seeking to enhance them, often by using sought-after materials and innovative technology."

Source: Chamberlain Coffee

Several matcha brands use earth tones and vibrant greens to mirror the natural hue and inherent health benefits of their products. For consumers, green has implicit associations with freshness, health and nature. While some brands, like Chamberlain Coffee use bright or rich greens and fun imagery for a playful modern look. Other brands, like Clevr Blends, balance sage greens with complementary earthy tones like warm terracottas.

Matcha green makes for a colorful eye-catching instagram feed. Many brands lean into colorful-barista-made blends. Brands like Blank Street coffeehouse and Cha Cha Matcha have built up cult Instagram followings by sharing their popular layered matcha drinks, such as Cha Cha Matcha’s Iced Strawberry Matcha Latte which layers matcha on top of pink strawberry milk and Purple Matcha Latte — a lavender, ube honey and matcha blend.

Source: Cha Cha Matcha’s Instagram

Matcha’s healthy green hue naturally lends itself to the cafe aesthetic that’s so popular with Gen Z and millennials, with consumers sharing pictures of their bright green matcha drinks in cool cafes and coffee shops across Instagram. coffeehouse Blank Street says: "Matcha isn't just a drink – it's a lifestyle statement. People order it as much for the aesthetic as for the taste."

Matcha packaging is often luxe. Many high-end brands package up their matcha in bags, tins and boxes that feature premium typography and design. Gold-embossed bags, minimalist tea tins featuring detailed art work and chic, branded mason jars give matcha a premium feel and act as kitchen decor and keepsakes, allowing consumers to justify a product’s higher price points.

Source: Raku Matcha

Messaging

Much of matcha’s brand messaging is built around the ingredient’s ability to support core pillars of health — including its high anti-oxidant count, zen-like energy boost and its potential for facilitate mindful living in the form of daily meditative rituals and tea ceremonies.

Many brands focus on matcha's ability to provide a cleaner, less-anxiety-inducing caffeine hit than coffee, highlighting the calm-inducing effects of L-theanine. L-theanine increases dopamine and serotonin, balancing out caffeine's edge. Matcha tea brand Tenzo positioned their matcha powders as offering, "Caffeine without the crash,” labelling their green tea powder, “A daily dose of zen in a cup.”

The anti-oxidant rich and functional wellness benefits of matcha is another core focus of many brands' messaging with companies’ emphasizing matcha’s EGCG antioxidants and heart, brain and metabolism benefits to hook health-conscious consumers.

From L-theanine content to meditative ceremonial tea rituals, matcha brands frequently emphasize matcha’s ability to support mindful living — appealing to wellness-focused consumers.

Matcha business SipSpa notes in a recent blog post:

“Meditation is associated with increased alpha wave activity in the brain, a state of relaxed, present-moment awareness, neither drowsy nor agitated. L-theanine, the amino acid found in high concentrations in matcha, has been shown in EEG studies to produce the same alpha wave pattern within 30–40 minutes of ingestion (Nobre, Rao & Owen, 2008). You do not need to meditate for this to happen; the compound shifts the brain towards that state independently. What this means in practice is that drinking matcha before sitting to meditate may make the initial settling easier.”

Brands like GOLDE and Tenzo highlight matcha’s role in supporting everyday healthy rituals and habits, from replacing consumers’ morning coffee to becoming a core part of their daily meditation and mindfulness routines. Statista Consumer Insights found that 19% of consumers who drink matcha specifically choose it as a direct replacement for coffee, suggesting matcha has become a core part of many consumers’ daily routines.

Source: Japanese Taste

Quality is at the center of the majority of high-end matcha brands’ messaging. While other tea and coffee-based beverages may position themselves as fast, cheap and convenient, matcha brands typically position their products as premium quality. Brands continually refine their messaging to draw in mindful, deliberate, health and wellness-focused consumers.

Brands looking to validate their premium pricing often highlight authentic sourcing. Famous growing hubs like Uji (Kyoto), Shizuoka or Kagoshima automatically highlight matcha quality. Brands also highlight artisanal processing, emphasizing weeks-long shade-growing techniques and stone-milling that produces a fine powder without degrading matcha's rich anti-oxidant content.

Community building

Online brands, wellness influencers and creators have built far-reaching communities around drinking, eating and ritualizing matcha.

Many brands partner with wellness creators to grow their reach and bring matcha to a wider audience of consumers focused on their mental and physical health. When it comes to marketing matcha, brands are frequently partnering with nano and micro influencers with strong cult followings and high levels of audience trust. Whether it’s online mental health advocates promoting matcha for an anxiety-free caffeine kick, yoga teachers or women’s health coaches: matcha brands can choose from influencers across the wellness space.

Thanks to its unique flavor and nutritional profile, nutrition influencers are another natural fit for many matcha brands. Matcha has verified health benefits including the ability to improve attention, reaction time and memory. Madison Ginsburg, a sophomore at the University of Florida, said, “Influencers drink matcha as if it's part of their lives, so I thought I had to try it at least once.”

Another popular online community for matcha brands is the coffee alternatives community. MatchaBar's founders, brothers Max and Graham Fortgang, started their alternative to a New York coffee bar after their experience as NYU students looking for a cleaner energy hit to coffee, building America's first dedicated matcha café in Brooklyn to serve the need.

Fitness and lifestyle creators are ideal influencers for wellness beverage marketing. Over half of Gen Z consumers say they use social media to help build their health and fitness routines. Fitness and lifestyle creators often partner with matcha brands due to the aesthetic appeal of matcha, featuring matcha blends, powders and lattes in colorful content across TikTok and Instagram.

Popular coffee house Blank Street went viral for its sage-green decor and blueberry-matcha drinks. The brand's matcha-led creator campaigns led to a 40% jump in app downloads during the franchise's peak summer promos. The WSJ notes the coffeehouses' TikTok-based matcha strategy turned the brand into a Gen Z “accessory brand” to rival brands like Sephora and Stanley.

Source: The Hoot

The popularity of café culture continues to increase matcha products’ reach across the socials. Matcha-runs, coffeeshop recreations and chic coffeeshop decor all inspire millions of pieces of UGC (user generated content) each month, bringing matcha products to a wider audience.

Recipe-based content is another popular format for growing a matcha-brand’s reach and engagement. Matcha-based smoothies, 8am lattes and home-baked goods bring matcha to a wider audience and give consumers new ways to experiment with matcha-based products.

The economics of matcha

From pricing strategies to business models, let’s explore the economics behind Gen Z’s favorite green tea.

Pricing strategy

Matcha typically comes at a premium price point compared to coffee. Brands validate luxury pricing by emphasizing unique health benefits and premium sourcing, growing and manufacturing processes behind their products.

Matcha lattes currently sit at around $6.15, up from $5.84 in 2024. A ceremonial-grade matcha from a known region often brings in upwards of $8.00 per drink. Research shows that consumers are often happy to spend more for a matcha-based drink, seeing it as a wellness purchase rather than a simple source of caffeine.

“In 2026, matcha is no longer a novelty menu addition—it is the single most profitable beverage category a café can launch. At Blank Street Coffee, matcha now accounts for 50% of total orders, with summer volumes overtaking coffee entirely in select stores. Black Sheep Coffee reported a 227% year-over-year lift in its iced category after expanding its matcha lineup. A properly engineered matcha latte delivers an 82.9% gross margin—nearly nine percentage points higher than a caffè latte.” - First Agri

When it comes to matching pricing, products are typically tiered by grade and origin. Let’s take a look at wholesale matcha prices by comparison:

Heritage or competition-grade matcha: $450–650+ per kg
Ceremonial grade: $180–320 per kg
Premium latte grade: $85–140 per kg
Culinary grade: $55–80 per kg (Source: First Agri B2B 2026 wholesale pricing tiers, cited in One with Tea, "Best Matcha for Cafes and Restaurants: 2026 Guide," May 2026)

Online retail is the leading distribution channel when it comes to matcha, holding a 41.10% market share in 2025. These retailers typically include specialty tea stores, boutique cafés and premium online supermarkets — meeting consumers’ needs for quality and authenticity.

Matcha’s vibrant green hue, coupled with its nutritional benefits, makes it easy to upsell across cafes and bakeries. Brands provide unique barista-made blends, green-hued bakes and ceremonial-grade signature teas – drawing in consumers with matcha’s cool aesthetic and nutritional appeal, lifting average transactional values.

Limited-edition seasonal flavors are also a great way to drive sales by building a sense of exclusivity. Milk Bar x Jade Leaf Matcha launched a limited-edition Strawberry Matcha Cookie, offering the snack up for purchase for just 8 weeks.

Business model

The global matcha market is valued at $3.91 billion, with matcha moving from specialty product to mainstream menu item — entering onto the menu in places like Jack in the Box and Philz Coffee.

Matcha-based beverages deliver some of the highest margins. A matcha espresso shot uses just 2-3g of powder, costing an average of $0.30-0.45, whipping up a drink that sells for around $5.35-$7.00 — a margin over 85%. Even at ceremonial-tier matcha boasts a lower per-serving cost than a specialty espresso.

Brands can grow their matcha offerings and their revenue by moving into multiple product categories. Take UK brand Oato's limited-edition matcha oat milk which brought matcha to oat-milk-loving consumers via a modern “milk man” delivery service.

With so many consumers looking to bring matcha into their daily lives to support their meditation routines and physical health, matcha is a great product for building subscription-based models. Monthly delivery subscriptions allow consumers to enjoy matcha at home without worrying about running out of product.

Cafés and coffeehouses can also grow their revenue by offering their premium matcha in take-home tins.

A café customer buying a $19.50 tin of matcha powder for their home brews brings in around $16.15 in gross profit per transaction, with zero added labor costs.

Matcha benefits from premium positioning across channels. Consumers are willing to pay more for high-end matcha, prioritizing quality and taste over affordability. The premium matcha market The premium segment of the market is the fastest paced in the category — projected at an 8.5% CAGR from 2026–2033.

Why consumers are willing to pay more

Why does matcha command such a high price point? Backed by the health halo effect, its rich historical origins and its unique zen-like health and wellness benefits: many consumers see matcha as a premium solution to several of their physical and mental health needs.

Premium ingredients and product authenticity also drive higher price points, with consumers willing to pay more for “ceremonial grade”, grown in a traditional shade-grown approach and crafted using premium stone-milling techniques.

Matcha’s ritual value is another draw for consumers. The ease of which matcha can be baked into consumers’ wellness routines continues to drive repeat sales for brands and retailers. Tea meditations and ceremonies make matcha feel like a ritualized aspect of consumers’ day-to-day wellness and self-care practices, encouraging them to spend more.

Whether it's matcha’s perceived luxe functionality, premium nutrition or ties to zen-like wellness, matcha’s unique lifestyle associations make matcha seem like an everyday necessity for health, wellness and status-conscious consumers.

The advertising playbook

From family-owned brands selling ceremonial-grade matcha to mainstream coffee chains, here are some of the best matcha advertising strategies.

Social media strategy

Morning routine videos have become some of the most popular types of content for matcha's popularity. Matcha-boosted smoothies, mindful tea ceremonies and matcha-sprinkled granola all make for great, easy-viewing for curious, health-focused consumers.

Matcha preparation tutorials are another traffic driver. The #matcharecipe hashtag collected over 500 million views in 2024 alone, with whisking and prep videos standing out as a top-performing format. In 2026, the hashtag is currently included in over 93.3k posts.

Café aesthetics are a great complement to matcha’s visual appeal. Slow pours into glasses, green matcha-dusted ice cream and frothy matcha lattes give matcha its chic health halo, racking up hundreds of millions of views across the socials.

Matcha has become such a trend among Gen Z consumers because it allows them to signal their identity as health and wellness-savvy. Health and wellness content, from antioxidant-rich smoothie recipes to tea-based meditations, allow health-focused younger consumers to easily save, share and recreate matcha content online.

“Day in the life,” creator content further adds to matcha’s appeal, allowing consumers to recreate the health and wellness routines of their favorite celebs and creators. YouTube creator Emma Chamberlain’s daily matcha lattes became the basis of her successful brand Chamberlain Coffee, showing how recreateable routine-based content is a key driver of product demand.

Seasonal beverage launches also rack up millions of views and shares on social media. Take note from Café Kitsuné's Spring 2026 menu, which featured a limited-run Sakura Latte blending cherry blossom and matcha. Build up anticipation with consumers with a series of dedicated posts in the run up to a seasonal or limited-edition product drop.

Creator marketing

Wellness influencers are central to a successful social media strategy. As we’ve seen, Gen Z regularly look to social media to build out their health and fitness routines, looking to TikTok and Instagram for post-workout recipes, energy-boosting breakfast smoothies and alternatives to coffee. Partnering with popular health, fitness and wellness influencers is a great way to bring your matcha products to health-conscious consumers looking to pay more for high-quality premium matcha products.

Emma Chamberlain’s previously-mentioned $22 million coffee brand has reportedly sold out of their signature ceremonial-grade matcha more than five times, showing the trust and influence online creators have to drive sales among their online following. Beyond Chamberlain’s influence, café reviewers and food-review creators were an essential part of the brand’s growth with hundreds of video reviews of the brand’s matcha and pastries amplifying reach online.

Nutrition experts are another effective partner for building trust among health-conscious consumers. Knowledgeable, educated nutritionists and dietitians can inform consumers on the many health benefits of matcha and make trusted product recommendations on their socials.

Deloitte reports that 61% of consumers say they have a, "High level of trust," in nutritionists and dietitians when it comes to getting reliable information on healthy food and beverages online, making them one of the most trusted health authorities outside of physicians.

Matcha’s signature green hue and antioxidant properties have also made it a stand-out ingredient in the beauty space. Matcha hair products are growing at an impressive 10.2% annual growth rate. We’re also seeing, “matcha nails,” trending across Pinterest, TikTok and Instagram. This makes unexpected beauty influencer collaborations a great way to grow brand and product awareness: think creators pairing your premium matcha powder with a matcha manicure or homemade matcha facemask recipes.

Campaigns that worked

Wellness-focused brand partnerships are another popular approach. Wellness resort Six Senses Kyoto partnered with specialist tea brand Ippodo Tea to bring consumers a limited-run Matcha Afternoon Tea. The Arts Shelf shares:

"Guests begin with Gyokuro “Rinpou”, a cold-brewed tea selected for its rich umami flavour and delicate aroma. From there, the afternoon tea introduces a series of refined sweet and savoury creations that reinterpret classic Japanese ingredients through a contemporary lens.

Matcha and white chocolate scones sit alongside citrus tartlets, amazake verrines and marinated salmon trout wrapped with matcha, while desserts including hojicha cream daifuku and sencha dacquoise explore the depth and complexity of Japanese tea flavours."

Source: The Arts Shelf

Seasonal matcha beverages are one of the most effective ways to increase reach and engagement on social media. Think: summer matcha lemonades, limited-edition strawberry matcha shakes and festive gingerbread blends.

Milk Bar released a Cereal Milk Matcha Latte for National Matcha Day 2026, inviting matcha-indulging consumers to celebrate the day with an exclusive limited-edition latte. Connecting the rollout to an official matcha holiday, Hachiju Hachiya or the "88th Night,” tea farmers' preferred date to start the matcha spring harvest, helped ensure the brand had max media coverage.

Product sampling and experiential marketing allows consumers to try out matcha’s distinctive flavor profile before they buy, helping to overcome consumers’ hesitancy. While activations allow consumers to indulge in the matcha buzz before committing to a purchase.

Source: PR Newswire

As a standout in matcha marketing, Method’s Mindful Matcha activation was one of the standouts for Coachella 2026. The activation invited consumers to try out the brand’s icy cryo blast inspired by its cooling matcha products inside a body-wash portal for a zingy festival refresh. If fans enjoyed the scent, they could pick up free samples on their way out of the activation.

Retail or menu strategy

Matcha’s trending status primes consumers to value quality matcha more than standard menu items. Tiered menus offering several different grades of matcha — including core, ceremonial-upgrade and seasonal blends — allow cafes and coffeehouses to offer matcha at a premium price point in relation to other coffees on their menus.

Seasonal specials and limited-edition items are one of the most effective ways to drive more sales. Dunkin’s 2026 summer menu featured several Oreo-themed beverages, including a marshmallow matcha foam and cookie-swirl for their Oreo Matcha drink. Successful menu strategies often combine signature or seasonal beverages with snacks in the same flavor profile like matcha-infused cookies, waffles and cupcakes.

Ready-to-drink (RTD) products is one of the fastest-growing sub-categories in the space. Experts predict this segment will grow at a 9.7% CAGR from 2026 to 2033. Grand View Research notes RTD matcha's unique convenience and accessibility for consumers, "Product innovation is significantly boosting the growth of the market for matcha tea by introducing diverse flavors and convenient formats that cater to evolving consumer preferences. Manufacturers are expanding their offerings beyond traditional matcha to include ready-to-drink (RTD) options and unique flavor combinations.

Format matters because it makes the functional benefits of matcha more easily accessible. For a busy person, mixing a sachet or grabbing an RTD is far more likely than starting a full tea ritual with bowl and whisk. Thus, format innovation serves adoption, not just packaging."

Experimental flavor profiles continue to successfully draw in new demographics outside of the health-conscious consumer blueprint. Fun sought-after flavors include matcha balanced by raspberry, acai, vanilla, coconut and caramel.

As Grocery Gazette notes, matcha has quickly moved from niche health products, entering the mainstream FMCG market, as evidenced by matcha being included in popular products like Lindt’s chocolate truffles. While Nestle’s KitKat has expanded their line of popular matcha KitKats outside of Japan, bringing them to European consumers in limited-edition spinoffs.

Successful retail brands effectively position matcha as a wellness product, highlighting its unique anti-oxidant and zen-inspiring L-theanine content in their displays to help differentiate matcha from standard teas and coffees.

What brands can learn

From the power of daily rituals to the importance of price validation, matcha brands’ success offers several lessons for CPG and QSR brands and marketers.

Lessons for CPG brands

Matcha brands show CPG brands how heritage can become a competitive advantage when modernized thoughtfully. Six Senses Kyoto’s afternoon tea experience with matcha tea company Ippodo Tea blended matcha’s rich heritage and centuries-long premium status with a chic, modernized afternoon tea experience. Successful brands often develop a premium feel around their products by making them feel both timeless and modern, functional and indulgent and established yet innovative.

Best-selling matcha brands also show how wellness positioning is strongest when supported by a broader lifestyle story. YouTube creator Emma Chamberlain’s five-time sellout matcha shows the power of integrating a personal fitness and wellness backstory into a brand story.

These companies also highlight how premium packaging reinforces premium pricing. Luxe packaging and cool designs help reinstate matcha’s luxurious status for consumers, turning tins, bags and boxes into collectible items.

Matcha is also proof that a single ingredient can unlock multiple product extensions across categories. As one of the biggest trending ingredients, matcha’s reigning popularity suggests other superfood ingredients could one day have a similar status among consumers.

Lessons for QSR brands

Daily rituals create repeat purchase behavior. From TikTok content built around morning matcha routines to matcha lunchtime deals, the routinization of matcha continues to drive sales for matcha.

Matcha’s popularity also shows functional beverages can expand beyond coffee with unique flavor and nutritional profiles like matcha often performing better than the standard tea or coffee.

As we’ve seen exclusive, limited-edition seasonal menu items build anticipation and excitement by creating a sense of scarcity and exclusivity. Seasonal menu innovation keeps established products fresh, turning a habitual matcha habit into something more exciting.

Premium experiences don’t always require complex ingredients. Matcha is surprisingly affordable, sitting at just $0.30-$0.45 per 2-3g of powder, yet still commanding cult status among Gen Z and millennial consumers.

Lessons for marketers

One of the biggest takeaways on matcha for marketers is the ingredient’s ability to support consumers’ aspiration fulfillment.

Better mental health, a healthier lifestyle or a way to show off status: matcha helps consumers fulfill a number of aspirations beyond the ingredient’s anti-oxidant and subtle caffeine hit. Marketers should build brands around aspirations, not just product benefits. Use a consumer insights platform like Zappi to test which consumer motivations — wellness, taste, ritual or status — drive purchase intent the most.

Routine and rituals sell. Use creators to demonstrate products within everyday routines. Partner with micro influencers and educated experts like nutritionists and dietitians to build trust with your audience.

Price validation is also important. Test price sensitivities and validate premium pricing through consumer research before launch. Find the optimal price point for maximizing revenue with Zappi’s price testing feature.

Matcha’s success also shows the importance of an appealing aesthetic. From social posts to OOH advertising, invest in visual branding that encourages social sharing and reinforces perceived value.

What's next?

What does the future of matcha look like? Over the next five years, expect to see the continual expansion of matcha-based functional beverages, from matcha-infused sugar-free sodas to matcha energy drinks. The market will continue to grow with premium ready-to-drink matcha products that offer consumers ease and convenience from artisan ready-to-drink lattes to iced tea.

Consumers will look to AI-personalized nutritional recommendations to help them figure out how and when to bring matcha into their day-to-day nutrition, using AI to help them build personalized matcha plans that help them fulfill their health, fitness and wellbeing goals.

Matcha will also become more predominant across the protein, hydration and wellness categories — enhancing products’ flavor and nutritional profiles, giving them a premium edge.

Both matcha brands and consumers will put a greater emphasis on sustainability, sourcing transparency and ceremonial-quality products — reinforcing matcha’s premium status.

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AdMiration feature: Carlsberg’s “If Carlsberg Did Summer”

Vik Trifonova & Kim Malcolm — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

For this week’s AdMiration feature, we looked at consumer response to Carlsberg’s “If Carlsberg Did Summer” ad — the first campaign to carry the iconic “If Carlsberg Did…” line since 2016.

Read on to get our 3-2-1 snapshot of the ad (3 facts, 2 learnings and 1 reflection) and learn how their ad was received based on our data.

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The ad: Carlsberg’s “If Carlsberg Did Summer”

The ad opens on a group of friends sitting out on a blistering summer afternoon in the park. The picnic is set, the heat is relentless and there is nothing cold left to drink.

Then an ice cream van rolls into the park before one of the group gets up and runs towards it.

He hands a pound coin through the serving window but what comes back isn’t a 99 Flake. Instead, we see an ice cold Carlsberg Danish Pilsner at 99p a pint and inside the van the taps are already pouring.

A queue has formed behind him and the rest of the park is doing the same — pints are handed out one after another.

The ad closes on the line: “Carlsberg. Probably the best beer in the world.”

3-2-1 snapshot

3 facts

This was a strong ad from Carlsberg that works on both fronts, sitting in the top third of ads for its potential to drive short-term sales and to build brand equity over the longer term (Sales Impact: 67; Brand Impact: 68).
It stands apart from other lager advertising in the UK (Ad Distinctiveness: 4.0 vs. 3.7 norm) and reads as an ad only Carlsberg could have made (Uniqueness of Brand Impressions: 4.1 vs. 3.8 norm). Reviving a line the brand has owned for decades is a big part of why.
People find it funny (Laughter: 11% vs. 5% norm) and older viewers find it not only funnier (45+ Laughter: 13% vs. 4% norm) but also feel strong love when watching the ad (45+ Love: 22% vs. 14% norm).

2 learnings

Borrow a scenario your audience recognizes and make your product the twist. An idea like this could have easily confused people, but it doesn’t, because everything around the twist is familiar — the hot British weather, the empty cooler and the ice cream van pulling into the park. Carlsberg only has to communicate one new piece of information and a moment people already recognize does the rest of the explaining (Understanding: 4.4 vs. 4.2 norm). Introducing the product as the twist is also what sets the ad apart from everything else in the category (Ad Distinctiveness: 4.0 vs. 3.7 norm) and what makes it funny (Laugher: 11% vs. 5% norm). The tension building before the van arrives keeps viewers watching to find out what’s inside (Claimed Attention: 4.1 vs. 3.8 norm). As one viewer put it: “A great twist of seeing an recognisable vehicle selling something different & liked all the signs around the van, good touch.”
Make your product the reason the joke works. The risk with a funny ad is that the product may end up feeling tacked on after the joke rather than included in it. But in this ad, the product reveal is the joke — Laughter spikes as the man bolts for the van, then again when we see what’s inside it, with Love climbing to its high straight afterwards as the sign reveals ice cold Danish Pilsner for 99p. Both laughs land before the ad makes its offer so the pint doesn’t come across as a pitch. The joke only works if you’d rather have the pint than the ice cream so if you’re laughing, you’re most likely already sold.

1 reflection

What’s worked for your brand in the past that could work again today?

“If Carlsberg did…” hasn’t appeared in a Carlsberg campaign since 2016, but people never stopped using it — social listening found the phrase used close to 20,000 times globally in the year before this relaunch. Carlsberg simply reclaimed a line people had carried on using without them.

That gave the campaign a headstart which shows in the results. The ad resonates the most with the viewers old enough to remember the platform working the first time round (45+ Sales Impact: 94; Brand Impact: 94). One of them even made the connection outright: “It was very amusing and reminded me of the old ads for Carlsberg.”

But the more interesting detail is that a decade-old platform came back and read as current rather than nostalgic. Of everything viewers could say the ad communicates about the brand, “rooted in tradition” is the one they pick least (9%, and 11% among over-45s). Carlsberg kept the line but swapped the old fantasy classics like the holiday resort, the ultimate apartment and 5 a side team of dreams for an everyday British frustration.

The advantage of bringing back an old idea, slogan or other brand asset is that people already know it but the risk is that it may feel dated. Ask yourself: what’s the part worth keeping, and what needs rebuilding?

About the campaign

“If Carlsberg Did Summer” is the latest film in Carlsberg’s revival of the “If Carlsberg Did…” platform, which returns to the brand’s advertising for the first time since 2016. It was created with the agency Fold7 and is running in the UK from July 20 to August 31 across multiple channels and supported by in-store displays and branded merchandise.

The platform historically stood for “access to the best,” reimagining everyday situations as their ultimate version. The 2026 iteration swaps the fantasy scenarios with real seasonal frustrations and answers them with a Carlsberg solution.

Three executions run under the platform this summer. The ice cream van film is joined by “If Carlsberg Did Football Ads,” which converted billboards into physical goals for spontaneous kickabouts, and “If Carlsberg Did Summer… seagulls wouldn't get a look in,” which puts trained hawks into coastal pub gardens as “Seagull Security.” Retail activity across grocery, convenience and wholesale runs under the line “If Carlsberg did summer, we'd keep it chilled.”

Munnawar Chishty, CMO at Carlsberg Britvic, said: “Bringing back 'If Carlsberg Did...' after ten years is a massive moment for us. It is one of the most iconic, recognisable, and beloved advertising taglines in British history.” And Carlsberg has confirmed that the relaunch is more than a seasonal exercise — “If Carlsberg Did…” is becoming its long-term global creative platform.

A deep dive into the ad’s performance

Carlsberg has landed a spot that works on both fronts, sitting in the top third of ads for its potential to drive short-term sales and to build brand equity over the longer term (Sales Impact: 67; Brand Impact: 68).

It resonates the most with viewers aged 45 and over (Sales Impact: 94; Brand Impact: 94), who are the group most familiar with the original “If Carlsberg Did…” run.

The ad stands apart from other lager advertising in the UK (Ad Distinctiveness: 4.0 vs. 3.7 norm) and it holds people’s attention (Claimed Attention: 4.1 vs. 3.8 norm).

It also reads as an ad only Carlsberg could have made (Uniqueness of Brand Impressions: 4.1 vs. 3.8 norm) — a benefit of reviving the “If Carlsberg did…” line once again.

With viewers aged 45 and over, it goes further, setting Carlsberg apart from the rest of the category too (Brand Distinctiveness: 3.6 vs. 3.4 norm).

The ad creates a familiar scenario with a twist and that’s what makes it different. The setup is the most ordinary thing in a British summer — it’s too hot with nothing cold left to eat or drink.

Then the van pulls up selling 99p pints instead of ice cream and it works because, for a lot of UK adults, the swap is an upgrade:

“I like how it was different to every other beer advert that you see on TV. It had a little talking and different scenery.”
“How it was in a beer truck like ice cream truck for adults.”
“I liked that it made the van adult friendly and relatable to being thirsty on a hot summer’s day.”

An idea like this could have gone over people’s heads. But here it doesn’t, because the only new thing in the ad is what’s on offer (Understanding: 4.4 vs. 4.2 norm).

People find the ad funny. Laughter comes in at 11% vs. 5% norm, more than double the norm, resulting in an Overall Emotion that sits slightly above the norm (55 vs. 49 norm).

That goes further with viewers aged 45 and over, who laugh harder than anyone (Laughter: 13% vs. 4% norm) — more than three times the benchmark for their age group, and the strongest emotional response we saw.

Love, on the other hand, sits at the norm for the total audience (24% vs. 28%) but lands well clear of it with over-45s (Love: 22% vs. 14% norm).

The second-by-second trace shows Surprise ticks up as the group starts looking around and one of them spots the van. It stays present throughout so the ad keeps viewers engaged and wondering what’s coming.

Laughter then spikes twice, with the first peak coming on the reaction itself, as the man is up and moving before anyone else has registered what he’s seen. The second comes on the reveal, when we see inside the van where pints of Carlsberg are being poured.

Both laughs land before the ad makes its offer, so the pint arrives as the payoff to a joke viewers are already enjoying rather than as the thing the ad is trying to sell.

Love climbs immediately after, jumping to its high as the van sign confirms ice cold Danish Pilsner is on offer for 99p, ending the film on a high note.

The music does its share of the work here too. It builds tension from the moment the film starts and releases it the instant we see what the van is actually serving (Musical Appeal: 3.9 vs. 3.7 norm).

Here’s what people loved about it:

“I liked the story unfolding after the man was desperate for a drink. I like the cost of 99p. I like the images of the cold beer which look delicious.”
“The whole "hot sunny day, cool box is empty" feeling, relieved by the appearance of the Carlsberg van.”
“I like the subtle humour of the Carlsberg van instead of a traditional ice cream van. I liked that the van's branding was typical of an ice cream van (with different varieties etc shown on the outside) but was for lager.”
“A great twist of seeing an recognisable vehicle selling something different & liked all the signs around the van, good touch.”
“Finding out they had no beer and then the van appearing, very funny.”
“Genuinely made me smile/laugh. The beer can is a great idea - wish this was a thing. Makes me want Carlsberg.”

The timing can’t be better for this ad either! It’s all about being too hot and having nothing cold to drink, running in a summer where that describes most of the country, and Relevance lands at 3.7 (vs. 3.5 norm) as a result.

One viewer connects it straight to the weather outside right now: “I liked the intensity of the ad and that it was a beer van and not an ice van. It is very relevant because of the hot weather we are experiencing at the moment.”

Being this relevant also shapes what people take away about the brand after watching the ad. “Great for the summer” (64%) and “crisp and refreshing” (62%) are the two associations viewers land on most — and both are strong category entry points, linking Carlsberg to the exact moment people are most likely to want a beer right now.. As one viewer said: “The advert made the beer look like apple juice so it looked really refreshing.”

Final thoughts

Carlsberg took the most familiar scene in a British summer and changed one thing about it, and that single swap does the heavy lifting: it relaunches a platform, lands a joke and leaves you wanting a cold pint.

What did you think? Let us know by interacting with our coverage of the ads on LinkedIn.

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How connected data powers better consumer insights

Jennifer Phillips April — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 04:00:00 GMT

Brands have more consumer data than ever, yet they still have questions.

Marketers can see the number of consumers who clicked, engaged and bought. But even with more marketing analytics at their fingertips, it’s still not easy to answer the big question: Why did the campaign perform this way?

Zappi’s 2025 Connected Insights Imperative found that 41% of marketing and insights professionals cite data fragmentation as the biggest barrier to using insights effectively.

There’s more information than ever and marketing analytics can answer important questions, but learning from one question isn’t always connected to what the organization learned last month.

An ad test can tell marketers how consumers respond to a particular piece of creative. But when that research becomes part of a larger, connected body of evidence, marketers can ask a different question: What have we learned across our advertising about what works, for whom and why?

That accumulated knowledge gives marketers something to work with before the next campaign begins. They can use previous evidence to develop a hypothesis, then look for evidence that supports or challenges it.

In this article, I'll look at what connected data is, the different sources brands can bring together and how connected data can help turn those signals into better business decisions.

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What is connected data?

Marketers rarely make decisions based on a single source of consumer information. Connected data makes it possible to examine those different sources together, so teams can understand how one piece of evidence relates to another and build on what they already know.

Definition

Connected data is data from multiple sources that is integrated with enough context to identify relationships between the signals found within that data, which can be used to answer shared business questions.

For insights or marketing teams, consumer data integration can bring together different sources of consumer insight, including innovation research, advertising research, social and digital data and brand health tracking. Instead of analyzing each source in isolation, teams can compare what they're learning across them.

Context makes the connections meaningful. Marketers need to know whether they're comparing consistent measures and audiences, what each signal represents and which business question they're trying to answer.

Say advertising research shows consumers respond strongly to a brand character or celebrity choice that’s appeared across a series of ads. That repeated, positive signal could indicate an approach worth repeating — and worth including that character in the next big campaign.

Common data sources

A connected data ecosystem can include several types of consumer evidence.

Innovation research Insights from consumers that focus on the development of new products and concepts. Think: New flavors, packaging or entirely new products.

Advertising research Examines how consumers respond to ad creative and campaigns. Think: Emotional response, brand recall, message clarity. Social and digital data Captures how consumers behave and respond outside structured research settings, including conversations, engagement, search behavior and other digital signals.

Brand health and tracking

Shows consumer perceptions of a brand and how they may change over time, including measures such as awareness, consideration, preference and brand associations.

These sources become most useful when learning travels between them. Each source adds evidence marketers can use to test, challenge or refine what they think they know.

Why connected data matters

Good marketers don’t expect a dashboard to tell the story. They come to the data with a question and use the data to learn from it.

Connected data gives marketers more evidence to work with and lets them build on what another team learned before.

This flips the script on what consumer insights was traditionally used for:project-based testing. On Zappi's Inside Insights podcast, CIO and founder Steve Phillips describes the traditional model with an old adage: "companies can use insights like a drunk uses a lamppost, more for support than illumination. Insights teams are brought in after an idea has been developed to test it rather than using existing consumer knowledge to help shape the idea from the beginning.”

Connected data creates an opportunity to reverse that process with:

Better decisions

While a single research project can answer one question, connected data helps marketers understand that answer in context.

Suppose innovation research shows that consumers have leaned towards more spicy flavors across past research. This could indicate that their specific target audience would like to see more of that in the brands portfolio, and be something worth exploring across their line of products.

Now the team has a hypothesis worth testing.

That question leads to a specific decision. Rather than abandoning ideas consumers like, marketers can test whether it’s something worth exploring further.

Faster answers

With connected data, not every new question starts with a blank page.

When research is standardized and connected over time, marketers can use the existing knowledge base to establish a starting hypothesis.

McDonald's calls this “getting a head start.” Rather than evaluating every new innovation in isolation, the team mines its historical research first to understand what it has already learned from previous successes and failures.

“I always call that getting a head start. Why wouldn't you want a head start with all this knowledge that we had before? It's going to make your outcome better”
- Matt Cahill, Senior Director, Consumer Insights Activation, McDonald's

That historical knowledge gives the team a starting point for its next hypothesis. Instead of asking only “will consumers like this new idea?” marketers can start with what previous research already taught them and build on that research.

Fewer silos

Data fragmentation doesn’t support this type of learning.

Phillips gives a simple example. In a traditional project model, a marketer might ask, Will this new ad campaign work for young men in Thailand? Insights conducts the research, answers the question and the data may end up sitting in an Excel file or PowerPoint after the immediate decision has been made.

This challenge extends beyond consumer research. Nielsen's 2025 Annual Marketing Report found that only 32% of global marketers measure media spending holistically across traditional and digital channels. Nielsen points to data issues, weak tools, too many vendors and a lack of transparency among the challenges marketers face when calculating cross-media ROI.

Fragmented evidence makes it harder for marketers to understand how one result relates to another.

But if five years of advertising research has been collected systematically, marketers can ask a more powerful question before developing the campaign: What type of advertising works for young men in Thailand?

Existing evidence can inform the brief. The team can develop a hypothesis based on what it already knows, test the new work against it and add what it learns back into the system.

That's the difference between accumulating research and accumulating knowledge.

Analyzing connected data

As I’ve touched upon throughout this article, analyzing connected data can help teams identify relationships across a larger body of evidence.

Sometimes that means comparing results across campaigns or concepts. Other times it involves meta-analysis or predictive models that identify relationships across hundreds or thousands of data points.

These patterns give marketers evidence to interpret the data and invite new questions. Here’s a few examples of connected data in practice:

Identifying patterns

PepsiCo uses connected data to look beyond the performance of individual ads. Jane Wakely, then Global CMO at PepsiCo, described using years of Gatorade campaign research across multiple markets, along with competitive data, to identify what makes the brand's strongest advertising distinctive. She shares:

“The real value in raising the creative bar is when you begin to get to that meta insight, when you connect the dots, when you see a body of work.”

For Wakely, learning is one of the advantages of scale: a large organization can draw on years of accumulated evidence rather than treating each campaign as a fresh start.

Predicting future outcomes

Historical patterns can also help marketers develop better expectations about what may happen next.

McDonald's, for example, can analyze previously tested concepts to understand which attributes have historically driven interest and purchase. Its connected dataset doesn’t guarantee that consumers will respond the same way to the next shake or McFlurry, but it does give clues for what the team should investigate next.

“For a new shake flavor, I analyze the drivers of interest and purchase in all the shakes we’ve tested before. I can see how consumers play those concepts back, and what they want us to do differently. There’s a lot I can do easily with the data set.”
- Matt Cahill, Senior Director of Insights Activation, McDonald’s

Predictive analytics takes this further by using historical relationships to estimate likely outcomes. Models can identify combinations of signals associated with specific outcomes and use these relationships to estimate how new concepts, campaigns or ideas may perform.

Prediction doesn’t eliminate uncertainty, but it does help marketers decide what evidence they need before making a decision.

Improving marketing performance

Connected data analytics creates a feedback loop between what marketers expect and what consumers do.

Imagine that your previous advertising research shows a specific message that consistently produces a strong consumer response. The team hypothesizes that emphasizing that message in its next campaign will strengthen a specific brand association. Then, the creative tests well, but additional brand tracking shows little movement in that association.

The team now has a discrepancy to investigate. Did consumers take away a different message? Was the brand association already strong? The answers can shape the next round of research and creative development.

Connected data analytics becomes more valuable over time as each test builds on the last.

Building a connected insights system

A connected insights system has the bigger job of helping an organization build on what it's learned.

Technology enables that connection, but the most mature organizations also embed insights into everyday decision-making through cross-functional collaboration and continuous feedback loops.

The goal is to bring consumer understanding into the process early enough to shape the brief, creative or innovation, rather than asking insights to validate decisions at a stage gate.

Types of insights to include

A connected insights system brings together learning from several areas, including:

Innovation insights help teams understand consumer needs, which ideas resonate and what drives interest in new products or propositions.
Advertising insights help marketers understand how consumers respond to creative, which messages resonate and why some advertising performs better than others.
Social and digital insights add evidence from consumer conversations and behavior outside structured research. They can surface emerging needs, changing language or unexpected responses that give marketers new questions to explore through research.
Brand health and tracking insights show how brand perception evolves and provide further evidence about whether marketing activity is associated with the outcomes teams expected.

A question can start in one area and continue through the others. Social data might surface an emerging need; innovation research can explore it; advertising research can test how the idea is communicated and brand tracking can show what changes over time.

Stakeholders who benefit

Connected insights go beyond insights teams.

While insights teams teams can use previous learning to develop and evaluate new ideas, marketing leaders can also use that interpretation to decide where to invest and what may be worth promoting next and business stakeholders can gain greater understanding of their customers and what works for the business.

That cross-functional element also matters because insights teams aren’t always centralized. Zappi's 2025 research found that only 23% of organizations have a dedicated insights department or function, while one in three had centralized or restructured the function in the previous year.

Fortunately, teams don’t need to sit in the same department to build on the same consumer knowledge. When previous learning is accessible across the organization, insights can shape work earlier rather than being called in once a decision is nearly made.

Common mistakes

Connected data can give marketers a stronger foundation for decision-making, but not all of it is relevant. The system has to produce learning marketers can trust and use. These three mistakes can undermine that goal.

1. Looking for patterns without a hypothesis Large connected datasets can reveal plenty of interesting correlations, but that doesn’t mean it’s useful. Start with a business question, use the data to test it and be prepared to adjust. As experiments stack up, you’ll find what matters.

2. Connecting data that isn’t comparable Finding meaningful patterns across research depends on consistency.

If teams use different audiences, methodologies, questions or measures from one project to the next, it's difficult to know whether differences reflect a real change in consumer response or simply a change in how the research was conducted. Standardized frameworks make it possible to compare like with like and build reliable learning over time.

3. Treating every project as a series of one-off projects

Zappi's 2025 research found that only one in three organizations manage consumer insights systematically.

An ad hoc project isn't inherently a problem; sometimes marketers need an answer to a specific question. The lost opportunity occurs when that learning disappears into a deck or spreadsheet rather than contributing to the organization's knowledge.

Phillips' lamppost analogy captures the difference. Insights can be brought in at the end to support a decision that's already been made, or accumulated consumer understanding can illuminate the path before the decision is made.

Turning connected data into connected insights

Connecting data creates the foundation, but data alone doesn’t offer insight. Metrics tell you what was measured and analytics can reveal patterns or relationships. The insight comes from interpreting that evidence in context: why it matters, how it changes your understanding of the consumer and what the business should investigate or do next.

Zappi's connected insights approach connects consumer learning across advertising, innovation and brand tracking so teams can build on previous research rather than treating each study as a standalone answer. Standardized frameworks make results comparable and centralized access gives teams a growing body of research to learn from.

PepsiCo's Stephan Gans describes the result simply:

“The organization gets ‘smarter & smarter over time’ by connecting data across brands, countries and categories to generate meta-learnings.”

Turn connected data into a learning advantage

The real value of connected data isn't having more information in one place. It's about making sure what your organization learns today informs the next decision.

Connected research gives marketers a starting point. Previous learning can shape the hypothesis, new research can challenge it and what the team learns becomes part of the evidence available for the next decision.

That's how individual research projects become organizational knowledge.

Connected insights make that learning accessible and reusable, so consumer understanding can shape the next brief, idea or campaign rather than simply validate it after the fact.

In short: The advantage isn't having more data. It's getting smarter every time you use it.