2024 in grocery: marketing wins, fails and viral stunts

Prime sales plummet as viral soft drink sensation loses its fizz 

Once the most sought-after drink in the UK, energy drink brand Prime Hydration – created by YouTubers KSI and Logan Paul – was always going to struggle to maintain its explosive growth.

After launching in 2022, the viral brand and marketing sensation had shoppers queueing outside stores to secure their purchases at vastly inflated prices. Some convenience stores banned from TikTok amid allegations of ‘price gouging’ and the drink even spawned its own app dedicated to tracking new flavour launches.

Demand was never going to stay that high for long, but by April the brand’s sales were down by more than 50%.

Bottles of Prime Hydration have since been spotted in bargain bins, with retailers slashing prices by up to 87%. 

Brand and marketing advisor Mark McCulloch believes the very thing that made Prime a marketing sensation in the first place – its unwillingness to play by traditional brand-building rules – was ultimately its downfall. 

“When it comes to marketing, the whole thing is about mix,” he said at the time. “They flooded the market but there hadn’t been a proper strategy or budget to keep it going.

“They were in the scarcity business, but when you’re as available as Coca-Cola you’re competing against them, and it’s a completely different ball game.”

Old Jamaica retirement stunt 

In September, ginger beer fans were left bereft as Old Jamaica rolled out a series of OOH adverts and a social media campaign announcing that the drink would be discontinued. 

A video on the brand’s social media channels showed an Old Jamaica shelf-stacker delivering the news of the brand’s “retirement”, inviting consumers to say farewell to the brand.

The ‘Farewell Old Jamaica’ campaign appeared to be designed to “celebrate the 34-year-old iconic ginger beer and its legacy before it bids an ‘au revoir’, going out in a tongue in cheek blaze of glory”.

Although, of course, it was doing nothing of the sort. 

However, fans took the bait, and social media was flooded with comments pleading with the brand to reconsider.

The marketing gimmick was revealed in October, when, Old Jamaica posted a video on Instagram revealing the whole thing was a stunt for its upcoming rebrand. 

Well played, Old Jamaica, well played.

Robinsons gets Wicked with movie-inspired squash 

The press tour for the long-awaited film adaptation of the 2003 Broadway musical Wicked was a marketer’s dream, as interviews with the film’s leading ladies (Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo) proved to be almost unavoidable.

It was all great publicity for Robinsons, which had partnered with Universal Pictures to launch two limited-edition squash flavours.

Inspired by the film’s two main characters, Elphaba and Glinda, Amazafying Citrus Twist and Outstandiful Berry launched under Robinsons’ Double Concentrate range, supported by over £200,000 worth of marketing spend, including out-of-home advertising and PR.

An on-pack promotion offered consumers the chance to win Wicked merchandise and a trip to New York, while an augmented reality “magic mirror” in selected Tesco  stores allowed shoppers to visualise themselves as either ‘bad’ witch Elphaba or ‘good’ Glinda.

Steven Bartlett gets knuckles rapped by advertising watchdog

In August, a series of social media adverts for health-focused brands Huel and Zoe featuring entrepreneur Steven Bartlett were banned by the Advertising Standards Authority for being “misleading”.

The watchdog ruled that both nutrition brands had failed to disclose their commercial relationships with the Dragons’ Den star in paid-for Facebook promotions and banned the adverts from appearing again in their current form.

Described as a “well-known celebrity, entrepreneur, and investor” thanks to his regular appearance on Dragons’ Den, his 3.5 million Instagram followers, the six million subscribers for his The Diary of a CEO podcast and a bestselling book, Bartlett is also an investor in Zoe and a director at Huel.

However, none of the adverts made these facts clear. 

It’s not the first time Bartlett’s marketing tactics have sailed a little to close to the wind, as he was also warned by the BBC for breaching the broadcaster’s guidelines in 2022, after he wore a product on Dragons’ Den and plugged it in a social media clip. Bartlett called that move “a genuine oversight on my part”.

Will retail media really overtake TV advertising?

Tesco certainly seems to think so.

The UK’s biggest supermarket is fully invested in the marketing strategy, and has boosted its own retail media offering this year, launching video ads for brands on its website and app, as well as the opportunity for them to run full ‘store wrap’ campaigns.

The move marks an “expansion of Tesco’s creative canvas”, as it predicts retail media will be bigger than TV advertising by the end of 2025.

In the UK, retail media’s value (excluding Amazon) totalled £283m in 2023, and continues to grow. It is up 12% from the year before, according to IAB UK/PwC.

Retail media is proving a boon for the brands that can handle it right. Already, nearly 70% of advertisers surveyed by McKinsey say their performance in retail media is significantly or somewhat better than in other channels.

But the marketing channel is only just now “coming of age”, according to Nick Ashley, client development director of Tesco Media and Insight Platform. “It’s not the toddler some talk about. But it’s not an adult yet.”