The growing popularity of still soft drinks hasn’t taken the fizz out of the carbonated market in terms of promotions. Carbonated soft drinks account for 48% of total featured space allocated to the soft drinks category, according to Assosia’s weekly survey last weekend. This is marginally up on the amount of space they have taken in the year to date, though slightly down on last year, when they accounted for 50% of soft drinks space overall.

Coca-Cola and Diet Coke dominated activity at the weekend with 32% of space. This year, they have maintained their overall lead as far as activity from the top five carbonated brands goes, with 33% of promotional space. Pepsi-Cola/Diet Pepsi and Fanta jointly share second place with 19%, Sprite takes fourth place with 18% and in fifth place with 10% of activity is Dr Pepper.

Juice & ready-to-drinks took 25% of space at the weekend, cordials, mixes & squash 13%, energy and sports drinks 8% and water 6%. Water brands have gained the most share so far this year, accounting for 10% of activity overall, ahead of energy & sports drinks with 6% and only marginally behind cordials, mixes and squash with 12%.

The most active bottled water brands this year have been Evian, which has taken 40% of featured space so far; Highland Spring with 24% of space; Volvic with 16%; Aqua Pura with 12% and Pennine with 9%.

Evian also dominated the water rankings last year, claiming the top spot with 33% of featured space compared with Aqua Pura, which took second place with 26%. Volvic and Buxton came in third and fourth with 24% and 11% respectively. Strathmore had 6%.

Only three water brands were on featured space promotions last weekend. Pennine Spring water 1.5-litre was available in Somerfield using x-for-y and Morrisons had Aqua-Pura 2-litre on offer with bogof and Vittel 6 x 1.5-litre with save.

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