Boston Beer Company is launching a multimillion-dollar, multi-channel marketing campaign to support Truly Hard Seltzer, which it recently reformulated with real fruit juice.
In the new ad campaign, Boston Beer, which has leaned on singer Dua Lipa in previous Truly ads, has instead turned to fruit flies to help promote the reformulated hard seltzer brand.
Matt Withington, senior director of marketing for Truly, told Brewbound that the decision to feature insects in the promotion was to find “a bold and buzzy idea to turn up the authenticity to 100.”
“It’s a bold creative idea that we love, and we even worked with a real fruit fly wrangler,” he said.
“We really wanted to remind drinkers why they came to hard seltzer in the first place, which is for a refreshing, easy drinking, variety filled, fun experience,” he added. “That message we know is coming through loud and clear in the creative.”
The new campaign created by agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners includes a toned down 15-second ad “Our Best Flavors,” featuring rapper Qveen Herby’s “Rabbit Hole,” and a 30-second spot called “Fruit Flies” that features the bugs more prominently in extreme closeups on Truly cans.
“We released dozens of real fruit flies around Truly and watched them with a microscopic lens,” Jeff Goodby, co-chairman and partner of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, added. “Think the flies had the best day of their very short lives. The result is a little gross but 100% authentic! Doesn’t get any more real than that.”
Withington told Brewbound that the company received positive feedback from the spots in consumer testing.
The 15-second ads began running nationally last week on linear TV, with out-of-home, social, influencer, and digital promotion to follow throughout the fall. Boston Beer will emphasize the reformulation with a $10 million media spend in the fourth quarter, including spots on Monday Night Football, according to Withington. The out-of-home campaign will run in New England, New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Cleveland “to get the word out,” he added.
The reformulation follows negative year-over-year Truly sales trends.
IRI: Truly Dollar Sales -15.8% YTD Through August 7
Year-to-date (YTD) through August 7, Truly is the 10th best-selling brand family in off-premise retailers tracked by market research firm IRI. The Truly family’s YTD sales have declined -15.8%, to $698.9 million, in multi-outlet and convenience stores, the firm reported. Truly remains the second best selling hard seltzer brand, and holds a 2.57% share of beer category sales.
During Boston Beer’s Q2 earnings call, CEO Dave Burwick explained sales of Truly and the hard seltzer segment have slowed in 2022 due to the novelty wearing off and 35- to 44-year-old drinkers returning to light beer.
The negative sales trends have left Boston Beer looking for answers. The path Boston Beer has now chosen to win those consumers back starts with the reformulation and the new ad campaign and continues later this year with the release of Truly Vodka Seltzer.
“It starts with us reminding our drinkers of why they came to hard seltzer in the first place,” Withington said. “It’s then delivering the absolute best tasting, most refreshing Truly that we can, which we will through the real fruit juice addition. And then real fruit juice will not only add to the optimization on our Truly core, but we’re also excited about the introduction of Truly Vodka Seltzer, which is also made with real fruit juice and premium vodka.
“We’re excited to introduce unique flavor combinations with a premium vodka base and flavors like Blackberry Lemon and Cherry Lime as a way to provide that refreshment, sessionability that drinkers are looking for now in new ways.”
Withington added that Boston Beer remains confident that “hard seltzer is the beverage of the new generation.”
“When you look at drinkers between the ages of 21 to 34, more drinking households buy Truly than they do Bud Light or White Claw,” he said. “So Truly is really the brand for the new generation. And we are constantly asking ourselves how to be the best brand for that generation we can be and that leads us to optimizations, to choices on music.
“We know we’re here to stay for that reason. We’re confident in that.”
30+ Truly Flavors Reformulated
The entire Truly portfolio — more than 30 flavors in total — have been reformulated — or improved through a “sweeping product optimization,” as the company referred to the process.
Boston Beer said the reformulation process was part of a more than “year-long research and development process to increase sessionability for a cleaner, more refreshing taste profile.”
As part of the reformulation process, Boston Beer sampled more than 2,000 drinkers on the new flavors, and then tested another 4,000 to understand what consumers are looking for in a hard seltzer, from flavor to packaging, Withington said. It was the second “large scale” reformulation for Truly, following a 2019 reformulation that the company said “contributed to more than two years of share gains.”
“We know our drinkers respond positively to the product improvements,” Withington said. “And we feel like this optimization is on par with the reformulation in 2019, which contributed about two years worth of share growth for us.
“We are constantly innovating, constantly improving and I think that’s part of our craft beer roots as an organization,” he continued. “I can imagine someday if we can make them even better, we will.”
Boston Beer first announced plans to reformulate Truly with real fruit juice during its second quarter earnings call and teased the new advertising campaign. The company said adding real fruit juice to its core variety pack flavors gave them “an even smoother, easy to drink and refreshing taste profile.” The Citrus pack hit retailers in July, followed by Tropical and Berry variety packs in August.
New flavors Watermelon Breeze and Strawberry Lime are also rolling out now, while Lemonade, Margarita, Punch, and Tea, which previously included real fruit juice, have also “been improved to give drinkers the juicy, refreshing experience they’re looking for.”
The full transition to the reformulated Truly is expected to take hold over the next couple of months.