The global soft drinks market is estimated to be worth a cool half a trillion dollars today, with analysts predicting continued strong growth through the coming years.
Market expansion is not being driven by ‘traditional’ brands and products, however. According to specialist sector-watchers Mordor Intelligence, consumers are increasingly switching away from ‘refreshment only’ products in favor of functional beverages that provide hydration, support immunity and enhance cognitive focus.
Into this latter segment comes a bold new player; with a unique recipe, striking branding… and a Glion connection!
It’s called Dr. DAG, and it’s the brainchild of Mariana Palmeiro, who has been a member of the Glion guest faculty for many years, lecturing on topics such as spa & wellness, business trends and ultra-luxury travel.
Changing habits
The idea for a healthy soda came to Mariana (pictured) when she was researching topics for the online course she leads at Glion called Business Trends in Luxury.
Mariana was intrigued by data about the reduction in alcohol consumption globally and the ensuing rise in functional drinks. And from there she discovered a brand called Psychedelic Water, which is touted as a mood enhancing alternative to alcoholic drinks.
“It sounds like some sort of crazy drugs, but in reality it combines a lot of ingredients you’ll find in many health supplements these days,” Mariana explains. “I initially thought about the possibility of bringing the brand to Europe. However, the ‘psychedelic’ ingredient, a plant called kava, I knew would struggle to be licensed for use in a drink here.”
Despite reaching this entrepreneurial roadblock, the idea of creating an equivalent drink which could stimulate mind and body – without falling foul of the European regulators – became fixed in Mariana’s mind. And so, in search of inspiration, she began to immerse herself in the business of soft drinks.
“I started reading the data and seeing that alcohol consumption was going down, while sales of sodas with some sort of functional content were heading in the opposite direction. I also knew from my own family that the drinks kids find cool tend to be the ones that are terrible for them, stuffed with sugar, caffeine, taurine and more! So I knew there was space in the market for a drink with cool branding that makes you feel good, but in a healthy way.”
Fruitful connections
The stumbling block was that Mariana had no experience of how to go about producing such a beverage. Fortunately, she had a friend working in the food supplement business, and working together they sketched out a potential formula for a healthy soft drink featuring a variety of natural plant and fungi ingredients, namely:
- Rhodiola Rosea – to boost mood and creativity
- Reishi Mushroom – to regulate emotional balance and promote relaxation
- Passiflora Incarnata – to sooth anxiety and promote a mellow state
- Yerba Mate – to provide natural energy and focus
- B Vitamins – to support energy production, brain function and cell metabolism
The same friend tipped Mariana off about a Portugal-based food technology startup called Science 351, with which he’d previously worked. And this was the moment the project went from dream to reality.
“The scientists working for this company are basically magicians when it comes to creating novel product formulas,” Mariana enthuses. “They’ve solved R&D challenges for multinationals like Unilever and they are super-professional. Very clever. We showed them our basic recipe and asked them to research the ingredients more thoroughly, to make sure there would be no regulatory issues. And then we asked them to come up with a workable formula for a soda that would be tasty as well as stimulating to mind and body.”
Excited by the chance to work on a different kind of consumer product, the Science 351 team beavered away in their laboratories for around four months, before inviting Mariana and her business partners to Portugal to taste the results.
“The first time we tasted it, we knew we were on to a winner,” she says. “We said to each other, this is not some niche drink for the health food market, this is something that our kids would happily drink. It completely changed our thinking, which had initially been around marketing this soda to health food stores, gyms and the like. We never dared to imagine we could have a mass-market drink on our hands.”
In fact, the only issue with the first formulation was its cloudy nature, the result of including reishi mushroom in the recipe. As luck would have it, one of the Science 351 team had focused on this very issue in her PhD studies and thus knew that there was a proven technique to clear the liquid. Once this was confirmed as acceptable to the food standards agencies, the technique was tried, and the drink went from cloudy to perfectly clear.
What’s in a name?
Having chosen the launch flavor from three blends created by Science 351, next up was how to create a strong and engaging brand that would power the drink successfully to market.
“Knowing that we had this mass-market potential gave a lot more scope to be really creative with the look and feel of our branding, because we knew we wouldn’t be sitting on the shelves next to kombucha or matcha tea. Instead, we were going up against brands like Coca-Cola, Sprite, Red Bull and Monster Energy, all of which have very clearly defined identities,” Mariana continues.
“Of course, one of the hardest things to come up with is the name – to find something memorable which hasn’t already been taken. My husband is a fan of Aussie slang, and he came up with the idea of ‘dag’, which is a slang name for someone who is a likeable geek. We added ‘Dr.’ as a nod to the healthy nature of the drink and the way it boosts your mind.”
The next step was to create the owl character which is the star of the can design and launch visuals.
“The whole point of this drink is that its ingredients help you to feel less anxious – and that includes socially as well. We wanted to promote this idea of getting kids out of their bedrooms and off their phones, and going back to meeting up with friends in real life. The idea of the owl, which is an animal famous for going about in the night, came from this.”
Another innovation for Dr. DAG is the unique can design and manufacture, which uses special printing methods that make up to seven million colors available, instead of the traditional seven. The end result is a striking, almost 3D effect, giving Dr. DAG considerable ‘shelf appeal’.
Off to market you go
With the product, the brand and the manufacturing in place, now comes the hardest task for any new venture: going to market.
While Dr. DAG can already be purchased directly from the company website, breaking into the retail sector is the key to long-term success. The good news is that progress has already been made, with a trial listing now set up with Portugal’s biggest supermarket chain, Continente, which will showcase the drink at 12 of its largest stores.
“We’ve also appointed a distributor who can help us get into hotels, cafes, beach clubs and music festivals, which will all be key points of sale for Dr. DAG. In the Swiss market we are looking at colleges and universities, including of course Glion. We’ve already had some samples made in French and German languages, which I handed out to Glion students. Many of them have been following this project through my classes, and the reaction to the finished product was really positive!”
Asked what her biggest learning has been from the project, Mariana is unequivocal. “For me, it’s been the incredible amount of research and innovation goes into making a consumer product, right down to the molecular level,” she says. “As an academic and entrepreneur, but not a scientist, I really didn’t appreciate the effort required for formulate a product that is tasty, stable and capable of being mass-produced.”
While all the foundations are nicely in place, Mariana recognizes that there’s still much to be done from a product development and marketing point of view. She reveals that a new flavor variant is in the pipeline; at the same time, work is going on to simplify the manufacturing process, in order to support the future scaling up. And a marketing campaign is also being readied, which will make extensive use of social media.
“It’s been such an interesting process, and one that I’ve been delighted to share with my students at Glion. In fact, I’d say that I owe this whole experience to teaching at the school, because I’ve always had to stay on top of market trends and what consumers are looking for, and in the process of doing so it began to give me these entrepreneurial ideas, as well as the energy and confidence to build something.
“If I was not teaching this subject, there’s no way Dr. DAG would have happened.”
• To discover more about Dr. DAG, visit the website
