Do you think you can guess what the hot flavor of the summer is going to be in the beverage world? In this special interactive session, you'll discover how well you know consumers. See the original research from a survey of 2,000 Highlighters in this session.

Automated Webinar Transcript

 Chelsea Stone: Hello everybody. I think we are live. We have finally arrived at our final session of Highlight Spark. Congratulations on making it this far. It's been a long day of learnings, which was hopefully rewarding in and of itself, but we did a lot of reward you for making it this far with a little treat for you at the end with a fun one.

So, as summer is upon us, we couldn't help but wonder what will be the beverage flavor of the summer. Andsince this is highlight, we decided to simply pull our community of product testers. So before we, we kick things off and reveal the results, I want to introduce my colleague Emma Steele, who's joining me today.

She's our Disruptive Brands Partnership's Lead and one of my favorite work besties. Also very important part of your jd. Emma, thank you so much for joining me today.

Emma Steele: Yes, thank you so much for having me. I am so excited for this session. Big beverage girl myself. As Chelsea shared, I head up our partnerships with brands who are emerging as disruptors in their categories, and I'm here to support, as they continue to grow on scale.

So my personal background's in behavioral economics, so. Really understanding more about like trade-offs that consumers are willing to make and kinda what the purchase decision journey looks like, is what gets me really excited about market research. And so, you know, for example, choosing what beverage to have on a hot summer day, when there are a plethora of choices.

So really looking forward to the conversation.

 Chelsea Stone: I love it. Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us. Les, I forget to introduce myself. My name is Chelsea Stone. I'm Senior Manager of Content Digital Marketing here at Highlight. One big part of my job here as content creator is producing reports based on original data that we source from our awesome community of product testers.

So we're actually gonna start just by explaining a little bit to you about who they are and the research that we did today. So if you've worked with us before, you've probably heard us use the term highlighter. That's the term that we use to refer to members of our product testing community nationwide.

And we love them so much. They're really a bedrock of what we do here. They, are instrumental in giving us high quality data results. And they're used to doing all sorts of testing, right? I mean, they're used to doing like daily video diaries of their usage of a product over the course of two weeks to test efficacy, right?

So me sending them out this. Eight question survey with, you know, mostly quant and a couple of open-ended. This was a walk in the park for them and, and so we were able to get 2000 completes in just a day or two, which was awesome. And, and we collected this data in the first week of May. Emma, any before we move on, anything you wanna add about how great our highlighter community is?

Emma Steele: No, I think you covered it there. But I'm always happy to answer any different questions, so if you have 'em, drop 'em in the chat, feel free to reach out to me directly. So let's dive in.

 Chelsea Stone: Yeah, let's do it. So why are we talking about beverage today? If you're in the CPG world at all, this probably feels obvious.

I think all of CPG is a really exciting place to work. You know, I love that we have the privilege of being able to enjoy the fruits of our labors every time we walk into like our local grocery store or convenience store, like I personally get really excited walking down the aisle and seeing like.

The latest flavor innovation from Oreo or Goldfish. And I think all of us in the industry, like we have that enthusiasm around it and beverage, especially right now, is just booming for that. I mean, we know it's growing ridiculously fast, but, we also in these the last two bullet points here on this slide focus on two of the biggest purchase, per biggest drivers of growth, in beverage today. So, obviously the consumer demand for better for you is really driving this proliferation of subcategories within beverage, which is so cool to see. Just off the top of my head, right, we can name probably like 20 different new categories.

Kombuchas, gut Healthy Sodas, CBD, infused Drinks, seltzers. Sparkling waters, right? it's just such a fun time to be in beverage. And then of course we also see the proliferation of ready to drink beverages, which is so fun. And in fact, I really think I, I have a pet theory that I'm gonna share with you all today as to why I think this is such a driver for beverage, and that is what I like to call treat yourself culture. If you are online in 2025, if you're on TikTok or Instagram or what have you, you are seeing these memes of people talking about, giving themselves a little treat. Right. And I really think beverage is a really big part of that, because the joke is not that we're going out and buying these like $500 presents for ourselves, right?

We're just giving ourselves like a little something to, you know, help us through the day. So Emma, you're online, like, do you think my theory holds any water?

Emma Steele: Yes, absolutely. You are right. I am chronically online and it just makes me think of this trend that's kind of like the peak of luxury is having three different drinks at once.

So think like ice water, like a coffee or like a juice or a soda or something of that kind. And so I think these are ways that we see the economic climate kind of seeping into how consumers purchase products of really wanting to have something that feels like I'm treating myself and I'm indulging in luxury, but without actually having that spending price tag.

I think it's kind of another version of like lipstick effect, for those who might be familiar. It's kinda that economic phenomenon where consumers, especially women, are kind of increased spending on more of like affordable luxury goods, like lipstick in, you know, different cconomic climates as opposed to some of those like more higher luxury items.

And so I'm really excited. I think we have some data around, how we think beverage is playing into this. But yeah, I definitely see that is a trend

 Chelsea Stone: Yeah, that's a perfect segue to some of the initial findings of this study. We ask people how often they are buying canned beverages that are new to them, and we also compared that to a couple of other categories as well, like personal care, beauty, like you pointed out, Emma and beverage was high up on the list in terms of like frequency with which people are trying new products. People say that they're trying new products one to two times a month within beverage. 44%, of people said they're trying them that multiple times a month, another 20% on top of that said that they're trying them multiple times a week, which is just incredible to me. But also, like I said, not that surprising. What I think, is also not surprising, but exciting to see is that Gen Z is really leading the way in this, and especially Gen Z women who, a third of which say they're out here multiple times a week buying new.

Canned beverages that are new to them. So Emma, as a Gen Z woman, what, what are you, what is your reaction to seeing these numbers?

Emma Steele: Yeah, I mean, none of this data really surprises me. I think it's right in alignment with where I would expect it to have landed. I would say in terms of kind of new beverage trial.

Buying a soda is so low risk, right? It's something that you can afford for it not to be good. There's so many other items that you can buy that are at a higher price point that have such a much higher level of risk, I guess you could say. And again, we're still talking about beverages, so it's not that much.

But I even think of like, it's really painful to buy a cocktail for $18. You know, I live in New York City, so maybe that's overinflated, but, If that is not good, that is a really sad experience for me. But if I'm spending, you know, $3 on a soda and it's not the best, you know, it's such a low trial, but it still gives me kind of that, that serotonin hit of, you know, having the surprise and the delight of hopefully liking the product.

And if I don't like, it's, you know, it's no sweat off my back. So I think that given the, the risk of trial is so much lower compared to other categories that this rate of net new purchase really tracks.

 Chelsea Stone: Awesome. Yeah, couldn't agree more. Also, where are you finding $18 cocktails? I feel like they're $25 here in Brooklyn, so I need to travel your neighborhood.

Emma Steele: We've got some good spots on the east side.

Chelsea Stone: Okay, now let's dive into the moment that we've all been waiting for. Well, I get Emma to guess the answers and have her talk us through her logic and guesses. I'm gonna launch polls so that everyone watching can participate and cast their vote. So the options that I presented here for the question, have you tried any of the following brands?

Were chosen based on what we here in the CPG world, you know, in our little CPG bubble. We're reading about these brands in the trades, they're getting a lot of buzz. There's a lot of PR around them. There are, they're parts of exciting new emerging categories. And I was wondering, like, okay, outside of this bubble nationwide, are people actually trying these products?

So, I'm gonna open the poll and while, everyone's casting their vote. Emma, I wonder what you think the winning brands are gonna be from this particular question.

Emma Steele: Yeah, I think I would guess Poppy or Oli Pop,  just because I feel like I'm seeing 'em everywhere. I think anything, honestly, with the name pop in, it just feels like it's so buzzy.

But I also think that there's some sneaky brands in here, like Sun Sip comes from the Health Aid kombucha brand. And so having that, that name, you know, whether or not the consumer knows it, there's things that help in terms of like distribution and just trust in the quality of it. So I could see that rising to the top, as well.

But, yeah, I don't know. I think that all of the, the brands on here, when I think about them, they all have kind of a different, a different identity and almost a different like mood or occasion or purpose that I would be thinking about when I try them. So, I'm really curious to see what people are wanting to try more and if that relates to them thinking about it in a different occasion or a different capacity. So yeah, I have no idea. I have not seen any other results for this. I'm coming into this completely blind, I've never even seen this slide before, so. 

Chelsea Stone: I love that so much. Yeah, no, all very educated guesses. Just so everyone is clear, if you are looking at the chat, and you go up to tabs at the top, you can see chat messages and then poll and make sure that you click on the poll to take that if you haven't yet. So I'm gonna close it for now just for the sake of time, but we're gonna be doing about seven more of these, so you'll have your chance to vote. So let's see if the audience agreed with you.

All right. Yes. So it looks like the results are in. And, Poppi, everyone guessed Poppy. Oli Pop came in second. We had a couple other votes here and there for Sun Sips, Tepache, Recess. So let's just dive into the results here, because you all are, are very smart members of the CPG world.

You knew it was gonna be Poppi and Oli Pop, but everything else sort of surprised me about these results. Like, I, I wasn't surprised to see Poppi and Oli Pop towards the top, but surprised to see Zevia as number three had no idea that they had such wide distribution nationwide. Interesting that a lot of people, the fourth most popular answer was that people hadn't tried any of these brands yet, and then we see the fallout from there. So, anything that surprises you here, Emma, you wanna react to before we move on?

Emma Steele: Yeah, I'm really, it's really interesting to see how you see it so weighted on the left hand side of this graph and then it really plateaus out, which just shows you that there's so much opportunity to really you know, get in there and, and be, another one of the brands that people could potentially try. But it also shows you how competitive and how saturated the category is. I'm actually not super surprised by Zevia. I feel like I've recently been at grocery stores and like seen people checking out with them and just like observationally, like that's something I have picked up on.

And, but I think it's also one of those things where we're all CBG innovators. We're all thinking about these beverages. But there's a lot of people that are just, you know, middle America or just kind of more of a gen pop audience who, who isn't all in on the better for you beverage craze yet?

We feel like we're so far ahead of the of the curve and we're kind of in it when it's happening, but it's still something that is continuing to evolve. And so, you know. People are maybe just finding out about Poppi because of, you know, the acquisition, but we've been knowing about Poppi for years, right?

So, definitely, definitely a good reality check maybe for some of us. But, definitely really interesting to see how the rest of the data continues to come back.

Chelsea Stone: So I'm gonna open another poll because the question that we asked after that, and I want you guys to weigh on, weigh in on as well, is, okay, so maybe a lot of people have heard of these brands, but they actually haven't had a chance to try it simply because like it's not distributed to, you know, their grocery store, of choice or it's not available in their region for whatever reason.

So, I'm curious, I've opened the poll so everyone can go and cast their vote. We asked people, okay. Which of these, if you haven't tried 'em, are you most excited to try? And Emma, I'd be curious to hear what you think your guess is gonna be for this one 'cause of course the results are a little bit different.

Emma Steele: Yeah. I don't know. It kind of comes back to. Like if it's everywhere, are people gonna try it? I just think about this because the whole Foods that I live by here on the Upper East Side, there's just this massive poppy display. Like it is truly like probably hundreds of cans, just like put together in a tower.

And like, it's like, well, yeah, like what is this brand that's doing this crazy, you know, exhibit here in the middle of my shopping journey doing? So I think things that are like able to be like right there in front of things that people are gonna try most often, but I think the, On the point of trialing new and different beverages at such a high frequency.

Once you've tried Poppi, you're probably not going to wanna try a bunch of other flavors for 'em. I think you're probably wanting going to want to go try other brands. I know that that's the way that I am. Once I've had a flavor from one brand, I'm not gonna go try the, try the whole line. I wanna go try a new brand altogether.

Chelsea Stone: Interesting.

Emma Steele: How I shop. But you know, I don't know if that's, that's just a second.

Chelsea Stone: I was gonna say you're in the CPG world 'cause you're trying to try all these different brands, but maybe like the average highlighter is like, oh, I found one I liked, so I'm gonna keep buying that brand. Like, you know, it's just so hard to tell.

Emma Steele: Right, So anyway, I'm high risk on my decisions for beverages, I guess.

Chelsea Stone: Well, I'm gonna close the poll and show you guys the results. Pete guesses, we're all over the board here. So interesting to see everyone's votes, but let's, let's reveal, what it was. Bloom Pop was the top, brand that people hadn't tried yet, and they wanted to, I mean.

My best guess is that Bloom as a brand with its other products has so much nationwide recognition that, you know, it's, it's targets across. Yeah. So maybe people like knowing they have this, this new product coming out they're excited for. But yeah, I thought I was really surprised to see that 'cause it is so new, but people already hearing about it.

Maybe it's just that, that brand familiarity they already have. What do you think?

Emma Steele: I totally agree. I think something else it feels like, energy, particularly energy that's leaning towards a more like feminine kind of audience that's going after a different consumer than like a Red Bull or a Monster traditionally has.

It's really emerging and it's kind of where better for you soda was like maybe a few years ago. So you have like Bloom and Nu and all of these other different players that have come up and are kind of talking to a different audience and so. You know, have had a lot of opportunity to capture consumers there, and so knowing again, that there's, there's a product that they trusted in another category, they're more likely to probably try it.

I think something else just, kind of across CPG that I'm seeing not specific to, soda is just, how brands are using their, you know, brand equity to jump across aisles. And so, you know, brands that are moving, you know, across different categories or across different product types or even formats, I think there's some great examples of people ending up, you know, Hey, your product is normally shelf stable and now you have a frozen product in the frozen aisle, and they're not, you're not doing brand blocking anymore on shelf. And so there's a lot of interesting things that are happening where, we're seeing that, familiarity with a brand is really driving, the ability to trial. So just some thoughts there.

Chelsea Stone: That's a really good point. No, that's a really good point. I was also, just to add, I, I was delighted to see Hi, on this list. I know it's not the top, top one, but, I do think that it's one of the first brands I've seen really break out of this niche of like functional, non-alcoholic.

And, you know, I think they just got an injection of funding, like, to see them moving out of you know, their home base of California and you know, maybe they're not available nationwide yet, but clearly people have heard of them and they're excited to try it. So, cool to see that that niche like growing, in a meaningful way.

So if you're a retailer watching, like, please write down all of these brands, you should clearly have them on your shelves. All right. I'm gonna move on to our next question here. One of the open-ended questions that we had after these questions were, were like, so if you, you know, what other brands or drinks, have you tried canned drinks specifically have you tried, that you really enjoyed? The number one, like written in answer was Spin Drift. So John from our previous session will be very pleased to hear that, but it was really fun to see what people were, were writing in with so much enthusiasm. You know, one thing that I guess didn't surprise me is that we saw so many energy drinks written in, you know, and I think for us here in our CPG bubble, you know, we almost don't really think of energy drinks as like an emerging category anymore because they've been around for so many years, but consumers still have that much, loyalty and enthusiasm for them.

Another one that I wanted to call out too was there was quite a few people that were very excited about seven up's Endless Summer line, and I had to do some more digging because I hadn't heard of it, but there's even like subreddits that are like so stoked writing about like, where could I find Seven Up's Endless Summer. So shout out to the team behind that product, you have some very excited, consumers. We also had, what I'm calling the sleeper hits. So these weren't mentioned quite as often, but there were still some vocal supporters in these open-ended responses. So day trip was mentioned quite a few times.

Evolution Fresh. I didn't know they had a canned beverage. I thought they were, bottled juices. so that was cool to see. Hum and then the one that really stood out to me though, was so many people wrote in the Aldi drink, like literally just said the Aldi drink. And doing a little bit more digging and seeing some people mentioned like, oh, Vita life and if you are brand looking to get into these retailers that already have a private label, sparkling gut, healthy soda, your work is cut out for you. I thought this was very interesting to see how many people were excited about Vita Life.

Emma, did you wanna add anything about the challenge we have with and the opportunity with private label.

Emma Steele: Yeah. I think, I think it's a really important call out from consumers that they're talking about, or like associating it with a retailer in that way, even though it's being, of course, branded as Vita Life. I think just something in general that we see across all of CPG in this current economic climate is just, sort of the, the trading down and trading up phenomenon. And so right now there's a lot of consumers that are trading down from a restaurant experience to have a premium experience in home. But if consumers are normally buying more name brand or more like middle of the road kind of products, then they might be trading down towards a private label.

And so, with the incentive that retailers have for their private label products to win on shelf, it can be even harder for brands to really compete and win new distribution. And so really being able to showcase and have the data to prove that your product is going to win on shelf, even up against a tough private label product.

That's, you know, and I think something too we talk a lot about is replaceability the specific metric that can that retailers are looking for is so crucial just to prove that yes, we think that this will be not just something incremental, but we think that consumers are actually going to change their purchasing behavior based on this.

That's something that we really wanna pay special attention to. If you are not a retailer, and you are a brand that is looking to get shelf space, in a really, really competitive saturated category.

Chelsea Stone: Yeah. The amount of times that we've talked about, how saturated beverages is a category.

Emma Steele: I know it's true. Chelsea, Chelsea, Kelsey, and I sometimes, given that we are work besties, sometimes we'll walk to the Whole Foods that's right by the highlight office, and we will, you know, get ourselves a, a little treat, as Chelsea was saying, and just walking through the beverage aisle, you know, it's crazy just the, the amount of options that you have, which is really exciting.

But also, It's also something that really forces a lot of choice from the consumer.

Chelsea Stone: Absolutely. So I, am excited for the main event here. This is what we're all here for, right? To, to find out exactly what the flavor of the summer is gonna be. To be clear in the question, this is exactly how it was posed to them.

I just gave the names of the flavors. I didn't attach it to any picture or like brand names. It was just based on flavor alone. What appeals to you the most? I've opened the poll, so I can't wait to hear what everyone thinks is going to be the winning flavor. Emma, do you wanna weigh in with what your guess is?

Emma Steele: Yeah. Yeah, I'm immediately thinking since this is flavor of the summer, I'm thinking something that's fruit forward. I think strawberry is something that's really drawing to me the strawberry guava combination I'm not so sure about, but I think strawberry in general, is just really trending right now.

We done a, of course, a ton of work here at highlight across all CPG product categories and have been doing a lot of work recently in fragrance and personal care. And we've been seeing this like strawberry scent really come out on top and really be a winner. And so I think it's interesting when you see that's also something that's trending across consumables.

So, I think that that might be interesting, but I also think it's kind of feels like it's been the year of the Shirley Temple getting cool again. A lot of brands coming out with different versions of that after, you know, we had the seven up search Shirley Temple come back as a, an LTO, maybe it's not an LTO anymore, but, you know, we're kind of coming out to compete with that. So.

Chelsea Stone: Exactly.

Emma Steele: Those are my initial, those are my initial thoughts, but. I don't know. There's so many different ways it could go. I've been seeing so much on social media, so I'm curious to see what the audience had to say.

Chelsea Stone: Well, here's the poll results. eEveryone agrees with you that, we're having this summer of Shirley Temple, and honestly going into this, like we were just coming off of, Beverage Forum out in California and yeah, I think every session there mentioned Shirley Temple. So let's, without further ado, let's go straight to, to the results here.

What kind of summer are we having?

It's orange cream.

Emma Steele: Ooh. Yeah. Oh goodness. So I love that.

Chelsea Stone: I know. I was surprised in a good way that orange cream top the charts here. Let's, look at the full results here. So, not far behind, but cherry vanilla, which is really interesting. Not a lot of people mention cherry vanilla in their guesses here today.

But, yeah, those top three were pretty strong. Orange cream, cherry vanilla, strawberry guava, Shirley Temple coming in at a kind of distant four. So I think that's really interesting. I was very surprised. What, what do you think Emma?

Emma Steele: Yeah, I think that, I think you really see like the fruit forward versus more of like a floral forward, which I think is interesting.

There is, some key takeaways that I had from John of Spindrift session that happened before this. There'll be a recording. Go watch it. It was awesome, but just talking about kind of this idea of like how do we bring like, you know, cocktail or like more traditional cocktail flavors into like beverages and sodas and non ALK opportunities.

And so actually seeing that that's not something that people wanted to be their beverage of the summer, even though we have things like, oh, it's, you know, people are saying it's the summer of the Hugo Spritz. And, you know, that's an elderflower base, but yuzu, elderflower performs the worst on all of this. So I'm actually really surprised.

Chelsea Stone: I know that. And it's my favorite.

Emma Steele: Yeah. Yeah. I'm really, I'm, I'm surprised it's not higher up. I'm not surprised at all by like Raspberry Rose. I am surprised that Shirley Temple isn't higher. I think cherry, I think cherry vanilla and orange cream, are right where, where I, I would have expected them to be top.

I personally am not a huge Guava fan, so if it, maybe it was strawberry cream, I could see that beating out orange cream. So, maybe that's an idea for someone to take.

Chelsea Stone: Yeah. Yeah. I Absolutely. Okay. So, I'm still mourning my yuzu elder flower coming in last, but just so everyone knows, this is a flavor of can CANN.

It's a great beverage. And even though it lost the flavor today, you should all. Okay. Next fun game here. We are going to guess what the top winners were amongst these key cohorts. So in case you don't know, this is Gen Z women, so it's women on the top row, men on the bottom. And then of course each column is the generation.

So we're gonna start, Emma, with your cohort, gen Z women, which flavor do you think won specifically among them? This is a question to me.

Emma Steele: This is a question to me? Oh gosh.

Chelsea Stone: It sure is. And I'm gonna open it. I'm gonna open the poll for everyone else too, just so that if you wanna weigh in, you can, but.

Emma Steele: My gosh, this is a lot of pressure.

Chelsea Stone: But yeah, the pressure's on Emma. You're the Gen Z woman here.

Emma Steele: Hell no. I feel like, maybe I'm inspired by the Sabrina Carpenter graphic that you shared, but I'm gonna go orange cream because I feel like Gen Z women, as we know, are the ones who are primarily driving the trial of new beverages. And so, I'm making an educated guess that they, if they're also the highest shoppers in this category, then maybe they are also over indexing on the top flavor.

Chelsea Stone: It would be a good guess, here, let me close this quick and I, it looks like the audience agrees with you, but you would, you would all be wrong. It is in fact cherry vanilla, but what you would be correct about Gen Z men preferred orange cream. So that cracked me up, let me open again for millennial women.

Emma Steele: Sorry. Can I say something?

Chelsea Stone: Yeah. Please go for it.

Emma Steele: I know that we're gonna, No, no, that is also really interesting is when you think about what are people's favorites. So much of it has to do with brand identity. I was just reading article about this morning of like the Oli Pop, chili Vanilla is a very feminine packaging, like cherry, strawberry, kind of all fruit forward imagery is like.

Very much something that is trending just in kind of wider world, not just in CPG. And so that feels like a very girly, like Gen Z kind of drink that you might have, versus the orange cream. Like, it, it almost is like, you know, almost looks like beer.

Chelsea Stone: yeah,

Emma Steele: Glasses like clinking, so like that almost has more like male connotations with it just traditionally. But of course, like, I think that those are interesting, like visual cues that can kind of lead people to go down one, one path or the other versus a Sabrina, Sabrina Carpenter with orange cream is very, very for the gals,

Chelsea Stone: No, 100%. I, you know, branding matters tremendously, but What would be your guess for millennial women?

I as your, as your millennial counterpart, what, which one do you think I would choose?

Emma Steele: Gosh, I don't know. Something like grapefruit tangerine or ginger lemonade. No, I'm just kidding, no, those both actually sound great. I feel like, I don't know, I feel like grapefruit, like a Paloma kind of vibe.

People like I would maybe Raspberry Rose. I'm gonna go raspberry rose just feels good.

Chelsea Stone: Okay. So funny. Yeah, and I just closed the poll. You can see that no one really knows. And if I love a Paloma, but no, the results showed that millennial women want strawberry.

Emma Steele: Oh. Oh my goodness. Okay.

Chelsea Stone: Isn't that interesting? And then millennial men, they want orange cream.

Emma Steele: Wow okay.

Chelsea Stone: Do you wanna, do you wanna guess Gen X women?

Emma Steele: Gosh, I feel like I've had such a bad track record on this. I promise I work in the industry. I need to, I need to know.

Chelsea Stone: This is why we have Highlight, because we cannot pass.

Emma Steele: So maybe, maybe this one's raspberry rose. Someone's gotta have raspberry rose as their top.

Chelsea Stone: No. Oh my god. Sorry. In fact, the men also like orange cream.

Emma Steele: Wow. Okay. Really interesting.

Chelsea Stone: What about boomer women? Do you think they have something different?

Emma Steele: I think. There's Shirley Temple. I think that's a really good guess, but again, you're wrong.

Chelsea Stone: So it's actually Cherry Vanilla I know.

Emma Steele: And but wow. Really interesting to see how that mirror.

Chelsea Stone:  Yes, I know.

Emma Steele: Wow. Okay. Really interesting to see how that mirrors. I would've been really curious to know what Gen Alpha would've said for this. I know, 'cause again, I know, like as I were talking to earlier around the strawberry, that's a flavor like scent, that I know is really trending across younger generation.

So I'm curious to know how everything would've netted out with that inclusion. But, yeah, the men know what they want, I suppose.

Chelsea Stone: Okay. just for fun now, we're gonna guess. What do you think Whole Foods shopper versus Costco shoppers prefer for their favorite flavors?

Emma Steele: This is, this is again a question for me? Okay. I was Okay. I am thinking this is, I think a Costco shopper is, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go cherry vanilla on Costco and I'm gonna go, Whole Foods, I'm gonna go. I don't know. I haven't seen any of these other flavors that we're talking about, like peach, ginger, watermelon, mint really rises to the top, but that is something that I would think.

Chelsea Stone: Well, let me tell you that you're wrong about Costco

Emma Steele: Okay? Just tell me that I'm wrong, okay? Just tell me that I'm wrong for Whole Foods.

Chelsea Stone: Okay? Well, no. Take a guess. Choose. Choose one of them for Whole Foods.

Emma Steele: Okay. Raspberry Rose. Someone has to be Raspberry Rose.

Chelsea Stone: I'm so sorry to tell you that it's the Hiyo and the strawberry guava.

Emma Steele: Okay. Yeah.

Chelsea Stone: To, to be clear, like I said, I just, I didn't present the brands, I just presented the names of the flavors. So, yeah, it wasn't necessarily that, like they were choosing that based on that. But this one, this one was really fun. What do we think California highlighters versus New York highlighters preferred in terms of flavors?

And I will open the poll for our attendees to guests here.

Emma Steele: Okay. For this one, I'm gonna guess California is gonna be strawberry guava. That is, that's giving, California to me. And for New York, I'm gonna guess cherry vanilla.

Chelsea Stone:  Okay. So the poll that's open right now, oh, I love this is, for California. So if you haven't voted yet, please do. All right. 4, 3, 2, 1 poll. It is closing. Okay. so you are absolutely right. It was strawberry guava for California. It just because we're running short on time here, let me tell you that New York was orange cream. I know.

Emma Steele: Taking country by storm to go, I need, I need a bevvy now.

Chelsea Stone: I know, I know, right? So I'm actually, I'm gonna skip through these last few slides. We did top three flavors among Spanish speakers.

Orange cream was number three, cherry vanilla was number two, strawberry guava was number one amongst those to speak Spanish. I was just using fun with our segments at this point. I was like, okay, what about people who exercise every day versus those who never exercise Exercisers liked the cherry, vanilla, inactive people prefer the, orange cream.

Emma Steele: Okay.

Chelsea Stone: This was literally me playing around in the highlight platform, seeing what I could segment for dog people versus cat people.

Emma Steele: So me versus you?

Chelsea Stone: Yeah. You like cherry vanilla? I like orange cream, so.

Emma Steele: It's really interesting to see how these flavors really, really rise to this house. I'm really curious how a strawberry vanilla would perform, or like other flavors that are like, like different pairings of vanilla.

There's some flavors that, that wouldn't work. Watermelon, vanilla. No, thank you but.

Chelsea Stone: Right. Interesting. 100%. So just some quick takeaways before we, we end the day here. Clearly orange cream, strawberry guava, and chew vanilla, even though orange cream was on top, you know, these three are having hot girl summers.

So, but after, after the day that we've had, I think everyone's probably in the mood to run out and grab a beverage, but, yeah, I, I'm excited to hear what, what everyone thinks about these flavors. Another key takeaway, like I said earlier, if you're a retailer or you work for one of these brands that people said they wanted to try, make sure that you are getting these, these brands on your shelf.

The people are crying for them and finally, if you can tilt from those open ends, right? I had a thought in mind when I was putting out these nominees for brands that I thought people wanted to try. Like Hiyo and Sun Sip and what have you, but what we saw from those open ends is that people don't care about the difference between like a sparkling water or like an energy drink.

They're just walking into a store and they're looking for something delicious. So remembering that you are competing with the entire beverage category for share of mouth is so important for success on shelf. So anyway, before we, we end the day, Emma, is there any parting words you wanna give us before I go into our little outro here?

Emma Steele: I don't think so. I just totally agree with what you're saying about share of mouth. Sometimes you walk into a bodega or a grocery store and you know, I know I want a beverage, but I don't know what it's gonna end up be. This just happened to me last week I was visiting family in Florida and I walked into a Publix and I thought I was gonna go in and get some sort of a coconut water or something really hydrating, and I walked away with, you know, a probiotic soda and also a kombucha, like, you know, things that I wasn't expecting to go in for, but those were things that kind of, you know, stood out to me on shelf that I was.

Interesting in so knowing that, you know, you have consumers that in a place where there is so much choice, they're oftentimes open to that new trial. It can make it really exciting to be sitting in this category. So yeah. Yeah, for any questions, you know, feel free to reach out to myself, over LinkedIn or I'm sure there are contact details will be dropped in, follow ups here, but, would love to chat further with anyone.

Thanks so much for having me, Chelsea. This was so fun.

Chelsea Stone: Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us. It was so fun. Thank you all viewers for joining us. Thank you so much to all of our speakers and moderators. We appreciate you so much sharing your incredible insights, and I hope you had as much fun participating as we did preparing for this session.

So before I let you off the hook to go and, and grab your summer beverage of choice, if you did dip in and out throughout the event, don't worry. These sessions will be available on demand. Please keep an eye on your inbox. We'll be sending all of the recordings out for you to re-watch what you love or share with your teammates and colleagues.

And we'll be back with great more programming later this summer, both in July and in August, so be sure to keep up with highlight on LinkedIn. That's the best place to follow us. You can visit our website @letshighlight.com for a whole, like five years worth of on demand events just like this one.

So, thank you again everyone. I hope you loved Highlight Spark and have a great rest of your week.