Olipop Finds the Sweet Spot Between Flavor and Function

This week’s Innovation Of The Week comes from functional soda brand Olipop, who made a splash when they launched in 2018 getting in early on the prebiotic sofa and fiber trend. They’re now expanding their flavor range with the launch of Olipop Pomegranate Sparkle. 

But while functional sodas are an expanding category in the US, in terms of the mainstream they’re still something of a niche. That means you need a different approach to idea testing, with more emphasis on consumers who understand and are interested in the category. 

Every Test Your Innovation report by default includes a general population, mass-market sample, and for a lot of the ideas we look at that’s the right lens to examine the results. If you’re a big brand, or competing in an established category like candy or soft drinks, you need to know if your new product can survive in the marketplace as a whole. 

But if you’re a brand like Olipop, you need some extra perspective. Of course it’s useful to know how near your idea will be to mainstream acceptance. But when your sector as a whole isn’t there yet, the more urgent need is to understand consumer response within the category.  

So Test Your Innovation also lets you select a custom sample for testing – in this case Functional Drink Buyers. That means the brand gets a readout of how their new product will land without the noise from people who simply reject the whole idea of a functional soda. 

The results from the test are a lot more useful. They give a picture of Olipop Pomegranate Sparkle as a very promising new product while pointing up some possible areas for improvement or benefits to emphasize.  

Among the custom Functional Drink Buyers sample, Pomegranate Sparkle is a 3-Star product: a good result. But it excels in the “share buying” game, with 76% of participants saying they’d buy shares in the product. In other words, they sense its potential for success whether or not the drink appeals to them personally.  

Comments on Olipop’s new flavor suggest that consumers are responding positively to its packaging, character-led design and variety of flavors. While some skepticism towards prebiotic soda remains, others highlight health benefits as a reason to try it, alongside the appeal of its “unique” pomegranate flavor. But above all, it’s taste that emerges as the strongest positive response. 

And that’s no coincidence. The pomegranate-led packaging and character holding the fruit front and center are there for a reason: Olipop understands its audience. When consumers feel they’re having to trade taste for health, the proposition becomes a much harder sell. Instead, Olipop has put flavor firmly in the spotlight, making the functional benefits an added bonus rather than the main attraction. It’s a clever balance: a brand known for prebiotics, but winning consumers over with flavor. 

A brand should be careful with custom samples on Test Your Innovation. As with any custom sample, define your audience too tightly and there’s a risk of hearing only what you want to hear. But custom sample tests are the best way for a product in an emerging or specialist market to get a real understanding of idea potential. It’s not that Olipop Pomegranate Sparkle lacks fizz with a general sample – it’s that prebiotic sodas are a new enough idea that you have to zoom in to find out that it truly pops.