‍ Click to read the original text for details Failing to secure their core consumption scenarios and target audiences is the most awkward position for sports drinks. After Mizone's explosive debut in 2003, it led a wave of 'sports drinks' trend, with brands like Scream and Activate stirring up the beverage market. However, after its peak, Mizone has been teased by the public for poor sales, and Scream only appears in 'worst-tasting drinks' lists and videos about 'using its bottle as an oyster sauce container'. In this episode, I'll talk about sports drinks. 01 In 1965, in the hot and humid climate of Florida, USA, Dwayne Douglas, an assistant coach for the local university's football team, noticed that his players were underperforming, often suffering from heatstroke, and experiencing weight loss after attending summer training camp. Football is all about strength, so lighter players were a headache for the coach. Coach Douglas approached Dr. Robert Cade, a kidney disease specialist at the University of Florida College of Medicine, to help solve the problem. Dr. Cade discovered that the players' various physical issues were due to severe fluid loss, which couldn't be solved by just drinking water. He began developing a special drink for athletes to replenish the carbohydrates and electrolytes lost through sweating. Soon, a mysterious drink went from Dr. Cade's lab to the field. During game tests, Dr. Cade found that players who drank the beverage during games had noticeably more stamina than their opponents in the final stages. His experiment was a success. The drink was then used as a secret weapon by the University of Florida, spreading from the football field to the entire American sports world. This drink is the ancestor of modern sports drinks and America's number one sports drink brand: Gatorade. 02 In China, sports drinks started much later. China's first sports drink should be Jianlibao, born in 1984. As China's first beverage with added alkaline electrolytes, Jianlibao introduced the concept of functional drinks to the Chinese market and was the first to make Chinese people feel the power of sports marketing. Although I've always thought it's unscientific to treat a carbonated drink as a sports drink, the 'Chinese magic water' was indeed too powerful. In terms of national recognition, all later sports drinks combined couldn't compete with Jianlibao. It truly deserves the title of China's first sports drink. But after 2000, Jianlibao gradually declined after a series of controversies. Despite launching products like Fifth Season, it never made waves again. But Jianlibao's decline gave opportunities to newcomers. In 2003, Mizone's launch truly brought about an era of sports drinks. If you look at its lineage, Mizone is actually a New Zealand brand. Its predecessor was Mizone, a sports drink brand under Frucor, New Zealand's second-largest soft drink company, popular in both New Zealand and Australia. The company was acquired by Danone in 2000, and around the same time, Danone also acquired Robust, gaining control. So under the leadership of 'grandfather' Danone, 'grandson' Mizone was transferred from Frucor to Robust, with the Chinese name '脉动' (Mizone). By the way, Frucor was abandoned by Danone a few years later and sold to Suntory, but Mizone's operating rights in China stayed with Danone. It shows Danone is a hereditary vampire. Mizone's rise was closely related to the SARS outbreak that year. In April 2003, Mizone hit the Chinese market. Its parent company Danone positioned it as a 'vitamin functional drink', emphasizing its rich active vitamins that could restore and maintain physical strength, enhance immune system function, and replenish fluids. Of course, these are just advertising slogans. Students should have basic common sense: you can't treat drinks as nutritional supplements. But for Chinese consumers who had just experienced SARS, health was the top concern. So they couldn't resist slogans about supplementing nutrition and boosting immunity. In such an environment, Mizone sold like hotcakes as soon as it launched. In just one month, Mizone's sales exceeded 100 million yuan. By summer, sales continued to rise. Robust didn't expect the new product to sell so well, leading to production capacity shortages and limited supply in many regions. The wholesale price for a 15-bottle pack once rose from 35 yuan to 45 yuan, but supply still couldn't meet demand, making middlemen a fortune. Robust had to bundle (unsellable) purified water to suppress demand. By the end of the year, Mizone's sales reached 700 million yuan, making it the best-selling beverage in China in 2003. 03 Mizone's success naturally attracted competitors. The next year, over 20 similar products appeared on the market, including Huabang's '跑啊' (Run), Huiyuan's '他她水' (He She Water), and Master Kong's '劲跑X' (Power Run X). Among them, two brands worth mentioning are Wahaha's 'Activate' and Nongfu Spring's 'Scream'. Activate is a product with strong Wahaha characteristics. In the industry, Wahaha is known as a master of 'follow-up innovation'. This means they don't be the first to try something new, but quickly follow when competitors launch new products, offering similar products with slight innovations, and then using their strongest channel capabilities to defeat the pioneers. As I mentioned in the Robust video, Robust was actually the pioneer of calcium milk, but Wahaha quickly launched its imitation product AD Calcium Milk and eventually dominated the category. Wahaha also achieved good results in categories like cola and eight-treasure porridge through follow-up innovation. With Activate, Wahaha aimed to do to the functional drink market what it had done to Robust in the yogurt milk market. Comparing the products, Activate clearly mirrors Mizone in many ways. Besides flavor, the capacity, bottle design, dominant blue color, and even the wide bottle mouth are very similar to Mizone. Wahaha's innovation lies in claiming to add guarana, the 'youth vitality fruit' from South America, in addition to vitamins. Furthermore, Wahaha brought out its long-time spokesperson Wang Leehom, having him endorse a sports drink in addition to purified water—a two-for-one deal. With Wang Leehom's commercials, Wahaha spent 150 million yuan on advertising in 2004, the highest in the category. Sales reached 300 million yuan, second only to Mizone that year. As for Scream, it's an even more interesting brand. Although positioned as an 'emotional drink', in my view, Scream's core selling point is fun. Even now, when people mention the pacifier cap, most still think of Scream. When I was in school, I loved this cap design—you could either sip from the 'pacifier' or squeeze the bottle to spray the drink directly into your mouth. After finishing, we wouldn't throw away the empty bottle; we'd fill it with water and use it as a simple water gun. During breaks, male classmates would have battles in the hallways with Scream bottles. Additionally, Scream also made the drink itself quite distinctive. Unlike the past where a brand had one main color, Scream gave its three flavors three completely different colors. The blue bottle is grapefruit flavor, targeting sports energy replenishment; the green bottle tastes like non-carbonated Sprite, targeting low sugar and low calories. There's also a red bottle Scream, which is ginseng flavor, aimed at refreshing the mind, and it's as famous as Laoshan White Flower Snake Grass Water for being notoriously bad-tasting. Compared to other categories, sports drinks are a fast-growing category, with new players constantly entering. In 2005, Gatorade, already under PepsiCo, announced its entry into China, hiring Yao Ming as its spokesperson. Pocari Sweat, a Japanese brand that had entered China earlier but operated passively, also increased its presence in first-tier cities. In 2008, Nongfu Spring launched Water Soluble C100, and in 2011, it launched Powerade Vitamin Water. In 2014, Coca-Cola launched Aquarius, inviting Lin Dan as its spokesperson. By 2011, the sports drink market had exceeded 10 billion yuan. 04 So why have sports drinks suddenly stopped selling in recent years? My personal view: First, China's sports market is not yet large enough. Although more people are exercising now, overall, those with time and energy to exercise are still a minority. Including popular sports like football and basketball, as we all know, our football and basketball populations are actually very small. So the ceiling for sports drinks relying on this market is naturally low. In North America and Asia-Pacific, sports drinks account for nearly half of the soft drink market, but in China, only 20 billion yuan of the trillion-yuan beverage market belongs to sports drinks. The result is that all sports drink brands are unwilling to tie themselves to sports scenarios, because doing so narrows their path. For example, Gatorade honestly follows the sports route, carefully building its professional sports drink positioning, but it hasn't benefited in the Chinese market. Another example is Scream, which, despite being a genuine sports drink, insists on creating a concept called 'emotional drink'. As for what an emotional drink is, whether it makes you emo after drinking, we don't know, and we have no one to ask. The big brother Mizone is even more interesting. Danone originally wanted to make it a sports drink, but after market research, they felt the sports market was too narrow and had no future. So they directly copied the energy drink positioning, focusing on 'Mizone returns', meaning using nutrition to help consumers regain a good state. In recent years, Mizone also launched carbonated drinks like 'Mizone Lingqi' and a 400ml 'foodie pack', all to broaden its path and penetrate into dining and other scenarios. It's clear that everyone thinks that in a market where the total number of sports participants isn't particularly large, making sports drinks is not an attractive business. The second reason is that sports drinks themselves are an awkward category. Let me first explain the definition of sports drinks. According to the 'General Rules for Beverages' drafted by the Technical Committee of the China Beverage Industry Association, all beverages on the market can be divided into 10 types, among which special-purpose drinks are further divided into four subcategories: sports drinks, nutrient drinks, energy drinks, and electrolyte drinks. From this classification, there are actually not many true sports drink brands. Mizone, Activate, and Aquarius, which focus on supplementing vitamins and water, can only be considered nutrient drinks, while Pocari Sweat, which focuses on replenishing electrolytes, should be classified as an electrolyte drink. As for Red Bull and Dongsheng Teyin, they typically contain caffeine and taurine, which are very effective in fighting fatigue, improving endurance, and concentration, making them energy drinks. Among mainstream brands, only Gatorade and Scream are truly sports drinks. But this standard is mainly an industrial classification; consumers don't look at such details. In the market, functional drinks are only of two types: one is energy drinks like Red Bull, Lehu, and Dongsheng Teyin, and the other is everything else, collectively called sports drinks. Although these two types have some overlapping functions, they are fundamentally different species. Energy drinks are more like stimulants, while the essence of sports drinks is an upgraded version of drinking water, solving the problem of 'what to drink when thirsty'. In school economics, teachers teach the concepts of 'substitute goods' and 'complementary goods'. Drinking water and sports drinks are the most typical substitute goods, competing with each other. But how can sports drinks compete with drinking water, the most stable market? Only drinking water can defeat itself. Failing to secure their core consumption scenarios and target audiences is the most awkward position for sports drinks. This is the difference between sports drinks and energy drinks like Red Bull. Energy drinks have a very stable consumer base: truck drivers, overtime workers, and students. As long as you need to stay up late, you'll need Red Bull, Lehu, or Dongsheng Teyin. But sports drinks don't have such stable consumers. Even on the court and in the gym, drinking water is more popular than sports drinks. The reason is simple: it's cheap. With the price of one bottle of Mizone, I can buy two bottles of mineral water. Market competition is cruel. To grab some share from drinking water, sports drink manufacturers tell you that their products not only quench thirst but also supplement nutrition, electrolytes, and carbs, and they taste better than plain water because they're sweet. Gatorade even came up with the slogan 'Quench thirst, quench body thirst', trying to differentiate with the concept of 'body thirst'. But no matter how hard they try, the ceiling is clear. Because in the market, the height of the ceiling often depends not on how hard you work, but on how strong your opponent is. References: 'Nongfu Spring: Scream on the Bottle Cap' - Sales and Market 'Market Positioning Analysis of Robust Group's Mizone Drink' - Sheng Hui 'The Rise and Fall of Functional Drinks: Success and Failure Due to Function' - Chen Long 'Battle 2004: Who Leads in Functional Drinks' - Cui Yan 'Where is Wahaha's Activate Pointing?' - Wang Hairong 'Mizone Brand Strategy Analysis' - Bao Jie 'Insights into Mizone' - China Marketing Communication Network 'From the Tortoise and Hare Race to the 2003 Beverage Market' - China Marketing Communication Network 'The Growth Engine of Beverages, the Battleground for Giants' - Qingshan Capital 'Mizone Launches Two New Products, Aiming for the Dining Table' - Curiosity Daily 'Gatorade: The 50-Year Hegemony of the Western Jianlibao' - ECO Krypton 'The Big Market Behind Sweat: Sports Drinks' - Lazy Bear Sports 'Who Decides What We Drink After Exercise? A Scan of China's 40 Billion Functional Drink Market' - Lazy Bear Sports 'China Red Bull's Future Uncertain, but the 60 Billion Functional Drink Blue Ocean Battle Has Begun' - Lazy Bear Sports Source: IC Laboratory (ID: InsightPlusClub) Author: IC Laboratory -END-