Consumer Trends: The Rise of Sprite Cranberry
This is a blog written by guest contributor, Nick Guadagnino.
The Holiday Season
As everyone’s favorite time of the year approaches, so do the special edition food and beverages. One of these beverages, Sprite Cranberry, is taking social media by storm. With countless Tik Tok’s, Tweets and Instagram videos made, store are running out of their supply as people are buying in mass amounts. There are videos that are circulating the internet of people buying Sprite Cranberry to the point where there isn’t any left in the store. The popularity of Sprite Cranberry has really increased in the last three years because of a commercial that Sprite created. This commercial that came out in 2017 has really increased the popularity of the drink with young people. The commercial has a song sung by rap artist DRAM and has a special guest star of Lebron James. Studies have shows that the sales have doubled from 2013 to 2017. The wave of social media has really benefited products as it is really easy to advertise and market towards young people.
Celebrities Endorsing Products
Celebrities endorsing products is a great marketing scheme, it can really increase revenue and sales of a product just because the celebrity already has a following. It also is a great way to increase popularity for a limited time product like Sprite Cranberry. Since it only come out around the end of October and the begging of November and only last until Christmas, it is important that the product has a high demand. If the product did not have a high demand, it would not be worth all of the advertising costs and the costs to mass produce the product. The use of social media has made it very easy for celebrities to endorse a product. It take very little time to like a post or repost something and because of that people are really able to increase popularity of a product if a celebrity likes it. People see that if their favorite celebrity are endorsing a brand they will want to buy that product as well. I think this is the case with the increase of Sprite Cranberry. Lebron James has a huge following especially with young people, because of this the younger people are seeing that if Lebron James drinks Sprite Cranberry, they can relate themselves with that specific celebrity.
Overall the combination of social media and limited edition products are a great way to advertise. All the videos, tweets and posts about Sprite Cranberry are just free advertising. If you can get your product to be trending on social media for a good reason it is really easy to sell the product and if you can get a celebrity to endorse it is really beneficial to your product, especially if it is a limited time product where the time to sell it is not very long.
