There’s a new hard seltzer in town.
Lone River Beverage Company launched Ranch Water statewide across Texas and Tennessee in May, and it has been buzzing on social media.
Inspired by the tequila-based cocktail of the same name, as well as the culture of West Texas, this a seltzer unlike any others — truly standing “‘lone” in the wilderness that is the ever-expanding hard seltzer market. Made with lime and 100% pure agave, and only 80 calories, Ranch Water embraces its rugged influence rather than softening it, with branding evoking the rough spirit of the American West.
Much like their unconventional product, Lone River Beverage Company also has an unconventional success story — launching their first hard seltzer in the midst of the historical COVID-19 pandemic.
“What we heard early on was that the best way to drive sales for a new brand is through trial and [sic] a robust plan of in-store samplings — that was immediately taken off the table when we launched,” said Katie Beal Brown, Founder and CEO of Lone River Beverage Company, in an exclusive interview with Hard Seltzer News.
For Brown, stay at home orders by no means impeded these company’s launch strategy. Instead, she took this challenge by the reins.
Brown told Hard Seltzer News, “We’ve really leveraged our strategy in social media to drive the level of awareness that we needed in order to get our new brand in front of people — just knowing that they also weren’t necessarily spending a lot of time in the store either [because of the pandemic] — so they may or may not have seen us on the shelf.”
With this — what Brown calls a “digital first” — approach, the company was able to create such high demand that customers were going out to stores specifically seeking the product. Their West Texan brand image made the product appealing to high-profile figures with major social media followings — from rodeo athletes to country musicians.
“I definitely knew that it was important to get our product in the hands of people that I believed best resembled the kind of lifestyle that we represent,” Brown said.
Ranch Water was recently featured in a Parker McCollum music video, Young Man’s Blues, shot on the country musician’s ranch in Texas, greatly increasing brand awareness in the country music scene.
“A number of other musicians in Nashville — that honestly we didn’t even know had purchased our product — we just randomly saw posting on their pages,” Brown said. “I think it speaks to the brand itself and kind of what it represents and something that that audience maybe wants to be associated with.”
It makes sense that Lone River Beverage Company would place high value on brand and marketing. Brown left her advertising job in New York in order to start the company, so she has crucial experience. Social media provides the CEO an outlet to really get to know her consumer-base on a more personal level.
“In most of my career I felt very disconnected from the consumer. Oftentimes, we were getting feedback from consumers in really controlled research environments,” Brown said. “This [consumer interaction] has been really fun to me because it’s a very dynamic one-to-one conversation that we are constantly having with them through social media.”
That one-to-one communication gave rise to a new Ranch Water social media trend. Fans of the drink are making the product their own with custom rims, playing with complementary flavors such as chamoy and tajin. The company got the idea to capture some of these fan creations in a photo shoot and post them to their Instagram account.
“It ended up being one of our highest engagement posts just because I think that it’s something that was naturally happening among our base,” Brown said.
Fan influence might not stop there. Brown said she is absolutely going to look to her consumers for further innovation and inspiration for products in the future. Social media communication helps make that possible.
“Our product inherently was developed to fill a consumer need that hadn’t been met yet,” Brown explained. “I think maintaining that one-on-one conversation will be really important for us.”
- Podcast: New Realm’s Mitch Steele Talks Hard Seltzer - March 8, 2021
- Big Brands Bring Awareness with Publicity — in the Market or in the Courts - February 27, 2021
- Naked Seltzer Betters the Home Bar - February 26, 2021
