An Interview with Angela Smith, Talking Rain
Guest
Angela Smith is a Manager of Consumer Insights at Talking Rain, the makers of Sparkling Ice®.
Transcript
Bonnie: Thank you so much for joining me. This is Bonnie Janzen, I’m with Decision Analyst, a Strategic Consumer Insights Consulting Group. I have Angela Smith, who heads up the Consumer Insights, and leads that team at Talking Rain, has also been working on the Beverage Forum Conference and working with her, working closely with the brand team for Sparkling Ice. Angela is going to share some of her insights about consumers and branding, and a little bit about Sparkling Ice and Talking Rain, and we’re going to love this conversation over the next few minutes. So, thank you for taking the time with us.
Angela: Well—a pleasure to be here, Bonnie. I’m happy to speak about our company and our brand. I’m just a thrilled Rain Maker.
Bonnie: Well, we are going to jump right in and talk a bit about the history of Talking Rain, and how you, kind of, were just relaying to me that the history of the brand, and how the brand came to be. So, if you could kind of give that story to everyone else, in terms of how the brand started? If anyone doesn’t know, it’s been wildly successful, but how did the brand begin?
Angela: Well, thank you. Yes, exciting this year because we just celebrated our 35-year anniversary. So, some of us might not, some of you might not have heard much about Talking Rain over the past 35 years, but we are Pacific Northwest sparkling beverage company. And so, we do sparkling water—we started out with an unsweetened flavored sparkling water that was very early in the market, kind of ahead of the game in terms of picking up on that trend, but we have over the years had a strong innovation pipeline.
And one of our breakout moments came for our Sparkling Ice brand, which is our national brand that most people are familiar with; back in about 2010, we had a Midwest retailer who took a chance on us, and we did a market test. We threw a pallet of product on the floor and said let’s just see how that goes, and overnight it sold out, and we were scrambling to find more products to put into that store. And we knew we had a whale by the tail, and we had a big hit on our hands. So, at that time it was a race to get it everywhere we could. We built out a distribution network that was a very difficult thing to do for a startup brand in the national distribution landscape, and then we were able to start to collect more information about who was picking us up, and the consumers and what their needs were.
So, along that journey, we watched like what were they switching, the products they’re switching from. We understood more about like the family household structures of who was most likely to purchase. We attract a lot of families, especially ones with teenagers, but just they were picking us up in droves. And we have some very, very loyal fans that have stuck with us over the years, and we know these fans to be variety seekers—they love variety. So, it was an easy decision to make, to build out the portfolio full of flavors. So we do, we have a rainbow of flavors in terms of what you see on the shelf and at any time across the many, the brand portfolio you will have well over 20 flavors to choose from.
Bonnie: One of the things you were mentioning earlier in our conversation—that new product is really the lifeblood of the organization, and one of the things that you guys really look to, is try to innovate around, right?
Angela: Yeah, we’re always looking for, “What is that next consumer need?” Because if you have a product and it’s not anchored in a consumer need, it’s really going to have a hard time taking off, or it might interest people at first, but it might not be part of something that does a job in their life. So, we do like to take that jobs model and really understand “what is the purpose of this brand in somebody’s life?” So, that helped spawn new products like our Plus Caffeine line, and I know, you’re the fans.
Bonnie: Yes. You have some big fans for Plus Caffeine.
Angela: And that is an exciting new lineup, because it has brought more new households into our brand and attracting a different kind of consumer, and also a different occasion. We do draw a lot of people who are wanting to skip the sugar but not the flavor, and then some of them still not wanting to skip that little boost of energy they might get from maybe a diet CSD [carbonated soft drink] but we definitely are looking at those occasions and those consumer changing needs. You’ll still see us as being a good value, and a big part of value is the construct of price and quality. And, so what we do see, is consumers love the quality that we bring in our product. We do everything we can to have a great-tasting product. And we learn from consumers over and over again, they really do appreciate how our flavor tastes, and it becomes this affordable indulgence, and at times when there is so much stress from the financial strain and inflation, and a lot of other things that are outside of the economic strain, we have a lot of things that are really stressing our communities out.
Bonnie: It’s an emotional kind of fun, self-indulgent, and tastes great and it is fun, and, it’s not going to break the bank as far as that goes, and you can have a little fun, and it’s not an elaborate vacation or something like that.
Angela: Yes, it’s quite a big contrast, but sometimes in the afternoon, when I need to take a break, I’m very fortunate to have a lovely little deck, that I can go out on, and maybe I take my Sparkling Ice®. I might pour it over ice, I might maybe spike it a little, a lot of people like to.
Bonnie: Yeah, me too.
Angela: Use it as a mixer, but I can sit, and maybe just enjoy a moment of peace and calm and just kind of recenter, and it does help, just kind of make a moment a little bit more special.
Interviewer
Bonnie Janzen
President
Bonnie helps drive growth for client companies based on strategic consumer insights, innovation, and analytics to shape marketing campaigns and new product development programs. She has consulted with clients on new business mergers and acquisitions including global expansion. Advertising and messaging research is a particular passion. She has been very involved in strategic direction of the company.
