Your Beverage Brand’s Reach Problem Isn’t About Money — Here’s What’s Really Going On
Let’s start with a quick reality check. If I had a pound for every time a marketing team blamed “tight budget” for poor brand performance, I’d probably have enough to buy out your competitor’s ad space across the entire Northern line and still have change for an overpriced cold brew in Shoreditch.
But here’s the inconvenient truth: the brands with the most significant budgets aren’t always winning. And the ones that are winning? They’re not necessarily flush with cash; they’ve just cracked the code on making people care. But we can’t ignore the influence of a big fat budget on the success of a well-strategised marketing campaign.
Let’s discuss what stops your brand from cutting through the noise. But before that, you can reach out to us for growth strategies to improve your food and beverage industry’s share of voice and relevance.
1. You’re Playing It Too Safe
Most beverage brands today sound the same, look the same, and show up in the same usual ways, product shots, smiling models, boring outdoor campaigns, maybe a few QR codes with coupons, and some billboard ads. Everyone rinses and repeats. With a market with more competitors than ever, applying the old or known ways feels like a predictable failure. With the uprising in tech, sipping largely into people’s attention to be seen, will require a lot more than billboard ads or a media budget with interactive carousel designs. A good example is Burger King narratives to attract attention. You should do the same.
At intensegroup, we help you gain the attention of the market with campaign ideas and executions that cut through the noise.
2. Your Data Isn’t Telling You Anything Useful
Sure, you’ve got dashboards. But what are they saying?
Most CMOs are swimming in data but don’t have enough insight. You need more than impressions and engagement rates. You need cultural signals, buying triggers, patterns in post-purchase behaviour, and geo-data that show who’s using your product and why they stopped if they ever did.
3. You’re Focusing on Visibility, Not Vitality
There’s reach, and then there’s relevance. It’s tempting to chase views. But if people scroll past your ad without clicking your CTA button, what have you gained? The brands breaking through today are very intentional with content quality. They inspire conversations, memes, remix culture, and free user-generated content that’s more persuasive than any pre-roll. Just look at Prime. Like it or hate it, they made hydration cool again, not with traditional media, but with a cultural movement and branding that made people desire to be associated with it.
4. You’re Not Building Brand IP
What’s your signature story? Your world view? Your story that no competitor can copy?
Most F&B brands don’t have one, which is wild because owning a relatable brand content strategy is how you scale organic reach in 2025. Think of what Innocent did with their packaging. Or how Oatly made being weird their entire personality. Build brand IP, and people will want to follow you, quote you, and buy into your product. That’s a reach that money can’t always buy.
5. You’re Not Collaborating Smartly
Taking influencer marketing seriously is a good investment, but it can be done wrong if you’re not strategic. Strategic collaborations create cross-pollinated audiences; a good enough hook an influencer can get you earned media that paid ads could never touch.
The Bottom Line?
Reach isn’t about buying more eyeballs. It’s about earning attention.
If you need help building that kind of creative velocity without wasting your budget, that’s where we come in. Intense Group helps F&B brands grow reach by thinking like culture-makers, not just marketers.
Ready to reach the right people the right way? Let’s talk.
