Is Pepsi’s Bubly new LaCroix, or just another cute can of flavoured a drink?
IT’S BEEN bubbling up for years, and now here we are, in the midst of a sparkling-water brand war. LaCroix - the fizzy flavoured drink that comes in retro pastel so-uncool-they’re cool-again cans - is the frontrunner, and as Americans drink less and less soda, every brand is angling for its own subtly fruitflavoured water.
Enter Bubly (yes, just one b in the middle). PepsiCo’s newly debuted brand of flavoured sparkling water aims to make a big splash, with a peppy ad campaign that rolled out during the Oscars. With its colourful cans and cheeky marketing, it is clearly aiming to steal millennials from LaCroix. Other brands have tried - Poland Spring recently released its own flavoured sparkling water, and Dasani, owned by Coca- Cola, has a flavoured sparkling water, too - but Bubly seems to understand the cult-like appeal of flavoured sparkling water better than the rest. It’s not the flavors or the price - it’s the packaging.
For an average consumer, the look of the cans seems to be the only thing that sets a flavoured sparkling water apart from its peers. People may think one brand is better than another, but they can’t tell the difference between any of them in a blind taste test. People can’t even tell what flavour of sparkling water they’re drinking in a blind taste test. So the cans are a critical part of the flavoured sparkling water experience.
LaCroix’s cans have achieved cult status. They look great on Instagram. There are “LaCroixs over boys” T- shirts and “Have a flavorful holiday” greeting cards. Dressing up as a LaCroix can is a thing that many people have done for Halloween. Some bartenders are making cocktails with it. People are even dyeing their hair to match LaCroix cans! So if you’re going to come at LaCroix, you’d best do so with a can that’s equally adorable. Bubly knows this, and its product seems to be designed for maximum cuteness.
The cans are nearly monochrome, with emoji-like smiles on the side and some polka dots at the edges. Best of all, the pop-tabs all come printed with a little greeting that mimics how people text, in lowercase: “hiya” on lemon, “haayy” on mango, “hiiii” on strawberry and plain old “hi” on apple. Importantly, and like LaCroix, each can is a different colour that mimics the origin of the “natural flavour” fruit essence inside. It is truly a juice box for 20-somethings.
We rounded up a few sparklingwater fans in the office - some of whom consider themselves ride-
For an average consumer, the look of the cans seems to be the only thing that sets a flavoured sparkling water apart from its peers.
or- die LaCroix brand loyalists - to conduct a little experiment (albeit with a very small sample pool of nine people). Our tastetesters were given side-by- side sips of same or comparably flavoured sparkling waters by LaCroix and Bubly: Mango ( both brands), strawberry ( Bubly) and berry ( LaCroix), lemon ( Bubly) and lime ( LaCroix), and apple ( Bubly) and apple- cranberry ( LaCroix), in plain paper cups. In a blind taste test, would people be able to tell the difference between LaCroix and Bubly? And if they drank sparkling water without seeing the can, could they tell what flavour it was?
The answer to both questions, overwhelmingly: No. With the exception of the very familiar lemon and lime, very few people got it right. That’s not surprising - there’s a lot of research that goes into how packaging affects our sense of taste. In 2011, when Coke changed its can colour from red to white, customers began to complain that it didn’t taste as sweet, according to Packaging Digest.
“The containers from which we eat and drink, and, in particular, their colour, can also influence our perception of food and beverages and the overall consumption experience to a greater extent than most of us are consciously aware of,” wrote a team of European researchers who studied the effect of the colour of plates in 2013. One of those researchers, Charles Spence, was profiled in the New Yorker for his work in flavour perception as it relates to our other senses.
He found that shoppers are “twice as willing to choose a juice whose label features a concave, smile-like line rather than a convex, frown-like one.” ( Note that Bubly’s label has a smile on it.) He has found that people think food in a red package is sweeter and a blue package is saltier, and that people “associate a hard k sound with bitterness, while a softer b can make products seem sweeter.” ( Note that there are two b’s in Bubly.) Wrote Nicola Twilley: “Consumers are constantly, if unwittingly, proving his point that taste can be altered through colour, shape, or sound alone.”
So, basically: You think that Passionfruit (for example) is the best flavor of LaCroix, but you might not agree if it were in a clear bottle - and you probably wouldn’t be able to identify it at all.
We also asked tasters to tell us which of the two cups was their favourite in each round. LaCroix won the overall popular vote, but when the score was broken down by flavour, Bubly’s mango and apple flavours did slightly better than LaCroix’s. Most people couldn’t really tell the difference, anyway, so consumers should feel free to be relentlessly price- driven in their selection of flavored sparkling water, unless they’re really into Instagramming pictures of the cans.
Here’s what our tasters had to say.
Mango LaCroix: “Tastes more tightly carbonated.” “Not overly sweet or tart.” “Flavour is pretty overwhelming.” “Light & floral.” “Kind of like watereddown Haribo peaches.” “Alka-Seltzer.” What flavour they guessed it was: “Strawberry,” “I’m getting mixed berry vibes.” “Pomegranate and blueberry notes.” “Black cherry?” “Stone fruit - peach or nectarine?” “Blackberry or grapefruit.”
Mango Bubly: “More refreshing. The flavour is less overpowering. I like it better.” “Has almost no bite.” “Full-bodied.” “This tastes like air freshener, like if you walk into a hotel bathroom with your mouth open.”
What flavour they guessed it was: “Strawberry,” “peach-like,” “tropical fruit,” “cranberry?”
Berry LaCroix: “More bubbly.” “Like a watery melted popsicle.” “Very small bubbles - feels good on tongue.” “Somebody thought this was OK to create and I want to fight them.” “Really heavy on the palate.”
What flavour they guessed it was: “Pear?” “Cotton candy-esque.” “Watermelon.” “Peach?”
Strawberry Bubly: “Cough syrupy flavour.” “Froot Loop water.” “Not at all tart.” “There is a very strange perfume note.” “This tastes like pool water.”