The Better Drinks Co

The clean green story behind The Better Drinks Co’s juices and blended drinks is an integral part of the luring potential overseas customers to buy products, says the firm’s CEO Craig Cotton.

Although the- company-formerly-knownas-Charlie’s (and which now also includes the Phoenix organic drinks range and others) was sold to Japanese beverage firm Asahi in 2011, product development and marketing is still headed by a team of New Zealanders, and the Kiwi-based stories are still crucial in overseas markets, says Cotton.

For example, when the company launched Charlie’s in Japan in 2014, it was able to build on the story of New Zealand as a country with beautiful scenery, an idea the Japanese project team was already familiar with, thanks to films like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and the 100% Pure New Zealand tourism campaign, Cotton says.

“When we started discussions in Japan, we naturally introduced the product development and marketing teams to the New Zealand story by talking about our open spaces. We established the quality of our good, honest products by telling them about the purity of our air, our clear water and the fertile soils our fruit thrives in.”

The company used this knowledge as a platform to build on, “before telling the broader story of our products, culture, people and the things we are creating”, he says.

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