March 2008
A Fizzy Fairy Tale
the bionade success story
Once upon a time, in a small Bavarian town called Ostheim, the Kowalskys struggled to sustain their family-owned brewery. Bankruptcy was impending upon the business, which had difficulty competing with Bavaria’s large beer brands. It was one of those financial dead-end situations, which some meet with despair and others with insanity. The inhabitants of Ostheim must have thought that the owners of “Peter-Bräu” had been driven to the latter. It was rumored, namely, that the father of the family had turned one of their bathrooms into a laboratory in order to develop a new kind of beverage: a non-alcoholic lemonade that is brewed like beer and contained no artificial ingredients. If this was a story by the Grimm brothers, a fairy or some other magical device would have turned up sooner or later at the brewery, but here it needed eight years of trial and error and millions of Euros in developing costs until finally one day a strain of bacteria could be isolated that turned sugar and beer condiment into glucon acid in place of alcohol.
While the story of the invention of Bionade may have a Gyro Gearloose appeal, the strategy that followed in marketing this brewed lemonade may be deemed a top example of product placement. After experimentation, the Kowalskys had scarcely a penny left to invest in advertising. All they had were their beer bottles, their new flavored bubble water and a number of great ideas like the name and the hip retro-design of the bottles’ labels. (Some may recognize it as an ironic allusion to the Royal Air Force logo.) At first Bionade was only available at a few fitness studios and bars in Hamburg. But by the end of the 1990s—and just as it had been hoped for—Hamburg’s hipsters, some of them journalists, were infatuated with the soda and its offbeat flavors of herbs, elderberry, lychee or ginger-orange, and began spreading the news. Management experts call this highly effective strategy of infecting a small crowd of opinion-makers “Viral Marketing.” But this alone doesn’t explain the exponential growth of a small family business into an enterprise worth millions.
What really kicked off Bionade was the millennial turn to a new awareness by the masses that included anti-globalization, a profound skepticism toward multinationals and, most important of all, the organic food movement. “Bio” has become an auspicious prefix, which appeals to modern consumers who have decided to lead a healthier life, support regional farming without pesticides and protest against unethical entrepreneurs. Those are all ideas that are of vital importance today. Unfortunately, the use of the term “Bio” has become inflationary. Discount supermarkets have started labeling their food with this promising add-on. Innumerable eco-brands have joined the “bio-business,” which used to be a market niche. The production of ecological food has long become industrialized and critics say that new EU guidelines coming into effect in 2009 will dilute the “Bio” cachet even more.
The phenomenon of Bionade illustrates this balancing act between “bio philosophy” and the demand of the masses. It also manifests its debatable limits. The farmers of Ostheim, some of whom used to ridicule their odd brewery neighbors, now pride themselves in growing the ecological ingredients of the cult drink. The Kowalsky family declined a profitable offer from Coca-Cola, but still does business with the classic soda producer of questionable reputation. Since last year Bionade has also negotiated a deal with McCafé—the new sub-label of McDonald’s. Such business moves are double-edged. One can argue that Bionade brings a low-sugar, chemical-free alternative to the masses. Cooperating with Bionade may also force multinationals such as McDonald’s to rethink their concepts and business proceedings. On the other hand, such corporate marketing compels one to contemplate the origins and intents of the bio movement and to question the compromises made in search of profit. In the end, each consumer claiming to take interest in food production beyond daily nutritional necessity must decide which products and institutions are worthy of support. <<<
