Solterra Beverages: DTC - Functional Drinks
The Challenge: Solterra launched multiple flavors of its adaptogenic sparkling water but couldn’t understand why some SKUs spiked while others languished. Their marketing team segmented by age and income, but growth plateaued as consumer adoption became unpredictable.
How Merlin Stack Helped: By mapping psychographics to SKU preferences, Merlin revealed that “wellness seekers” gravitated to botanical flavors, while “adventure-driven experimenters” preferred bolder spice variants. Instead of generic campaigns, Solterra aligned flavor drops with distinct persona-driven messaging.
Key Insights Delivered:
Wellness-motivated buyers over-indexed on subtle, calming flavors
Experimental personas responded to surprise-limited flavors with urgency
Messaging needed to split between calm/wellness language and adventurous/novelty cues
Modules Integrated:
Osprey Spike to time campaigns around category-level momentum
Kitepoint to balance DTC vs. retail flavor adoption
Noctua Scale to test variant-led creative rapidly
Results:
27% lift in trial for wellness-aligned SKUs
33% faster sell-through of limited-run experimental flavors
Clearer roadmap for sequencing new flavor launches