The sparkling performance of Schweppes

What first caught our attention this year was the number of drinks brands that placed in the Top 20. Their presence has surged – doubling from last year’s three to six.

Coca-Cola has always been among the top handful of our 2,500 tracked brands, as well as Robinsons and Moët & Chandon, all of whom appear in the Top 20 for a consecutive year. But joining the champs in the Top 20 this year are Baileys, Ribena and Pepsi.

Just a couple of places outside is Schweppes – a new entrant into our Top 100 – flying in at #22. Narrowly missing the league table last year (#107 overall), the brand has soared 85 places, recording its strongest ever Brand Love score. This gave us reason to analyse the trends within the drinks category more closely this year.

Looking at consumption behaviours at a macro-level helps us understand the changing trends in approaches to drinking. We survey six categories, ranging from teetotal to regularly drinking excessively. In 2024, the growing categories are teetotal (9%) and rarely drinking (21%). While Gen Z are most likely to be teetotal, the most significant year-on-year shift is among those aged 25-59, with a 3% increase in individuals drinking very little, or no alcohol.

Download the report to view the league table..

We then turned our attention to our BrandVue’s ‘occasions data’, where we ask respondents about their last drinking occasion: where, when and what it was, why they drank, and who they were with. In 2024, the ‘why’ (or the “need”) driving most of these occasions, indicates a statistically significant increase in the desire for something refreshing compared to 2023. This has become the most cited reason for having a drink, suggesting that brands which perform well on this metric (associated with being ‘refreshing’), perform well overall.

With that in mind, any idea which brand ranked 6th this year for being “Refreshing”?

That’s right, Schweppes Lemonade, overtaking Sprite, Evian, Appletiser and several more. In line with this improvement, they also shot up from 49th to 18th amongst drinks brands most associated with drinking “on sunny days”.

But what brand activity could have contributed to such a noticeable and timely rise? It was widely reported through industry press in February this year that Schweppes has launched a Europe-wide Brand Ambassador programme, which partnered with “the best in the business” in the on-trade sector, with the goal of conveying Schweppes’ “unique story of innovation, bubbles, bite and balance”.

Key uplifts we noted in BrandVue following the programme’s launch:

In just two weeks, Schweppes achieved the highest Positive Buzz score of any drink brand we track. Over a quarter of UK adults reported hearing positive news about the brand in the past month – nearly double the percentage from the same time last year.

By March, Schweppes rose to the #2 spot in our Net Promoter Score (NPS) rankings for all drinks brands – that’s more than a 20% yearon- year increase. Schweppes’ performance illustrates the power of well-timed, well-executed brand activation in driving short-term brand enhancements. The next step is to observe whether these boosts translate into sustained commercial growth; we’ll be watching with interest, bringing you real-time updates on its trajectory.

This article was initially published in The UK’s Most Loved Brands report, which you can instantly download – for free – below.