Meet the 2024 Category Captain for Packaged Beverages: The Coca-Cola Co.

The Coca-Cola Co. last year used its category leadership to drive incremental volume by leveraging the Sprite brand and the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. As the No. 1 brand among African American Gen Zers (aged 13-24), Sprite continues to outpace total sparkling soft drink and noncola sales, and grow its consumer base year over year. Armed with the knowledge that Sprite fans are constantly seeking ways to cool down and clear their mind — especially during the summer — the company unveiled Sprite Lymonade Legacy in June 2023.

The limited-time-only (LTO) drop remixed Sprite's lemon-lime flavor, adding a hint of strawberry for a delicious combination of tried-and-true and something new. The LTO was driven by fan requests on social media, as well as consumer testing and internal insights.

As a brand that has championed hip-hop for more than 35 years, Sprite's summer 2023 campaign honored the genre through partnerships with both living legends like Nas and Rakim and rising stars like Latto and GloRilla. One of the ways Sprite encouraged consumers to engage with the campaign was through the "Summer of Drops" sweepstakes. Each bottle or can of Lymonade Legacy provided access via QR codes to digital drop shops where consumers had the chance to win hundreds of giveaways that covered multiple consumer passion points. The landing page received 1.5 million pageviews and 237,000 sweepstakes entries.

Sprite Lymonade Legacy had a fast start and was successful enough to justify a second run in the market. Originally slated to run from May 15 through Aug. 11, the LTO was also made available from Sept. 5 through Oct. 15. With $25 million in retail sales during the initial 13-week period, Lymonade Legacy achieved $2 million in average weekly dollar volume.

All information contained in this profile was supplied by the company.