Launching a functional beverage brand in Germany: Go-to-market strategy and multi-channel campaign execution for BEVAS.

Vertical

FMCG

Client

BEVAS World SL

Capabilities

Advertising

Rika partnered with BEVAS to launch a new functional coffee brand in Germany, introducing a category-defining product to one of Europe’s most established and traditional coffee markets. From positioning to performance tracking, Rika led the end-to-end go-to-market effort, designed to educate, engage, and extract critical insight to inform potential scale.

The Business challenge

BEVAS aimed to establish a new product category: functional coffee. Entering the German market without brand awareness, we needed to communicate a clear value proposition, justify premium pricing, and navigate entrenched cultural preferences.

Additional complexity stemmed from the SKU mix, 15 variants across five blends and three formats, requiring sophisticated messaging. Driving early interest while validating product-market fit was critical to informing broader European expansion plans.

Objectives

BEVAS needed a go-to-market strategy that could do more than generate short-term sales. As a challenger brand introducing an unfamiliar product into a skeptical market, the goal was to educate consumers, validate positioning, and uncover the insights required to refine the proposition. The launch had to work hard across marketing, eCommerce, and brand strategy—laying the groundwork for future expansion and product evolution.

Establish category credibility for functional coffee.
Position BEVAS as a premium, wellness-oriented brand that enhances coffee’s natural benefits with vitamins and minerals, without alienating traditional coffee drinkers.

Build initial awareness and demand.
Generate visibility through high-reach, multi-channel media campaigns, influencer engagement, and PR to educate consumers and create interest in a previously unknown product category.

Validate product-market fit and pricing model.
Assess real-world performance across audience segments, formats, and blends to inform future product simplification, pricing optimisation, and market prioritisation.

Optimise the direct-to-consumer (DTC) eCommerce journey.
Implement a full eCommerce stack including CRO, fulfilment partnerships, CRM automation, and customer support infrastructure to support future scale.

Create a scalable marketing and performance framework.
Build an attribution-ready setup to measure campaign effectiveness, surface insight into channel ROI, and enable ongoing optimisation and strategic campaign planning.

Insights

Germany, as Europe’s largest coffee market, offered scale but came with cultural challenges. Consumer skepticism toward functional beverages and reluctance to change traditional routines meant BEVAS couldn’t rely on novelty alone. Messaging had to focus on the inherent benefits of coffee rather than altering it, while channel selection needed to balance broad awareness with high-intent targeting. Simplifying the path to trial and clarifying value were central to strategy.

Approach

The go-to-market plan was designed to both test and teach, to drive traction while surfacing the insights needed to refine product, messaging, and channel priorities.

Soft launch with early cohorts to test product, validate messaging, and stress-test fulfilment and CX.
Multi-channel awareness campaign across Meta, Google, PR, and influencer partnerships to drive education and discovery.
Retargeting, CRM flows, and CRO enhancements to convert engaged audiences, with real-time dashboards to support rapid iteration.

These efforts were underpinned by the hypothesis that clarity could overcome skepticism, and that early performance would reveal the blend, format, and audience combinations with the highest market potential.

Creative theme

Your Coffee and You. Improved.” positioned BEVAS as a wellness-enhancing upgrade to a beloved ritual. Each blend was paired with a symbolic animal to reinforce its unique benefit, creating visual shorthand for the product’s purpose and personality.

Deliverables

Market and audience analysis
YouGov product-market fit study
Messaging house and persona development
Media planning and asset development
Influencer outreach and activation
Website CRO and analytics dashboard setup
E-commerce optimisation and fulfilment support

The Outcome

The German launch enabled BEVAS to enter the market with a distinctive brand and value proposition, reaching a wide audience and gathering critical data to inform future business decisions:

Campaigns reached

2.5M+ consumers, driving over 12,500 unique website visitors with strong engagement across product pages.

Premium pricing validated

with an AOV of €31 and a 1.09% CVR, both in line with FMCG DTC benchmarks.

Audience insight to guide targeting and messaging.

Women aged 45–54 emerged as the most responsive demographic, accounting for 78% of conversions, shaping future audience prioritisation and content direction.

SKU-level performance to inform portfolio focus

The Anti-Ageing and Focus blends were top performers across formats, with whole beans clearly preferred over ground or capsule formats, insight that now informs product simplification and hierarchy.

Foundation for strategic repositioning.

Key benchmarks and qualitative insights highlighted areas for refinement, supporting the shift toward a simplified product line, RTD format exploration, and market expansion into more receptive territories.

The BEVAS launch did more than introduce a new product, it tested the boundaries of a new category. Beyond impressions and orders, it surfaced the friction, resonance, and patterns that matter. These insights now inform BEVAS’ next phase: a more focused offer, sharper messaging, and an expansion strategy aligned with market readiness and consumer demand.