400+ stockists and nobody knew what it was for

The obvious answer was more listings and more promotion, but the evidence pointed elsewhere. The product already sat on shelves in over 400 outlets, and the rate of sale was the problem rather than the availability. Consumer research kept surfacing the same thing: people did not understand what kombucha was, when they would drink it, or what it replaced in their week.

If the barrier is comprehension, more distribution just puts the same confusing bottle in front of more people. I called the strategy 'The Booch Reboot': build understanding, build cultural relevance, then convert that into subscribers, because a daily wellness habit is worth more than a single sale.

Before scale, the plan fixed the foundation. Messaging simplified to three pillars: gut health, low-sugar alternative, daily wellness habit. Brand alignment brought the kombucha cans and the prebiotic sodas, which read as two different brands, into one visual identity and one voice. Website optimisation added a kombucha education hub answering the questions people were already searching, with a structured SEO funnel: awareness keywords like 'what is kombucha' at the top, consideration keywords like 'kombucha after workout' in the middle, conversion keywords like 'kombucha subscription Ireland' at the bottom.

Social ran on a 40/30/20/10 content model: 40% education, 30% lifestyle, 20% user-generated content, 10% conversion, so the channel had a structured route from awareness to action rather than a feed of promotional posts.

Retail gives you a transaction. Subscription gives you a relationship worth modelling, so I built the subscription proposition around customer lifetime value (CLTV): what a repeat drinker is worth over a year, what that justifies spending to acquire them, and where the CRM-led journey has to intervene to stop them lapsing after the second delivery.

The lifecycle comms were designed against that model rather than bolted on: onboarding that teaches the occasion, a nudge at the point where usage drops, and a win-back with a reason attached. The plan proposed doubling subscription sales inside six months on a EUR 40k budget, delivered as a phased roadmap with the sequencing made explicit. As an MSc module project, that target is a proposed objective rather than a measured outcome.

The brief you are given is rarely the brief you should solve. The obvious ask was more distribution, while the evidence said the barrier was comprehension. Reframing the problem before building the plan changes the quality of everything that follows.