3x shifts that prove premiumisation isn't over. Just your version of it is.
For a decade, drinks had one playbook for premium. Charge more. Restrict access. Heritage story. Margin grows. Simple.
Then the maths stopped working. Price-per-litre grew one percent last year. Inflation ran at four. What most of the industry called premiumisation was never really a strategy. It was a rising tide dressed up as a swim. The tide went out. A lot of brands are still standing on the beach wondering what happened.
But not all of them. Premium-plus RTDs grew twenty-one percent in value last year. Super-premium travel retail grew ten percent. Premium beer held. The consumer didn't downgrade. They got selective. They'll still pay more — but only when the product earns it, not when the price tag claims it.
Three shifts separate the brands still growing from the ones writing off premium altogether.
1. Trail before trust
Most premium strategies are built backwards. Build desire. Create aspiration. Wait for the consumer to commit thirty-odd quid to a bottle they've never tasted, from a brand they saw once in a sponsored post. Then hope the liquid justifies the leap.
It won't. Because most people won't leap. The brands gaining ground right now removed the leap entirely. Single serves. Familiar flavours done properly. A price point where trying something new costs less than a pint. Get it to their lips once. The product closes the sale — not the campaign, not the packaging, not the story. If your strategy needs trust before trial, reverse it.
2. Their story, not yours
Flip over ten premium bottles in any off-licence. Count the back labels that mention a coastal distillery, a family recipe, or a founder who set out on a mission. That's not a brand story. That's an industry screensaver.
The brands cutting through stopped narrating their own origin and started showing up inside the moments their audience already has. The weekend ritual. The "what are we drinking?" text. The recommendation from a mate — not an ad. You can't buy that kind of endorsement. You earn it by fitting into someone's life, not by shouting about your own. If your story starts with you, check who's still listening.
3. Right moments, not right postcode.
Premium used to mean restricted. Certain bars. Certain shelves. Certain postcodes. Scarcity as a signal. That contract is broken. The moment a consumer wants something great isn't behind a velvet rope — it's at a festival, a work trip, a Wednesday night that escalated. The brands growing understand this: premium isn't defined by where you're sold. It's defined by whether you belong in the moment someone reaches for you. If your brand only makes sense on one shelf in one kind of shop, that's not exclusivity. That's irrelevance with better lighting.
The market didn't stop paying for premium. It stopped tolerating the lazy version. The brands that figured that out aren't waiting for the rest of the industry to catch up. And every quarter, the distance between them grows.
The Behaviours Agency works with drinks brands navigating the new rules of premiumisation — from repositioning what you've got to launching something new.
