Mark Wahlberg, actor, producer and former rapper, joined BevNET editor Jeffrey Klineman
Startups and growing brands heard it repeatedly—investors with full pockets are waiting for your next marketable innovation. It was the steady mantra at BevNET Live in Santa Monica on Dec. 3 and 4, a conference that gathered representatives of the beverage industry from across the world to engage in panels, presentations, expositions and a sampling bar. The dichotomy of startups and veterans was palpable, but no matter a brand’s experience, the theme remained: good ideas with proper management can make their dent. The conference began with the opening round of the New Beverage Showdown, a contest geared at finding the industry’s best brand with less than $1 million in funding, $2 million in revenue and 12 months on the market. 20 brands, including eventual winner Spacho, presented their beverage ideas
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and business models to a panel of judges that rated concept, taste, packaging, function, market readiness and what can only be described as “it” factor. The next portion of the conference certainly didn’t lack the “it” factor. Mark Wahlberg, actor, producer and former rapper, joined BevNET editor Jeffrey Klineman for an onstage interview that touched on AquaHydrate, a performance water brand of which Wahlberg holds shares, his balancing of Hollywood and business, and even a little talk of Celtics vs. Lakers. Wahlberg admitted that he’s currently a student of the beverage industry, but he doesn’t consider himself merely an endorser of AquaHydrate. He said that during his training for the 2010 film The Fighter, he took his workouts to another level with immediate results from the performance water. He said that he awoke easier and hadn’t changed anything in his routine except for what he was drinking. “A name can get you to try it the first time,” Wahlberg said. “But it’s the quality of the product that brings people back.” That kind of true connection with the product eased him into committing time to an atypical endeavor. “It’s definitely out of my comfort zone,” he said. Wahlberg, however, found a way to bridge the two different cogs of his life: business and entertainment. He said he demanded that AquaHydrate sit on every desk in the office of Ari Gold, one of the main characters of Entourage, a popular HBO show that Wahlberg produced. Bottles of AquaHydrate scattered the sets of the 2012 comedy Ted. “Everything that I do, it’s a packaged deal,” he said. Shifting from the perspective of a star shareholder to that of company founders, Klineman invited to the stage Richard Tait, cofounder of the sports energy drink Golazo, Serge Freund, cofounder of the gourmet iced coffee maker RealBeanz and Camille Reith, cofounder of the chiabased smoothie company ChiaVie. Joining Klineman in a question-and-answer session, Tate, Freund and Reith all stressed the importance of brand management.