下一代品牌打造生态优势

Equity ResearchConsumer |Consumer Products July 16, 2025Industry Report Jon Andersen, CFA+1 312 364 8697jandersen@williamblair.com David Shakno, CPA+1 312 364 5256dshakno@williamblair.com Industry InsightsNext-Generation Brands:Ripples in Still Water Glenn West, CPA+1 312 364 8673gwest@williamblair.com Contents What Do Next-Generation Brands Do?..............................................................................3Serve Vital Consumer Needs.............................................................................................4Build Authentic Aligned Relationships.............................................................................7Deploy Disruptive, Hyperefficient Marketing.................................................................10Innovate With Relevance and Pace.................................................................................13Employ New Tools and Technologies..............................................................................16Brand Ecosystem.............................................................................................................20What Happens When Done Well?....................................................................................21Stock Implications...........................................................................................................26Appendix..........................................................................................................................37 What Do Next-Generation Brands Do? In a consumer-packaged industry populated with large legacy equities and product forms, next-generation brands are creating ripples—and perhaps better said waves—in what has otherwisebeen relatively still water. We identify next-generation brands as those that are making sustainedmarket share inroads in large, fast-moving consumer goods categories and doing so in concert withfive motivating factors. These include a laser focus on serving vital consumer needs, building au-thentic aligned relationships, deploying disruptive hyperefficient marketing, innovating with rele-vance and pace, and employing new tools and technologies. When done well, the collective outcomeis a vibrant ecosystem that enables the brand to become part of the fabric of consumers’ lives. In thefollowing sections, we endeavor to define each factor, describe it in more detail, and offer relevantcase studies for brands owned by public (covered) companies and select private companies. Serve Vital Consumer Needs Next-generation brands serve vital consumer needs, fulfilling essential functional and emo-tional roles. What Do We Mean?Next-generation brands serve vital and often insufficiently met consumer needs and, thus, are born by identifying, early and often, latent needs, aspirations, use-cases, and occasions. They arethen given form and potential by being configured to serve key functional roles such as nutrition,health and wellness, and productivity, and emotional roles such as self-expression, confidence,and companionship. Positioning on “higher order” functional and emotional roles helps ensure that the brand’s ad-dressable market is large and, when the brand is differentiated—via quality, service, and value—isa precursor and lays the foundation for the brand’s in-market success. Serving such higher orderroles can lend weight and duration to a value proposition, important in helping a brand break intoand ultimately surpass the competition in the category. Case Study: CelsiusThe Celsius story is a good example of serving functional roles such as fitness to help enable cat- egory penetration. In this case, Celsius has helped transform the energy drink category by posi-tioning the brand to broaden the addressable market and expand the range of use-cases. Before Celsius, the energy drink category was dominated by Monster and Red Bull, beveragesthat typically contained sugar and were relatively high in calories. The brands were supported byhigh-octane marketing (extreme sports and entertainment) to drive impulse purchases through on-the-go channels (convenience stores). Partly as a result, the category and, more specific, thesebrands tended to resonate with more idiosyncratic use-cases (quick boost) and a restrictive demo-graphic (primarily male). Fast forward to 2020, when Celsius began rapidly scaling—for the first time achieving reportedsales of more than $100 million—through serving unmet functional consumer needs. Its bever-ages were sugar-free, low (or no) calorie, and, perhaps more important, uniquely formulated tobe better-for-you (seven essential vitamins, no HFCS or aspartame) and functional (metabolismenhancing, calorie burning). The brand was marketed in a more approachable fashion; that is, as afitness-oriented beverage that could (and should) be integrated into consumers’ everyday hydra-tion regimens across a wider range of use-cases (around a workout, with a meal, as a pick-me-up).The sticking point being