221BC Kombucha is a family-owned business dedicated to promoting healthy lifestyles. Aneta and Eric Lundquist founded the company to inspire people to live their best lives one step at a time. Drinking kombucha, a nutrient-dense beverage with many health benefits, is a gateway habit to a healthy lifestyle. Kombucha is a bubbly, fermented tea with a host of health benefits. The basic ingredients in kombucha are yeast, sugar, and black tea. SCOBY, which stands for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, is an ingredient used in the production of kombucha. The mix is set aside for a week or more to ferment. Simply put, fermentation is where the activity of friendly bacteria, yeasts, and probiotic enzymes eat the sugar in tea, transforming it into kombucha. The process is similar to how cabbage is preserved as sauerkraut or kimchi, or how milk is turned into yogurt. The tasty end product has B vitamins, probiotics, caffeine, and small amounts of alcohol. Kombucha has a long history. In fact, the name 221BC highlights the first known reference to the brewing of kombucha in China more than 2,000 years ago! It was known as the "Tea of Immortality"! Aneta explains, "Kombucha is an ancient drink from Asia. The recipe is over 2,000 years old. That's where our name came from221BC stands for '221 before Christ.' We use high-quality organic tea leaves and sugar and ferment that in a culture, then add fresh-pressed, raw, organic unprocessed juices. It creates probiotics, enzymes, B vitamins. There's a trace amount of alcoholless than .5 percentbut it's not considered an alcoholic beverage" (personal communication). Today, the kombucha market is growing rapidly. Globally, the market is projected to reach nearly $5 billion by 2025 (MarketWatch, 2019). Why the rapid growth? It goes beyond the popularity of beverage alternatives to soda. Kombucha purports to have many health benefits, especially benefits for gut health. Advocates say kombucha aids digestion, rids the body of toxins, and boosts energy. It's also said to boost immunity, support weight loss, ward off high blood pressure and heart disease, and even prevent cancer. Growing up in Poland, fermenting foods was a regular part of Aneta Lundquist's life. Every fall, her family harvested food from the garden. Some of that food was stored in underground cellars, while the rest was fermented in jars. Culturally, food was viewed as medicine for common ailments. After coming to the US, Aneta realized that she didn't feel the energy she once felt. She committed to eating clean foods and using nutrient-dense foods as a core commitment to her family's health. She began brewing her own kombucha at home, experimenting with ingredients like bee pollen, turmeric, ginger, and matcha to influence the flavor and nutrition of her home brew. As the family transformed their eating habits, their health also improved dramatically, convincing Aneta's husband, Eric, that clean eating and kombucha should be a way of life. Today, Aneta defines herself as a fermentarian; fluent in the language of good bacteria, she feels a natural connection to and understanding of the complex world of microbes. She's become obsessed with nature and the power of food to support a healthy life. With this goal in mind, she and Eric decided to begin 221BC Kombucha. Their mission goes beyond selling kombucha. Kombucha is simply one step that can serve as a gateway to healthy living. 221BC's product line offers several unique flavor blends, including Berry Hibiscus

Grapefruit

Bee Pollen

Ginger

MoringaLavendar

Orange Turmeric

Jun Honey Matcha

Lemon Chlorophyll

Acai Beet

Reishi Chai Core

Yerba Power Green Core

Yerba Power Berry Core.

221BC is sold throughout Florida and in a few major regional markets throughout the US, as well as abroad. Its channel of distribution is indirect in that it is sold through retailers such as Publix and Whole Foods. It is also sold on tap at health food bars and yoga studios. The company uses a premium pricing strategy with each bottle priced at or around $3.99 to $4.29. Competitively, 221BC is a relatively small player in a market overflowing with major brands like GT's Living Foods and Health-Ade as well as regional and niche brands. The company plans to use social media marketing to facilitate achieving its marketing objectives. Throughout an ongoing case study in this book, we'll walk side by side with Aneta and Eric as 221BC plans its social media marketing strategy. Currently, 221BC is active in the Social Community zone. You can follow 221BC and Aneta: Instagram: @kombucha221bc and @aneta_lundquist

Facebook: www.facebook.com/kombucha221BC/

Twitter: @kombucha221bc

In Chapter 1, we learned that social media marketing can be used for promotion and branding, market research, service recovery, retailing and e-commerce, and sales. 221BC's specific objectives fall into these categories: to increase brand awareness

to promote the brand's image and position the brand as superior to national brands

to encourage product trial

to facilitate purchase

to reinforce brand loyalty.

Discussion Questions:

1. What is 221BC's marketing mix?
2. Why might 221BC be interested in using social media marketing as a promotional strategy?
3. In which zones of social media marketing is 221BC active? How could the company use the other zones?
4. What are 221BC's social media marketing objectives? How can social media facilitate these objectives