One of the biggest stars of country music is participating in sports drink wars.
Bodyarmor announced Monday that seven-time Grammy Award-winning singer Carrie Underwood will be its first celebrity, as the sports drink maker wants to expand its appeal. As part of the deal, Underwood will get an undisclosed stake in the company and will appear alongside James Harden in Bodyarmor Lyte’s first television campaign, which will debut on Monday during “The Bachelor.” It will also appear in the advertising of the premium sports product Bodyarmor.
“I’ve probably spent the last 15 years working on myself and falling more and more in love with health and fitness,” Underwood told CNBC. “So it relates everything and I love being able to create this great network of things related to health and fitness that happen in my life.”
Underwood joins an impressive roster of sponsors for the brand, including NBA star James Harden, PGA golfer Dustin Johnson, MLB Mike Trout, professional tennis player Naomi Osaka and football star Megan Rapinoe. The late Kobe Bryant was one of Bodyarmor’s original investors and was instrumental in adopting the main brand.
Underwood said she’s obviously not a professional athlete (though she jokes that singing can also be physically difficult), believing she can help open doors to Bodyarmor by reaching a new audience.
“I can talk to working moms and people like me because that’s what I do and that’s what I know,” she said.
“Carrie is what we’re seeing in a lot of consumers. … She’s a mother and a wife. She has two kids and she’s on the run, she’s leading this hectic lifestyle and she needs healthy hydration,” said Mike Repole, CEO and founder of Bodyarmor. .
Underwood said one of the things that was appealing about this deal is the fact that he was offered a stake in Bodyarmor.
“You want to invest personally for the company to be successful. It’s definitely a reason to just be there and be working and getting your product out to as many people as possible,” he said.
Underwood’s business portfolio has grown rapidly over the past decade. The country singer gained fame in 2005 after winning American Idol. It has sold over 64 million records worldwide. She has appeared on television, in the movies, is the voice of NBC’s Sunday Night football and is also a best-selling author.
She has also been very active in the gym. Nearly six years ago, he ventured into fitness clothing with the launch of CALIA, a training line created exclusively for Dick Sporting Goods. The Lifestyle brand has been a quick success, becoming the second most popular female brand of sporting goods retailer. In December, Dick’s unveiled its first pop-up stores with the brand.
This year, Underwood introduced a fitness app called FIT52 in collaboration with longtime personal trainer Eve Oreland. He was inspired by Underwood’s passion for an active lifestyle, he said.
The singer’s latest partnership aligns perfectly with her personal mission to ensure that health and well-being are at the forefront of everything she does.
“I’m lucky to have been able to turn my passion for health and fitness into a business model and a personal brand of which I can be behind and be proud,” he said.
Bodyarmor was founded in 2011 by veteran beverage entrepreneur and industry Mike Repole, who previously helped found Glaceau, the maker of Vitaminwater. The brand is the third largest sports drink on the market, with 13% of sales in the category, according to data from Beverage Digest.
Bodyarmor earned $ 1 billion in sales last year, 70 percent more than in 2019, Repole said. Sales were helped, in part, by Coca-Cola’s purchase of a minority stake in 2018, which has led to greater visibility and distribution.
“They’re definitely one of the fastest growing sports drinks,” said Duane Stanford, editor and editor of Beverage Digest. “Actually, they’ve been able to maintain significant growth rates, which has been really interesting.”
Repole’s goal is to dethrone industry leader Gatorade, which is owned by PepsiCo and controls 70% of the market.
“I wanted to be the number one sports drink before 2025,” he said. “I said it in 2011. A lot of people laughed.”
“Gatorade right now is five times bigger than our size,” he continued. “Ten years ago it was 500 billion more than our size. So we’ve narrowed the gap, from 500 billion to five times our size.”
Taking the brand more traditionally through recommendations like Underwood’s is one of the ways he hopes to get there.
“Other traditional sports drinks don’t come out of the athletes’ box and you know Bodyarmor has always been innovative has always been different, ”he said.
Disclosure: Comcast’s NBCUniversal is the parent of CNBC.