Executive Briefing
The art of selling a feeling
Recess, Taika, and other “functional” beverages claim to make you feel something. How to build a brand around that?
By Dan Frommer on Sunday, June 21, 2020 at 5:30 pm
What does it look like to feel relaxed? Cool, calm, and focused? Is it, perhaps, a pastel, airbrushed human brain sprouting blades of glass, quenched by a single drop of peach-ginger dew?
Welcome to the weird world of Recess, the New York-based startup that’s trying to build for the “anxiety economy” what Red Bull has made for the action-obsessed: A beverage brand that speaks to something much bigger.
“Stress and anxiety are one of the biggest issues, I believe, of the 21st Century,” Recess founder and CEO Benjamin Witte tells me. “I think that people are looking for things that help them deal with the world around them.”
Recess is a canned sparkling tea of sorts, now in six varieties, including new and improved coconut lime, black cherry, and blood orange flavors that debuted last month.
It is also part of the trend of what’s called “functional” beverages. These are spiked with substances that are, in theory, supposed to improve your physical or mental well-being. They range from simple collagen-infused bottled water to more hardcore shots like Magic Mind, “the world’s first productivity drink.”
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Hi, I’m Dan Frommer and this is The New Consumer, a publication about how and why people spend their time and money.
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