Lots of zeros for Athletic Greens

What's behind the surprising sales slump?

Author

Daniel Cruz
August 1st, 2024

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📈 Number of the week

137 000 000

The number of times TikTok was downloaded in Q1 2024 alone. Currently, the platform has a 1.04 billion monthly users worldwide. Since TikTok Shop launched in September last year, the social media platform has transformed into an e-commerce powerhouse, generating more than US$11 billion in gross merchandise volume by the end of 2023.

💫 Highlights

🌿️ $1,000,000,000 / How Athletic Greens became a grown-up company.

💫 Highlights

  • First, it’s about sales, then it’s about brand.

  • AG, like many of the greats, was built on the back of a media arbitrage (high reach & low CAC). For them, it was podcast sponsorships.

  • AG sells you what you want (an easy way to compensate for all the vegetables that you’re not eating, but that you should be eating), not what you need (vegetables).

  • AG does not run any Facebook ads at the moment of publishing.

    Let’s take a second to appreciate the glowup 👇

⚓ Anchoring
Sit down for a masterclass in anchoring.

The One Time Purchase is more expensive than the Single Subscription (Most Popular) and doesn’t even include the 60-day money-back guarantee, nor does it come with the tin can and the shaker bottle. This is a brilliant way to position the Single Subscription as a “no-brainer” (I can just cancel it or get a refund. AG clearly still holds on to that direct marketing DNA.

The Double Subscription is aimed at couples making a health-related decision together. It also serves to anchor the Single Subscription as the choice in the middle (be honest, how many times have you bought the middle choice without deeper thinking?)

If AG, a single product green superfood powder, can create three different choices with their product, any brand can.

🌟 Differentiate
AG is not the first green superfood powder to exist. However, they did find a way to “DTCfy” their brand at the right time. In a sea of sameness, AG became a category of its own.

🎙 Podcast sponsorships done right

“I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually Athletic Greens, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system.”

Tim Ferris

“They replaced multi-vitamin for me, and went far beyond that [...]”

Lex Fridman

“I’ve been taking Athletic Greens since 2012”

Andrew Huberman

👉 These are all podcasters with a deep tie to their audience.

AG makes sure that all their sponsorships hold some variation of “I take Athletic Greens to [...]”

This is brilliant. As an advertiser, you receive more buy-in from a first-person (I take) sponsorship than a third-person (this product allows you to) sponsorship. You essentially unlock first-level access to the audience’s trust.

As a brand, you should try to build this kind of report with any influencer promoting your brand. Send them free products, and be upfront with them that you only want them to endorse you if they actually love it. Have influencers talk about your brand in the first person; your CAC will go down significantly.

📭 Multiple touchpoints
AG understands who their power user is, and they get in front of them, a lot.

They have sponsored:

  • 88 / 535 episodes (16%) of the Tim Ferris Show.

  • 35 / 75 episodes (46%) of the Uberman Lab podcast.

  • 38 / 254 episodes (15%) of the Lex Fridman podcast.

📈 Expand, gradually

AG has gradually expanded their target market as they reach market saturation.

  • 2011: Performance athletes

  • 2015: High-income knowledge workers with an itch for performance

  • 2022: Anybody / They are moving away from the “Athletic” in their name by calling their product “AG1.

  • 2023 to now: AG1 has expanded their marketing efforts with influencer marketing significantly. Apart from partnering with athletes and celebrities, they have diversified their influencer pool and leveraging more user-generated content to showcase their product's appeal to a much wider demographic.

💡 Takeaway

Athletic Greens is ready for its next phase of growth.

It has successfully rebranded to AG1, dropping the "Athletic" from its name, and expanded its audience base to include all those who are conscious about living healthily.

Their CEO, Chris Ashenden, is clear on the fact that any ambassador of AG should be an AG customer. This subtle nuance is the game-changer. It gives them first-party (I) sponsorships, which builds trust.