In this Q&A, Dave Mead, co-founder and chief marketing officer at sparkling water brand Rambler discusses the brand’s growth, marketing strategy, partnerships with charitable foundations and its new tagline Chug Life.
Sparkling water brand Rambler just needs consumers to get “the juice on their lips” to get them hooked on its brand, said Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer Dave Mead.
And plenty of consumers are. Since its launch in 2018, sales have increased 118-times with a 97.8% compound annual growth rate. Plus, in the first half of 2025, sales have increased roughly 125% year over year.
Texas-based Rambler bills itself as a “better for you” mineral water brand that’s great tasting and fun to drink. The packaging is similar to vintage beer packaging, allowing sober consumers to drink the product at a festival or event without feeling a stigma about not drinking alcohol, Mead said.
From personal connections of the three co-founders, Rambler got its product into three well-known Austin, Texas, venues: iconic restaurant Franklin Barbecue, live music venue Mohawk Austin and bodega Royal Blue Grocery, all within the first year. And from those first locations, distribution quickly scaled throughout Texas with grocer H-E-B, then regionally with Whole Foods. Rambler is now in dozens of retailers nationwide.
Mead, who has a background in photography and 25 years of advertising experience in agency and production, sat down with Chief Marketer to discuss Rambler’s growth, marketing strategy, partnerships with charitable foundations and its new tagline Chug Life.
Chief Marketer: What happened in 2023 and 2024, when your sales really took off?
Co-Founder and CMO Dave Mead: That all comes down to our national sales team winning accounts, picking up new retailers. When we picked up Kroger, they gave us 1,100 stores. There’s a bunch of retailers under the Kroger umbrella, and they gave us all of that. And so we picked up a lot of business quickly.
We’ve got a national accounts team that is out there every day trying to get us into new retailers, but there’s only annual resets. Usually, we’re pitching a retailer for an entire year before we learn if we’re going to get it or not, because there’s only so much shelf space. If they’re going to take on Rambler, it usually means they’ve got boot somebody. It’s a pretty cutthroat, difficult business.
CM: The sparkling water category also has expanded, though, since you’ve started. Maybe, they’re not booting another sparkling water?
Mead: 100%. Soda and alcohol sales are declining, and non-ALK brands are on the rise. And sparkling water is one of the biggest categories. So it might be a soft drink or it might be a different category. Stores are now expanding their sparkling water aisles. What used to be one aisle might now be two.
CM: OK, so national accounts. Anything else you want to attribute that inflection point to? Like a great marketing campaign?
Mead: We’ve been really scrappy with our marketing. Our marketing has been strategic events, sponsorships, music festivals and food festivals. But more than that, it’s digital media, digital advertising, and it is trying to find the right brand partners to have a voice for us. We have a professional BMXer here in Austin, he’s an ambassador for us. He’s been advocating for Rambler. We also have a pro skater in Los Angeles. We team up with musicians, artists and do short-term brand partnerships, where we do collaborations and create content and do giveaways.
CM: Do you think that’s unique for a brand to go that route?
Mead: I don’t think so. It’s pretty traditional and typical of a beverage brand to lean into sponsorships because it’s all about getting cans in hands. It’s about brand awareness and trial. And so getting cans in hands, large events, activations, that’s the best way to do it. But then also in terms of growing your social audience, getting in front of new audiences, that is best done through brand partnerships and key categories like music and the arts and athletes.
CM: Do you have any examples that you can share with me of a specific partnership or festival that you really saw the impact of it, of growing your business?
Mead: In 2023 we sponsored the GoPro Mountain Games, and we put 16,000 cans in hands in Vail, Colorado, over the course of a long weekend. It’s a lot of product. That’s a lot of brand awareness and a lot of trial. I guarantee you the brand awareness and the trial that we got from that weekend in Vail; I’m sure there was an uptick in sales in Colorado.
CM: What kind of lift would you expect from that? Is that something you measure or not really?
Mead: No, we just know that it works. It’s such a great product that we just need to get ‘juice on the lips,’ as we like to say, and get cans in hands.
In terms of measuring, I’ll just say that we’ve doubled our revenue every year that we’ve been in business for the most part. The last year we didn’t double, but revenue has doubled every year. Seeing our increase in sales and seeing the number of retailers that we’re picking up and knowing that we are the fastest growing sparkling water times three, based on our revenue growth, I’d say something’s working.
CM: Tell me more about your new Chug Life campaign.
Mead: That is the brainchild of Matt Owens at (brand studio) Athletics. We are the sparkling water that drinks like a beer. We wanted to create a chuggable, sessionable sparkling water. That term ‘chug’ really evokes ’70s, ’80s beer culture.
Also, one of our main competitors is Liquid Death and Chug Life just seems to fly in the face of Liquid Death. Our attitude is more of a positive outlook, and we like to suck the marrow out of life and chug life. It’s a positive message, and it’s a fun one. It also suggests: Drink a lot of this.
CM: Can you talk a little bit about how having sustainable badges on your can — American Rivers and Texas Parks & Wildlife Foundation — and when you talk to it in your messages for marketing, how do you know that that resonates and moves the needle for your brand?
Mead: When people also discover that we have a conservation partnership, it’s really what kind of seals the deal for people. And we have a lot of brand loyalty because those are the three things: We taste better, we’re well packaged and we give back.
Conversations that we have when we’re sponsoring music events or food events where that comes up in conversation, often people will say, ‘Oh, holy cow. I didn’t realize you guys support Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation in American Rivers. I love that; I love the outdoors and I’m sold.’ It’s a feather in our cap.
CM: Do you think it’s more for brands like a checkbox these days? Or do you think it is a differentiator for you and that people seek it out?
Mead: There are people who seek it out, and there are people who, once they learn that we have a conservation giveback program, that solidifies their brand loyalty.
But we don’t lead with it in our messaging. We lead with taste and minerals in our messaging. And then it’s a sub message for us that if anyone is on the fence about why they should try Rambler or why they should support Rambler, when they learn that we give back, it’s a good way to seal the deal.
CM: Why both foundations?
Mead: It was in 2019 when we were in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, with Whole Foods that we decided, we also need to partner with American Rivers or a national conservation group. As we expand and go national, there’s going to be a lot of people who don’t really care that we’re giving back to Texas. They want to know what we’re doing for them.
When we’re messaging and marketing and talking about our presence here in Texas, we lean into Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation. When we’re in New York or California or Florida or Oregon, and we’re talking about our conservation partnership, we lean into American Rivers. That’s more important to people.
CM: What do you give back?
Mead: It’s a check that we write every year to both those organizations. And it’s not a percentage of sales. Every year that we’ve been in business, it’s been scaling. The first year as a company, straight out of the gates, we gave them 5,000 bucks, which was a lot of money for us. And seven years in, we give them a lot more than that now because it was part of the deal. It was a scaling contribution.
CM: With your background as a creative, how does that benefit you as a CMO?
Mead: We’ve created a lifestyle brand. Not only are we a great tasting sparkling water, but people love our packaging. They love our social content, they love our advertising. And there’ve been a number of people to reach out to say, ‘Man, you guys, your Instagram page and your content and the creative that you guys do is fantastic. And I love your brand as much as I love the water.’
It’s something we can’t measure. It’s all about the conversations that I’ve had, and the notes we receive about how much people love our brand.
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