Georgian Bay Spirit Co: Sampling, Quantitative Research & Ethnography

While Georgian Bay Spirit Co is well known for its “Smash” gin & vodka cocktails, they wanted to better understand the surging “Hard Iced Tea” category and address performance concerns for their own Hard Iced Tea product. In order to understand both the Hard Iced Tea category, as well as perceptions and feelings toward Georgian Bay’s new Iced Tea liquid we preformed 3 separate studies:

•      Large-Scale Product Tasting / Sampling:  We allowed regular consumers of the Hard Iced Tea category to perform a taste-test against Georgian Bay’s new product to understand how it stacked up.

•       Quantitative Research: We spoke with ~14K RTD users to understand usage and perceptions of the category so the client could understand their current consumer as well as where they might be able to source volume.

•       Ethnography: We set-up an online diary model with 50 consumers of the Hard Iced Tea category where existing users would walk us through their path-to-purchase at store, how they navigate and shop the pre-mixed cocktail section and how / where they usually enjoy the product in their everyday lives.

Large-scale sampling was conducted during the height of COVID-19, when in-person research was shut down and new solutions needed to be found.  Our team met deadlines by quickly adjusting to home delivery of the product and online data collection, surpassing client expectations and delivering on their key objectives.