The infamous, creator-led, Prime Hydration company has been valued in the billions by several outlets in the last few months. Although it is a private brand the numbers don’t mean as much as a public company, and new investors can change that pretty easily, but I digress. The frontrunners of the brand, Logan Paul & KSI both have a 20% share in the company, with the other 60% being owned and managed by Congo. This is great news for every party, really. Logan Paul and KSI push the product to their massive audiences respectively, which includes Paul’s United States audience, and KSI’s English audience which has cemented the brand’s legacy, right? Is anyone seeing a problem here?
(If you’re curious about how Logan Paul and KSI even made enough money off YouTube to go into a business venture like this, check out my other article about “How YouTubers Make Money Posting Their Hobbies”.)
What Happens If They Leave?
Although the Prime brand itself launched in 2022 which means it’s very unlikely for either of the frontrunners to leave, it makes you think a little bit about it. Do people care about Prime products if the faces that launched it are gone? Sure, the 10% coconut water flavoring helps out with making it a bit unique, but as a hydration tool, it doesn’t offer much to benefit healthy kids (the biggest target market) who already drink water, according to Poison Control.
The average person doesn’t even need Gatorade after a workout unless you just finished something like an Ironman. Although I’m not going to delve into the specifics of the ingredients of Prime versus Gatorade for sugar and artificial sweeteners, I’m a proponent of telling people to drink water after a workout. It’s cheaper, not too sweet or salty, and a cold glass of water will always be one of the most refreshing things on earth.
Prime Is a Good Product
Now, have I bought Prime before? Yes. I like it, I think it’s a good product, and tastes better than something like Liquid IV, and is good competition for the market. I am not a Prime hater and I like that its not own by a massive corporation like Pepsi or Coca-Cola. But that’s also what makes it a little scary. If Logan Paul and KSI decide to retire from content creation, they will start to fade out of the spotlight, and that will tank sales of Prime. They have created an upside-down pyramid where if the bottom block is pulled out, the entire thing falls.
Do I think this will happen soon? No, definitely not. The duo are still very relevant and arguably near, at, or just past the peak of their career. The thing to keep in mind is that in order to push a product and be a celebrity, you have to still be exactly that, a celebrity. What recommend is to look into giving the reigns to someone else over time, unless Logan Paul and KSI ever plan to leave the internet for employment. The owners of Prime don’t have the same advertising and marketing budget that their older brothers and sisters in the beverage industry do.
The Budgets Are Very Different
This is important because it makes it much harder to stay relevant when you cannot spend over 2 billion dollars on naming rights for the Super Bowl halftime show for a decade. That was exactly what Pepsi did for 2012-2022, which is no small figure. Marketing is what sets these large companies apart, and it’s not something to shy away from. Other sugary hydration beverage companies have a stronger foot in the market and don’t have one central spokesperson and rely on them heavily. Prime is a great idea and I want more creators to start disrupting the industry a little bit, such as MrBeasts’s Feastables, which I wrote about here. These creators just need to be thinking about the long-term plan of their business, otherwise, it will be a flash in the pan of a long-standing market. Gatorade and Powerade aren’t going away anytime soon, but hopefully, neither will Prime.
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