SME Magazine caught up with Milly Tuck, Head of Marketing at Cawston
Press to find out about the company’s growing success.
1. Milly, can you start by giving us some background about Cawston
Press. Who are the people behind it and what are its business
objectives?
Cawston Press was founded 30 years ago by Mark Palmer and Stephen Unwin.
The brand was born in 1986 with a lot of apple trees, and we have been pressing
fruit ever since. We make delicious soft drinks with real ingredients, just like you’d
make at home, inspired by the kitchen garden. Our motto, No Jiggery Pokery,
reflects how our drinks are made with pressed fruit, no added sugar, no added
sweeteners, no concentrates and no shortcuts! We do things simply yet properly,
with around one and a half apples pressed into every can of our Sparkling range.
Since the start, we have been making life hard for ourselves.
Some drink makers use concentrate, and have very little fruit in their drinks. Whilst this would make our lives a lot easier (and our finance director a lot happier), we don’t like the idea of taking shortcuts or fruit fakery, and our drinks wouldn’t taste nearly as good as
they do! We have always stuck to our core principles of No Jiggery Pokery, and
continue to create great tasting drinks with simple ingredients, which is what sets
us apart from other soft drinks brands.
2. What were the challenges in the early years and how were they
overcome?
We launched our best-selling flavour, Rhubarb, ten years ago, which was seen as a
strange and uncommon flavour back then. No one else was using Rhubarb in
drinks, but we wanted to stand out and be different. With previous flavour trends
within the drinks category consisting of orange, lemon, apple and lime, the rare
ingredient of rhubarb was then more commonly found within the likes of
puddings and yoghurts. We had to entice people to buy the drink and get to grips
with the flavour, because, once it is consumed once, people want to buy it again!
The success all came down to our Sparkling Rhubarb not only being intriguing,
but most importantly tasting delicious. A decade later, we are now the No.1 brand
in Rhubarb, with 71% market share, despite a number of competitors
in the space!
3. Cawston Press recently linked up with Disney’s Inside Out 2 as the
chosen drinks brand. How did that come about?
We were delighted to have the opportunity to work with Disney and Pixar to
inject even further joy to our much-loved Fruit Water range and spread the power
of goodness to Disney and Pixar cinema fans across the UK. It is the biggest brand partnership Cawston Press has executed to date, and as an independently owned British soft drinks brand, we’re immensely proud to partner with such a loved, iconic brand.
I was at Merlin Entertainments for eight years before joining the team at Cawston
Press, and so understood the power of IP and tapping into the emotional
connection that Disney and Pixar create through their incredible storytelling
capabilities. Our Fruit Waters have been around for ten years now, and we felt we
needed to create some buzz for the product and celebrate our brand truths.
As if by magic, when I started conversations with Disney, they shared that Inside
Out 2 was in the pipeline for 2025. Seeing as we get emotional about our
ingredients, it only felt right to create our ‘Goodness from the Inside Out’
campaign – and it just so happened to be the perfect fit for our Fruit Waters
audience!
This special partnership sees Cawston Press’ first collaboration at a global IP scale
and integration across our whole marketing plan to target both on-trade and
off-trade customers. The ‘Goodness from the Inside Out’ campaign features a
nationwide cinema ad, on-pack promotion, large format OOH, shopper
marketing, an on-trade restaurant activation and a consumer activation. It’s also
excitingly the first time Cawston Press has reached a cinema audience!
4. What challenges did a small independently owned British soft drinks
brand face working with a multinational mass media conglomerate? What did you learn during the course of the partnership?
One of the challenges was around ensuring our brand identity remained strong
and visible. In partnering with Disney, our role was to create buzz for the film
ahead of the theatrical release date, and we were fortunate to be able to leverage
assets like Joy, the film’s main character, who is beloved by many and aligns
perfectly with our brand values.
However, the challenge was maintaining a balance, so that Cawston Press and
our brand truths weren’t overshadowed. We had to work diligently to ensure that
our campaign messaging was engaging and resonated with our audience. The
solution was to develop an integrated proposition that consistently brought
everything back to our core campaign, ‘Goodness from the Inside Out’. This
approach allowed us to stay true to our brand while effectively collaborating with
a major player like Disney.
For an independently owned British brand, to partner not only with Disney, but
for such a huge film launch with Inside Out 2, shows that anything is possible
when the brand fit aligns perfectly! We knew this particular partnership would
resonate strongly with our audience, with both brands holding a dedicated value
to emotions and understanding that it’s really what’s on the inside that counts. It’s
also been great to see the success of the film launch over the summer, as it broke
records to become the highest-grossing animated film of all time!
5. What campaigns do you have coming up in the near future?
We are currently running our ‘Life’s Best Pressed’ media campaign, celebrating
the ten year anniversary of our best-selling Sparkling Rhubarb drink. It is the
flavour that we are well and truly loved for, yet was considered an unexpected and
unfamiliar surprise at launch.
With previous flavour trends within the drinks category consisting of orange, lemon, apple and lime, the rare ingredient of rhubarb would’ve once been more commonly found within the likes of puddings and yoghurts. A decade later,
Cawston Press is outperforming the drinks of well established brands across
supermarket shelves with Sparkling Rhubarb, and has witnessed a 36% growth in
retail value over the past year for its Sparkling Rhubarb single can.
The media campaign is being executed across ATL media via OOH advertising
including billboards (6 sheets) and London underground advertising panels
across London, and is further supported through shopper marketing across Co-op
and Waitrose stores, PR, sampling, paid social media and CRM.
We also recently launched our ‘Back to School, made easy’ digital campaign
which focuses on our child-friendly, school approved Fruit Waters range. Parents
are more and more often looking for drinks that aren’t full of sugar, and are
created with clean ingredients to add in their children’s lunch boxes or for an after
school pick me up. Our Fruit Waters are made simply with pressed fruits, no
added sugar, no sweeteners and no shortcuts. All Cawston Press Fruit Waters
contain at least 40% fruit juice, which is then simply blended with still water, and
are gluten-free and vegan friendly, with the sweetness coming entirely from
pressed fruit and purees.
6. How important is sustainability in the business?
Sustainability is integral to our business. Nature provides us with all of our
ingredients, so it’s imperative that we play our part to help protect the
environment and the natural world. We take immense pride in the quality of our
ingredients, crafted with care to produce delicious drinks.
We take care to do things properly, sticking to our No Jiggery Pokery promise
whilst also importantly maintaining socially and environmentally responsible
practices. We have a ‘Pressing for Better’ sustainability action plan, which is part of
our commitment to do further good for people and the planet. The plan focuses
on ten commitments (five people-focused and five planet-focused) linked to three
critical United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Climate Action,
Responsible Consumption & Production, and Good Health & Well-being.
After two years in the making, this year we were delighted to finally be able to call ourselves a B-Corporation, which was a proud moment for the Cawston Press team and founders after such a group effort to achieve the certification. Like any business, we are on a journey with our sustainability strategy, but we are committed to learning and are striving towards being more socially and environmentally responsible.
7. More generally, what do you think the secret is of the company’s
success?
Staying true to our core principles has been fundamental to our growth and
long-term success. Since the start, we have made life hard for ourselves by
avoiding concentration and shortcuts, and prioritising making great-tasting
products at an accessible price point without ever compromising on quality. This
has set us apart in a crowded market, and we are seeing our brand awareness
grow year on year, not just in the London bubble but all across the UK. Our ability
to take risks and offer something different, as shown by our best-selling Sparkling
Rhubarb drink, combined with our focus on best ingredients and sustainability,
resonates with consumers who are increasingly looking for healthier, more
responsible options.
8. Where do you hope the business will be in five or ten years’ time?
While a lot can change in five years, one thing remains certain: Cawston Press will
continue crafting delicious soft drinks without compromising on quality. Our
commitment to great taste, with No Jiggery Pokery, will remain at the heart of
everything we do.
I would love to see Cawston Press Sparkling Rhubarb sold in nearly every corner
shop across the UK. It’s my absolute favourite drink, and everyone I introduce it to
says the same! 
Over the next five years, we’ll keep the Cawston Press brand vibrant and relevant
by investing in both brand development and product innovation, exploring new
flavours and exciting new categories—but I can’t give too much away! What’s
great is that we’ll not just be growing—we’ll be doing it responsibly, with our
Pressing for Better strategy guiding us at every step.
