Olly Dixon started Something & Nothing in 2017 with Rupert Pugsley — basically a side hustle next to the pub he ran and the branding agency he owned. It launched as a “seltzer” in the UK, but between White Claw's hard seltzer invasion and their own boozy spritz line, everyone got confused about what was really in the can. So they renamed the whole thing Premium Soda and killed the alcoholic line for good once the data showed customers were using it to drink less, not more.
Along the way: exploding cans, a crash course in can printing, a stubborn refusal to look at a single competitor while building the brand, and a scrappy “Not Pop” campaign with huge results. Now the U.S. is about 70% of the business and growing 90% a year, right in the middle of the modern soda boom.
🔧 Category Rebrand, Told Straight - Why “seltzer” stopped working once White Claw hit the UK and their own alcoholic spritz line blurred the message, and how “Premium Soda” fixed it
📊 Killing the Alcoholic Product Line - The real-wine, real-saké RTD spritz that didn't sell, ran into US state alcohol law complexity, and got scrapped once customer data pointed to alcohol replacement as the bigger opportunity
🤝 Designing Blind to the Category - Why Olly refused to look at a single competitor's soda while building the brand, and how a DJ-and-remix mentality shaped flavor development instead
⚙️ Multi-Country Production Architecture - How a single UK-blended flavor “compound” ships to co-packers chosen for water quality in Shropshire, Amsterdam and Vermont, and the carbonation science behind matching taste across markets
📈 Early CPG Near-Disasters - The batch of Hibiscus & Rose that fermented and started exploding in the warehouse, and the crash course in can printing that followed
🎯 Marketing Without a Budget - The "Not Pop" out-of-home campaign that rode the crowded, pop-named modern soda category to a 150% sales lift in some Whole Foods stores, plus early experiments pairing each flavor with its own Spotify playlist
Whether you're renaming a category, killing a product line that isn't working, or building a brand by deliberately ignoring the competition, Olly's frameworks will help you turn creative instinct into operational discipline.
Perfect for: Beverage and CPG founders, brand-to-operator transitions, category creators, international expansion operators
Guest: Olly Dixon - Co-Founder, Something & Nothing
Host: Samantha Rose - Managing Partner, Hologram Capital & Founder, Endless Commerce
