No Confet-tea For #DryJanuary

Each year kicks off with gallons of alcohol, innumerable embraces, and millions of resolutions made across the globe. Get fitter, spend more time with family, take a vacation, invest time in a passion project, start saving — just some of what we hear every January.

Chuck Palahniuk said, ‘People don’t want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their mess cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.’

And yet, each day, we attempt to find a solution. A fix for anything and everything, from wrinkled shirts to cancer and more.

In one such attempt, we witnessed the birth of a trending resolution that has snowballed into a movement: #DryJanuary. Initiated in 2013 as a public health campaign, the concept involves abstaining from alcohol for all 31 days of January. Although fulfilling the challenge is said to result in possible weight loss, better sleep as well as higher savings, a majority of the recent participants of #DryJanuary consider it as a period for their body to recover after heavy alcohol consumption during the holiday season.

With the onset of 2021, hard seltzer brand Truly was geared to launch their line of lemonade tea hard seltzers. Amidst building a hype for their release, Truly came across #DryJanuary and decided to share their own take on it, revealing their #TryJanuary campaign.

The commencement of #TryJanuary was targeted towards the 62% of millennials over the age of 21 that didn’t intend on participating in the #DryJanuary movement, a huge potential market that Truly tapped into. Alongside this, offering free branded merchandise as an incentive is a strategy that continues to aid the brand in becoming a household name for hard seltzers, and is building awareness at a relatively low cost as compared to television or out-of-home advertising.

Given the large number of young adults who would opt for #TryJanuary over #DryJanuary, Truly’s lemonade hard seltzers were successfully launched and are a part of their mainstream offerings today. The exposure to hard seltzers is growing multifold among legal age millennial drinkers, making the brand’s campaign a very relatable and easily accessible one. Truly uses social media extensively to appeal to the ‘ideal aesthetic’ that millennials strive to see on their feed with vibrant hues and well-composed visuals, and this campaign added a feather in their cap for the same.

So while we’re 2 months into the year and you may have put off some resolutions until 2023, keep in mind that it’s ever too late! You don’t need a #TryJanuary to do something fresh, #FeelFebruary to express yourself or #UnmeasuredMarch to take a risk you’ve been longing for. Put yourself out there, and truly, carpe diem!