Oliver Dixon is the co-founder of the UK-based premium soda brand Something & Nothing, which was launched in 2017. Below, Oliver explains the company’s 2025 summer marketing plans, including how and why their email campaigns tap into broader cultural trends with cocktail recipes, city neighborhood guides and much more. He also gives a sneak peek into Something & Nothing’s three new summer flavors.
What’s the idea behind Something & Nothing?
We make premium sodas using only natural ingredients - no added sugar, no sweeteners, and nothing fake. We use grape juice and lemon juice to create the body of the drink, and the lead flavors for all the drinks are inspired by travel. Yuzu is currently one of our most popular flavors. We also have pineapple and pink grapefruit, cucumber, hibiscus and rose, ginger and lime, and we’re launching three more flavors this year…
What inspired you to start the company?
I come from a branding, communications and cultural background. I worked at fashion and spirit brands and before that at Dazed & Confused magazine. I was all about using culture to connect brands with consumers in a very authentic way. So with Something & Nothing, I wanted to create a product and a brand that would create an emotional connection. A brand that works very hard for you without necessarily having to spend lots on marketing.
On a personal level, I was also involved in a bar in East London and I wanted to stop drinking. I was looking for a good drink to have in that sort of convivial environment, but soft drinks had boring flavors, were full of sugar, and nothing had changed for decades.
Traditional sodas are full of sugar, and then a lot of the new ‘better for you’ sodas have Stevia in it, which to me had a very unpleasant aftertaste. So it was about ensuring it was all natural ingredients, and using the juices, extracts, and botanicals to create that more elevated flavor profile.
I essentially realized there was space for a grownup, more elevated soft drink that didn’t use added sugar, didn’t use sweeteners, and had flavors that could work well with food, but could also mix well with alcohol and, of course, be great on its own.
Can you tell us about your digital marketing strategy?
I made a decision early on to invest heavily in retention rather than acquisition, which is probably unusual and back-to-front for brands of our size. But we find that that works really well. Retaining and engaging our community is really valuable for us, because then when we drop a new flavor or run a promotion, we get a profound, strong reaction. Email is a massive part of this strategy.
Walk us through your email marketing approach.
The brand that we’ve created is all about creating a deep emotive connection with our community. And email is the most valuable channel for us in that sense.
People can sign up to our newsletter without having made a purchase, but a pretty high percentage of people have made a purchase. Initially, they’ll get a welcome email which talks about our ethos, a little bit about the brand, the quality of the drinks, and the natural ingredients.
But then the trick is keeping the content interesting! You can't keep telling people that you only use natural ingredients and no added sugar and no sweeteners, because that would get boring. So we treat our emails like a magazine editorial. Our team member Megan acts as Something & Nothing’s editor in chief – she does all the research, curating and writing.
How do you strike a balance between storytelling and sales?
We have our transactional ‘nuts and bolts’ emails – i.e. our abandoned cart reminders, the welcome email, etc. But then all other emails are editorial with a commercial element. They all feature buy buttons and we're often promoting something. But we don't send emails with just ‘Here's 15% off.’ We always want to give something more.
I always think: What right do I have to be in someone's mental space? There's only so much you can talk about in terms of products, your credentials, the brand, what you believe in. It can become a bit navel gazing. So as a team, we're very interested in culture – and that's our way of sharing our ethos.
When you’re creating discoveries for people, they respond. If you read something interesting in our newsletter, you might think, ‘Oh, that's cool’ and not ‘I must buy that drink immediately.’ But on a subconscious level, it’s an emotive connection that you’re reinforcing constantly.
I'm sure some people see our emails, look for the discount code and move on. But I know some people read the longer form content. People get in touch to say, “I bought the cookbook that you recommended in your newsletter”. People really react to them. Our open rate and the success we have when we launch something new – the engagement’s always really strong.
And it feels right. Unless you've got a huge marketing budget, this is your way to communicate in a relatively cost-effective way. But you've got to put in the work in terms of getting the right people and building that brand ethos, so you’re writing about the right stuff and bringing the right discovery moments to your consumers.
Tell us about your amazing neighborhood guides!
Our brand platform is ‘Escape the everyday’ which has multiple layers to it. It’s about giving our community interesting, inspiring, and engaging stories, content and ideas, which is mainly driven through culture.
A good example of that are our neighborhood guides. We've covered loads of places: Philadelphia, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Tel, Aviv. We’ll pick a neighborhood and then an establishment in that neighborhood, whether it's a cafe or a little gallery or a boutique hotel or a store. And Megan will wrap a story around that neighborhood and then feature a place that sells our product.
Our network, friends, and customers constantly send us places around the world. We call our consumers ‘the creatively minded’. They might be a lawyer or an accountant, but they have a different way of looking at the world. They’re looking for interesting places, maybe healthier products with more interesting flavors. It's like the old Mars slogan ("Work, Rest and Play"). These are the neighborhoods in which our community are living, working and playing. They've got a favorite coffee shop, so those are the places where we want to turn up.
This neighborhood strategy permeates the whole business. Most soft drinks brands launch and then look for retail and bigger accounts straight away. But we’re very consumer and community focused.
Can you give us a sneak peak at Something & Nothing’s new summer flavors?
May through mid September are our biggest trading months, when we lean into summer. And in early summer this year we’re going to launch three new flavors. One is a Sicilian lemon iced tea, which blends black tea and rooibos. The second is mango and Thai basil – Thai basil has a very strong aniseed taste, so it’s quite an unusual drink. I think this could be the first drink that we make that divides people! But it’s an amazing drink. And the third is an orange and mandarin flavor – the ultimate orange drink. It’s got zest. It’s got juice. It’s got extracts. Mandarin is a slightly tarter orange, so it adds a bit more depth. It’s a delicious, healthier orange drink.
We'll launch these flavors via our Mailchimp email campaign. We'll work with content creators to create summery imagery. We’ll also have recipes for alcoholic and non-alcoholic long-serves, and food pairings. Traditional sodas are really sweet and can overtake food flavors, but our drinks were designed to work well with food, so food pairings as well as cocktails are a big part of our summer marketing.