• by Erin Everhart , Staff Writer, Yesterday

It’s undeniable the rise of brands hitching themselves to the sports wagon. It makes sense. Live sports is arguably the last truly premium inventory for TV advertisers. As brands scurry to weed out garbage inventory and funnel dollars into areas where people are engaged, it’s natural they turn to live sports to make the most with the dollars they have.

Sure, it’s easy to throw money for logo rights or a generic voiceover to be the official “whatchamacallit for “whateveritis,” but marketing dollars are scarce nowadays. So, the smart brands get scrappy. They look outside the stereotypical mainstream sports, finding smaller sports that align with their brand values. They find ways to activate IRL, becoming engrained with the sports, the athletes, and the fans.

Oakberry is one of those brands.

In less than a decade, Oakberry has gone from a single shop in Brazil to 900 locations in more than 50 countries. As they expand into the U.S. market, they’re not only partnering with elite athletes like Aryna Sabalenka, they’re eyeing niche, aspirational sports like tennis, but also Formula One and sailing, to not just sell their signature acai bowls but position themselves as the lifestyle fuel for high performance.

How do you take a single ingredient and turn it into a global lifestyle brand? And how do you balance an aspirational message while still being accessible to the mainstream?

In this week’s Brand Insider, we go 1:1 with Bruno Cardinali, Global CMO for Oakberry, to see what’s all the buzz about this little berry. Listen here.