The fourth-largest beverage brand in the U.S. market just launched an energy drink, which is cool, but shouldn’t industry professionals be more interested in what the Gatorade Fast Twitch product innovation means to PepsiCo’s entire sports nutrition portfolio strategy?

Isotonic beverages, sports drinks, hydration products…whatever you call them, blurring lines and new positionings are creating a fascinating CPG category. The hydration CPG category isn’t so much about invention today as it is about innovation. Invention is creating a totally new thing. Gatorade was something totally new. Today, if you want to create something that has a lasting impact on the CPG world, it needs to be combo of “new” yet “familiar.” Do something too closely related to the market leader and people won’t take notice but do something too novel and they’re confused. In the CPG industry, most successful products do not arrive out of nowhere; they’re remixes of existing ones.