Introduction
A 2020 article in the University of California-San Diego’s student newspaper describes how, walking into any library or study room on campus, one would see “students holding an iconic yellow can or colored bottle” of yerba mate.Footnote 1 And in 2023, a University of California-Santa Barbara student expressed to Her Campus (according to Forbes, the publication with the largest female college audience), “If you haven’t heard of yerba mate tea by now, you have undoubtedly seen the signature bright yellow Guayakí Yerba Mate can in the hands of your fellow students.” Footnote 2 Only several decades earlier, few Americans knew about yerba mate other than travelers who had visited Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, or southern Brazil or people who knew someone from the region. Consumed as mate (pronounced mah-te) with hot water and tereré with cold water, yerba mate is a caffeinated shared beverage with deep meaning, widespread popularity, and a long history in southern South America. This essay explores how, after over a century of various entrepreneurs marketing the South American beverage in the United States as a substitute for coffee and tea, Guayakí popularized yerba mate among college students and people with creative tendenciesFootnote 3 by transforming it for American consumers.
It has long been recognized that efforts to market a foreign product without adapting it to local conditions generally fail.Footnote 4 Instead, to successfully market in new locations, a process called localization occurs, whereby the foreign product or brand is adapted and takes on new meanings in order to appeal to local consumers.Footnote 5 Multinationals market and/or tailor their offerings to fit local sensitivities, while local consumers give new meaning and significance to the products and brands.Footnote 6 This essay provides an extreme example of localization. In the case of yerba mate, an entirely new company was created in the new host country that fundamentally changed the product while preserving aspects of its narrative. In doing so, the essay exposes the role of local entrepreneurs rather than foreign multinationals or marketing agencies in reshaping a foreign commodity for the local market.Footnote 7
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Often, the foreign and exotic nature of products (the Americanness of Spam in the Philippines and the association of avocados with guacamole in the United States) play a major part in their appeal and give them meaning.Footnote 8 This is especially true for many superfoods: foods perceived as having exceptional health benefits. As Jessica Loyer and Christine Knight argue, many superfoods are from Latin America (e.g., quinoa, chia seeds, açai berries, and maca) and were generally unfamiliar to Western consumers before being marketed as having extraordinary nutritional traits based on their long history and use by Indigenous peoples. Thus, being foreign and exotic creates an aura of authenticity that gives credence to claims that the product is a superfood.Footnote 9 As Ana Fochesatto has shown, Guayakí has successfully marketed yerba mate in the United States as a superfood due to its Latin American origins and its connection to Indigenous people.Footnote 10 Furthermore, the company has also built on yerba mate’s long history in South America as a stimulant with an assortment of health benefits. By preserving and even exaggerating long-standing South American narratives about yerba mate, while radically transforming the product, Guayakí expanded yerba mate’s categorization from a hot infusion to straddling several categories (energy drink, iced tea, and functional beverage).
Consumers’ perceptions of authenticity have been central to Guayakí’s success in promoting yerba mate in the United States. Authenticity is the search for the genuine, in contrast to the false, counterfeit, and fabricated. People understand something to be authentic by comparing it to what they consider to be inauthentic. It is a social construction. The diversity of Mexican food, in particular, exposes how authenticity is a social construct. There is no single authentic Mexican food; instead, there are many different regional cuisines and variations.Footnote 11 Judgments about authenticity differ based on time, place, and one’s experiences. Authenticity implies legitimacy and quality, while in fact, it is often a “a highly negotiated interaction that represents a romanticized representation of reality.”Footnote 12 The perception of authenticity, especially as it relates to food, is particularly appealing to young and affluent consumers because of its association with quality, status, and sophistication.Footnote 13 This essay differentiates two forms of authenticity: product (yerba mate) authenticity and brand (Guayakí) authenticity.
Product authenticity means that yerba mate is perceived as an exotic and truly Latin American beverage that has real stimulating and nutritional benefits. In this case, it is approximate authenticity (connected to the place but without absolute fealty), rather than pure or literal authenticity (perceived as the genuine article).Footnote 14 The perception of authenticity surrounding foods is a rich field for study. There are no standard criteria for determining what makes a food authentic, but there are some commonalities. Authenticity often entails the rejection of industrialized, mass-produced food and is frequently associated with ethnic or exotic food that is perceived to be connected to a particular ethnic group, exposes cultural difference, and is less familiar to mainstream consumers.Footnote 15 Ironically, while the marketing of yerba mate in the United States emphasizes the beverage’s Latin American origins, it is a distorted aura of product authenticity. Not only is it a radically different beverage than what is served in South America, but it is sold premade in industrialized and mass-produced bottles and cans.
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Consumers’ perception of Guayakí’s brand authenticity has also been important for popularizing yerba mate. The brand is not only the name and logo pertaining to a product (or products) sold by a specific company, it also includes meaning based on customer perceptions and experiences.Footnote 16 Businesses have found brands to be important, because brand loyalty stimulates long-term revenue,Footnote 17 but a backlash against big brands has threatened this relationship,Footnote 18 and as Rafael Castro and Patricio Sáiz assess it, “Their strength as a sign of quality and their power to open people’s wallets are fading.”Footnote 19 As a result, consumers’ desire for authenticity has become “one of the cornerstones of contemporary marketing.”Footnote 20 Businesses promote brand authenticity, because it is a social construct that gives value to the brand by building status, enabling price premiums, and reducing competition.Footnote 21 Initially, companies focused on cultivating authenticity as a reassurance that their products were genuine, but the concept has evolved into imbuing the product with a set of values that differentiate it from other, more commercialized brands.Footnote 22 While companies can promote ideas of brand authenticity, consumers make their own judgments about authenticity based on their experiences and beliefs. Research shows that, overall, consumers tend to associate brand authenticity with a commitment to quality, sincerity, and heritage.Footnote 23 Companies contrive narratives to promote the perception of brand authenticity. As Michael B. Beverland found for luxury wines, the perception of authenticity entailed “developing a sincere story that enabled the firms to maintain quality and relevance while appearing above commercial considerations.”Footnote 24 In other words, companies with authentic brands are seen as being motivated by their passion for the product (rather than for profit) and their desire to serve their customers, and by extension, society. In this essay, I link brand authenticity with green capitalism, an idea popular at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Promoters of green capitalism want to incorporate sustainability and environmentalism into capitalism. Doing so fits with a core idea associated with brand authenticity—that a company is not motivated solely by profit and that it acts in the best interests of its consumers and the planet. Moreover, such ideas often reinforce a narrative about sincerity, quality, and heritage. In the last decades of the twentieth century, environmental concerns became more widespread, and many businesses in the United States and Europe embraced green capitalism, just like healthy foods, as a business opportunity to reach new markets, build customer loyalty, and increase revenues.Footnote 25 Organic sales in the United States surpassed $63 billion in 2021, and there has been significant growth in green construction and green advertising in recent years.Footnote 26 Underlying green capitalism is the idea that consumers are political: They make purchases based on values and ethics, not just price or lifestyle.Footnote 27 Proponents believe that environmental problems can, and should, be addressed through consumer choice.Footnote 28 Despite such optimism, scholars have found that “it remains challenging for citizens to relate their personal behavior to large-scale problems such as climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, and natural-resource depletion.”Footnote 29 While many consumers say that they are willing to buy green goods, only a small minority will accept trade-offs for the environment. Studies reveal that committed green shoppers are at most 15 percent of American consumers. Instead, most green shoppers are “convenient environmentalists”; they only consider the environmental impact if they do not have to sacrifice price, performance, or ease of use. As a result, brands need to emphasize private benefits of their products, such as quality, status, health, and emotion, and not just the environmental benefits.Footnote 30 In sum, as Geoffrey Jones concludes in his study of green entrepreneurs, “History shows that profits and sustainability have been hard to reconcile.”Footnote 31 Guayakí’s experience as a B-corporation (a for-profit company certified for its commitment to social and environmental performance) supports such findings. Consumers prioritize convenience and taste, often at the cost of environmentalism and social justice. In this case, it is a premade, flavored, sweetened product sold in single-use bottles and cans. As a result, Guayakí has had to compromise on its mission to create environmental value in order to grow the company and popularize yerba mate in the United States.
The essay uses newspaper articles, interviews, and archived versions of websites preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to trace how Guayakí popularized yerba mate by promoting product authenticity and brand authenticity. But at the same time, the company has compromised these values in order to make the product appeal to American consumers. After an overview of yerba mate in South America, the essay moves on to explore how Guayakí’s entrepreneurs in the United States built on South American narratives about yerba mate’s Indigenous origins, stimulating characteristics and health benefits to promote the perception of product authenticity and fit with the growing popularity of superfoods. The essay then explores how, at the same time, Guayakí’s entrepreneurs also emphasized grassroots marketing and a narrative of green capitalism, which cultivated brand authenticity. The following section shows how consumer input obtained through such grassroots marketing revealed that both product authenticity and brand authenticity were not enough to popularize yerba mate. To appeal to the tastes and preferences of American consumers, Guayakí had to transform the product in ways that challenge both product authenticity and brand authenticity. As a result, the company compromised product purity and yerba mate’s distinctive characteristics, along with environmental concerns, to make a single-use, mass-produced product.
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