S5 Ep2: Building a New Category Around a 2,000-Year-Old Drink

What happens when a radio comedian, a senior drinks marketer, and a 2,000-year-old Roman hydration recipe collide?

In this episode of That’s What I Call Marketing, Conor Byrne sits down with Merrick Watts and Ed Stening, co-founders of Posca Hydrate — a sugar-free, hypertonic hydration drink inspired by ancient Roman Posca.

Posca isn’t a nostalgia play. It’s a sugar-free, hypertonic drink inspired by a Roman solution to unsafe water — rebuilt for modern life, modern habits, and modern expectations. That means confronting everything from flavour and formulation to packaging, positioning, and retail resistance.

Along the way, Merrick and Ed unpack a set of ideas that matter far beyond drinks:

Why liquid still matters more than marketing.

Why category creation is harder than brand building.

Why refusing “me-too” formats can slow growth — but protect belief.

And why brands should aim for humour, not jokes.

Merrick explains why jokes age quickly, but a sense of humour travels across audiences, occasions, and time and how that thinking shapes Posca’s tone, creative decisions, and internal culture. It’s not about being funny. It’s about not taking yourself seriously while taking the product seriously.

They also discuss building brand in-house rather than outsourcing belief, measuring brand as a startup using Tracksuit, balancing mental and physical availability, and what it really takes to scale a challenger brand globally without losing the story that made it matter in the first place.

This is a conversation about founders, flavour, brand discipline, and the uncomfortable decisions that come with doing something genuinely different.

3:50 – From radio comedy to drinks founder

5:50 – Why the liquid comes first

7:50 – The Roman origin of Posca

10:50 – Turning history into a brand story

14:50 – Ancient wisdom meets modern science

16:20 – Building brand from the inside out

19:50 – Tone, humour, and taking the product seriously

23:50 – Building a category, not fitting one

29:50 – Brand vs physical availability

32:50 – Measuring

34:50 – Global expansion strategy

38:50 – The hypertonic breakthrough moment

44:50 – Risk and belief

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