Pepsi to distribute Muscle Milk

Via Bevnet comes news that Pepsi will be distributing sports nutrition giant Cytosport's Muscle Milk:

"Strengthening and diversifying the PBG product portfolio is one of our top priorities. By teaming up with CytoSport, we are entering a new beverage segment with attractive long-term growth prospects," said PBG North America President Rob King. "Muscle Milk has established itself as one of the leading functional nutrition beverage brands, and adding it to our portfolio will enable us to capitalize on the opportunities in this exciting category."

"The Pepsi Bottling Group's robust go-to-market system is unsurpassed in the beverage industry," said CytoSport President Greg Pickett. "By working with PBG, we'll be able to greatly extend the reach of the Muscle Milk brand and put our products in the hands of more consumers than ever before. This is a beverage category with tremendous growth potential, and this agreement further enhances CytoSport's leading position in the category.

My take
I've been a big fan of Cytosport for a long time, and if you've been paying attention to the beverage and sports nutrition category, this news isn't really a surprise. The big takeaways here are:

• If you stay true to your origins, but make the right adjacency moves (as Muscle Milk did when they engaged women), you can build a huge brand from what used to be a niche product.
  
• Bodybuilders and hardcore fitness enthusiasts are a big opportunity, and a fast growing emerging segment. Don't write them off as dumb muscleheads or you'll be making the same mistake as the people who wrote off skateboarding, punk rock, graffiti, and hip hop (whoops!).