TENZING's CMO on Scaling 'Good Energy' Beyond Sport

For years, the energy drinks market has been defined by highly-processed ingredients and spikes of energy. 

But is this still what consumers want? 

Research from Glanbia finds that a fifth of energy drink occasions are now motivated by a need for sustained energy, while research from Innova shows that the most influential claims when buying energy drinks are vitamins and minerals (27%) and low, no or reduced sugar (24%). 

This growing demand for more natural energy drinks is precisely where TENZING comes in, with the brand offering an alternative focused on the idea of ‘Good Energy’ – natural ingredients that can help the drinker sustain their focus.

According to Cindy Tervoort, Chief Marketing Officer of TENZING, as this category grows, the company is preparing to transition from a challenger brand into a much bigger scale-up, focused on spreading ‘Good Energy’ across the energy drinks category.

Speaking exclusively with Marketing Chief, Cindy explores how TENZING is rewriting traditional marketing narratives in the energy drinks industry – and the strategies the brand is using to sustain its growth.  

You were recently made Chief Marketing Officer of TENZING in May. What excites you about the brand, and what do you plan to grow at the company?

What has always attracted me was that TENZING has real substance behind the brand. It was created to offer people a better kind of energy: 100% from nature, low sugar, no crash, with natural caffeine and ingredients people can understand. 

But equally importantly, there has always been a wider belief in spreading Good Energy.

We now have the opportunity to take that from being a brilliant challenger proposition to a much bigger movement.

There are several areas I’m particularly excited about. The first is Natural Energy+, which gives us the opportunity to move beyond energy alone into broader functional benefits. Fiery Mango is an important part of that, and we see significant potential to expand into new flavours, formats and ultimately adjacent categories.

The second is expanding who we reach. TENZING has very strong roots in sport and outdoor communities, particularly running and climbing.

 We want to retain that credibility while opening the brand up to more everyday energy occasions – whether that’s a student heading into a lecture, a young professional needing focus during the day or someone who loves their morning coffee but wants a convenient alternative when life gets busy.

And thirdly, there is a huge opportunity in community and digital. We want to build our ambassador and creator programme significantly and turn our online platform into much more than a place to transact. 

The ambition is for it to become a home for our community and the wider Good Energy movement.

How are you looking to rewrite traditional energy drink marketing narratives? 

We are challenging the energy category head-on. For years, energy has largely been defined by brands like Red Bull and Monster: big stimulation, extreme performance and products built around highly processed ingredients and lots of sugar or artificial sweeteners. We think there is a better way.

Our point of view is very simple: Life’s too good for bad energy.

People absolutely want energy, that need is only growing, but they shouldn’t have to choose between getting an energy boost and feeling good about what they’re putting into their body. 

TENZING gives people natural caffeine from plants, lower sugar and functional ingredients with a clear purpose. And with Natural Energy+, we’re taking that further through additional ingredients such as Lion's mane.

So rather than talking vaguely about “natural”, we want to make the contrast much clearer: Good Energy versus Bad Energy. What’s in your drink? Where does the energy come from? What does it actually do for you?

Creatively, that gives us permission to be much more challenger-minded. We can contrast the ingredients and conventions people have come to associate with traditional energy drinks with an alternative that feels much more relevant to how people want to live today. 

Our ambition is to take on the biggest brands in the category and make people question why they ever accepted bad energy in the first place.

How do you make sure brand purpose translates into wider company strategy, rather than just campaign messaging?

For me, purpose only has value if it influences the choices a business actually makes. That has been true at TENZING from the very beginning. 

When our founder travelled to the Himalayas ten years ago, met the son of Sherpa Tenzing and discovered the drink that inspired the brand, he also fell in love with the region and its communities. 

Ever since, we have supported initiatives to protect that environment. Today, TENZING funds Sagarmatha Next’s programme to remove tourist waste from Everest.

That same philosophy runs through the wider business, from the ingredients we choose and the products we develop to our B Corp commitments, partnerships and the communities we support. 

I’m a big believer that purpose and performance should reinforce each other. Purpose gives you clarity on what you stand for; strategy turns that into choices that create relevance, differentiation and ultimately growth.

TENZING has built up a very loyal customer base. How are you looking to grow that customer base while still preserving the company’s sense of community?

This is probably one of the most important questions for us. TENZING has grown from communities rather than simply marketing at audiences, and I never want us to lose that. The challenge now is to scale intimacy rather than replace it with reach.

Our approach is what we call a hotspot strategy. Instead of trying to be everywhere all at once, we want to identify places and communities where energy needs, culture and TENZING naturally intersect : climbing walls, universities, workplaces, gyms, running communities and other relevant cultural hotspots and show up there properly.

Sampling is part of that, but it can't simply be handing someone a can. 

We want to create experiences, content and reasons for people to participate. Our ambassador programme will be important too. 

We already have an incredible network around the brand and we want to build that into a much stronger ecosystem of athletes, creators and people doing interesting things in their communities.

And digital gives us the ability to connect all of that. Our website and e-commerce channels should not just be the end of a marketing funnel. 

Over time they can become the centre of the TENZING community, connecting content, ambassadors, events, products, experiences and commerce.

What is your approach to product transparency and packaging innovation?

From day one, TENZING has challenged the energy category to be more transparent about what goes into its products. 

Our belief is simple: there has to be a healthier way to deliver energy than the traditional big players offer. 

That’s why we’ve always kept our ingredients simple, 100 from natural and easy to understand. We even ran a campaign around ingredients you can actually pronounce. 

People should know what’s in their drink, why it’s there and what it does for them. 

And as we build out Natural Energy+, that won’t change: clear benefits, transparent ingredients and no unnecessary complexity, just Good Energy that works. 

That philosophy goes beyond the can. As a B Corp, we hold ourselves to high standards in how we operate and the impact we have on people and planet.

With regard to packaging innovation, we are always exploring new formats that better meet consumer needs, and we have an exciting innovation in this area planned for Q1 2027.

How do you see TENZING growing in the next 12-18 months?

I think the next 12–18 months will be a very important step in TENZING’s evolution from challenger brand to scale-up.

There are a few big priorities.

First, building Natural Energy+ into a meaningful platform. Fiery Mango is the starting point, but there is significant potential across new flavours, functional benefits, formats and adjacent categories.

Second, expanding penetration. Our sporting communities remain incredibly important, but we want to bring TENZING into more everyday energy occasions and recruit new communities, particularly students and young professionals.

Third, creating fewer but much more unmissable brand moments. As a challenger, you can’t outspend the biggest players, so you have to outthink them. I want us to concentrate our energy behind distinctive moments that people notice, participate in and talk about.

Fourth, building our ambassador and creator ecosystem. I see that becoming a real engine for community, content and cultural relevance rather than simply another media channel.

And finally, building a genuinely holistic online ecosystem. E-commerce is already strategically important to TENZING, but the opportunity is bigger than sales. 

I want our digital platform to connect commerce, content, community, ambassadors and our Good Energy initiatives in one place.

The exciting thing is that we’re not trying to reinvent what TENZING stands for. The foundations are incredibly strong. 

The opportunity now is to make Good Energy relevant to many more people, in many more moments, without losing the challenger spirit and community that created the brand in the first place.

TENZING’S projects and partnerships

• Carry Me Back: TENZING is a sponsor of Carry Me Back, a programme where people take a kilogram of waste down from Everest to be recycled. So far, the programme has seen 40,700 kilograms of waste removed by more than 28 thousand participants over the years. 
• Rainforest Alliance: TENZING works in partnership with the Rainforest Alliance to ensure its core botanical ingredients are ethically and sustainably sourced. The organisation works to protect nature, improve the livelihoods of farmers and forest communities and tackle climate change. 
• HEINEKEN: HEINEKEN Invested in the brand for a minority stake, to support the ongoing growth of TENZING. The agreement will see HEINEKEN UK invest with a minority stake in TENZING which will continue to operate independently, with both businesses able to gain valuable insights from each other. HEINEKEN UK will offer TENZING some limited distribution through its network into the convenience channel. 
• Carbon Cloud: Since 2020, TENZING has been partnered with Carbon Cloud – a platform that helps the company calculate, track and minimise the carbon footprint of its products. TENZING uses this data to monitor emission metrics and maintain ongoing transparency with its customers and community.