Buy Cycle: Researcher

all Insights

The Role of Instagram in Package Design

October 23, 2018  |  an article by Diana Fryc

With Instagram being one of the first places consumers will see your brand’s main face to the world (its packaging), how can brands optimize this platform to work as hard for them as good in-store shelf presence does? There are considered ways that brands can use the power of social media to evoke an emotional tribal call to your consumers rather than becoming something people mindlessly scroll past.

In a platform that is filled with clutter, you must find ways to leverage Instagram to give your brand a unique perspective and lure consumers in by both standing out and fitting in.

The first step to success is to identify your brand’s voice and brand promise; this should be the blood that pulses through everything you do on Instagram – from stories to posts to direct messages. This is most important because Instagram is where your package goes from being the most interesting on shelf to something that makes people feel cool when they’re showing it off on their own feed. Instagram is all about what people choose to signal to the outside world – where your product needs to go from visually striking in a two-second scroll to being by consumers signaling a message to their own followers.

After you have clear vision of your brand’s tone, voice and ethos, you can begin thinking about how to best approach Instagram.

How To Launch a Well-Designed Product on Instagram

  1. Do your research. Yes – stare at your phone for a while. When designing a package to stand out on a retail shelf, your main sources of competition are the other brands that your package will sit next too, but Instagram is a totally different playing field. You will need to research what accounts your ideal consumers follow to know what makes them mentally invest in a brand. Also use competitive research as a benchmark on how to zag away from competitor accounts as a way to catch and keep their attention.
  2. Aesthetic is important but not everything. Your social media is an opportunity to sell a potential consumer on your brand’s promise and make them want to feel like they NEED to be a part of tribe. In doing so, the aesthetics of your posts should mimic your packaging in emotive cues, but remember that your words matter too. It’s important to move beyond the pack to create a 360 brand experience rather than simply following what’s on trend at the moment. This extends beyond the story that is told in photos, but also how you communicate with your followers. By responding to their comments in a timely manner and in an on-brand tone of voice you signal to them that their loyalty means the world to you, and in turn they will be more likely to sing your praises to others.
  3. Where package design in concerned, consider its “thumbnail-ability”. Instagram is becoming one of the biggest purchase drivers for retail brands with its new feature to allow consumers to purchase directly from the app or connect to an e-commerce site. Making sure that your product communicates all that it needs to in the right size and format – which in this case, is a small, thumb-sized image. From a visual communication standpoint, beyond just showing how the pack looks and functions, brands should be demonstrating the brand promise, key benefits, and the product name in a beautiful way — whether through photography or videography. You have two seconds to wow them and pull them in. Challenge accepted.

While keeping all these key factors in mind, know that you have such a unique power to positively impact billions of people with your brand if you use Instagram correctly. With the amount of reach available with Instagram, your message can travel extremely far in the blink of an eye. Just remember that consistency in imagery and messaging is a key factor in conveying authenticity, which is most sought after in this sphere. Make sure you use that power wisely.

Diana Fryc

For Diana, a fierce determination to pursue what’s right is rooted in her DNA. The daughter of parents who endured unimaginable hardship before emigrating from Eastern Europe to the U.S., she is built for a higher purpose. Starting with an experience working with Jane Goodall to source sustainably made paper, she went on to a career helping Corporate America normalize the use of environmentally responsible products and materials before coming to Retail Voodoo.

Connect with Diana

Don‘t see what you need?

Just drop us a line and we‘ll talk

all Insights

Take A Holistic Approach to Your Food Packaging System

October 2, 2018  |  an article by David Lemley

It happens all the time in big CPG companies, but it’s surprisingly common in the better-for-you space too. Brands with a solid lineup of products and a loyal following extend into different categories. Sometimes marketers have identified a real, strategic opportunity to expand the brand’s reach. Sometimes, they’re just chasing trends, adding the healthy ingredient of the month or, heaven help us, pumpkin spice flavoring.

Either way, perhaps you find yourself in a situation where your flagship product is doing fine, but the line extension and new products are not meeting velocity hurdles. Your leadership team wants a band-aid fix — a packaging redesign — for the underperformers. And they want it quickly.

Slow down.

Packaging Is Only Part of the Problem

Before considering a one-off design tweak of a handful of products, it’s essential to understand why they’re troubled. Generally, lackluster performance if a subcategory comes down to one of three problems:

1) The packaging of the line extension is incompatible with the brand’s overall look and feel, so consumers don’t recognize the connection. Bringing these products under the larger brand umbrella is an easier fix because you can leverage the strength of the flagship — letting people know it’s the same brand they trust, but a different product.

2) The brand overall has lost its way. When marketers look at the product, they’re missing the bigger picture of what’s going on with the brand. Instead of asking why the product isn’t doing well, ask what’s going on with the brand. When the brand is healthy and the packaging is driven by an underlying strategy, its equity shows up whatever category you’re in. Customers hear that call to the deep when they see the brand in another aisle; they feel that familiar emotional response. They think, “this makes sense” instead of wondering, “what is this?”

3) The extension — the product itself — is incompatible with the brand’s ethos and promise. This signals a deficiency in your company’s approach to innovation. And it’ll take more than a packaging refresh to boost sales or overcome the loss of consumer trust in a product that’s so off-target.

A Systems Approach to Packaging

Overhauling your lackluster sellers alone, without looking at your entire lineup, poses serious risk to your brand equity.

When clients come to us with this we’ve-got-to-fix-this-now extension problem, it’s almost always budget-driven. Products aren’t meeting sales goals, and the sales team’s panic rises up to the C-suite.

Instead of taking a piecemeal approach to solving a packaging problem, we advocate a systematic approach. System thinking considers how your brand promise connects all your products across all categories with all your core customers. Changing one element of your brand’s visual identity on a single product affects how customers perceive your entire line. System thinking reveals opportunities that naturally arise out of the brand’s interconnected web of existing products and customers.

For a good example of a holistic approach to food packaging, take a look at Kettle brand. Going beyond the original kettle-cooked, plain potato chip, they’ve made just about every line extension play you can imagine in the snack space. Additional flavors? Check. How about Fiery Thai and Chili Lime. New formulations? Got it. Some chips are prepared in almond or avocado oil. Category expansion? You bet. They have added tortilla chips. Look at their entire line, and you’ll see that the Kettle brand mark dominates. On every package. There’s no mistaking these products for Frito Lay’s.

Inconsistent Packaging = Confused Consumers

Marketers often make the mistake of outfitting their line extensions in packaging that focuses on product attributes — flavor profiles, for example. Instead, the brand should remain front-and-center, just as it is on the flagship line. There should be no question in consumers’ minds that this is all part of the same family.

Because there’s so much noise in the store environment, it doesn’t take much to distract the shopper and make her think, “Hmm, I’m not sure if this product is from the same company I know.” Inconsistency in a packaging system makes it difficult for the consumer to make the connection between one product and another, especially in different parts of the store. You risk damaging not just your relationship with consumers, but also with retailers, partners, and investors.

If your brand isn’t crystallized in people’s minds — across your entire suite of products, across every category and every channel — it loses its position of prominence. A piecemeal approach to packaging refinement will produce a piecemeal customer experience.

David Lemley

David was two decades into a design career with a wall full of shiny awards and a portfolio of clients including Nordstrom, Starbucks, Nintendo, and REI. His rocket trajectory veered when his oldest child faced a health challenge of indeterminate origin. Hundreds of research hours later, David identified food allergy as the issue and convinced skeptical medical professionals caring for his child. Since that experience, David and Retail Voodoo have been on a mission to create a cleaner, healthier, more sustainable food system for all.

Connect with David

Don‘t see what you need?

Just drop us a line and we‘ll talk

all Insights

Better-for-you Brands are Missing Their Biggest Market Opportunity

September 11, 2018  |  an article by Diana Fryc

If you’re working inside a natural food or beverage brand, chances are you’re a natural products fan, yourself. So you assume that the marketplace embraces natural, too.

But not everyone does. Not by a long shot.

That disconnect hit me during a recent business trip through the Midwest: Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas. As I usually do when I’m traveling, I popped into a grocery store to experience different retail environments and find different products from what I see here in Seattle. (Yes, I’m a retail nerd.)

Browsing the naturals section at a HyVee in Omaha, I spotted Ensure, the nutrition drink, shelved among the organic products. And I had an epiphany: There are people who think Ensure is a better-for-you product. OK, technically Ensure is better for you compared to Doritos. But Ensure would never be admitted to a natural products expo.

The experience sparked three major insights for me:

  1. Natural products play differently to different demographics in different parts of the country.
  2. Owners and marketing executives at natural brands, who tend to be West or East Coasters (either geographically or philosophically), communicate as if their entire audience is composed of similarly coastal-minded people.
  3. There is a huge market opportunity for natural brands in the country’s midsection.

Natural Products Means Different Things to Different People

According to Nielsen research, a staggering 20% of Americans are resistant nonbelievers. They refuse to believe that food and diet have an impact on health and wellness. And there’s another huge group of people who are ambivalent about it. Lots of people don’t care about making smart food choices or don’t know how to make them. Part of the disconnect is regional. Better-For-You (BFY) in Nebraska means Ensure next to organic crackers. BFY in New York means fair-trade, single-origin, farm-to-package, organic pumpkin seeds with hand-harvested Mediterranean sea salt. It’s also socioeconomic, psychological, and educational. Natural brands sell at a higher price point. Their packaging and messaging communicate in an arch style that doesn’t build relationships across demographics. And the perception that healthy food tastes like cardboard persists.

Natural Brand Leaders Have Innate Bias

We find that BFY brand owners are unaware of their confirmation bias, that the rest of the world thinks like they do and has the same standards for health and wellness. Yeah, you drive an electric car and meditate and gladly plunk down $5 for that packet of single-origin pumpkin seeds. Maybe your friends and colleagues do, too. So it’s easy to navel-gaze and project your own preferences onto your entire audience. Which means you’re missing a huge potential market — because you just don’t see them. When we started working with Essentia, the performance water, they were great at appealing to elite athletes and medical professionals who shopped for enhanced water at Whole Foods. The marketing team had built a set of assumptions about their niche, and they were only talking to those people — people who were like themselves. But we had ample consumer data that showed that non-white-athleisure-wearers were also likely to buy supercharged water. Our research identified new customer segments, including African-Americans and Hispanic men, who were interested in a hydrating product and would otherwise buy Gatorade. We created a prototypical persona: a Hispanic construction worker in Houston who needed a better option than plain water to keep him going. Based on those insights, we repositioned and repackaged Essentia for a broader market, with expectation-busting results.

There’s Huge Opportunity — But it Takes Work

If you seek to grow your brand beyond your current customer base — and sales will stagnate if you don’t — then you have to recognize that there are people out there who are not like you and your colleagues. And you have to build a relationship with them. How? Look beyond your glass house. Identify the geographic/demographic/
psychographic segments outside your base who are your strongest prospects. Understand their needs that your product meets. (Learn how to use U&A studies to find out what you don’t know.) Don’t assume they’re up to speed. These aren’t regular natural product buyers. You need to educate the consumer about why BFY products matter to them, and bringing these new customers along is a much longer journey. Your look, your package copy, your online presence, and your advertising all has to gently, respectfully educate. Know their biases. Remember those resistant nonbelievers Nielsen uncovered. They don’t see the benefits of BFY products. They have what we call a “sufficient quality” bias — they determine a product’s value by whether it’s just good enough for the money. They think natural food tastes like crap. You have messaging work to do. Preaching to the converted is easy — they’re already in your fold, they’ve bought in. But there’s no path to growth there. The opportunity — and the challenge — lies in evangelizing about your brand in the bigger world, convincing the skeptics, and winning over people who think a bottle of water, sugar, and artificial ingredients qualifies as a natural product.

Diana Fryc

For Diana, a fierce determination to pursue what’s right is rooted in her DNA. The daughter of parents who endured unimaginable hardship before emigrating from Eastern Europe to the U.S., she is built for a higher purpose. Starting with an experience working with Jane Goodall to source sustainably made paper, she went on to a career helping Corporate America normalize the use of environmentally responsible products and materials before coming to Retail Voodoo.

Connect with Diana

Don‘t see what you need?

Just drop us a line and we‘ll talk

all Insights

Food & Wellness Brands, Beware: How Redesigns Go Wrong

September 5, 2018  |  an article by David Lemley

When you were a kid, you probably begged your parents to let you have cookies before you had dinner, right? You wanted the sweets before you ate your vegetables.

Now that you’re running marketing for a food, beverage or wellness brand, you want the good stuff (cool-looking, trendy identity, and packaging) before you’ve had the good-for-you stuff (business strategy).

We’ll be the grown-ups here and tell you: No design until you’ve done the strategy first.

This design-before-strategy trap is becoming even more prevalent: We’re finding that about 75% of our prospective clients just want something pretty and they want it now. Why the rush? These are the most common reasons we see for moving forward quickly with design changes:

  • Brands haven’t allocated appropriate resources (dollars or people) to develop a sound foundational strategy.
  • CEOs and CMOs have been burned in the past by hasty redesigns, and they’re not convinced they should spend the time or money to do it right. See the irony here?
  • People in business tend to overestimate their own taste and expertise; they’ve supervised design projects before so they think they can fast-track the latest one.
  • Design is a tangible outcome and research is not, and it’s hard for people to be patient enough to wait for that outcome.
  • There’s a false sense of urgency: the sales team wants the change now, retailers are barking at the door, and competitors are coming into the market.

We get it. Setting the stage for an effective design or redesign takes time: The process we walk our clients through typically runs six to eight months. It’s intimidating: Research might reveal mistakes you’ve made; category reviews might show that your competitors are trouncing you at retail. It takes resources: You need to allocate a budget and secure the commitment from your leadership team.

And it’s worth pointing out that brand strategy does not equal creative strategy; one comes before the other, which is important to keep in mind when you set your expectations for working with an agency.

The Problems of Redesigning without Strategy

Design becomes a beauty contest. Let’s line up three splashy new packaging systems and pick one. Which one? The one the loudest voice in the room (the CEO) favors. This is a great approach only if your leadership team knows exactly how to pick a winning, on-brand, culturally relevant design that not only appeals to current customers but also captures a huge new audience. (I have met just two in thirty years who could do this.)

Design is just guess. Without the appropriate competitive analysis, trend forecasting, white-space mapping, and brand-driven positioning language, creative execution is a total shot in the dark. How do you make design decisions that will stand out on shelf, attract buyers, and stand the test of time if you don’t understand what the market needs and wants?

Design is a short-cut solution. You’re under pressure from retail partners seeking greater velocity, and you need a redesign — fast. So you skip the three months of strategy work and go straight to picking colors and typefaces.

Design is knee-jerk reaction. You’re just chasing trends in search of a sales spike. So you redesign every 18 to 24 months in response to what’s hot in ingredients, graphics, or food photography.

Redesigning becomes an endless cycle. When the creative execution fails to move the needle, and it inevitably does, the marketing team takes another swing at it. Bad design begets bad design, and pretty soon everyone thinks it’s the design’s (and the designers’) fault. It’s the natural outcome every time.

What does a smart redesign in our space look like? Check out Kashi’s 2016 brand overhaul. They updated the logo, dropping the swishy rectangular background and emphasizing the leaf motif. The mark plays a more prominent role on packaging, yet it’s still familiar to fans. New boxes feature super-close product photography on a stark white background. A primary typography system reinforces the brand’s iconic green. It’s a pretty major redesign, but still completely in line with what the brand was before. The Kellogg team clearly built the redesign against Kashi’s existing brand strategy and in response to the marketplace, instead of changing for the sake of change.

And we’ll bet that Kashi’s marketers won’t be doing another redesign anytime soon.

You only have to look at Coke and Pepsi to know that a brand’s design can last for years. They hang on to those design systems because there’s so much equity — customers freak out if the brands make even the smallest tweak.

So, that last design your brand team unveiled … How’s that going? Not what you wanted? Thinking about a do-over? Let us guide you through it — the right way.

David Lemley

David was two decades into a design career with a wall full of shiny awards and a portfolio of clients including Nordstrom, Starbucks, Nintendo, and REI. His rocket trajectory veered when his oldest child faced a health challenge of indeterminate origin. Hundreds of research hours later, David identified food allergy as the issue and convinced skeptical medical professionals caring for his child. Since that experience, David and Retail Voodoo have been on a mission to create a cleaner, healthier, more sustainable food system for all.

Connect with David

Don‘t see what you need?

Just drop us a line and we‘ll talk

all Insights

6 Ways Agencies Fail Food & Beverage Brands

August 22, 2018  |  an article by David Lemley

As the food and beverage category continues to hone in on the importance of natural brands across all channels, getting investors is no longer the challenge — because better-for-you brands are driving category growth and, consequently, private equity investment in food outpaces all other categories. The pace of change in the last three years has outstripped even the staggering changes of the previous decade. Natural and better-for-you brands have moved beyond the realm of Whole Foods and made Costco and Walmart the biggest retail buyers of organic products.

The game has changed; investment opportunities appear to be falling from the sky for anyone with a clean ingredient deck and a crumb of a brand story.

But we have spent the better part of the last decade deep in the boardrooms, farms, and factories with some of the well-respected players who have driven this change, and we have some potentially bad news. If you have invested in rebranding within the last three years and are not experiencing the growth you expected, your agency may have failed you. This white paper explores six unexpected ways in which we have seen the agency drive the naturals brand off the proverbial cliff.

1. Sanitizing the truth about your brand. When the creative agency doesn’t take the time to learn, analyze, and ultimately challenge the category conventions or the closed-loop thinking of the founder-owner, the company’s culture, product offering, and vision, they inadvertently default to cool and clever tactics. Without mind-melding over the real pain points (or legitimate white space innovation), any creative outreach is more likely to be slick and not grounded in business strategy. And — because they are moving quickly — they tell the brand owners what they want to hear instead of the sometimes deeply blemished truth in order to get the creative ideas approved. The result is unownable beauty.

Need proof? Flip over any better-for-you packaged food and read an origin story that sounds like this.

“I had this challenge/pain point and so I made a company. Insert clever/humorous/witty tone to cover up the lack of depth in the origin story and add sizzle.”

– The Earnest Founder

2. Faking the category audit. Was your category audit insightful or did your agency merely check the box? The most common complaint we hear from brand owners, particularly in the naturals space, is that their category audit was too sterile and looked like something an intern could have produced using Google in an afternoon.A meaningful category audit must include the sometimes-ugly reality of retail. At a minimum, this means that the category audit should showcase lighting conditions, shelf restrictions, and key adjacencies from multiple locations. This along with analysis of your channel strategy is important if your category audit is to show you both potential threats and budding opportunities for your brand.

3. Claiming social media engagement will get you trial and velocity. Many agencies are still telling clients that likes and mentions will drive sales. And perhaps while the meter is running on that vegan snack fitness influencer contract there is some traction. We have seen it time and again — when that contract ends, the likes go away; the brand is forced to resort to buying likes with coupons and promo codes. Product efficacy, a contrarian point-of-view, and transparency to back up any claims of authenticity go further than any celebrity endorsement. And while we won’t discount the growth opportunities of influencer marketing, defaulting to this single tactic won’t get you the velocities you’re looking for. Bottom line, your marketing strategy needs to be multi-faceted.

4. Calling star-power strategic branding. Using celebrities can be a powerful endorsement for your brand, particularly when they fit the positioning of your brand ethos. We have seen the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Kobe Bryant and many others assist with a brands growth potential. However, branded products and famous people in ads only works for a few minutes. Once you stop paying endorsements, your brand disappears. You also do not have control over that person’s personal life. You can look to Tiger Woods or Lance Armstrong to see what sort of collateral damage a celebrity can have on your brand. Unless you are a multi-national, we suggest you spend your marketing dollars elsewhere.

5. Assuming your consumer speaks your brand’s language. Marketing or advertising filled with insider jargon, certification claims, and tons of “us” vs. “them” verbiage emphasizes the negatives instead of the lifestyle associated with the brand. These tactics won’t grow a brand, increase its sphere of influence (among people, not influencers), nor get into a new customer’s consideration set. This approach automatically assumes that your consumer-to-be speaks your language. In extreme instances, we have seen this create a retail environment where the front-line employees have been poisoned by the marketing team to think unflatteringly about customers. The right way is to use brand strategy to decide why your brand exists in the world and who you can help because of it. Once clear on your brand’s purpose, the act of profiling your audience moves from merely demographic and leans into ambition, hope, human tendencies, and inspiration. We all want to believe we are working toward becoming a better version of ourselves. Brands, when they consider real people to be worthy of them, help us get on and stay on the path.

6. Using squishy strategy so the creative team isn’t fenced in. The agency creates a strategy, the client signs off, and then… the creative team comes up with a cooler idea. So the agency is forced to change the strategy to match the creative concept. Abraham Lincoln once asked, “How many legs does a dog have if you count the tail?” He answered, “Four. Calling the tail a leg does not make it a leg.” Killer creative ideas are not brand strategy. Killer creative’s intent is to get people’s attention so that they notice (and buy) your brand. Brand strategy’s intent is to evolve the company, its culture, offerings, sales opportunities, and ultimately its contribution to society in order to grow a large tribe of believers both inside and outside the company. A case in point: In our work with Essentia Water, we inherited a brand strategy that was clearly designed to produce adverts filled with blonde women in white yoga pants sitting on the beach (despite the fact that the data pointed to a racially diverse audience focused on being active in radically diverse ways). After scrapping that strategy and building one from the ground up, foodnavigator.com says this brand is on fire.

Consumers’ needs, competition, marketplace, and channels all change. Which means positioning needs to be refined or overhauled every once in a while to make sure your brand stays relevant.

We recommend that each brand that we work with establishes a scheduled audit and tune-up at a minimum of five-year increments — unless something significant has happened with your market or something is NOT working. Obviously, if your brand is losing share, don’t wait five years to make a change. But you should also be aware that a brand strategy driven rebound takes take 12-24 months before you can sit back and know with confidence that you have nailed it.

If you have gone through a rebrand in the last 18-24 months and aren’t realizing growth, I suggest a reality check that begins with the following questions before blaming your current agency.

  1. Is your internal team truly following the new strategy or have you tweaked it to make yourselves more comfortable?
  2. Did your strategy produce an innovation pipeline that has retail buyers looking to your brand for what is next in the category?

If after careful reflection you feel like your agency has failed you, or it’s time for a tune-up, it may be time for Retail Voodoo.

David Lemley

David was two decades into a design career with a wall full of shiny awards and a portfolio of clients including Nordstrom, Starbucks, Nintendo, and REI. His rocket trajectory veered when his oldest child faced a health challenge of indeterminate origin. Hundreds of research hours later, David identified food allergy as the issue and convinced skeptical medical professionals caring for his child. Since that experience, David and Retail Voodoo have been on a mission to create a cleaner, healthier, more sustainable food system for all.

Connect with David
all Insights

The 6 Marketing Ingredients of a Naturals Brand

August 14, 2018  |  an article by Diana Fryc

The “4 Ps” model has been a foundation of marketing management since the 1960s:

Product + Price + Place + Promotion = Marketing

If you manufacture a product, price it right, make it accessible to shoppers, and spread the word about it, you make the sale. Easy.

We’re here to declare this 50-year-old formula dead.

Product doesn’t (really) matter anymore. Patagonia a great example: Yvon Chouinard started the company in the ’70s, selling climbing equipment; now they’re in the food business. You can’t win on price, because Walmart has muscled brands into discounting submission. Place is irrelevant: Thanks to Amazon, people can get any product shipped anywhere. And you can’t out-spend the big brands on promotion.

A New Marketing Discipline

Consumers today seek authenticity from the brands they buy; they want to know what’s in their food, and they expect companies to have morals and values. Now more than ever, people use brands as building blocks of personal identity—they don’t just buy your products, they view you as a reflection of themselves.

Consumers’ expectations of brands are even higher in the naturals category because those who are willing to pay more for natural products care not only about what you’re doing for them but about what you’re doing for the planet.

The 6 Ps of Marketing for Natural Brands

We see it: Many brands are struggling to be relevant in the face of changing consumer preferences. They’re increasingly pressured to do more with less and are vulnerable to better-organized, well-funded competitors.

So we guide our clients to focus on a mix of six marketing ingredients:

1. Purpose

This is your mission, your higher calling, your reason for being, beyond making a profit. What’s your contribution to society or the planet? This should be so well defined that you don’t even have to think when you’re asked about it. If it’s not ingrained in your brand’s DNA, you have major work to do.

2. People

Two components here: internal and external. How do you treat employees—not just your office staff but your manufacturing workers? Wages and working conditions are key indicators. Outwardly, what’s your giveback to your community? How are you pouring profits back into supporting your purpose?

Our client Loma Linda is a great example of this internal/external people focus: The world’s oldest vegetarian brand has a manufacturing facility in Rocky Mount, NC, a community of working poor. The founder raised wages, gave every employee food once a week, and taught them how to cook with it for their families.

3. Planet

Do you have a visible, transparent end-to-end manufacturing and supply chain? Not just for your products, but your packaging as well? It’s a challenge: All of the natural snacks brands we know want to put products in pouches, which are not recyclable or renewable. We’re constantly pushing clients to find different options; cans, for example, while not especially sexy, are sustainable and a package of choice for Loma Linda.

4. Passion

This is your why—it underpins your purpose and drives your people. It’s your origin story. Successful brands have a battle to fight, a wrong that they seek to right. Your enemy isn’t your competition; it’s a challenge that your products help people to overcome. Nike’s foe isn’t Adidas—it’s the voice in all of our heads that says, “you can’t.”

5. Personality

Your brand should sound like no one else; in fact, it should be contrarian to your competitors. It should speak in a language and tone that calls out to your tribe. For example, KIND’s core message—“Do the kind thing for your body, your taste buds & your world” wraps a basic message about health and sustainability in a larger envelope of kindness. It’s a great display of brand personality.

6. Profit

Duh. But some passion brands let profit fall by the wayside in pursuit of the higher calling. We’ve watched founder/owners mistakenly believe that being successful in the business they’ve built equals selling out. So they don’t pursue the right relationships, they let growth stagnate, they get stuck with a $25 million business that costs $30 million to run.

If you’re a better-for-you brand, having a good, wholesome product with clean ingredients is a given. You have to stand for something more: sustainable sourcing and manufacturing practices, livable wages for workers, commitment to the environment. You need a prominent, passionate founder (that’s you) with a great backstory and a voice that echoes a siren song to your people.

To this 6 Ps of Marketing, we’ll add a seventh: Partner. That’s us. We’re here to help.

Diana Fryc

For Diana, a fierce determination to pursue what’s right is rooted in her DNA. The daughter of parents who endured unimaginable hardship before emigrating from Eastern Europe to the U.S., she is built for a higher purpose. Starting with an experience working with Jane Goodall to source sustainably made paper, she went on to a career helping Corporate America normalize the use of environmentally responsible products and materials before coming to Retail Voodoo.

Connect with Diana

Don‘t see what you need?

Just drop us a line and we‘ll talk

all Insights

Guiding Growth for a Passion Brand

August 1, 2018  |  an article by David Lemley

We’ve seen it so often it’s become a cliché: The veteran marketer, disillusioned by the lack of opportunity for career growth in a big CPG company, jumps to an emerging food or wellness brand. She’s inspired by the founder’s passion and excited to bring her expertise to the table.

And then a few weeks into the job, she realizes that things aren’t … well … as she expected they’d be.

The founder/owner’s drive, passion, and ability to move quickly and on the cheap works great until about $5mm, and then it gets in the way. The brand is ripe for growth, yet the team is hesitant to let go of what brought them this far. And while there’s tons of opportunity for new revenue, the owner doesn’t want to be seen as chasing big bucks.

Sound familiar?

If you’ve come from a big marketing engine to help a fledgling brand grow, you’ll likely find that most of what you know isn’t going to work for your new boss. And until he recognizes that you truly get his vision and share his passion, he’ll resist — or even fear — your expertise.

Over years of working with CMOs in the exact spot you’re in, we’ve devised a number of strategies that can help you get your job done in a way that makes a meaningful difference for your brand. Let us show you the way:

Recognize that your No. 1 job isn’t marketing. It’s talking the founder/owner off the ledge. Convincing her that business success does not come at the expense of personal reputation or brand history.

Understand that it’s not business, it’s personal. The brand’s biggest hurdle is the founder’s emotional relationship with it. He looks back with nostalgia to the good old days. Fear lies at the core of the problem: The founder fears that the origin story will be overwritten, and that success will make him look like a sellout.

The founder’s deep attachments affect everything from the color used on a logo to the proper use of the office coffee maker. These preferences may appear irrational, but they’re seated in the owner’s blood, sweat, and tears.

Be an archaeologist. Your first task is to understand the brand’s history so that when you make a recommendation it’s steeped in that history. Dig deep, find every bone in the dirt and bring it to the surface, ask tons of questions. This process of excavation should take three to four months.

And a psychologist. Founders are passionate, entrepreneurial, driven people who are great at invention. But when it comes to maturing a brand or facing a growth challenge, they often make decisions based on personal biases. As the new CMO, you’ll find yourself in the role of therapist as your boss transitions the brand into something different. She’ll be learning to trust others, let go of the past, and with your guidance, develop a new ideal for the brand she started.

Listen reflectively. In every meeting with the owner, every casual conversation, repeat what he says — not to be a parrot but to clarify, learn, and check your assumptions.

Practice tough love. This where your best negotiating/politicking skills will come into play. Whether you do the work internally or hire an external firm, you’ll be in the middle of the relationship, as the founder who has hired you to grow or salvage the company will be intimately involved in each conversation and decision.

Take it slow. Resist the urge to solve the problem immediately. What might make you look like a superhero will feel threatening to the founder. If it’s that easy to right the ship, he’ll feel incompetent for not having done it himself.

If you find yourself in this position, know that you’re not alone: So many CMOs that have landed with passion-driven food and wellness brands have been here, too — and we’ve worked with a lot of them. You’re in for an up-and-down ride. And your biggest challenge may be ahead because you’ll soon start to lose some of the objectivity that made you such a great hire.

Need help? Need to vent? Give us a call.

David Lemley

David was two decades into a design career with a wall full of shiny awards and a portfolio of clients including Nordstrom, Starbucks, Nintendo, and REI. His rocket trajectory veered when his oldest child faced a health challenge of indeterminate origin. Hundreds of research hours later, David identified food allergy as the issue and convinced skeptical medical professionals caring for his child. Since that experience, David and Retail Voodoo have been on a mission to create a cleaner, healthier, more sustainable food system for all.

Connect with David

Don‘t see what you need?

Just drop us a line and we‘ll talk

all Insights

How to Ace Your Upcoming Category Review

July 17, 2018  |  an article by Diana Fryc

Your category review is coming up. But you’re not ready or your market position doesn’t look good. What now? Learn how to ace your category review meeting.

Diana Fryc

For Diana, a fierce determination to pursue what’s right is rooted in her DNA. The daughter of parents who endured unimaginable hardship before emigrating from Eastern Europe to the U.S., she is built for a higher purpose. Starting with an experience working with Jane Goodall to source sustainably made paper, she went on to a career helping Corporate America normalize the use of environmentally responsible products and materials before coming to Retail Voodoo.

Connect with Diana

Don‘t see what you need?

Just drop us a line and we‘ll talk

all Insights

Prepare Your Lifestyle Brand for the Next Market Correction

July 3, 2018  |  an article by Diana Fryc

Michael Meade once said, “A false sense of security is the only kind there is.”

If you’re in a market or industry that’s seeing a lot of growth, it’s easy to buy into the belief that when it comes to your brand’s longevity, the sky’s the limit. Strategy be damned; your brand is invincible.

The reality is that your brand’s long-term viability cannot be reliant on market or industry performance, world-class packaging, or even competitive pricing. There’s some security in those things, but it’s always temporary.

To survive the ebbs and flows of the global marketplace, your lifestyle brand has to be well positioned — even (and maybe especially) during periods of economic growth.

Price Isn’t Everything

When consumers are spending money left and right, brands don’t really have to compete on anything. Almost any brand can thrive in a booming economy. But as soon as the economy starts going downhill, the center of the store becomes too crowded. There are simply too many options and not enough customers to buy them.

There’s a dichotomy we’ve talked about before called the Walmart-Tiffany Effect, which is this idea that the most successful brands survive on either end of the value spectrum. Walmart brands are the ones that compete on price; Tiffany brands, on prestige.

The Walmart and Tiffany extremes become much more clearly delineated during an economic downturn. This is when the brands that live in the middle (which is most brands) are faced with the reality that they can no longer ride solely on the coattails of their market or their industry.

These undifferentiated brands are typically the first to go when an economic crisis hits.

Good Design Isn’t Everything

Too many lifestyle brands equate hip, well-designed packaging or even a slick website with brand legitimacy. And when the economy is thriving and people are buying your product, why would you not?

Unfortunately, good design can lead to a false sense of security during these periods of economic growth. When shelf appeal plays such a big role in your brand’s marketing strategy, it’s easy for design to trump actual strategy.

But brands that rely on design at the expense of strategy are rarely successful in the long run. Under the guise of, “Look what we can do for you!” they hide behind pretty packaging and empty promises of product features and benefits.

While these brands look beautiful, they don’t stand for anything.

Figure Out Your Brand Strategy Now, Before It’s Too Late

If your lifestyle brand wants a fighting chance at surviving a market correction, good design or competitive pricing is not the answer. The key to weathering (and even taking advantage of) an economic downturn is to start focusing on brand strategy now. Don’t let the market necessitate a change in how you market your product or who you’re marketing to.

Because brand strategy is an exercise that requires a considerable investment, a Hail Mary attempt to fix whatever is broken with your brand simply won’t work. By the time a solution is in place or the economy is on the upswing, it’s likely too late.

Know Where Your Brand is Going & How to Get There

We like to think about brand strategy like a flight plan. A flight plan will only work if:

  • Everyone who’s involved in getting that plane from point A to point B knows exactly what’s happening, when it’s happening, and who needs to be involved in the process at various points along the way. Even if the pilot is the one drafting the flight plan, dissemination is crucial.
  • The plan is constructed when the plane is safely on the ground. Trying to figure out where your plane is going once it’s already up in the air is like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted; the intention is there, but it’s too late to be effective.

Brand strategy is no different.

When it comes to strategic brand development, timing is everything. The right time to build your brand strategy is not when a crisis hits. The right time is always now, even if the market is trending in your favor.

What’s more, brand strategy isn’t just for your marketing team. It’s for your entire company. It’s cultural strategy, sales strategy, design strategy — it’s everything, all together.

Everyone from your C-Suite to your sales department to your internal operations team should know your brand strategy inside and out. Being on the same page about that strategy ensures you’re all heading in the same direction, in good times and in bad.

Need help corralling your team? Drop us a line: info@retail-voodoo.com

Diana Fryc

For Diana, a fierce determination to pursue what’s right is rooted in her DNA. The daughter of parents who endured unimaginable hardship before emigrating from Eastern Europe to the U.S., she is built for a higher purpose. Starting with an experience working with Jane Goodall to source sustainably made paper, she went on to a career helping Corporate America normalize the use of environmentally responsible products and materials before coming to Retail Voodoo.

Connect with Diana

Don‘t see what you need?

Just drop us a line and we‘ll talk

all Insights

The KPIs that Matter for Lifestyle Brands

June 20, 2018  |  an article by David Lemley

When it comes to measuring business performance, so many retail brand owners live and die by the numbers.

Revenue, profit, same-store sales margin, ratio of assets to debt — these are the types of key performance indicators (KPIs) that years of experience and a business school education have taught you are the best and likely only ways to measure the success of your brand.

But what if there were other KPIs you should be using to measure your brand’s health and scalability? What if the performance indicators that really matter to your brand are more qualifiable than quantifiable?

The secret to uncovering these hidden KPIs is to look out for the six indicators that could signal a performance problem for your brand:

6 Signs of Brand Underperformance You Didn’t Know You Should Look for

1. Employee Disengagement/Culture Problems

Strangely enough, we often find employee disengagement and culture problems most prevalent in companies that, for all intents and purposes, should be thriving.

Maybe the timing is just right for their brand or product line to come into the marketplace. Or perhaps there’s enough operational significance to ensure widespread manufacturing and distribution. Whatever the reason, from the outside looking in, these are companies that look like they have it together.

On the inside, however, these companies have a culture problem. Maybe employees are scared to speak up for themselves and their customers. Or perhaps leadership has created a culture of insularity. Whatever the reason, these employees can no longer be relied upon as brand ambassadors.

The key lesson here? Disengaged employees will ultimately lead to disengaged customers — and that’s something that will, without a doubt, impact your bottom line.

2. Innovation Overload

Brands that have been around for a few decades are the ones most prone to excessive brand extension. After so many years in business and with manufacturing capabilities at an all-time high, it’s easy for the products to start piling up. Many times, these brands don’t even realize how oversaturated and unfocused their product line has become.

The issue with innovation overload is that it so often signals a problem with positioning. An enormous product line doesn’t strengthen your brand — it dilutes it. You’re better off with a small, targeted product line that considers who your audience is and what they need from your brand.

3. Innovation Stagnation

When we talk about innovation stagnation, we’re not just talking about a drought of ideas. Any brand can dream up a new product. What we’re really talking about is a lack of strategic innovation — an inability to come up with ideas for products that logically extend into your customers’ lives.

Let’s say you have a product that’s selling well and bringing real revenue to your company. This product has been your bread and butter, but you know there’s an untapped opportunity to capitalize on your brand’s reputation in the marketplace.

The natural next step is to extend your brand with a new product line or offering, right? But simply creating a new product is not going to fix an innovation stagnation problem. To generate real revenue for your brand, your brand extension has to be strategic.

4. Limited Distribution

We work with a decent number of lifestyle brands that have rightfully gained a cult following — just with a small audience and only at a handful of retail chains. For some retail owners, limited distribution may make sense. But success on a limited scale can be problematic.

We recently partnered with a health food brand that had for many years sustained their business as a top seller at two big-name retailers. Fast forward a bit and the marketplace for their product became flooded; so much so that they could no longer hold their #1 spot at these two retailers. Because they had put all their eggs in one basket, they were left scrambling to convince new retailers to carry their product — but to no avail. Their limited distribution threatened to become their biggest downfall.

Think about distribution like portfolio diversification. You can put all your stock in one company, but if that company fails, you’ll have nothing to fall back on. In the same way, diversifying your retailer distribution minimizes the risk that a sudden change in the market will jeopardize your brand’s viability.

5. Fragmented Messaging

Fragmented messaging is a good signal that your brand is off course. If there are 47 different versions of your brand message floating around, there’s no way for your brand to differentiate itself in a crowded marketplace. Why would customers decide to purchase your brand over a competitor if you haven’t given them a reason to?

A cohesive brand message speaks volumes. It says you know who you are, who you’re for, and what you’re about. Brands with focused, thoughtful messaging are the ones that reap the greatest rewards.

6. Emotional Attachment

One of the most obvious signs that emotional attachment has crept into your brand is SKU proliferation. It’s natural for a brand to equate quantity with quality; but more often than not, an extensive product line says less about your production capabilities and more about your lack of positioning.

Speaking from experience, we know that most retail owners/operators truly care about the products they’re manufacturing and selling — to the point that they often let personal opinion get in the way of strategy.

Having a vested interest in your products is not a character flaw. By all means, be passionate about what you’re creating. But don’t let emotional attachment derail your brand’s purpose.

If your brand has a SKU proliferation problem, simplifying your product line is likely the solution. Evaluate each product in the context of your target market and brand promise. If that product doesn’t speak to what is true about your brand and your customers, it needs to go. Plain and simple.

David Lemley

David was two decades into a design career with a wall full of shiny awards and a portfolio of clients including Nordstrom, Starbucks, Nintendo, and REI. His rocket trajectory veered when his oldest child faced a health challenge of indeterminate origin. Hundreds of research hours later, David identified food allergy as the issue and convinced skeptical medical professionals caring for his child. Since that experience, David and Retail Voodoo have been on a mission to create a cleaner, healthier, more sustainable food system for all.

Connect with David

Don‘t see what you need?

Just drop us a line and we‘ll talk

Close
Close
Scroll to the bottom to agree