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Naturals Brands: Is Your Charismatic Founder Helping or Hurting the Business?

We’re just gonna make a bold statement here: If the sole reason for your company’s success is the actual, physical presence of the founder — during visits with retail partners, sales meetings at trade shows, in-store demonstrations — then you have a branding problem.

Because when that charismatic founder/owner isn’t in the room, the wind goes out of your sails.

It’s a challenge that we see frequently in the natural food and beverage space, which is populated by brands launched by individuals who developed products that initially met their own needs. (Think: an avid hiker needed an energy bar to power through day-long treks; a parent with a kid with a food allergy needed a clean snack.) Typically, a brand rides to out-of-the-gate success on the back of that passionate, visionary founder.

But as the brand grows and the founder/owner can’t be everywhere at once, a few gaping holes begin to develop. While the sales team is capable of selling the brand’s offering to retailers, the product itself doesn’t match the hype. Consumers don’t see the brand as meaningfully different from competitors and choose lower-priced options. The brand loses velocity and risks discontinuation. It’s exhausting to rely on charisma, and it’s expensive to not get the sell-through you need to stay profitable.

When the Founder Becomes a Liability

In the lifecycle of a brand I describe in my book Beloved & Dominant Brands, the risk of founder-as-brand shows up when the brand tips from Beloved by Default (still riding the visionary’s coattails) to One of Many (lost in a churn of copycats).

First & Only — an innovative, world-changing newcomer

Beloved by Default — a niche brand attracting a growing audience of fans

One of Many — a once-darling brand copied by cheaper competitors

Beloved & Dominant — a category-crushing superstar so favored by consumers that it’s competition-proof

Two fundamental truths about entrepreneur-led brands are at play here: One, the founder can’t replicate herself, and as she spreads herself too thin her influence wanes. Two, and perhaps more important, the leader and her executive team assume, wrongly, that they ARE their customer. They fail to see that consumers’ needs are different, and that the product doesn’t fit as well into their lives. They think: “Everyone must love this brand as much as we do.” We see this especially in competitive categories where the barriers to entry are lower (e.g. snacks) and where look-alike products are hard for consumers to differentiate.

Faced with dipping sales, the marketing team often steps in with quick fixes: tweaks to the packaging design or sometimes even positioning. The deeper the bias of the founder or leadership about their product’s superiority (when for retailers and consumers, it’s parity) the smaller and more frustrating the moves. Marketing is often unsuccessful or merely produces a short-term bump prompted by ad campaigns or discounting. Meanwhile, the brand struggles to meet minimum velocity hurdles. Sales and marketing are doomed to fail if the brand and business are hinging on the charisma of the founder.

Separating the Brand from the Individual

So, how can marketing executives steer the brand away from the founder’s persona? Very gently.

First, it’s important to remember one definition of brand:

Brand is what they say about you when you aren’t in the room.

That’s because it’s about them, silly, not about you.

Perhaps the smartest thing you can do is to enlist an external ally to help identify the issue — the primacy of the founder/owner is creating serious branding and business problems — and to deliver the difficult news and take the heat for saying so. And yes, there’ll be some heat. (We’ve been in that chair, and we’re well-versed in sharing tough news with grace.)

Just as important, you must frame the situation not as a complaint about the founder, but as a natural, growth-related challenge that has a strategic solution.

Think of other brands pegged to an individual founder: Bob, Barbara, Justin, Annie … it’s been a long time since Bob or Barbara was in a regional retail sales meeting. But Bob and Barbara still project a halo of wisdom and a promise of quality over the brands, even those that are now owned by large multinationals.

As a spunky, entrepreneurial naturals brand grows, the role of the founder/owner must pivot away from hands-on, in-every-meeting doer to benevolent guide. The founder/owner becomes a shepherd for the brand rather than the brand itself. She shows up like a pastor or chairman emeritus; the brand stands for itself and its mission, and the individual hovers above in a sort of endorsement role. Like Justin or Annie, the founder’s presence serves as confirmation that the brand is a real thing based on real people.

Think of the founder/owner’s position like a patronus. (“Harry Potter” fans will recognize the patronus as a magically conjured apparition that guides, protects, and inspires a person in his moment of need.) The founder, then, doesn’t fight the fight, but serves as a beacon.

When we advise founder-centric brands on evolving the brand beyond the dynamic individual, we help turn the liability into a strength by involving the founder in the journey from lead warrior to champion. It often takes some coaching, but rarely have we seen the founder resist the move. Typically, he recognizes his responsibility for the business impasse, feels the pain of decreasing sales, and embraces his new role as vision-giver and mentor to the brand.

And then the whole organization breathes a sigh of relief. The overtaxed founder gets to step out of the day-to-day and focus on work that adds value. Product development responds to real market opportunity rather than the owner’s whim. Marketing moves the needle because the brand’s values align with consumers’.

Apple is often celebrated as a brand with a powerful connection to fans, and it’s also a case study in how dominant leaders can and should behave. In Apple’s darkest days, Steve Jobs was in every meeting, weighing in on every decision, driving every aspect of the business. When he stepped back to let other exceptional minds shape the company and instead became a spiritual guide and external presence at product-launch events, Apple soared.

If you’re working with an in-the-weeds Steve Jobs when you need a product-unveiling Steve Jobs, give us a call. We’ve traveled this path and can help founders find their most fulfilling and difference-making roles.

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.

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Leaders, Brands and the Hawaiian Value of Kuleana featuring Danielle Laubenstein, Godiva Chocolatier

This week on the Gooder Podcast I had the pleasure of talking with Danielle Laubenstein, The Director of Global Marketing for Mauna Loa. Danielle is overseeing the future and legacy of the company’s direction into becoming Hawaii’s wellness brand. She believes product development and holistic marketing looks at beauty as a combination of qualities of paradise, creating brand culture and products that empower the mind, nourishes the body, spirit, and evokes emotional health. Join us as we take a deep dive into the health and wellness industry and explore how brands should strive to serve their customers with healthy products.   

“If you’re Hawaii brand, then you’re a brand from Hawaii.” -Danielle Laubenstein

In this episode we learn:

  • About creating a brand community and how to make it be authentic.
  • The difference between a Hawaiian brand and a Hawaii brand or Hawaii owned brand.
  • How Mauna Loa is leading the naturals industry in staying true to its purpose of caring for everyone’s needs.
  • The concept of giving back and social responsibility or reciprocal responsibilities, where that comes from, and how it affects Danielle’s leadership style. 
  • About how Danielle is mentoring women, especially women of color, and why it’s important for her.
  • What the word Kuleana means and the importance it has within the Hawaiian culture.
Gooder Podcast

Leaders, Brands and the Hawaiian Value of Kuleana featuring Danielle Laubenstein, Godiva Chocolatier

About Danielle Laubenstein:

Danielle has worked in CPG Health and Wellness, as well as in the global travel luxury confectionery space for over a decade for companies such as Chocolove, Godiva and DFS. 

Guests Social Media Links:

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellelaubenstein/

Websitehttps://www.maunaloa.com/ 

Show Resources:

Godiva Chocolatier is a Turkish-owned chocolate maker that is jointly owned by Turkish conglomerate Yıldız Holding and MBK Partners. Founded in 1926, it was purchased by the Turkish Yıldız Holding in November 2007; then MBK Partners bought a stake in 2019. 

Chocolove is a chocolate manufacturer with headquarters and a manufacturing facility in Boulder, Colorado, founded in 1995 by entrepreneur Timothy Moley. The company produces all-natural and organic chocolate bars. Chocolove imports chocolate and cocoa butter from Belgium to produce its chocolate.

DFS Group is part of the world’s largest luxury conglomerate, Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), and a pioneer in luxury travel retail.

Hawaiian Host is the original chocolate-covered macadamia. Hawaiian Host is also the largest manufacturer of chocolate-covered macadamias in the world, as millions of boxes of our treats are shared all over the globe.

The Hershey Company, commonly known as Hershey’s, is an American multinational company and one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in the world.

Project Potluck is a professional community founded by People of Color with a singular mission: to help people of color build successful companies and careers.

Lei Day is a state-wide celebration in Hawaii. The celebration begins in the morning of May first every year and continues into the next day. Lei day was established as a holiday in 1929. Each Hawaiian island has a different type of lei for its people to wear in the celebration.

Siete is a Mexican-American food brand, rooted in family that makes delicious grain-free products.

Books Mentioned:

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf

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.

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The RIGHT Strategic Partner for your Naturals Brand

There are times when even the smallest business decision feels like life or death. When, despite your experience, smarts, and leadership position you hear that voice that says: What if I get this wrong?

Happens all the time. We’ve seen companies delay (often for years) committing to an initiative or innovation because executives can’t make up their minds or fear making the wrong choice. The same goes for beginning a branding project or even choosing an expert partner to help with the work.

Sound familiar?

Perhaps you’re in charge of a brand and it’s clear that you and the company need to make some changes. But you’re not exactly sure what the problem is, and so you’re challenged to choose the right team. You might delay getting started, or break a big project into small chunks that don’t effectively tackle the larger issue you need to resolve. (We understand; we’ve coached marketing leaders in your chair before.)

Recognize What’s Giving You Pause

If you’re hesitant to engage a strategic partner or commit to a project, it might be helpful to first understand why. A few insights:

Some organizations are built for comfort, not for speed. Even if your brand was founded on passion, innovation, and entrepreneurship, the growth of the organization may have dampened those early risk-taking tendencies. As the company has added staffers, won fans among consumers, built retail partnerships, and grown revenue, decision making becomes more difficult. The stakes feel higher. Your butt’s on the line, and you’re afraid of making the wrong choice.

Two, growth tends to throw even upstart brands out of alignment. When your organization isn’t aligned to a common cause, personal agendas overwrite the brand’s mission and purpose. Decision making is tainted by individuals’ preferences and interests. The more people you ask for input, the harder and more confusing it is to make the right decision.

Let’s also acknowledge the immense anxiety that’s pervading society and, by extension, business right now. Uncertainty breeds fear and indecision.

What to Expect When You Engage the Right Strategic Partner

Which marketing strategist is the right group for us to partner with? Do we even need outside help? What should we hire them to do? What if we make the wrong choice?

If uncertainty is in the way of your decision, then knowing what to expect may help sweep that aside.

Imagine what is possible when the brand is surrounded by a team of internal and external experts who are passionately committed to the cause. When you bring to the table expertise that your bench doesn’t currently have and an objective point of view that your internal folks can’t possibly possess.

An outside partner — the right outside partner — will help you see the opportunities right under your nose that you’re too in the weeds to see. They’ll walk alongside your team, sharing expertise and experience, helping you make the decisions with confidence and bravery. They’ll give you tough news gently and cheer your wins enthusiastically.

When you build a team that includes both internal and external experts, you establish a think tank around you that elevates your own expertise. You have weapons and systems at your fingertips that you didn’t have before.

A strategic partner can also help you undertake challenges that your team has been struggling with for years. They can diagnose problems and prescribe solutions quickly so the organization can spring into action. In our experience, any hesitation that marketers feel about letting outside experts in the door evaporates as they see the big picture, understand what they need to do, and become hopeful instead of skeptical about the future.

When prospects make the decision to enlist our brand strategy help, they become lighthearted, relieved, open to change — frankly, they’re jacked out of their gourds. (To be clear, we’re not for everyone, and that’s okay.)

As a sign-off, I’ll share a bit of reassurance: The risk isn’t choosing the wrong outside partner. Because even if it’s not the right fit, you’ll still gain a ton of valuable insight. The risk is to not engage at all.

So …

Trust your instincts.

Reduce the number of people you’re talking to about this initiative to your mentors or closest business partners. The more you shop around a decision like this, the more conflicting opinion you’ll hear.

Be afraid and do it anyway. Any fear lies in the decision-making process, not the decision itself; you just need to get over the hump.

Understand the reality of what you can and can’t do. When you hold off making a bigger commitment to a strategic partner, you may instead try to chip away at your business problems piecemeal.

Know that in any engagement with outside expertise you’ll gain intelligence and insight, change the way you think as an organization, and start to see your blind spots. You can’t really blow this decision.

Ready? Give us a call.

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.

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Brand Slam Episode 5 – featuring Plant Works

Brand Slam 5 – Finding Your True Audience and Standing Out in a Crowded Category

Download now to watch this fun and informative webinar where we audit Plant Works’ brand ecosystem and identify gaps, highlight opportunities and help the team understand where to focus her marketing spend.

Brand Slam was created by Retail Voodoo to help CPG entrepreneurs in food, beverage, and wellness reduce their struggle with brand growth in the face of Covid-19. Using the auditing process models created by Retail Voodoo to develop Brand Ecosystems, (which we’ve used for some of the world’s most beloved brand and featured in the book Beloved & Dominant Brands,) we will benchmark Plant Works and provide strategies to help Anna, Trever and the rest of their team regain brand traction.

More About Plant Works: Being workout and protein fanatics, trying to maintain a better-for-you, more plant-centric diet, they made the switch from whey protein powders to plant protein powders. They soon grew tired of drinking terrible tasting shakes, made with low-quality proteins that lacked the right ratio of essential amino acids to help our bodies recover, so they decided to make their own. 18 months and many failed attempts later, they finally built a formula that met their goals. They combined a blend of high-quality plant proteins with super herbs, adaptogens, added BCAA’s and a few other natural ingredients to create a great tasting plant-based performance protein powder that helps the body recover, rebuild, and repeat.

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.

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Brand Slam | Call For Entries for Season Two

Retail Voodoo is recruiting participants for Season 2 of Brand Slam – Episodes starting March 2021.

CPG brands spend a lot of time telling consumers how different they are. And with the brand world changing faster than ever, the fundamentals of brand building are receiving scrutiny. What is a brand anyway? A logo? An idea? An ad campaign?

We have decided to answer those questions, in real-time and have created a monthly workshop for food, beverage, health and wellness company founders looking to gain insights on how to use brand positioning, language and strategy to gain unfair advantage in the market. Learn what opportunities and details Retail Voodoo looks for when building a strong brand and how your brand must use these tools to educate consumers about it.

Our Brand Slam Brand Tune-Up will start by auditing and benchmarking your brand against competitors in your categories to develop a powerful platform for brand growth. Our goal is to help you think about building a stronger brand by giving you tools and examples from a live case study.

Each month, Retail Voodoo’s David Lemley will choose one entrepreneurial brand (maybe yours?) to showcase the lessons and strategic thinking that go into building the heart of a brand – in a live broadcast.

Are you ready for a Brand Slam?

Application Criteria

  • Must be a food, beverage, wellness, or fitness brand
  • Applicants should be $2M or less in annual revenue
  • Must be in market a minimum of 6 months
  • Must be based, and doing business, in North America

Watch Previous Episodes:

Sign Up To Apply – Deadline: January 15, 2021

We can’t wait to meet you!

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.

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Big Plans for Your Naturals Brand? Start With a Strategic One

Yes, 2020 has been a … well, we’re not sure what kind of year to call it.

While it’s still not business as usual, businesses still have to do many of the usual things, like planning for 2021. And if there’s one thing you should have on the to-do list for your natural food or beverage brand in the next year—before product launches or new channel strategies or investment opportunities—it should be brand strategy.

That’s because none of those initiatives stand any meaningful chance of long-term success without a strategic foundation supporting them.

Brands in 2020 are placing too much emphasis on commercialization and not enough on strategy.

Look, I recognize the importance of selling products or services and getting to market ASAP. But it’s risky business because it is less disciplined to chase an opportunity than it is to create opportunities based upon clearly defined strategic goals. By focusing on strategy-first, businesses can take the lead on branding and positioning, then translate those needs into new products, services, experiences, and personalization opportunities to grow both revenue and positive consumer-relationships.

Brand Strategy as a Smart Business Investment

If you’re going to spend dollars anywhere, brand strategy is where to spend them first. This is where your ROI will come from; every initiative that is strategic in nature will generate a return. Strategy anchors every decision your leadership team should make about the brand and every tactic your marketing team should deploy.

When you know the brand’s DNA, you can confidently make bold moves that might look risky to outsiders. You can stretch your product offering in just the right way that will a) make sense to current customers and b) attract newcomers into the tribe. You can renovate the brand’s identity or packaging so that it stands out in the category. You’ll be highly attractive to investors because you deeply understand who you are and have your act together.

The Process of Developing a Brand Strategy

Natural-brand companies that come to us for guidance have a shoot-first and aim-second mentality. They’re facing a challenge or crisis: Competitors are taking their lunch money, or retailers are shelving their products on the bottom row, or investors are sniffing around but shying away from a deal.

Perhaps you’re in a similar position.

In which case, allocating time to “do” strategy feels like you’re stuck in the starting blocks while the rest of the runners are halfway down the track.

Our work with naturals brands, though, is more like a cross-country race than a sprint. Without the right plan, you’ll come out of the gate too hot, burn out, lose your footing, or pull a hamstring. All are sure-fire ways to lose—or not finish—the race.

So what does this strategy work look like with our clients? It starts with our competitive audit. Not a category audit, mind you, which only looks at the other products in your immediate category. We look holistically at everything—necessities, experiences, luxuries, and other stuff—that competes with your brand for your core consumer’s dollar, time, and attention.

We look at all seven platforms in what we call the Brand Ecosystem to see where your brand wins or struggles.

Our brand strategy work looks externally to audiences, both those you have and those you hope to reach. Brands, especially those founded by visionary CEOs who pioneered a novel product, have a tendency to think that a consumer thinks about their brand 24/7. Most only think about them in the moment of need—at purchase, or when a product is needed to solve a problem (it’s raining; I need my Patagonia jacket). When brands forget that that moment of inflection with consumer happens on an infrequent basis, they over-inflate their importance to the universe. What’s more, leaders at naturals brands really believe in their products, and so they think that consumers automatically do, too.

It also turns the camera on the internal corporate culture. Your brand’s success is limited or unleashed by the people within your organization; we help companies align their people to their purpose.

It takes a fair, unbiased, honest perspective to bring actionable insights—instead of just guessing or making assumptions based on what you see in front of you. That’s what we bring to the table. We’ll help you discover what you don’t know.

A strategic brand foundation focused on body (the competitive environment), mind (your promise and the way that you keep it), and soul (your people) renders your business essentially future-proof. It makes decision-making easy.

A solid brand strategy is like a flight plan. Sure, you might eventually fly the plane from LA to New York, but without a navigational plan and waypoints, weather data, technical inputs, and the right fuel load, you have no idea where or how you’ll get there.

You run every other aspect of your business with a plan—finance, operations, sales. Why operate without a plan for the brand itself?

We can help you research, aggregate, analyze, and create a plan. It’s what we’re good at, and our clients see phenomenal growth when they dedicate the right time, investment, and people to building a strategic brand plan. Ready to go? Let’s talk.

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
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Before You Redesign Your Naturals Brand, Do This

As we turn the last few pages on the calendar, you and your marketing team are working on your final initiatives for this year and planning for 2021. If you’re eyeing a redesign for your company’s natural food or beverage brand, allow us to make a suggestion:

Work on the brand strategy first.

No doubt, as a veteran marketer, you’ve worked on or overseen more packaging for consumer brands than you can count. You have an eye for design and a nose for trends. The systems you’ve created may have scored raves on The Dieline and generated a boost in sales.

And yet, the consumer landscape has changed. Brands are no longer built through communication and design tactics; they emerge from the experiences they create that produce a gut-level preference for a brand among its fans. Design, while important is transient, reactive, and subordinate to whatever medium you are using to communicate.

We’ve seen this play out in our 10-year transition from award-winning design firm to strategic brand-builders. And we can guarantee this: Your creative vision and design expertise will lead to Beloved & Dominant status when they’re layered on top of a strong strategic foundation for the brand.

Brand Strategy Begets Package & Logo Design

Typically, when brand leaders come to us for help addressing challenges or opportunities (tough competition, or potential growth or investment), they’re convinced that they need a visual makeover. Pretty quickly, we help the marketing and leadership teams understand that their need is strategic first. The entire communication roadmap—what we call the Brand Ecosystem—depends on three foundational elements:

The brand’s mission: the problem in the world or in consumers’ lives that it exists to solve.

The brand’s environment: competitors, retail space (both online and in-store), consumer behaviors.

The brand’s culture: the internal mindset that drives the organization.

A well-defined mission, a firm grasp on the brand’s world, and a unified internal culture provide focus—guardrails if you will—for every business decision. From a marketing perspective, strategy prevents arbitrary design decisions based on whim or preference or trend. Imagine developing an enduring visual identity for the brand that connects deeply and intuitively with a growing tribe of passionate believers. Imagine creating a packaging system that doesn’t need to be updated every 18 months when a new look dominates Instagram—but rather endures for five or more years and flexes to accommodate new products.

Brand Strategy Allows for Bold Design Decisions

Among all the communication channels in the Brand Ecosystem, packaging is extra important because it’s often the first touchpoint a consumer has with the brand. And it has a long tail: She’ll engage with it after she makes the purchase and brings the product home.

Designing boxes and bags and bottles for natural food and beverage products is exciting, energizing work. It’s also incredibly frustrating because you’re roped in by the visual and structural conventions of the category. A package has to communicate so much information from a distance (defining the category, like popcorn or energy bar or enhanced water) and up close (whispering in the shopper’s ear and convincing her to buy).

When everyone in the category plays by the same rules, it’s a recipe for sameness. Look no further than the “anti-brands” popular on Instagram, and you’ll see what we mean. This proliferation of products packaged in pale pink with simple serif type isn’t branding; it’s blanding. When the retail set is full of indistinguishable products, only big-budget advertising campaigns or bottom-line-chewing discounts will persuade the customer to buy.

Beloved & Dominant brands don’t chase trends. They use strategy—a higher calling, a deep understanding of their place in their fans’ lives, a passion for excellence—to make bold design moves that other brands are afraid of. Confident in their beliefs and engaged with their consumers, they break out of the category conventions to create packaging that not only makes a splash, it makes sense.

Creative Plays a Key Role in Strategic Planning

We believe that design and marketing rest on a solid strategic foundation, but those disciplines aren’t mutually exclusive. Creative input is mission-critical as part of our brand strategy process.

We engage key members across the client’s organization to collaboratively build insights that will fuel a creative translation. (That said – I’ve had experiences in my career when I’ve been tasked with design based on a strategy I had no say in. It’s simply not an optimal situation for creating great work.)

For us, brand strategy isn’t just about crunching consumer data, scouting the competition, and dissecting the R&D process. It’s about creating a common vision, a singular path, and a shared language. Those tools make it easier to develop creative output—whether that’s a logo or a social media campaign—because they innately define goals and outcomes. They streamline input and approval because everyone’s using the same playbook.

Building a Beloved & Dominant Brand

When a unified vision for the brand translates into breakthrough creative, the results are so much more powerful than an aimless redesign:

  1. Your brand will act, look, and sound different from everyone else in the category.
  2. Your value propositions will scare the daylights out of your competitors because they can’t achieve what you have.
  3. Your sales team’s pitch to retailers and distributors will be easier; retail managers will “get” the brand and look to your team as partners, not vendors.
  4. You’ll spend less on retail promotion and advertising because you look and behave differently.
  5. You’ll sustain or regain relevance with consumers.

Creating breakout results for the business you support, disrupting the category, building a brand that changes the world—brash goals like these require vision. Bucking the trends with clarity and confidence based on mission and strategy will elevate your brand to Beloved & Dominant. We’ve walked lots of veteran marketers down this path. Let’s talk about how we can help your team.

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.

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The Future of Plant Based Period Products with Denielle Finkelstein, TOP

Gooder Podcast Featuring Denielle Finkelstein

In today’s episode, we are joined by a highly accomplished retail executive with a proven track record in growing large scale businesses profitably and creating new business opportunities within brands, sharp business acumen with a keen ability to assess business conditions and manage towards opportunity with a relentless focus on the customer, Denielle Finkelstein, President and Co-Founder of TOP (the organic project). She is experienced in overseeing brand development and strategy, launching businesses, Omni-channel merchandising, marketing, international expansion and operations. She is also recognized as a passionate and strategic leader, known for relationship building.

Join us as we dive deep into healthy living, her organic business, plant-based organic period products and the challenges that come with being an entrepreneur and how to overcome them. We discuss the decisions that helped her leave the retail fashion world to focus on a passion and build a brand (from the ground up) to tackle the legacy taboo of period products, building a greener product and doubling down on the leadership and innovation that she’s been craving.

In this episode we learn:

  • The genesis of The Organic Movement (TOP) – organic/natural period products.
  • How Gen Z is changing the conversation around personal care and period products.
  • What plant-based innovation has been a game-changer for the brand and the industry.
  • How the leadership experience of a large retail brand helps, and hinders the start-up business process.
  • The challenges legacy conventional brands may have converting natural shoppers.
  • What period poverty is and how pervasive it is in the United States.
  • Denielle’s call to arms to major period product brands.
Gooder Podcast

The Future of Plant Based Period Products with Denielle Finkelstein, TOP

About Denielle Finkelstein:

Denielle Finkelstein, President and Co-Founder of TOP (the organic project) was raised in Rhode Island and graduated from Union College in Schenectady, NY. Post graduation, she moved to NYC with her future husband and started her career in fashion retail at Ann Taylor. She went on to executive merchandising roles at Coach, Kate Spade and Talbots. She was always recognized for her strength in building businesses, finding the white space and managing high performing teams. At the height of her career, she began looking for more purpose in her work and how she could do things differently for future generations.

After spending 22 years in fashion retail and sitting in the C-suite, she took the best risk both professionally and personally and left the corporate world to join Thyme Sullivan, to launch TOP the organic project. As moms, they went searching for organic period products that were healthy and safe for their girls and the environment and came away empty-handed. They have set out to build TOP as a business to drive positive social and environmental change.  TOP is bringing innovation to period products with Organic and Plant-based Tampons & Pads.  What we put in and on our bodies matters more than ever!

Show Resources:

TOP (the organic project) – We are here to educate, enlighten, and embarrass ourselves so that every girl and woman on the planet has access to healthy, 100% organic, eco-loving tampons and pads. and every step of the way, we’ll inspire stigma-shattering conversations about periods.

Poo-Pourri – We’re Poo~Pourri. A poop-positive brand dumping the shame around the things we *all* do. We deliver quality products made with natural essential oils that leave the bathroom smelling amazing and liberate you from harmful ingredients and inhibiting worries.

Beautycounter – One by one, we are leading a movement to a future where all beauty is clean beauty. We are powered by people, and our collective mission is to get safer products into the hands of everyone. Formulate, advocate, & educate—that’s our motto for creating products that truly perform while holding ourselves to unparalleled standards of safety. Why? It’s really this simple: beauty should be good for you.

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.

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FoodNavigator-USA Summit 2020: Food for Kids: David Lemley Keynote: How To Build A Brand Kids and Parents Will Love

School closures – and tentative re-openings – have compounded stress levels for families, while COVID-19-induced economic anxiety is also straining household budgets. So how can food and beverage brands come up with enticing – but affordable – recipes, products and culinary solutions to make life easier for parents when long-established routines have been upended?

What does the ‘new normal’ look like for families and has this crisis given a boost to direct to consumer brands targeting babies, toddlers, and young children? Will the recent growth in interest in kids’ multivitamins continue, or is it risky to assume that buying patterns in 2020 provides a useful indicator of where consumers are heading in 2021?

Find out the answers at FoodNavigator-USA’s third Food for Kids summit – which is transitioning from our usual face-to-face event to an interactive broadcast series.

The series will bring five category-focused events, including:

  • The Consumer Panel
  • Kids and the Plant-Based Trend
  • Beverage Trends
  • Innovation in Action… Meet the Trailblazers
  • Meeting Children’s Nutritional Needs, from Foods to Supplements

Watch the On-Demand Event Now

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.

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Brand Slam Episode 2 – The Life Cycle of Better-For-You Brands

Learn the category audit techniques these leading brands have leveraged to average triple-digit growth.

In this episode of Brand Slam we will cover how better-for-you brands can move from First and Only to Beloved and Dominant.

As covered in David’s book, Beloved and Dominant Brands, the brand ecosystem allows you to develop a realistic, unbiased assessment of your current state and your market opportunities based upon competition, your company culture, and your brand’s strengths and weaknesses. This analysis combined with a deep understanding of the changing nature of consumer preferences provides the platform on which brand strategy is built.

Watch as we host a Q&A with David Lemley, focused on solving a brand’s pain points across the brand ecosystem. Pain points that we have been hearing from the market this year. The tools and tips we will offer will give you insights on the areas of your brand that you can impact immediately, and how to plan for the future.

Brand Slam was created by Retail Voodoo to help CPG entrepreneurs in food, beverage and wellness reduce their struggle with brand growth in the face of Covid-19. Using the auditing process models created by Retail Voodoo to develop Brand Ecosystems, (which we’ve used for some of the world’s most beloved brand and feature in the book Beloved and Dominant Brands,) we uncover key areas that we have seen brand’s struggle at each touchpoint and how to overcome.

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