Tag: Food and Beverage

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Better-for-You Brands: Quit Playing Small

February 21, 2020  |  an article by Diana Fryc

Occasionally in our work, we encounter a curious phenomenon: We’ve completed deep-dive brand strategy work with a client in the better-for-you space, and laid the foundation for them to achieve growth. Everyone’s committed to the new strategic direction.

And yet when it comes time to execute — a packaging refresh or marketing strategy or advertising buy — the client team hesitates.

Often, it’s not because of budget concerns — but because of fear. Marketers and executives are afraid to actually make the big moves they need to on design, innovation or activation, often to their brand’s detriment.

Why Marketers Fear Success

Setting strategy is largely theoretical; execution is where it gets real, where the risk lies. Some people are more comfortable playing small instead of going big, because it’s familiar and safe.

Our philosophy on the perils of playing small comes from this quote:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” — Marianne Williamson

The founder/leaders of entrepreneurial BFY brands are perceived to be so bold and brave. So why the hesitation to bring the brand fully to life through execution?

Commonly, we see that the companies that hesitate on execution are those whose culture avoids change or risk. We hear comments like this: “Prove it first, and then we’ll fund it.” “That’s not the way we do things.” “That’s not how we spend our marketing dollars.” “We’ve never had to do this before.”

Conversely, bold brands operate on a test-and-learn mentality and are open to incremental risk. They look to meaningful event horizons in the future and ask, “What will it actually take to make this big thing happen?”

To take the big steps that spark meaningful growth, you have to make smart educated guesses about what years three and five look like. What’s the likely future you’ll move into based on trends and scenario planning? Only when you take that long view can you get comfortable with risk and rationalize the resources it’ll take now to achieve that future.

Clients often ask us what it will take to execute the strategy we’ve developed together. After a few years of experience, we’ve determined that companies should anticipate spending 1 to 5x for the first year of the strategy cost in order to leverage the opportunity. It’s not a small figure, but neither are the stakes.

Your Responsibility is to Make it Big

Re-read this part of the quote above: “Your playing small does not serve the world.”

Customers want — and sometimes need — your product. So quit downplaying how awesome your brand is. Your company wants your brand to succeed in a big way, not just make enough to cover hard costs.

You have an obligation to follow through. What’s the point of coming up with amazing ideas and then not sharing them? Remember:

If you go small, some other brand will go big and you’ll be left in the dust — this has proven true 100% of the time.

In fact, all the encouragement you need is right there in your brand strategy: your brand’s WHY, its mission or passion or reason for being. Brands that know their WHY and institute it culturally aren’t afraid to play big. They have a different mentality around everything than brands that are just trying to hit growth targets. When you have a powerful WHY, you can’t let the mission die. You can’t play small.

Our client Loma Linda is the best example we know of a brand that wasn’t afraid to go big.

Loma Linda is the world’s oldest vegetarian brand, you’ve probably never heard of, founded in 1890 by J.H. Kellogg and owned until 1990 by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. When they came to us, Loma Linda was a small brand embraced by a specialized cohort of loyalists. But they were seeking to expand their audience beyond church membership and tap into the growing plant-based food trend.

We helped the marketing and leadership team listen to their loyalists and identified a key brand value — sustainability — that would appeal to a wider consumer base. With that strategic foundation, we then helped them build a new message that conveyed the brand’s heritage: “Vegan before being vegan was a thing.” We reformulated products and reimagined packaging to suit the modern consumer (for example, shifting from cans to pouches). We kept a core group of beloved long-time products and introduced new global flavors.

Loma Linda’s team was so committed to the brand’s mission that they knew the products had to be available everywhere, to everyone.

Their big play paid off: Loma Linda’s customer base grew from about 2 million church members to 50 million global customers, a larger distribution network including big-box retailers, and a growth trajectory that was 10 times what they anticipated.

Whether your brand team is ready to go big, or you need a bit of encouragement, we’re here to help. Let’s talk.

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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Confessions of a Marketer Podcast: Marketing Starbucks (2 of 2)

November 6, 2019  |  an article by David Lemley

Featuring David Lemley

On Episode 98, David Lemley is back to continue our chat about retail marketing. This time we focus on his time early on at Starbucks, which taught him a lot. He takes that education with him today to help him current client roster. There are some valuable lessons in David’s story—plus he gives us a look at the future.

Listen on Confessions of a Marketer

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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Your Brand Isn’t a Marketing Asset. It’s a Business Essential

December 14, 2018  |  an article by David Lemley

We’ve been thinking (and writing) about brand a lot lately. Not just because it’s the heart of what we do, but because so many really smart people we encounter misunderstand or misinterpret the concept. They interchange the words ‘brand’ and ‘branding,’ mistaking the thing, a strategy-driven business asset, for the activity, the tactical approach of deploying that asset via marketing.

(Remember, we define a brand as first, a promise, and second, the way in which your company keeps that promise.)

As a result, many people misdirect the ownership of the brand. Worse, they skip past the strategic brand foundation and go straight to marketing.

We often meet with marketing executives who think they’re solely in charge of the brand. They’re not. Instead, they are the stewards and architects of how the brand plays out in the world.

Rather, the organization owns the brand.

The Relationship Between Brand Strategy, the Business, and Marketing

Because our culture is built on consumerism, it’s difficult to elegantly unpack business, brand, and marketing from one another as they are so intertwined. Each cannot exist without the other, but there’s a distinct hierarchy. Brand strategy must underpin the business and inform marketing efforts.

Brand strategy touches all aspects of the business: HR, sales, R&D, operations, merchandising mix, real estate acquisition strategy, vendor preferences, and more. It unites often competing business units behind a single goal. In a marketplace of equals, it gives consumers a reason to buy.

Marketing needs to help the business identify strategic opportunity, and the business needs marketing to keep and communicate the brand’s promise.

The Role of Brand Strategy in Modern Marketing

Modern marketing is a holistic, adaptive methodology that connects brands with real customers and drives business results by blending strategy, creative, technology, and analysis. It’s a process of measurement, testing, and refinement until you get a combination yields a measurable increase in sales.

This all sounds like 20th century tactics, so what is the difference?

Modern marketing no longer revolves around the traditional 4 P’s: product, price, place, promotion. Today, consumers expect the brands they favor to have morals and values beyond merely great products. We call this the 6 P’s of Modern Marketing: purpose, people, planet, passion, personality, and profit.

You might summarize the old approach to marketing by citing a movie line: “If you build it, they will come.” Modern brands have to tell customers why they need to come. The competitive landscape now is so crowded that simply having a product is not enough.

To paraphrase author and speaker Simon Sinek, that means thinking about your why, not just your what. Why do you do what you do? Why do employees and customers align with what you do? Why are your products, your brand, and your organization essential to the world?​

If marketing has pivoted beyond product, then the underlying brand strategy is more essential then ever. Brand strategy no longer an exercise in features and benefits that move SKUs, but an exercise in cultural anthropology that helps customers understand why a product is uniquely different and especially suited for them.

Brand strategy helps ensure that marketing is driven by the heart and soul of your purpose rather than focusing on commoditizing attributes such as flavor and function. It provides a framework to ensure that your marketing efforts are supported by an established, purpose-driven vocabulary. It guides you to authentically communicate with your tribe, instead of just broadcasting a lot of noise.

Based on a brand strategy, one that’s shared across the entire business, marketing is all about deploying that strategy and using real data to determine successes and opportunities. We’ll say it again: Marketing requires a test, learn, and refine mentality.

Brand Purpose Practically Applied for Impact

Your brand — your purpose, your social benefit, your reason for being — is a valuable business asset. Edelman’s Earned Brand Report suggests that brand purpose is as powerful in driving sales as a multimillion-dollar advertising spend plus earned media, combined.

When we engage with our C-suite clients, we talk about brand strategy as a form of organizational development. It helps you know what business you should be in, who should be on your team, what opportunities you should go after, what partners you should align with, what needs your company should solve, what products you should develop. And, yes, what marketing channels you should pursue.

Want to bounce some ideas off us? Drop us a line.

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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Founder Fears Associated with Private Equity and Acquisitions

November 28, 2018  |  an article by David Lemley

Better-for-you food and beverage has become the investment world’s industry darling. And with good reason. All but the most resistant non-believer understands that what we eat and drink and do to stay active have a direct impact on our health.

Combine this with the pace of change that technology affords entrepreneurial business, combined with the appetite for change of the typical technology-minded investor and it is just too fast for most incumbent brands. That’s why the longstanding practice of big companies buying startups to help them stay relevant is in high gear. And there’s no reason your company can’t be one their acquisitions and tomorrow’s breakout brand.

This white paper discusses a set of often unspoken expectations that minority investors, would-be acquirers and founder-owners need one another to understand in order to help you avoid getting swallowed up by anxiety.

The white-hot world of better-for-you food and beverage has more players from the equity world looking to get in before “old guard food brands” can discover the next rising star. A lot of these new players are holding companies and tech investors looking for a way to transition from Silicon Valley thinking to something more holistic.

This better-for-you flurry has got a strong head of steam. According to foodbusinessnews.net, the number of food investors has doubled in the last 5 years. Food has so much interest that its seems as though food & beverage investments now outnumber technology investments.

But this capital-infused high comes with its own challenges.

Food & Beverage Brands’ Key Investment Players

The tech investors tend to make their money by pushing people and systems to the edge. They are not accustomed to being in the people business and, sometimes, can have the attitude of disposable people and disposable relationships. Tech investors love ABC’s Shark Tank and sometimes fancy themselves as the sharks (and that is okay as long as the brand’s founder is aware).

Founders create a gem of a brand with their own tears, blood, and sweat. They live and breathe their company culture (even if it’s bad). So, while they are looking for capital to grow their organization, they are often reluctant to bring in partners who have a track record of being heavy-handed in operations, equipment, HR, and, well anything other than sales, marketing, and funding. This isn’t because the founders don’t understand these key areas as being critical to building meaningful, operationally significant brand systems. It’s more primal that that. Many founders, when faced with the specter of an investor putting multi-expert-hands in their proverbial pie, simply recoil. It makes many of founder-owners feel that potential equity partner or investor is only about growth at all costs — and when they don’t talk openly, the relationship is bound for the therapist’s couch (at best).

To work through this, the founder needs to ask questions of the core acquisition team and talk to other brands in their past and current portfolio. This is the only way to discover if the investor’s normal mode of growing an acquisition fits well with the culture of the current brand.

What Investors Need To Understand About Founders

Food and beverage brand creators are running on emotion and will likely question their gut instinct in the face of investor bravado.

Once contractually together, investors will often push for changes that the founder owner hadn’t anticipated. This can be resolved during the due diligence phase if the founder owner can look at and ask the following important (and often undervalued) question. Will my new partners possess and behave with the same moral compass that we used to build this business?

Food & beverage founders face a common set of fears when seeking investors.

  1. Founders fear that the industry may perceive them as a sell-out, especially if the acquiring entity and/or investor do not allow the brand to continue with the moral compass they created.
  2. Founders are weary that the earn-out portion of the deal may remain unattainable if the acquiring company’s pro forma is merely lip service in an attempt to calm the their nerves. The founder is concerned that the EBIDTA demands of the acquiring entity will put pressure in places inside the organization that will change the company’s stance on ingredients, sustainability, and hard-earned business relationships. So, in a worst case scenario, the founder could be labeled a sell out, not get paid, and be seen in the industry as having been bamboozled by people with deep pockets and a shallow conscience.
  3. They are not gonna “get” me, and I will be stuck reporting to a room of accountants and analysts who don’t believe in the brand beyond the balance sheet.

Investor Types: Which Is Best For Founder-Owners?

As a founder owner of a food & beverage brand, you will sleep better if you know and understand your would-be acquirer’s investment strategy. Are they looking for quick flips? Will they invest strategically in building the company out the way you envision or will they default to a specific point of view once the deal is inked?

Here is a simplified view of common equity partner philosophies.

  1. Moonshot investors think like Google and Apple. These investors buy a bunch of thought-leading brands and let them fight it out in the court of public opinion, believing that, eventually, one of them will be amazing and a must-have for everyone. The other brands are left to languish, fight for resources and ultimately go away. After all, there can only be one Siri.
  2. Spendthrift investors search for brands in distress so that they can acquire them at a bargain. Hostess and Necco Wafers and are great examples that happen to share the same acquiring investor. Roundhill Investments has made a name for itself by acquiring and growing nostalgic brands that have fallen out of fashion with consumers. Hostess is well on its way, It will be fun to see what they can do with the beloved Necco brand.
  3. Aggregator investors are looking for ways to make their marquee brand better. This is great if you have an ingredient-focused brand, or have  product that is more than the sum total of its ingredients. But it gets risky if you think you have a consumer-facing brand but are making most of your revenue in bulk or private label.
  4. Shepherd investors look for brands they can guide to greatness. As conventional food companies see more consumers choosing innovative natural, organic, and better-for-you products over legacy brands, they are seeking ways to meet that demand from acquisition to early-stage investments, and they have demonstrated a willingness to pay high multiples. These conventional food organizations are best suited to make acquisitions like Hormel (acquiring Applegate) and WhiteWave foods (acquiring Vega).

Obviously the best kind of equity partner for a founder-owner who wants to stay involved is the shepherd investor. But how does a founder-owner determine precisely what kind of investor they are talking to?

We recommend having a list of prepared questions about their business practices and their past wins and losses (as well as references from both). Here is starter question to ask a potential investor:

In the last three years, what has changed the most in our industry?

They should be able to speak candidly about the changing nature of consumers, the evolution of their preferences and behaviors, and connect these insights to your brand.

Many other situationally appropriate questions can be formed through a meaningful SWOT analysis prior to getting into due-diligence conversations.

For both parties it comes down to fierce, upfront dialogue. Be true to yourself and your vision from the very beginning. Listen, ask hard questions, answer boldly and with vulnerability, and whatever you do, don’t tell them what you think they want to hear.

Looking for a branding partner that has helped investors navigate founder brands – you found us. Drop us a note and 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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Change is Hard. These Seven Tactics Make it Easier to Manage

August 10, 2018  |  an article by David Lemley

“Things change.” “Change is good.” “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Platitudes about change abound, but here’s one thing you won’t see on a motivational poster backed by a scenic mountain photo: Change is hard.

It’s supposed to be. Change is risky, scary, inconvenient, messy. And we see it all, up close. Food and wellness brands come to us when they’re on the brink of change or in the thick of it — change that they haven’t anticipated and don’t necessarily want, often brought on by rapidly shifting consumer preferences and a turbulent retail landscape.

The changes we facilitate tend to be monumental — not a packaging tweak but a holistic repositioning or refocused brand strategy. And sometimes they’re painful, as we discovered when one of our recent clients came to us because they were floundering after a rebrand/renaming. Based on our consumer data that showed that customers still knew the brand by its original name, we recommended that the company return to that name. It was a real leadership moment: The CEO had to step up, own the mistake, and be the bright light shining through the chaos.

So let’s say you’re the wolf: You’ve been tasked with instigating or managing a seismic shift in your organization. Maybe there’s been a management shakeup, or the CEO may be looking to sell. Maybe you once led the category but you haven’t kept up with consumers’ wants and whims and you’ve lost share. Maybe a new competitor is chewing up the category. Whatever’s sparking the change, you’re expected to guide the team through it.

Take a deep breath and ready yourself with these tactics we’ve gathered from helping our clients deal with change wisely and well:

1. Acknowledge the fear. Understand the psychology of what you’re about to do and don’t dismiss your team’s fears. If change is challenging for you, it’s likely more so for others in the organization, who feel powerless and worry that their comfortable routines will be turned upside-down. Listen and share frequently and strategically; gather input and buy-in along the way. But don’t unveil the finished work until it’s ready for prime time.

2. Expect resistance. From all quarters: long-term employees who are happy with how things have been done forever, finance & operations people who are charged with getting results, marketing staffers who know the biggest impact will be on their department. Know that the sales team will be early and vocal objectors — they’ve been successfully selling the product for years, and they’ll object to changing their pitch. But they’ll also be the fastest adopters once they “get” the vision.

3. Start with strategy. A strong strategic foundation — one that addresses consumer trends, acknowledges market realities, and drives business growth — gives the team confidence and common ground. Strategy becomes a toolbox that guides everyone — from the CEO to the front desk receptionist — on how to behave in their role to contribute to the brand’s success.

4. Enlist advocates. Creating a solid group of key stakeholders at the outset gives you an internal leadership team that co-authors the brand and becomes your ally when it comes time to strategically leak news. Encourage your advocates to share their personal experiences as insiders involved in the process along with information about how the project is unfolding and what’s to come.

5. But know that not everyone will get on board. In fact, we request that HR management is part of any rebranding or repositioning project we’re involved with because there’s always a training/coaching component to change. And staffers who resist and fight their way through the strategy development process may need to be asked to leave before they poison the well. Ask your HR partner for help identifying potential resisters and getting them on track or out the door.

6. Make it feel special. Tap your internal advocates to help build a sense that the change represents an opportunity to further a brand they’re passionate about. Connect this initiative to the brand’s greater purpose. Celebrate milestones and create momentum to fuel excitement.

7. Use language to gain buy-in. Reality exists in language. Having the brand strategy and talking points that answer questions will be key to calming your team’s nerves. We use language to teach the teams we work with how to describe their products and why they exist in the world. This is especially crucial for the sales team: Unless they buy in, they’ll never be able to make a presentation about the product.

Change can be humbling — it means admitting that what you’ve been doing isn’t working anymore, that your competitors are moving faster than you are. Or that you’re just flat-out wrong. That’s a real test for company leaders.

Done well, change can be a catalyst not for fear and internal squabbling, but for collaboration, growth, and rededication to the cause. The objective is not comfortable complacency, but transformational business success. On the other side awaits greater clarity, sharpened vision, and teams that are aligned with the vision and confident in moving forward.

Change ain’t easy. That’s why it’s essential. And when you’re ready, we’re here to help.

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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All Beauty, No Brains: When Graphic Designers Fail to Understand Packaging Hierarchy

April 16, 2013  |  an article by Diana Fryc

We here at Retail Voodoo are big fans of ProBar. Do you know it? We’ve been buying them for sometime now. You can find them in your local Health Food store, Whole Foods, or REI. They are very wholesome, filling and just plain yummy. That said, I’m confused…like shopper confused. A couple of months ago, I went to buy my favorite, the Superberry & Greens, but what happened next is a tale of packaging tragedy, a story of beauty over brains. I saw new packaging, quite lovely new packaging, but all of a sudden, greeted by a wall of orange, everything looked the same. I had to squint and spend time discerning if I was buying the correct bar.

The whole label hierarchy broke down, and while I meant to leave the car double parked and grab my fav, I ended up getting a big fat ticket instead (*LIE*). Don’t let beautiful packaging override brains. Make sure you manage the information hierarchy correctly, and for goodness sake, change colors, or include high contrast visual cues to make it easy for those of us too addled to read on the fly to buy our favorites.

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

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