Target Audience: CMO/CGO

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Wondering What It’s Like to Work with Us?

March 29, 2023  |  an article by Diana Fryc

If you’ve been reading our stuff for a while, you know we typically share our ideas and experiences to help brand managers and marketers leap over the hurdles their brands run into. Business challenges like figuring out which products to launch or finessing relationships with retailers or navigating consumers’ fickle buying habits.

So I wanted to pull back the curtain a bit and write about how brand leaders come to work with us, and how we help them blow up their brands in all the best ways.

Why Brand Leaders Engage Us

Brand managers, CMOs, and private equity investors typically reach out to us when they’re in one of two broad scenarios:

One, something isn’t working. Market share is growing slowly or not at all. Profits are stagnant. Category managers are losing interest in the brand and its products. A once powerful connection with the brand’s audience has softened, and a potential new audience is hard to identify. Packaging and brand identity no longer stand out in a competitive marketplace. The brand is floundering and leadership needs outside expertise to right the ship.

Or two, the brand is in solid shape, performance wise. But the team is under-resourced and can’t devote people’s power to taking it to the next level. It’s more of a bandwidth issue, not so much that the brand is stuck. Perhaps the brand is new to the company’s portfolio and leaders aren’t yet ready to build out the team. They need work from us that’s as good or better than what they could produce internally.

While we’re really good at turning around sluggish brands (see Russell Stover and Essentia), we excel when we plug in as an expert resource for the team. That’s because we’re free to bring big ideas, take risks that are hard to do internally, and stand in the trenches to advocate for a bold vision for the brand. Our position as an outside partner means we’re not intimidated by pitching breakthrough ideas or limited by what’s always been done.

What You Can Expect from Us

Our work with food, beverage, and wellness brands typically falls under two umbrellas: our 360° Brand Development process (i.e., the whole kit ‘n’ kaboodle) and Brand Strategy & Positioning (when the client has an internal team capable of executing the strategy).

Some brand managers, whatever our engagement, prefer us to play the “agency” role, standing a bit apart from the team, working independently, and iterating in back-and-forth fashion. We skillfully support the client’s expertise and help them build solutions that feel “aha” — grown organically out of their strategy.

Others invite a more collaborative partnership with lots of dialog and personal connectivity. These managers want to blend new-school and old-school marketing thinking; they expect to roll up their sleeves and be part of the behind-the-curtain work.

After decades of doing this work, we’re super comfortable with both of these roles. We can shape-shift to assume whatever form works best for the project. Clients tell us this flexibility is one of our assets, along with a few other strengths:

We See Into Your Blind Spots

It’s maybe the biggest argument in favor of working with us: We see what you don’t. Institutional bias is real. It keeps you from imagining a wider consumer base beyond the fans who’ve been with your brand from the beginning. It hamstrings your innovation process because you can’t get past your personal preferences. When you’re stuck in we’ve-always-done-it-this-way mode, bold moves feel too risky, even when they’re the right ones.

We Help You Get Comfortable with the Uncomfortable

Armed with that outsider point of view, we can push boundaries and advocate for positioning or audiences or retail channels that might feel uncomfortable or unfamiliar to the internal team. We’re not afraid of the internal politics and turf battles. Our business partners tell us we help them imagine their business in ways they could never have foreseen. We overcome doubt and deliver results — results that make our clients look brilliant. And in the highly unlikely event that we fall short of the goal, we absorb the punches.

We Leverage Our Years of Experience

David and I have been at this for a couple of decades now. As a young creative, David helped build one of the most iconic, pervasive brands in the world, Starbucks, and he’s gone on to advise CMOs and leaders of many other influential food and beverage brands. Since my early career position working with Jane Goodall, I’ve been on a mission to change the world. Those three things — experience, impact, and passion — are unique to us. Every client engagement, every breakthrough, every win adds to our expertise. And we’ve built a team of strategists and creative pros with CPG marketing chops that bring their own dedication and skills to the work.

We Find New Consumers to Fall in Love with Your Brand

All that experience helping brands like Starbucks and REI and High Key find breakthrough success adds up to what I call David’s superpower. It’s his freaky ability to translate raw consumer data into a deep understanding of the consumer and consumer-to-be. Most data takes a historic look at who’s bought your product, where, and why. David’s adept at mining that info for insight into who your future audience is and how your brand fits into their lives. Growth comes not from selling more product to your existing fan base, but from finding all those people out there just waiting to fall in love with your brand.

We Deliver Results, Period

This is what it’s all about, right?

As a brand manager, you’re charged with growing the business. It’s a singular goal with a lot of moving parts: messaging, channel strategy, audience development, product innovation. Time and again, clients tell us, “You told us what would happen and you delivered exactly what you promised. Working with you transformed our culture and impacted my career.”

Maybe they had questions or fears along the way, but they trusted the process. Working with us is like physical therapy: You relearn how to do things you thought you knew how to do.We’re out to build what we call Beloved & Dominant Brands. Brands with devoted followers, with bold aims to change the world, with the power to out-compete rivals. If that aligns with your vision for your brand, I invite you to get in touch.

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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Your Brand’s Success Depends on a Great Team Culture

February 27, 2023  |  an article by David Lemley

It’s not uncommon for CPG or FMCG brand leaders to come to us for help with an external problem such as sluggish sales, aggressive competition or disinterested retailers. However, we often find that the problem behind the problem turns out to be an internal one. Employees are disengaged from the work and disconnected from the brand’s larger mission, or perhaps there isn’t a mission at all.

Beloved & Dominant brands, the brands we help build, are grounded in a higher calling to improve people and planet, to right a wrong, to fight the good fight, to enable a big change in the world. For these highly successful companies, every decision is based on the brand’s WHY — the promises it makes and the way it keeps them.

That goes for employees, too. Brands thrive from the inside out. So the culture of shared ideology and passion you aspire to create with your most loyal buyers applies equally to your team.

Brand Strategy Work Reveals Cultural Problems

When brands can’t quite get over the hump — can’t hook an audience beyond their loyalists, can’t get into new retail channels, or can’t break through a revenue ceiling — leaders often chalk these hurdles up to strategic or tactical misfires: “Our consumer data is off” or “We’re not talking to the right people.”

When we dig into these challenges, we often find that the internal culture is in disarray. When that happens, employees can become hyper-focused on survival tactics rather than making their brand a movement. Without a movement, it’s just a company, not a brand. People don’t like to work for companies; they want to work for smart organizations that value making a difference.

It’s relatively easy to create a mission statement for your company; it’s more vital to create an actual mission for the brand. What’s the difference? A mission statement is a marketing exercise, one you’ve probably done a thousand times in your career. A true mission is the very soul of your brand, its reason for existence.

Here are 6 things a positive, mission-based internal culture can do for your brand:

1. It builds a better organization. Any company that gains momentum needs subject matter expertise, which in itself creates functional silos. Functional silos are kryptonite to culture and getting everyone on the same page. The more functional disciplines you have, the more talented people you have, the more different pages you have. Mission lowers the barriers between different areas of the business because employees see themselves as teammates serving the collective good, not as marketers vs. salespeople vs. finance people. It greases the wheels for better collaboration and information sharing.

2. It overcomes challenges. Working together toward a higher purpose keeps people rowing in the same direction when the water gets rough. They can’t let the larger movement down, so they’ll fight through, innovate, and problem solve.

3. It surfaces the best ideas. In a broken culture, employees are scared to speak up for themselves and their customers. Leaders stand above, barking orders, hoarding information, and diminishing trust. Everyone outside the C-suite becomes pessimistic about what’s possible, so they do the bare minimum and avoid rocking the boat. Keeping their heads down instead of trying new things. In a healthy culture, team members feel free to share ideas, question the status quo, and advocate for fans of the brand.

4. It facilitates decision making. When every employee embraces and works toward the same North Star, decisions become relatively easy. This internal alignment makes it easy to spot opportunities that aren’t right, identify the right kind of products to introduce, and clarifies your consumer messaging. The brand’s mission and unity around it provide a framework for decision making. Strategies are well-defined, and tactics are obvious. People may not agree with a particular decision, but they’ll support and execute on it because it’s right for the brand.

5. It becomes contagious. A powerful mission is catnip to your retail partners, and it gets your salespeople completely fired up to talk about your brand. When your marketers and comms team believe ardently in what they do, that passion and enthusiasm radiates through your advertising and social media to capture the hearts and minds of your audience.

6. It keeps the best people. Working for a company is a job. Working for a mission-driven brand is a calling. At a time when businesses are having trouble recruiting, and employees feel disaffected, a powerful mission gives them something to believe in and support. Your staff also needs to know how they fit into the system so they can meaningfully contribute to the cause.

The Intersection of Culture + Brand Strategy

Think of culture as the internal expression of your mission and brand strategy as its external expression. Both involve a clear set of promises and an agreement on the behaviors and ethics around how those promises are kept. If the brand can’t make its own world better, it can’t do that for partners or consumers.

Brand strategy can help heal a corporate culture — or amplify it. If your culture is great, it will help you move infinitely faster; if it’s broken, you can use brand strategy to build a culture that can unite the entire team.

The brand development process identifies or clarifies the WHY that elevates the brand above its competitors. And it defines the way people interact and collaborate and treat each other as colleagues. A vibrant culture is not just about having fun and creating good working relationships, it’s about joy as well. You want to go into battle with these people, you have their back and you know they have yours; you’re unafraid to take risks that advance the mission.

Ultimately, passionate employees will lead to passionate consumers. In fact, internal culture is such a determinant of a brand’s bottom-line success that we recommend it as one of the six KPIs that matter for mission-driven food, beverage, and wellness brands. Employee engagement may not be a metric you’re watching out for, but it should be.If your brand isn’t meeting expectations, it may be a culture problem, not a strategy problem. Let’s talk about it.

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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5 Consumer Research Tools & What They Tell You

January 27, 2023  |  an article by David Lemley

As we dive into a new year, we’re advising the brands we work with to make bold yet highly calculated moves for growth. Revisit your retail strategy. Upgrade your product formulations. And reach for new audiences.

Finding new consumers — without losing meaningful numbers of your longtime fans — may seem like the biggest hurdle to food, beverage, and wellness brand leaders. Why? Because you know your current audience. You understand their needs, attitudes, patterns, why they buy, how much they’ll pay, how they talk about your brand to their friends.

New consumers are like strangers on the dance floor.

And you need to not only find them, but also understand their needs, attitudes, patterns, and so on. That’s where consumer research is useful. So if you’re going to identify them and figure them out, let’s look at the different research tools you have at your disposal.

Data Types for Food & Wellness Brands

Most consumer research tells you about the current state of your brand and the people who buy your products.

Syndicated research

This is the most basic. Syndicated reports use data gathered within specific geographic markets to give you some insight into the mind of the consumer. The most commonly used syndicated research providers in the CPG space are Mintel, Ipsos, and Pew Research Center, which provide data on geography, market size, category leaders, and general demographic and psychographic information on consumers shopping the category.

SPINS (focused on the natural channel) and IRI (covering conventional grocery channel, MULO, and Club) are largely used as subscriptions by brand owners to track sales volumes per week at the national level. The advantage is that you know who is leading the category and how your brand ranks in terms of share of dollars and velocity at the store level.

Nielsen and Numerator offer consumer data collected by surveying people through consumer panels or apps where users answer questions and provide information about their purchases. This research goes beyond demographics and sales data to help marketers understand who’s buying their products (and their competitors’). Marketers can buy adhoc reports or subscribe to a never-ending stream of real-time data — which can be helpful but requires a full-time employee to mine and distill it.

Layering retail data on top of consumer data gives you a view to your brand’s performance within the competitive set. And basket affinity — what products consumers buy in addition to or instead of your products — can be important information as you look to build your audience.

On top of the raw numbers, research companies try to help marketers interpret what they mean. The intel you get, depending on the category, is based on primary school-level survey questions; because the data is pretty simplistic, the analysis can sometimes be right and sometimes wildly off.

Companies like Nielsen and Numerator also offer customers access to their databases to slice and dice in all kinds of cool ways. If you’re a data geek, this will be your jam. But there are limitations to what this kind of data can tell you. You’re only hearing from consumers who’ve opted into the survey or panel (and they may or may not be your target audience). Also, the companies’ algorithms ultimately determine the data that’s presented to you. This can be interesting but not necessarily insightful.

Usage & Attitude (U&A) studies

These research options give you a picture of how consumers interact with your brand. Who uses your products? How do they use them? U&A research typically involves surveying your existing audience by email or online (using tools like Survey Monkey or GutCheck). It’s a great way to have a conversation with your buyers, and if they are stark-raving fans they’ll likely do it gladly.

We’re fans of this kind of research, but with a caveat: Because you’re talking to people who favor your brand, it’s kind of an echo chamber. U&A studies can reinforce your brand team’s existing biases and perceptions. A smart research partner can help you find the right people to survey (including, critically, people who stopped buying your products) and the right questions to ask.

Segmentation studies

These are helpful because customer segmentation alone often doesn’t provide enough input to properly inform marketing strategy and tactics. To ensure segments are distinct, sizable, and actionable you’ll need more information. A more meaningful way to approach it is to not only understand who your audience is (demographics), but learn what they do (behaviors), and probe into why they do it (psychographics). Tools like Suzy, Nielsen NPOWER, and others help you include psychographics in your segmentation, to incorporate attitudes, aspirations, values, and emotions to identify segments based on lifestyle, personality traits, opinions, beliefs, and interests.

Trend reports

Published by organizations like New Hope and Mintel, these are written by experts who follow specific categories and markets closely. We love them and have used them for years, but because they’re so popular now and so many out there are written by less savvy, less expert sources, we’re really selective about using them. Consumer trends can inform your product innovation work by showing what kinds of ingredients, eating patterns, and flavor profiles will be popular in the next year. Trend forecasters take existing consumer preferences and behaviors and try to project forward what they’ll like and do in the future.

Proprietary research

This customized option allows marketers to directly connect the dots between consumers and their brands. Using providers like Nielsen Bases, GutCheck, and Survey Monkey, you can quickly query consumers (both current and prospective) about initiatives you have in the works like new products or new positioning: “This is what we’re trying to do, would you buy it for $4.99?” For more complicated asks, you can move into consumer-led testing (focus groups) and in-home testing. At this high level, you can develop samples or prototypes and have people take them home and use them and tell you what they think.

Custom research yields a lot of meaningful information: Their interest in your product, feelings about your brand, intent to purchase, flavor preferences, price they’re willing to pay.

Love the Data, Beware of the Data

We love data. We use data. We have thoughts on data.

The first problem we see with consumer research is confirmation bias. Most research is backward-looking and includes current customers. So brand leaders often feel smart when they look at data because it confirms what they already know about the people they already know.

The second biggest problem we see is that brands get bogged down in data. They have too much information, or it’s spread out and hidden among business units. Which is a lot like having no data at all.

Problem number three is that marketers often rely on outdated research. You can’t use 2018 data to understand how a post-pandemic consumer thinks. Data is like house guests or fish: leave it around too long and it starts to smell funny.

But the biggest problem even market-leading brands have with consumer research is that they flat-out avoid it. There’s always a risk that when you ask consumers what they want, they don’t want your products. But you should not fear bad news. Bad news points to opportunity. And you can take action toward that opportunity.

By itself, research is just a bunch of numbers. It can offer you clues, but it’s like buying a vowel on Wheel of Fortune: You still have to solve the puzzle.

It takes expertise and nerve and vision to look at data and fill in the blank spots. You have to decide where the clues lead you. Do you triple down on what you know or go to a new space? Do you stop investing dollars in an aging audience? Find new people in a different income bracket?

The real power of consumer research emerges when you gain clusters of insight within all the spreadsheets. It takes a strategic mindset among your team to translate and respond to data. Ignoring data would be foolish—but knowing what to do with it, that’s the magic.Unsure about what data you have, what you need, or how to interpret it? That’s our specialty. 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.

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Attracting New Customers Doesn’t Mean Losing Longtime Fans

January 13, 2023  |  an article by David Lemley

“Don’t lose our power users!” It’s the No. 1 concern we hear from brand executives who come to us for help building their business.

Here’s the problem, though: Your power users, your longtime fans, your core customers — they’re a fixed universe. Keeping them, and only them, happy is not the ticket to growth and long-term impact.

To thrive, food, beverage, and wellness brands need to constantly convert new believers. There’s a whole cohort of fans-in-waiting out there, ready to fall in love with your brand’s promise and products. You just haven’t yet sent them roses.

To grow your brand’s audience, you need to first get over your team’s institutional fear of failure, and then understand where and how to find new consumers.

Fear of Leaving Fans Behind

Brand leaders are charged with growth. That’s a given. But it’s a mistake to assume that growth can come from selling more stuff to a finite number of people. If your brand is duking it out on price, or can’t get invited on shelf because your products are too similar to what’s already there, then your target audience, no matter how loyal they are, may be in the way. Growth won’t come from your 250 die-hard fans spending 5 cents more; it comes from getting 250,000 more people to think the same way.

Unfortunately, most consumer products companies have a short-term financial mindset; data is judged in quarterly or semi-annual segments, and no marketer wants to be the person who’s responsible for losing share. A false sense of safety emerges from focusing on the core fan base; if you can keep them happy, that feels like a win.

The census of power users is often not big enough to matter, but brand leaders are so freaked out about losing them that they often don’t see beyond them. Growth means adding new consumers to the fold, and in appealing to those new people you risk leaving your early adopters behind.

Global brands with massive audiences are more adept at weathering these audience shifts. For mid-cap brands, potentially losing a few points in share in exchange for larger long-term expansion feels chancy.

Let me reassure you that building an audience is not a zero-sum game. You don’t lose an old customer for every new one you add.

There’s another fear at play here: Leaders and teams are fans of their brands and naturally think their audience mirrors their own preferences and behaviors. New audiences may scare marketers because they’re unfamiliar. Because they’re not exactly like you, you need to figure out who they are, what they respond to, and how to communicate with them.

Recognize, too, that there’s a natural evolution in a brand’s audience. Consumers mature out of brands, develop new need states, and live in a changing world. They expect brands to evolve alongside them. Don’t change for change’s sake; change for growth and relevancy.

Where Are Those New Customers?

Consumer preferences and behaviors are going through massive changes because of the fear of recession. For most people, their perception of the economy is more driven by the media and bad news than by lived experience. In short, consumer behavior doesn’t match consumer sentiment.

People are willing to pay more for products they like, open to trying something more expensive, and curious about sampling other brands. They’re looking for products that fit and reflect their values. So it’s a good time to capture new folks, especially since everything points to continued strong consumer spending despite downer economic news.

So how do you look for these willing-to-try-ers? How can you find a large group of people who will evolve into die-hard fans?

We’re especially skilled at helping brand leaders reimagine market boundaries, reinvent categories, and rethink their audience. This net new audience feels like a foreign concept when you’ve been focused on a core group for so long. It’s all about identifying a larger addressable market of people who will similarly be attracted to your brand’s promise.

Business schools teach the strategy of narrowing your addressable market; our approach to audience development goes in the opposite direction. We’ll start with that core audience and their needs and characteristics, then look at the broader category and draw threads that connect them to understand that there’s a huge audience of prospects. It’s not that you’re going to market to ALL of them, but if you get into the right channels and communicate your brand’s values, those people will pay attention to what you’re doing, and you’ll win over a good chunk of them.

Use Data + A Whole Lot of Insight

This model of building a group of net new consumers relies on data, sure. However, data is an artifact, historical by nature. It can tell you that a transaction occurred, not why it happened. It provides a road map of sorts, but it won’t point in a specific direction.

Audience development takes creativity and chutzpah, and an understanding of human behavior that data can’t collect. To borrow an example from streaming TV: Netflix has all the data in the world and they’ve sliced and diced it to create shows for all these segments. While AppleTV doesn’t yet have the viewership of Netflix, they’re great at making series nobody else would make because they can see beyond what the data says consumers would watch.

As a marketer, innovator, or brand manager, you’re will have to rely on experience and insight to expand your universe of customers. We often talk with clients about finding the white space — the place of real opportunity, where your competitors aren’t playing. Find where your brand’s superpowers overlap with consumers’ needs and wants. Project your core group’s characteristics onto a larger universe. You might appeal to yoga moms, but wouldn’t on-the-go outdoor enthusiasts love your products, too?That empty void looks scary, but it’s full of potential. It’s the only way you get to something (or someone) new. We’ve helped a bunch of brands navigate that white space and find the consumers they never could have imagined. So let’s talk about who you should be talking to.

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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6 Growth-Oriented Strategies for Food & Beverage Brands in 2023

December 23, 2022  |  an article by David Lemley

End-of-year planning during uncertain economic times is scary for leaders in the food, beverage, and wellness categories. Marketers at multinationals are being told to “protect the core” — retreat, retrench, and ride it out.

But holiday sales results and signals from the Federal Reserve suggest that this recession isn’t gonna be deep and long. We have evidence from recent downturns that this is not the time to hole up in the basement. Instead, marketers should seize this opportunity to rebrand, reformulate, reposition, repackage, and rethink anything that isn’t defensibly different from the other players in their respective categories.

As your brand team looks ahead to the first quarter of 2023, here are six action items that should be on your to-do list.

Rebrand

Upgrade the promises you make and the way in which you keep them.

If you don’t have a solid strategic foundation for your brand, do not pass Go. Nothing else you do in 2023 will be effective without it.

Your brand’s WHY renders it recession-proof, pandemic-proof … anything-proof. Because when push comes to shove, all goods and services are commodities, even those that speak to vegans and busy moms and Keto followers.

Strategically well-positioned brands, though, aren’t commodities that a consumer can easily replace with something cheaper or newer. Beloved & Dominant brands are markers of personal identity and tribal association. So when something — like a supply chain outage or family budget crunch — disrupts how consumers choose what they buy, they’ll stick with Beloved & Dominant brands even if they’re more expensive or hard to find.

Why? Because the consumer likes the person she gets to be when she associates with the brand. She believes in what the brand stands for and feels good about connecting to its mission because it aligns with her own values. The fact that she likes the flavor or the ingredient list is a secondary consideration.

Redefine

Think about who your audience is — and could be.

Consumer behavior right now is a little confounding: The news cycle keeps harping on recession, yet people are still spending on stuff they really want. They’re back in stores big-time, and they’re looking for products and brands that help them feel good. In this climate, shoppers are open to trying new things, so you have a golden opportunity to gain new customers.

Your consumer research likely points backward, telling you who your current customers are and why they’ve bought in the past. Now is the time to look forward, using tools like a competitive audit to help you see who your future customer might be. Brand leaders often have a mistaken impression of their potential audience, failing to recognize that there’s a whole universe of people out there who could fall in love with your brand if you only spoke to them.

Reformulate

Look closely at what you’re making.

Supply chain outages two years ago likely forced you to examine your product lineup and make hard choices about the stuff you make and what you make it with. Now is the time to do this deliberately, not reactively.

Look at your ingredient deck. Is it time to get the gunk out — aim for fewer, better ingredients? Streamline your processing? Level up your sourcing? Look at your whole offering … what are you making that you shouldn’t, and what are you not making that you should?

This may translate to more cost, but it will also yield more defensible differences. When your brand — and therefore your whole innovation process — is tethered to a meaningful WHY, the ingredients you use become part of the promise you make and the way you keep it. Consumers who buy into your mission won’t trade down to competing brands with crappier ingredients.

Reposition

Expand the daylight between your brand and your competitors.

This tag-teams with your brand strategy. Positioning affects everything within and external to your organization: how you talk about the brand internally, with retail partners, with supply chain partners AND with consumers. It’s the expression of your value proposition, your reason for being, and your product offering. A focused position forces you to make deliberate choices about what you make, who you reach, and how you reach them.

Strong brand positioning builds a moat around the space you occupy in the consumer’s mind and increases the distance between you and your competitive set.

Repackage

Make sure you’re catching the consumer’s eye.

Often, we have to convince marketing leaders in the food/beverage/wellness space to pause for a beat before repackaging their product line. Brand strategy has to be rock solid before you go off tinkering with product photography and typefaces — every single time. Design always follows strategy.

But if you’re squared away on strategy (see above), then now’s a good time to refine or redesign your packaging system. Look at the whole of it: operations, fulfillment and shipping, the materials supply chain, costs, efficacy of packaging for different sales channels … and, of course, graphic design.

Rethink

Everything is on the table.

Don’t fall prey to the old-school mode of thinking about how to run a consumer product business during an economic downturn. “Conventional wisdom” (note the air quotes) says to kill your ad campaigns, slash expenses, protect the core. But there’s enough evidence to convince us that the leaders who play the long game win every time. Think of opportunity, not retrenching.

The challenge may be to convince your entire organization to embrace a forward-thinking mindset at this time. You’ll need others to help you calculate risk, come up with bold ideas, and power through.

The only thing guaranteed in life and business is change. You can be on the receiving end or participate in it, take action or feel like a victim, make it happen or feel like it’s happening to you.

Your opportunity now is to think boldly and act bravely in a time of uncertainty. If you don’t make smart moves, other brands will. We all need to get comfortable with discomfort because it’s a safe bet that there’ll be another disruption to our business sooner or later. Positioning your brand solidly now means you’ll be on better footing no matter what happens.We’re bullish on 2023. We believe in brands on a mission. And we can help you take full advantage of the opportunities that lie ahead. Let’s talk about your plans for the coming year.

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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Top 10 Things We Thought Were Rad About 2022

December 16, 2022  |  an article by Diana Fryc

On a personal and professional level, 2022 has been a whirlwind, and I can’t believe we’re in the final weeks of the year.

So many of our business conversations have focused on things that are broken: economic uncertainty, on-going supply chain issues and the challenges of bringing diverse voices into our organizations. But we haven’t spent a lot of time focused on the journey; things we’ve learned this year that will help us next year — like embracing the unexpected, turning roadblocks into catalysts for opportunity, discovering that we’re more the same than we are different, being relentlessly optimistic, AND having fun doing what we do.

In that spirit, I’ll share the top 10 positives I’ve seen over the past 12 months.

1. Community became really important in our industry again — or was amplified. We started to travel without restriction to visit suppliers and retail partners. Our industry trade shows started happening again, and we could build (or re-build) relationships face-to-face. I attended EXPO West in person for the first time since the start of the pandemic, and it represented all the best things about doing business in this industry. We met a lot of people in person for the first time, many of which we’d only collaborated with online and to top it off, we saw a lot of innovative products. I didn’t realize how much I missed those casual conversations where interesting ideas and connections tend to bubble up during events.

2. Across the board, the food and beverage industry is incredibly resilient and creative. Leaders just continue to take a no fear approach to trying new things and getting stuff done. This “go for it” tendency started in 2021, and became really evident in 2022 as new initiatives, products and brands came on line. As we move into 2023, I expect that we’ll continue to look forward with optimism and to make smart, bold moves that transform our businesses.

3. I didn’t know that I could learn as much as I have over the past year. My experience as a student in Seattle University’s Executive Leadership MBA program has changed me for the better and has evolved the way I see business and its potential. My professional background is in sustainability; because of that, I’d long held the view that business was a necessary evil. The way the program frames the potential of business to benefit society and the things I’ve learned from my fellow students, have been eye-opening.

4. Investors in food and beverage brands are favoring the bold rather than the me-too players. Investors don’t want to spend on brands that are meek; they’d rather have a leadership group with a badass vision for the business. They want to see brands come out swinging for the fences and ask for a bajillion dollars. Leaders of better-for-you brands often shy away from going big, which is a mistake. The world needs your brand, and you’ll never have the impact you aspire to have if you sit quietly in the back row.

5. Regenerative agriculture took the spotlight. Multinationals like PepsiCo, Unilever, Mondelez, and ConAgra are investing in sustainable agriculture practices. They’re normalizing something that was fringe in our industry a decade ago; the biggest players are re-evaluating and re-building the front end of their supply chains following shortages caused by the pandemic. Investing in agriculture gives them control (or say) over supply and production specifications. If you’re building a network of farms, why not do it sustainably? And consumers will herald these brands for taking the lead in sustainability; it’s becoming even more important than organic or non-GMO. Without soil, there is no food. We need business to take a leadership role in solving this aspect of the climate change problem, rather than waiting for government agencies to dictate the terms.

6. One of the raddest things to emerge this year is that every automaker is working on an electric vehicle. It’s the culmination of years of research and audience building, but electric vehicles have finally become mainstream. The best thing? Consumers are driving this shift, irrespective of government incentives (or disincentives). Not long ago, there was a stigma attached to driving a Prius or a Tesla — that they were either nerdy or bougie — but those characterizations didn’t stick, and now there’s a Ford Mustang electric vehicle! This gives me great hope for my kids’ future. And anything that mainstreams environmental sustainability is good for better-for-you brands.

7. Western medicine and popular culture have finally awakened to the fact that we really are what we eat, and that the standard American diet is not the answer. So many of us have discovered alternative ways of eating – like whole food diets, functional nutrition, intermittent fasting, or situational vegetarianism actually make us feel better. And doctors are getting the hint and recommending better eating habits to keep us healthy.

8. Thanks to the Gooder podcast, my weekly interview series with women in food, beverage and wellness, I’ve connected with new people in a diverse range of roles and brands. These stories are resonating with people regardless of gender, and creating a movement that elevates women in this industry. This year, I was gobsmacked to meet so many people at trade shows who knew of the podcast.

9. The podcast has also opened doors for me to take a more active role in supporting our industry. I’m in the process of helping build the Naturally Network in Seattle, an in-person networking group of investors, brand leaders, founders and marketers. This year I was also invited to be the moderator of a panel of women in CPG and to be on the judging panel for Pitch Slam at Expo East.

10. Finally, a shout-out to Geno Smith, the Seahawks’ new quarterback. I’ve been talking about him for years, so I’m super psyched that he’s doing well this season.

As the year winds down, one more thing I think was rad in 2022: the amazing group of clients and brand leaders we worked with. So, if you have interesting projects on the front burner for 2023, let’s talk about how we can help you hit the ground running in the new year.

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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The Formula for Taking DTC Brands to Brick-and-Mortar Retail

September 22, 2022  |  an article by David Lemley

You’ve got a killer product, a packaging system that looks fantastic on social media, a cohort of fans who flock to your site and gobble up every new flavor you drop, and a pile of data on those customers. You’ve got a thriving direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand. Good on you!

DTC is a great proving ground for start-up brands. But the costs associated with delivering a top-shelf consumer experience are skyrocketing: shipping costs, marketing expenses (social media, influencers, retargeting), and raw materials. And while we don’t think the channel’s going away in the near term, we believe it’s time for brands to shift their focus from being a darling to a few (we call this Dominant by Default in the life cycle of a brand) and move to the bigger, real-er world of in-store retail where billion dollar brands are made, and the fakers die.

We are advising the DTC brands we work with, “Get thee to retail.”

How Does DTC Success Translate to IRL Retail?

The short answer is, what you think you know about your customers is not gonna get you there.

Not all DTC 1-to-1 marketing data translates into bankable audience insights. We have seen it lead smart teams into complicated channel transitions because they’ve been deceived by past success —

1) They thought they had a brand, when in reality they had a product lineup.

2) They thought they knew their audience, but really they projected their own wants and desires into an audience profile.

Products don’t matter as much as promises. And groupthink and cognitive bias are brand killers.

Reaching consumers is so much easier via DTC and ecommerce channels than through brick-and-mortar because you’re fully in control. You tell your story through artfully curated social media photos, you pay to attract visitors to your site, you entice them with long-form content about how great your products are. Then, when they buy, you overspend on a sexy unboxing experience and free shipping, hoping that the lifetime value of this handful of die-hard fans will become your ticket to the promised land of preference.

But (or and) even though this channel has boasted 10 years of strong growth, at the peak of the pandemic DTC was still 84% below total retail sales. And it’s been steadily declining since we have been allowed to go out again.

If you want to go big, it’ll take more than your customer data to get you there. Every leader and marketer working on DTC brands has access to their own loyal fan base’s input, preferences, and shopping behavior. But just like all syndicated and primary research, this data can only look backward.

Plus, your current fan base is too insular. Consumers think they have an outsize influence on other people’s buying habits because they’re living in an echo chamber – and the brands that listen to them are living in the same echo chamber. You’re missing millions of people who could love you in the future because you’re focused on the thousands of people who love you now.

So how do you translate this tiny little star into a galaxy of customers?

The Formula for Taking a DTC Brand to Retail

There’s a formula for turning DTC traction and insights into a strategy to reach velocity on shelf:

Audience + channel strategy + positioning, with packaging as the icing on the cake.

(How do we know this works? We guided HighKey from a DTC startup with tons of potential to explosive retail sales in just 6 months.)

So let’s break this formula down.

Audience

When you start in the DTC channel, you’ll know deeply who your audience is. In fact, it’s a valid reason to launch a brand this way: not to make money, but to gather consumer intel.

But — and this is a big but — online consumer data gives brand leaders false confidence. Why? Because you’re paying money to get people to your site, narrowing your audience by persona, and communicating highly specifically to them. Many leadership teams and marketers think that the online buying audience will scale. Just because a hard-core workout type buys protein powder on Amazon, that business isn’t scalable beyond that microgroup.

Three things will help you get beyond your current fan base:

1) additional data (SPINS, IRI, Numerator) that will help you understand who to target in the retail environment

2) an experienced navigator who can interpret that data to help you find net new consumers (that’d be us)

3) a solid brand strategy that will align your mission, audience, and product lineup.

Channel Strategy

It’s not just a matter of where you sell; it’s about the order in which you proceed into different outlets. Ultimately, universal acceptance requires that your brand be available in all kinds of channels, but the order in which you move is important. Success in DTC will have left clues about which sequence of retailer growth makes the most sense for your brand.

Audiences expect certain types of brands in certain stores. If you start out in dollar stores, you can’t then go sell at boutique or specialty retail. Your reputation as a low-cost offering will precede you, and you can’t then up your price and target audience. If you get discovered at Costco, it’s hard to swim the other way.

You may not be a mass-market brand, and that’s OK. An essential part of brand strategy is defining who you are not for. But if you aim to reach a bigger and bigger audience, best to start at the small end of the funnel. When we built a channel strategy for our client Essentia, we led them carefully from specialty food retail into big-box chains. Consumers are delighted to find Essentia at Walmart because they’ve already bought it at Whole Foods.

Positioning

Positioning is an extension of your strategic foundation. It’s the act of saying, “Here’s our value proposition, our reason for being, and what we make.” Let’s agree that your success in DTC means that you have considered and are using brand positioning.

Once you define and deeply understand your audience, you build different personas. For Essentia, we broadly defined the brand’s audience as “Overachievers” and then created personas around different types of overachievers: athletes, people who do physical work, musicians, etc.

Positioning involves making tough decisions that go beyond conventional messaging. Who do you want to reach, and how do you want to reach them? The transition from DTC to retail is an ideal time to re-energize brand positioning as part of a deeper strategy to reach a wider audience in pursuit of growth.

Packaging

How you look on shelf is the icing on the cake, the inevitable visual outcome of the world you’ve built around the brand. If there’s any hesitation or conflict about the package design, you’ve missed something.

What Do Retailers Need from You?

No doubt, success in DTC will open some doors for your brand. Retail category managers probably know who you are. But they need more than a few months of Amazon or proprietary sales data.

They want to know that you have real audience insight — not just for your own products, but for how their shoppers will adopt your brand. And not just for your niche online buyers but for a larger universe of brick-and-mortar shoppers.

They’re also looking to see that you have a long term game. And you’ll need to convince them that you know the category well and that you’ll invest in their channel – their job is at stake here, too.

Taking an online darling into retail stores requires a hell of a lot more than a cool design, a few diehard buyers, and some swagger. We’ve done this before, with great success. So, if you’re ready to make a power move, let’s talk about how we can help you.

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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The Importance of Having Accelerator Programs for Latino Entrepreneurs Featuring Junea Rocha, Brazi Bites

September 19, 2022  |  an article by Diana Fryc

Are you a startup struggling to achieve success? Have you thought of joining an entrepreneur accelerator program?

It is not easy to make a business viable — many barriers can take you down. That’s why Junea Rocha relied upon many people in her journey growing Brazi Bites. She now has a thriving brand and is passionate about helping others achieve success. With the launch of the Latino Entrepreneur Accelerator Program, Junea is uplifting minority entrepreneurs, giving them a network of support, and helping them reach their biggest goals.

In this episode of the Gooder Podcast, host Diana Fryc sits down with Junea Rocha, the Co-founder and CMO of Brazi Bites, to discuss how she’s helping entrepreneurs succeed through the Latino Entrepreneur Accelerator Program. Junea talks about the program, the industry gap she’s trying to reduce, how the program will help startup leaders achieve success, and the criteria for joining the program.

In this episode we learn:

  • Junea Rocha talks about Brazi Bites’ new products
  • The Latino Entrepreneur Accelerator Program Junea has developed — and the inspiration behind it
  • How Brazi Bites’ journey is connected to the template of the program
  • Junea explains the gap her program is trying to reduce
  • How the Latino Entrepreneur Accelerator Program is going to help startup leaders achieve success
  • Who can join the Latino Entrepreneur Accelerator Program, and what’s the application process like?
Gooder Podcast

The Importance of Having Accelerator Programs for Latino Entrepreneurs Featuring Junea Rocha, Brazi Bites

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About Junea Rocha

Junea Rocha is the Co-founder and CMO of Brazi Bites. Junea founded Brazi Bites with her husband in 2010 in the hopes that Americans would love Brazilian Cheese Bread (pão de queijo) as much as they did. After appearing on ABC’s Shark Tank in 2015, Brazi Bites grew a passionate, cult-like fanbase, and in the years since has expanded to thousands of freezer sections nationwide. In her time running Brazi Bites, Junea has gained experience in all areas of the business, while remaining deeply passionate about sharing their delicious creations with the world.

Guests Social Media Links: 

LinkedIn Junea Rocha: https://www.linkedin.com/in/junea-rocha-615b983a/

Website: https://brazibites.com/

Show Resources: 

This episode is brought to you by Retail Voodoo. 

Retail Voodoo has been building beloved and dominant brands in the food, wellness, beverage, and fitness CPG industries for over 30 years. They’ve served multinational companies like PepsiCo. and Starbucks, startups like High Key, and everything in between. 

Their proven process guides hundreds of mission-driven consumer brands to attract a broad and passionate fan base, crush their categories through growth and innovation, and magnify their social and environmental impact. 

So, if you are ready to find a partner that will help your business create a high-impact strategy that gives your brand an advantage, Retail Voodoo is here to help.

Visit retail-voodoo.com or email info@retail-voodoo.com to learn more.

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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The Art & Science of Killer Brand Taglines

August 23, 2022  |  an article by David Lemley

For a food or beverage brand, a tagline has the power to capture consumers’ attention in a fractured, fast-moving world. A killer tagline is also incredibly difficult to come up with — especially if you’re trying to bolt a magic phrase onto an existing (or nonexistent) brand strategy. 

We think of a great tagline as a Haiku that captures your brand’s essence and calls deeply to your present and future fan base. 

Our latest white paper reveals our process for developing a tagline and guidance on when and how to use it across your brand’s communication platforms. 

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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Authority Magazine: Women In Wellness: The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing with Diana Fryc

August 11, 2022  |  a news article by Diana Fryc

Diana Fryc, Partner and Chief Sales & Marketing Officer

Diana Fryc was recently interviewed by Authority Magazine on her thoughts of helping people towards better wellbeing.

Authority Magazine, a Medium publication, is devoted to sharing in-depth, and interesting interviews, featuring people who are authorities in Business, Pop Culture, Wellness, Social Impact, and Tech. They use interviews to draw out stories that are both empowering and actionable.

They believe that good stories should feel beautiful to the mind, heart, and eyes.

Check out the entire interview on Authority Magazine’s website.

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

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