This week on the Gooder Podcast I had the pleasure of talking with Christie Lagally, the founder and CEO of Rebellyous Foods, a food production technology company working to make plant based meat price competitive with traditional chicken products.
In this episode we discuss how Christie’s development of “Meatless Mondays” while working as a mechanical engineer in the aerospace industry at Boeing, helped her understand the barriers to plant based meat in offices and institutions. Join us as we discuss how Christie has parlayed this information into building her own company to bypass those barriers by catapulting meat alternative production toward price parity and convenience with animal-based meat.
In this episode we learn:
The history of Christie’s brand Rebellyous, how it was started, and reasons for its existence.
How Christie is using the pricing method to make her products accessible to everyone and why that’s important.
How Covid impacted their company, the opportunities that came up, and how it affected their market, and how they responded.
The importance of why brand owners should understand the purpose of their brand’s existence before they focus on the income.
About the process of enrolling investors and partners.
Christie’s vision she has for Rebellyous and what people should expect in the near future.
Driving a Mission in Plant Based Meat Products featuring Christie Lagally, Rebellyous Foods
About Christie Legally:
Christie is the founder and CEO of Rebellyous Foods and a mechanical engineer who holds multiple patents in manufacturing technology. She spent much of her career in the aerospace industry working at Boeing. Previously Christie served as senior scientist for the Good Food Institute and covering the technical barriers in the development of plant-based meat and clean meat.
The Good Food Institute is an international 501 nonprofit that promotes plant-based alternatives to meat, dairy, and eggs as well as cultivated meat.
Rebellyous Foods is a food manufacturing technology and production company defined solely to catapult meat alternative production toward price parity with animal-based meat.
Humane Society is a movement leader when it comes to farm animal advocacy in The United States.
Food Equality Initiative in Kansas City Improves health and end hunger in individuals diagnosed with food allergies and celiac disease through access, education, and advocacy.
Seattle Food Tech is a food manufacturing technology and production company on a mission to “catapult meat alternative production toward price parity with animal-based meat.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In this episode I had the privilege of chatting with RaeJean Wilson, Director of HR/Communications of GloryBee – a supplier of natural and organic ingredients to manufacturers, bakeries and consumers for decades. We discuss the how the naturals industry has changed (and stayed the same) since the company’s founding in the 1970’s as well as how the brand has evolved from a simple expression of love to one of stewardship for the greater good. Along the way we discuss the efforts GloryBee is making to ensure the future of honeybees, and to make sure the brand continues to stand as a leader and information source for farming practices as they relate to pollination, general food production and the overall health of our planet.
“It isn’t about one business or one company; it’s about all of us doing things together to make this world better.” – RaeJean Wilson
In this episode we learn:
The challenges and joys of leading a brand through the evolving naturals industry.
How farming practices have evolved and how the introduction of food science has affected the honey and sweetner industry.
How RaeJean and her family have managed transitional leadership change.
Why food is considered a love language.
How bee propagation is instrumental in the success of an industry that is leaning more and more heavily into plant-based diets and products.
Why leadership doesn’t need to be heavy-handed to be effective.
You Can’t Do Good In The World By Yourself featuring RaeJean Wilson, GloryBee
About RaeJean Wilson:
RaeJean Wilson is the daughter of GloryBee Founders Dick and Pat Turanski. RaeJean has served in the family business in several capacities for 25+ years. After earning a BA in Public Health at the University of Oregon, her focus was on sales and building GloryBee’s customer base. RaeJean now serves as GloryBee’s Director of HR and Communications, overseeing marketing, human resources, safety, sustainability, and community outreach.
RaeJean is married with two adult sons and a daughter. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, wine, and travel.
GloryBee – With over 45 years of experience in the natural foods industry, we have been supplying natural and organic ingredients to Pacific Northwest natural food manufacturers, bakeries, and shops for decades. It’s likely that you’ve enjoyed our ingredients in your favorite natural and organic prepared foods and restaurant meals! You may even have a jar of our honey, coconut oil or natural sweetener in your pantry at home.
SAVE the BEE: Led by GloryBee, the SAVE the BEE Initiative is a partnership of researchers, beekeepers, businesses and consumers committed to protecting honey bees.
B-Corp – Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. B Corps are accelerating a global culture shift to redefine success in business and build a more inclusive and sustainable economy.
Seattle Pacific University: is a premier Christian university that equips people to engage the culture and change the world.
The University of Oregon: is a public flagship research university in Eugene, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1876, the institution’s 295-acre campus is along the Willamette River.
Franz Bakery: is a source for the highest quality breads, bagels, buns, English muffins, cookies and more.
Eugene Mission: We are not a homeless shelter in the traditional sense. While we certainly provide our guests with food and shelter – and do so with an abundance of God’s love.
Oakshire Brewing: is a community-inspired, small-batch brewing company founded in 2006. We are locally owned, employ 24 people, and produce a wide variety of fresh, quality beers through our three distinct brewing programs.
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.
Have you ever driven a car that is out of alignment? The steering wheel shimmies and resists your attempts to turn it, the car squeals, the tires wear unevenly. Driving is uncomfortable and dangerous.
In the same fashion, if your naturals brand’s internal team isn’t aligned, the business may be heading toward a crash.
In a corporate setting, lack of alignment around a singular mission complicates decision making and creates silos in a way that makes it easy to overlook opportunity and difficult to react quickly. Like steering wheel wiggles, the signs of organizational misalignment are pretty obvious: turf wars between departments or leaders, backtracking, rising expenses for rework. All the while, competitors are barking at your door.
What Organizational Alignment Looks Like for Brands
As we’ve worked with brands across the natural food and beverage category, we’ve discerned that one characteristic is central to the most successful ones — the ones we call Beloved & Dominant Brands. And that’s alignment.
First, alignment across the organization: from the front desk receptionist to the sales team to the boardroom, every employee understands the brand’s greater purpose, believes in it, and works accordingly. And second, alignment across external channels: the brand communicates and behaves in the same way on social media, in person, and under challenge.
Organizational alignment is the optimal state for Beloved & Dominant naturals brands. It bestows important benefits:
You’ll have the clarity and confidence to move forward on anything. It could be a major initiative like a move into a new category, or something relatively low-stakes, like a social media engagement with your fans. Because every employee is singing from the same songbook, everyone is equally empowered to make decisions within their areas of responsibility. Decisions are made quickly, without the need for extensive research and endless meetings. The brand’s mission and unity around it provide a road map that’s innate to the organization. Strategies are well defined and tactics are obvious.“Of course, this is the right thing to do.”“Absolutely, this opportunity is not good for us.”
Alignment is not a mode of stasis, though. Rather, it allows you to intuitively and proactively pivot within a market rather than waiting to react. Brands must change in order to survive, and a shared purpose reveals the optimal direction for change. It grants you the freedom to make decisions on your own terms; you can lead the category instead of constantly playing catch-up when other brands innovate.
On a related note, alignment also builds your organization for speed. It allows you to operate with military-like efficiency because everyone has a common goal and knows their lane – no infighting or competition.
External Alignment, Too
You know the person who’s sweet as pie when he needs something from you and dismissive toward you otherwise? Consumers get confused when brands they follow aren’t consistent in their messaging. When brands engage with their customers, consistent behavior that aligns with the mission builds commitment and trust.
Enlisting your fans in your brand’s mission and communicating with them in a way that reflects that mission attracts like-minded people to the brand. They’ll give you permission to connect with them and become part of their lives. But it’s not just about likes on social media; engaged fans are loyal fans. External alignment overcomes consumers’ price objection and fickle preferences.
Alignment Isn’t (Necessarily) Agreement
Alignment doesn’t eliminate friction and disagreement. You don’t have to like the decision to understand that it’s the best decision for the brand. “I would make a different choice, but I see how this one supports the brand’s mission.”
If you find yourself saying, “that idea doesn’t light me up” or “I don’t like that” then there is an alignment problem. Brand leaders have to be able to set aside ego and preference in service of the greater goal. Like should never be a barometer of what the company should do.
Brand Promise as the Axis of Alignment
The hub of internal and external alignment is your brand’s promise. In fact, that’s our very definition of brand:
brand = your purpose and the way that you keep it
Brands without purpose aren’t even brands at all, they’re just companies selling products. Your brand is more than your features and benefits, ingredients, cool name and packaging, sexy Instagram feed. It’s the wrong that you exist to remedy, the health or cultural or environmental change you aim to make in the world. Purpose is powerful. It unites, motivates, and gathers others.
Brand Alignment (and Not So Much)
When brand teams come into alignment, business accelerates (we’re back to that car metaphor again). That’s what happens for many of our clients. Brands come to us looking to go from direct-to-consumer to brick-and-mortar channels. Often with a lackluster identity and an innovation pipeline that is all over the map. We help align their leadership team around a simple mission and a memorable tagline—and we rationalize their possible products in to a manageable list of ownable categories. The result? Explosive traction, growth, and profit.
If you’re a football fan, you’ve seen an example of organizational misalignment playing out on Sundays. After decades of adamantly embracing the team’s name, the Washington franchise ownership finally agreed to consider it, prompted by this year’s movements to support the Indigenous community and people of color. Incapable of making a decision, team ownership is soliciting outside feedback, focus-grouping the heck out of the problem, filing countless trademark applications, and generally punting on the issue. They seem paralyzed by indecision and fear.
Alignment is the key to ultimate brand success – everything else is window dressing. If your brand is dealing with erratic steering, bring it to us for service.
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.
Finding an investment partner, at any time, is no easy task. It’s not unlike soccer or football. The greater the number of shots on goal, the more likely to score a goal. But for young entrepreneurial brands, many entering business ownership for the first time, a capital raise can be a complicated and grueling task that can make or break a business owner’s dreams.
In this episode, I had the privilege of chatting with Ashley Hartman, Senior Principal at Bluestein Ventures, a family-backed venture capital fund that invests in the future of food. Ready to provide insights into a new way of seeing the capital raise. Ashely shares how investment and venture capital firms have taken the opportunity of the 2020 events to re-evaluate how, where, and with who they do business with. She shares how this year has become an opportunity to get better and stronger, meeting not only business but personal goals. Along the way we learn the importance of being a good community partner and how investing beyond a financial commitment has become a cornerstone in her firms’ success.
“People need to be utilizing their network a little bit more and asking a little bit more.” – Ashley Hartman
In this episode we learn:
The reason why Ashley and Bluestein Venture focuses on helping brands in Seed to Series A stage funding.
The ways investment firms are finding and supporting brands during this time.
The criteria and evaluation tools that Bluestein uses when courting brand opportunities.
The key differences in communicating with serial entrepreneur’s vs the home-grown “Hatchery” style entrepreneur.
About diversity initiatives in business and how Bluestein is able to outreach to those communities that traditionally haven’t had accessibility to capital investment.
Where Ashley derives her energy to keep on pushing hard to meet her goals and those of Bluestein’s brands.
Leverage Your Network to Maximize Business Opportunities featuring Ashley Hartman, Bluestein Ventures
About Ashley Hartman:
Ashley is Senior Principal at Bluestein Ventures, a family-backed venture capital fund that invests in the future of food. Bluestein looks for game-changing, early-stage ventures across the food industry that redefine how consumers achieve their health and wellness. Our investments span the entire value chain – both B2C and B2B – with a focus on four areas: high-growth consumer brands, proprietary foodtech, next-gen commerce, and value-add digital technology. At Bluestein, we’re active investors, going beyond capital to help its portfolio companies develop, iterate, and implement their go-to-market strategy to achieve product-market fit and set the foundation for scale.
Ashley is involved in all areas of Bluestein, including screening, due diligence, portfolio company support, as well as firm development and strategy. She has extensive experience leading growth strategy and establishing scalable infrastructure necessary to build sustainable ventures, honing these skills throughout her time running and scaling her family’s business, working on new ventures at Coinstar, and her experience in financial consulting. Active in the Chicago food community, Ashley serves on the Selection Committee and Associate’s Board of the Good Food Accelerator and is a mentor at Food Foundry and The Hatchery. Ashley received an MBA with honors from Harvard Business School and a BA in Political Economy, summa cum laude, from Williams College.
Outside of Bluestein, you’ll find Ashley on her yoga mat, exploring Chicago on foot, hiking up a storm when she can escape to the mountains, or at a contemporary art museum. A health & wellness nut, she’s been vegan for nearly eight years, but doesn’t preach!
Bluestein Ventures – We invest in the future of food. We’re looking for game-chaigne, early-stage ventures across the food industry that redefine how consumers achieve their health and wellness. Our investments span the entire value chain – both B2C and B2B – with a focus on four areas.
Chicago Food Community – A united community effort working to bring food, dignity and hope to Cook County neighbors. They act as the hub for a network of more than 700 food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and other programs which provide food where it’s most needed.
Good Food Accelerator – The Good Food Accelerator gets emerging Good Food CPG brands ready for prime time, giving them the skills to scale up
Food Foundry – A Chicago-based growth accelerator program by Relish Works built in partnership with Gordon Food Service and 1871. It supports, connects, and propels innovative startups who are reimagining the food industry.
The Hatchery – A non-profit and beverage incubator dedicated to helping local entrepreneurs build and grow successful businesses.
Yerbae – A line of zero calorie sparkling waters that are enhanced with a blend of yerba mate, white tea extract, and guarana seed extract.
Coinstar – An American company operating coin-cashing machines
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.
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
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.
Our experience with clients has shown us that when it comes to consumer data, there are two camps. Some organizations can’t make the simplest decision without tons of research to back it up; some disregard research entirely and go with gut instinct.
Of course, the reality is that Beloved & Dominant naturals brands make the best decisions with the right combination of data and “feels.” Research without analysis is just a bunch of statistics. And decisions without data are just guesses.
To use research properly—whether it’s a Usage & Attitude study, trend research, syndicated retail sales data (SPINS), or focus groups—you need to overlay the findings with your brand’s mission and vision. Analyze the data through your brand lens—that’s where you’ll find actionable, “decisionable” insight to guide everything from channel expansion to product development to messaging.
When to Lean into Consumer Data
One of the greatest decision-making vulnerabilities in our naturals category is our collective tendency to assume that our consumers are just like us. Especially in brands led by a creative founder who innovated a special product and grew a business around it, leadership believes that the brand’s tribe consists of like-minded and like-lived fans. Practically speaking, consumer insight can be a daily reality check against our biases.
Brands often don’t seek insight without a pain point. When one of these challenges starts to emerge or there’s a pattern, you should seek it out:
You’re not getting the velocity you predicted, want, or used to have.
You’re losing ground to competitors that are more trend aware and innovative.
Retail partners are less enthusiastic about your offering and are shelving your products less prominently.
Store brands are eroding your traction.
You’re seeking to widen your audience beyond the consumers you currently serve.
Major disruptions like the current pandemic are also ideal times to procure consumer insight. For example, The Hartman Group is publishing research on how Covid-19 is affecting grocery shopping habits.
What Data Can Tell You—and Can’t
Generally, we don’t conduct focus groups with our clients. There’s a time and place for them, but they’re not relevant for developing the big brand strategy that we work on. Focus groups and other primary consumer research yield a small sample size of opinions that can help you make tactical moves like line extension or packaging design messaging hierarchy:
the general look and feel (e.g., I like that photo, logotype, colorway)
I would tell my friends about this product
I may prefer vanilla vs. chocolate
the benefits claims would influence my decision to buy the product
Consumer feedback and syndicated data can’t offer wisdom about how people connect with your brand on a deeper level:
how your brand fits into their lives in a cultural context
how they behave when your product is one of many in a consideration set
where they would expect to see your brand
what is the best sequence for your innovation pipeline and channel strategy
When you’re developing a brand strategy, it’s essential to bring intuition and expertise to shopper research; often, that takes outside consultation. You can ask consumers all the questions you want, but they can’t do the critical thinking for you.
How to Manage Data
If you’re a data-driven organization, your opportunity is not to gather more, but to organize and rationalize what you have so it’s useful. Often, brand teams have so much information that they’re paralyzed. To better manage existing consumer research:
Get it organized. Take inventory of the consumer data you have, and in what format it exists. Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) for your business and see if your IT team can build a dashboard that aggregates multiple reports.
Keep it current. As we like to say, data is like in-laws and fish—really good fresh, not so much after a week. Consumer research generally has a 12-month shelf life before it becomes outdated. If you’re relying on three-year-old data to make decisions, you’re immediately behind the curve.
Spread it around. Your sales team has data, your marketing team has data, your retail partners have data. Share it across the organization and take key decisions out of business silos.
Consumer Data Plus Brand Insight
Beloved & Dominant naturals brands combine information with insight to make the right decisions. It takes overlaying the brand mission and vision to create analysis in order to inform those “gut” decisions. Without the strategy, the understanding of the consumers, the point of view—you can’t prioritize options and make decisions.
Research alone is just a set of numbers; its power emerges when you gain clusters of nuance within the data that takes a strategist and marketing team to translate and respond to. Ignoring data would be foolish—but to know what to do with it, that’s the magic.
Think of those “hidden picture” games you had as a kid, where you’d have to lay a sheet of red acetate over the page to see the full image. Analysis—ideally from an outside advisor with tons of expertise and zero bias—is the red acetate that reveals your brand’s path. If you are ready for that external eye – or maybe just thinking about it – drop us a line 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.
In this episode of Gooder I had the privilege of interviewing Natalie Shmulik, CEO of The Hatchery, a food incubator just outside downtown Chicago. The Hatchery is a powerful initiative that brings a community of innovators along the entrepreneurial path and launches the dreams of owning and running a business to communities that have not traditionally had this access. We learn about the resources The Hatchery provides and how we as a community can provide our expertise, in big and small ways. And why Natalie believes in the power of community.
“Whenever speaking with an entrepreneur, you should always make sure that if you are going to provide feedback or input or a suggestion, that you coach them to believe that the idea was their own.”
In this episode we learn:
* The genesis of The Hatchery and why it is fast becoming a beloved innovation partner to the food and beverage industry. * The common challenges of budding and small entrepreneurial food and beverage brands. * Why exciting innovation comes from under-represented entrepreneurial brands. * About the symbiotic co-learning traditional CPG’s and entrepreneurial brands share in their journey with The Hatchery. * How coach-ability is a make-or-break trait for leaders and how to vet for coach-ability in your recruiting process. * How to become a Hatchery brand or partner. * About Natalie’s trend forecasting super-powers and how it supports The Hatchery’s entrepreneurs.
Food and Beverage Innovation, Begins and Ends with People featuring Natalie Shmulik, The Hatchery
About Natalie Shmulik:
Natalie Shmulik is The Hatchery’s CEO, and go-to resource for everything food business related. Along with an M.L.A. in Gastronomy from Boston University, she has a wide range of experience working with supermarkets, culinary publications, consumer packaged goods companies, and food service establishments. After successfully operating her own restaurant, Natalie was hired as a specialty consultant for one of Ontario’s largest supermarket chains where she enhanced consumer experiences through educational initiatives. Discovering her passion for innovation, Natalie was brought on as a brand strategist for the first cold brew tea company and later moved to Chicago to run The Hatchery Chicago.
With over six years of food incubation experience, Natalie has gained a unique perspective on the industry and what it takes to launch and grow a successful business. Natalie is a regular contributor to Food Business News, was recently featured in the Chicago Tribune’s 10 Business People to Watch in 2020 and received the Specialty Food Association’s award for leadership in vision. She continues to play a valuable role in branding and marketing for food businesses around the country, with her specialty in trend forecasting.
The Hatchery: A non-profit food and beverage incubator dedicated to helping local entrepreneurs build & grow successful businesses.
ICNC: Industria Council of Nearwest Chicago offers entrepreneurs an innovative community to grow small businesses through incubation, workforce development, neighborhood planning, and business advising.
ACCION: A nonprofit microlender providing small businesses with loans at an early stage, particularly to support those that aren’t bankable yet.
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.
Brand Slam Episode 4: Learning How to Grow and Market a CBD Brand
On episode 4 of Brand Slam our guest is Liza Cohen from Nature’s Nosh. Nature’s Nosh is a dried fruit and nut bites infused snacking brand infused with hemp-derived from CBD.
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 Nature’s Nosh and provide strategies to help Liza and her team regain brand traction.
More About Nature’s Nosh: The idea for Nature’s Nosh came to founder Liza Cohen in 2017 (around the same time that she began culinary school), while vacationing with a friend’s family. On this trip, her friend’s mom would sneak away from her grown kids each morning to smoke CBD as her form of relaxation and pain-relief. The idea for Nature’s Nosh was immediately born and the mission was clear: They aim to remove the negative stigma associated with cannabis consumption while making it healthy and convenient for consumers to reap the natural benefits of this functional ingredient.
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.
