Brand Success Stories: Holly Rix on building Method

0:14Holly Rix:Hello and welcome to the Tomorrow Brands podcast where we explore what it takes to build a brand of tomorrow. I'm your host Ruth Hittock and today I'm joined by Holly Rix, fractional CMO and one of the people behind one of the best challenger brand stories in recent FMCG history. Holly spent six years at Method, or People Against Dirty, helping build the brand in Europe from almost nothing into a household name. We get into what actually made Method work, a drag queen campaign that people are still talking about, and what founders get wrong when they think about disrupting a category. Let's get into it.

0:43Holly Rix:So nice to see you. Before we get started, and we're going to talk about Method today specifically, it'd be great to hear your background, how you got to where you are now, what you're up to now. I was thinking all about method and then completely forgot about me. But I currently are a fractional CMO. So I work across multiple brands, including Money Life, TOTM and On Bar Chocolate. So how I got there is from, like yourself, many years in FMCG marketing across all the big bad and the ugly and startups and scale ups, which has furnished me with lots of juicy experience for helping other scaling brands to grow.

1:27Holly Rix:And we're going to talk about Method today because it's rare in FMCG that you get that kind of success story and you get to see a brand through from launch through to acquisitional. And obviously, it's such an amazing example of a brand that came in and just really disrupted a category, which is the kind of thing we love working on. Tell us a bit, go all the way back to the beginning and tell us like the background of Method because it was a US brand originally, wasn't it? Yeah, so super cliche story, actually. The startup story of two male founders that met in college and created a brand that was headquartered in San Francisco.

2:02It has become, Method was one of the original challenger brands and that has been mirrored and copied so many times. But it was one of the original ones, which is why it was so exciting. It did launch in California, first and foremost, closer to the millennium. And it came into the UK in 2012, but you probably wouldn't have remembered it in 2012. It was, I joined in 2015. So I'd come from Diageo. I wanted to complete change, but I moved to a cleaning brand that no one had ever heard of and thought I was mad. I was heavily pregnant as well at the time. And it just seemed like a balmy thing to do.

2:45and at that point I actually joined with a bunch of other people so also I'll talk to you about my experience of method but it was very much go time it was a real pivot of when they took launching in Europe seriously so I joined at the same time as a chunk of other people that all come from big businesses and we all joined about the same time in September October and that was the European business where we merged and we just merged with ECOVA. So Method was bought by a family investment company that owned ECOVA, which was a 40-year-old Belgian proper eco-activist brand. Smushed that together with an American startup method.

3:28And that's where the magic happened. It was when everyone came together and we grew a really solid business that I wouldn't call a startup it was it very quickly became an SME and yeah I wouldn't take credit for the whole method story because there was a load of us that joined at the same time so yeah that was 2015 no one had

3:48Holly Rix:heard of method and what did the UK cleaning category you said people thought you were mad what did the category look like at that point yeah like dull as dishwater to be honest it was A sea of sameness is what Eric and Adam, the founders of Method, called it. And it was the same in America as it was here. It was commoditized, promotionally driven. The definition of functional before functional was cool. It was about antibacterial, bleach. It had a lot of male cues, Mr. Muscle. It was full of efficacy. Everything stank of pine and lemon. And you'd need to... I remember vividly walking down the supermarket aisle as a kid.

4:29And I overcome with how much it really stunk of aggressive chemicals and leaven. It was really boring. No one wanted to stay in the aisle in that category. No one perused it. It was a grab and go, zero thought, complete inertia in that category. So the scene was set really for complete and utter disruption.

4:50Holly Rix:And what did, I was going to ask who you were up against and how did they think about brand, but that suggests that nobody was really thinking about brand. I don't think they really did. It was the big boys. It was the P &Gs and just some gnarly chemicals being thrown down your loo and bleached from a Kashi kitchen counter. And again, it was about pack format and promotion. Did you guys know at the time that you were disrupting a category? Was that the brief? Was that how people spoke that then? I don't remember. God, that's a real, I'm having to really drag my memory. Yeah, I think it was about, we'll take this successful American brand and bring it into Europe.

5:29And I think we were given real autonomy to do that with a European consumer and obviously predominantly a British consumer, which I think is really what worked. It wasn't just lob this over and keep all of the same things. But it was, I think disruption was definitely part of the vernacular method. The method had already been written by that point. And we kept a lot of those very special quirks from like how we recruit people to how we keep it weird in the office. and sit on reception. Everyone sits on reception. It was daft and silly, but it very much helped build the successful brand. Method.

6:07Tell us a bit more about The Method Method. The Method was the book written by Eric and Adam. An actual book. An actual book. And it got gifted to us all when we joined. And I read it diligently, let's be honest. She's definitely read it before I joined as part of the interview process. You know, there's this whole strand that runs all the way through it that is what kept Method really special. And even as we scaled, even as Method merged with ECOVA and became a much bigger business, it became very much a blueprint for how a lot of businesses do things now. So, for example, when you do a homework task as part of a head of brand interview, that started a method.

6:47It took me six months to get into People Against Dirty and 10 rounds of interviews, including this now famous homework task, where one of the questions was how to keep it weird. And at the time, I was like, I'd only worked in huge corporate companies, GSK, Axe and Abel, Diageo. And this was such an alien concept to me, but I knew that I really wanted to be part of it. I mean, you've gone through such a ridiculous process. It weeds out the people that don't care. And you are so invested in it by the time you get there. I felt like I'd been there already. I knew everyone. I'd met everybody. So, you know, that culture and the recruitment process and how things operated in what they call pods, which are the different categories, like the dish pod, the hand pod, the cleaning pod, became the blueprint for how a lot of businesses do business.

7:39and that was just how we did work. It didn't feel weird by the time you were fully indoctrinated into it. Sounds a bit Silicon Valley, like pods. It's very Silicon Valley and the way that it did butt up against the Belgian culture to begin with was really interesting and the compromise that had to be found around those two brands and two very different businesses. Basically, the whole of that culture that was created and the way that we were recruited, the way that we operated in these pods of categories, set the blueprint for how lots of businesses do very well now that is very much part of the method method.

8:22Holly Rix:So the method, you had like a US playbook. Were you expected to follow that? You said you had some autonomy. How did that work in practice? Yeah, so obviously on methods, when I joined People Against Dirty, I just looked after a method across Europe. And that was through this kind of the toddler years of having more of a global brand run out of San Francisco. There was obviously a global playbook and brand guidelines that we adhered to. But as part of this setting up of the European business, the autonomy was very much with us. So whilst we took on all of that stuff. The idea of having a European consumer target, for example, that we completely rewrote.

9:06We inherited a consumer target called PAM, which is obviously extraordinarily American. And when you put PAM alongside Ecova, which wasn't in the US, at one point we had a method PAM and an Ecova PAM. You can see how nuts that is for actually two very different brands talking to two very different consumers, actually splitting those out into the two different target audiences that we had for the two different brands was some of the most interesting work actually and then creating the brand hearts around that so we did have autonomy and the bottle that i'm holding my hand the rhubarb antibac the antibac that was in america was in a completely opaque shrink wrap dark purple dark teal and dark yellow and it felt the antithesis sort of transparent it felt very u.s coded and really actually quite unlike the rest of the method range whereas i briefed the design for the european version which was is completely clear and you can see the liquid again which was more synonymous with the method look and it's pink and we developed the wild rhubarb flavor fragrance rather in europe so that fragrance doesn't exist in the US.

10:18So again, really working on like particularly UK, but broadly more European trends that informed all of that. And that was absolutely taken on board. We had a campaign called FurnMS, which was very much an American campaign. And we struggled to make that work in the UK, especially in Germany, because it looked very American. So after that was when it was very much separated and we ran campaigns from scratch based in the UK.

10:46Holly Rix:Let's talk a bit about design, because I think for anyone who doesn't remember this launch, I still remember being in a waitrose and seeing it on the shelf method and thinking, oh, I want that, which I'd never, ever felt before in that aisle. and also laughing at myself at how ridiculously swayed by packaging and design and branding I am. But it was so different. And I'm assuming that was a massive part of the success of the brand that you really created. You know, now we're so used to things being out on display in our homes, but in the kitchen at that time, that just wasn't really a thing. No, absolutely.

11:26Design was completely at the center of the method brand. and I would argue was fundamental to its success because like you've identified, you are that target consumer that's quite aesthetically driven. So am I. It's a safe space. And that was really, it came out of a truism of human behavior, which is that we are fundamentally magpies. We are drawn to things that we like the look of or the smell of, the feel of. And it was when Adam and Eric first questioned the category why does cleaning have to be boring and functional and lemon flavored why does sustainability have to be beige and snore inducing why can't cleaning be sexy and desirable and interesting and fun also but this whole we called it sink worthy that it wanted to be you wanted to have it out on the counter because it's a bit of a humble brag.

12:29You're the kind of person who has your nice olive oil sat next to your oven. You're the kind of person who really thinks about what you're reflecting with the choices that you make in store. So it is absolutely taps into that. And we had both teams and the brand kind of pillars centered around that. So I was head of brand experience we had a product experience team where we at the same time as i joined we hired a fragrance expert called the nose they call them the nose cassie from a fragrance house from a perfume house no other cleaning brand or any brand in the majority of the of grocery categories would even think of doing that and the whole brand was built around these moments of being quite extra and really going there in terms of design but not just design in the visual sense design in terms of industrial design the way the trigger feels in your hand the way that the shape of the bottle looks quite suggestive the way that it smells of something very distinctive and very

13:38Holly Rix:uncleaning let's talk a bit about going extra so i remember you and i actually went to school together we hadn't seen each other for probably about 15 years and then you popped up on my linkedin feed with some drag queens absolute career highlight i think i know her i think i know her so feel free to expand on that or any other extra moments honestly that is probably the extra moment of my life in terms of my career that was part of this having real like autonomy and the British European consumer at the heart of the plans. You know, that was a purely European campaign that we ran out of London.

14:19We also had a real shift from anything that I'd previously worked on or anything that we'd done previously on Method in America by having a campaign or having a brand premise coined by my friend Sarah Chuk, who I worked with, who was the head of PR, PR at the heart. And that is a way that I still think in terms of campaigns by thinking really about earned first rather than paid. And that's where this came from. So we spent months thinking about what our cause was. Method was very much about people and pets and the planet versus ECOVA, which was hardcore green and about campaigning and phosphates in the water and changing the legislation.

15:07Whereas Method was really more human and social. We found out that our consumers, our target audience, our social spenders is what they were called. They cared more about social issues. So they were really turned on by things like immigration and LGBT rights. And they also had much more varied interests. And critically, they really needed the fun. They wanted the positivity. Whereas if you're really quite an activist, green consumer, you actually thrive on the negativity. So that was where Drug Cleans came from. we realized that actually the kind of, the literal rainbow was in the brand DNA. And we worked with an agency who I've worked with a lot since called The Romans that really took this creative idea of putting PR at the heart.

16:03And they presented drag cleans to us. And it was one of those moments where it just made sense after months and months of turmoil. What is our thing that we care about? and what we're going to align ourselves to, what difference and change are we going to drive in the world that's tangential to cleaning in some tenuous way. When they presented Drag Cleaners to us, we all looked to each other and that was it. And we also then all looked to each other and went, okay, when do we need to see how quickly can we do this? And I think that was in the May. And we decided that it had to be in Pride. We had to do it in Pride Month for it to really have the earned potential.

16:42so we looked at each other and went okay we're gonna do it for july so drag clues got turned around in two months and that was really thinking about bringing in a charity so we brought in the lgbt foundation into our business in terms of teaching us how we should be striving for equality how we physically functioned and then taking that into a really celebratory certainly focused thing and RuPaul was massive at the time the British Drag Race was and what was the other one there was a couple going on at the time and that was a real moment if you think back to god it must have been 20 oh god maybe it was 2019 when that was really part of the cultural zeitgeist so we created these characters by partnering with drag kings and queens that were British and giving them the artistic license to create characters based on different methods, products and fragrances.

17:44And we put on a drag show for two nights that we invited journalists to and they were all clamoring to come back for the second time. So it was such a spectacular, it was honestly the most surreal thing to have these drag acts put on by familiar, like famous faces all centering around cleaning. Honestly, you couldn't make it up. It was really fun and really different. No other brand could have done that in this space that could have done it, which is what makes it such a good idea. But it was such a rounded idea as well because then we took those characters and we blew them up into massive billboards and we put them on the tube and they were dancing on the tube.

18:26And we had Frida Slaves dressed in a tangerine jumpsuit that we bedazzled with real giant sequins on the biggest billboard you've ever seen outside the church in Fulham. And I remember standing there thinking, what is going on? But it was, yeah, it was absolutely massive. And to this day, people still, like yourself, ask me and other people that worked on it about it all the time.

18:52Holly Rix:Absolutely love it. And I love that expression, PR at the heart. What were the key channels or tactics that Method used when you were there? So was it in-store shopper, mentioned PR, can't play, a real mix, 360, as we say. What did you lean hardest into? And did you have big budgets at that point? So coming from Diageo, where I had£10 million across Western Europe, the budget seemed absolutely minuscule. But when I look back now and think it was no smaller than other brands that I'm working on at the moment, but it just felt it and I think that's where we get this kind of scrappy startup energy from it's where I certainly learned to really reassess what is going to drive impact and what is a nice to do so they were small but they weren't like we've got no money we're not going to do any media and obviously it grew exponentially in line with our growth it was in the millions by the time I left after six years but it was definitely in the small six figures when I joined so in terms of channels obviously we shifted the focus into PR at the heart and thinking earned first but really a core principle of method that came over from the US was creating real retail relationships that was one of our core values so working collaboratively with Francesco on redefining the category that was we invited them for the most exuberant ridiculous trade days together where at one time we made a beach in the office and we played games and it was real relationship built on a desire to make things better but also like fun and light-heartedness because as much as it had like quite a worthy purpose at its core it's just soap and I think it's really important to remember that.

20:53Holly Rix:That buyer that household buyer didn't get much of that at the time. No exactly so that's part of the charm of People Against Dirty because yeah those buyers were drawn to us like moths to a flame because we represented something completely different and something disruptive to their day-to-day. But yeah, I'd say PR and retail relationship focus, not necessarily shopper. We didn't spend oodles of money on shopper marketing, but we did really invest in, particularly on Method, in that accelerator program with Tesco. So when you would have gone into Tesco in 2016, 2017, 2018, you'd have seen what we called the M spot, which is a full fixture sized unit it was either mid-aisle or on a gondola end and it looked like a cosmetics bay it could have been like charlotte tilbury sat there because it was lit up like a green room with lights on leds on every shelf it was white so all the different colored liquids in the bottles really pinged and it had the rainbow logo at the top and i think that was where people were just drawn to it and for the whatever it was at the time two pounds for a bottle of and cleaning spray, it just became a bit of a no-brainer.

22:09So we did invest quite heavily in those as part of that Tesco relationship. Magpies. Yeah, it's not a new wave science, nothing groundbreaking. It's nice colours and bright lights.

22:22Holly Rix:Yeah, you say that, but it's still quite rare to see. I think it's just because the method branding is so strong, isn't it? Yeah, it's a gift. It's a gift. Looking back now, what worked that you didn't expect? what worked that you didn't expect to work what works i didn't expect honest honestly i don't think you could have prepared me for the fandom of method when i moved to the uk team i remember we had these these sweatshirts that are just a lilac sweatshirt with a white method logo on and we we had them in the business we gave them to buyers and i think we gave some away we gave them to influencers.

23:03So this is the time of the clean for influencer. Remember Mrs. Hinch funded by P &G? We had the antithesis to all the Mrs. Hinch grayness with all the different more fun influencers. And we gave them all these method sweatshirts and their followers went mental for them. I've never seen anything like it. And we couldn't keep them in stock. It's one of those moments where this is just a sweatshirt it was before merch was like a thing that all brands did as well but it was yeah that that really surprised me just how crazy that people were that wanted

23:40Holly Rix:literally a sweatshirt that said method on it so let's talk about momentum and the sort of tipping point so you joined pretty early in was there a specific retailer campaign or moment that changed the trajectory. Yeah, definitely. I think that Tesco Accelerator was one moment where our physical availability just went from zero to hero. But obviously then having the strength of the brand and the appeal of the brand, absolutely made that a success. But in terms of an inflection point, I would say it's when we launched the Wild Rhubarb. And I say Wild Rhubarb rather than the Antibag, because we launched actually three fragrances of Antibag.

24:21It was the Wild Rhubarb that went absolutely wild and as i talked about earlier we were given this anti-bac product which was fairly uninteresting from the global to from the us and and we took that in europe and made it a lot more fun it became our number one bestseller and it's still the bestseller because people want anti-bac funnily enough and we launched it before covid so it was already very successful before covid but it was it really came down to what it looked like and what it smelled wild rhubarb really tapped into that a trending fragrance at the time and that came completely from kessie who was our fragrance expert and yeah i think that would remain her and my biggest claims to fame in terms of successful things that we've launched ever

25:13Holly Rix:So Method was acquired by Essie Johnson. How did that feel when you were working in the brand? It felt a little bit odd to be working for a business that had put so much effort into recruiting in its own image, really recruiting the people that keep it weird, recruiting the people that give a shit about the things that we cared about and setting up such a unique culture to then be bought by Essie Johnson, which was not that. but equally a very successful business. But because we were left to run as we were for a good couple of years for all the same team right up to the top, it didn't feel that different.

25:55It just felt better funded. And then after a couple of years, the screws did start to turn. And that's when I had to bail because I didn't really feel like it completely aligned anymore. That's not to say that it's not a great business and that there are people that still worked back on I worked on Method and ECOVA back in the day that still do. It's just not the experience I wanted anymore. But I'd worked on Method for six years at that point. It's the longest I've worked on any brand. I think of it as one of my children as my third child. And for three of those years, I worked on both Method and ECOVA.

26:28They're very much part of a time in my life when I look back on with the utmost fondness. And I also wanted to keep that the way that it was. Lots of us left around a similar time. And I'm still very close with lots of people that we worked with. over the course of those six years because it was immensely special. There was no real experience like it before or since. So, yeah, I kept it as very much a little discrete chapter. And, yeah, then that's when I really moved into startup proper. Much smaller teams, much smaller businesses, much higher risk.

27:01Holly Rix:There's something special about working in a brand, especially if it's something better, if it's better for you or better for the planet. And so within FMCG, and they don't come around that often, do they? They don't come around that often. And to be inside one, sort of from the beginning to the end almost, is a very unique experience, special experience. And I was wondering if I could do it again. I just think I'm too old now. I think it was very much of its time that nexus of true disruption in categories that now is in every category. I don't think you can name a category that now doesn't have a villain of a challenger.

27:43Holly Rix:I don't always ask people that question. And someone said the other day, salad. A salad. I think there's so much that's still really ripe for disruption. But if I think back to what really made method truly stand out was this design approach to the most boring and functional category out there. It's a bit like the who gives a crap of toilet paper. When you're talking about like a functional, FSEQ, you use white, boring category, very commoditized. It's very similar. There's drinks and food are always going to be interesting, exciting because they're engaging categories. Consumers are engaged with them.

28:24No one was engaged with toilet paper. No one was engaged with cleaning products. And I'd apply that same logic to the brand that I work on at the moment, TOTM. No one's interested, was interested in talking about period care. And I think categories like incontinence, degrees, a lot of the health categories are a lot of the things that are in under the sink in your bathroom cabinet. Those are the categories that I think could have a method.

28:49Holly Rix:Yeah, I think you're right. Those like super functional things that people are actually starting to talk about more as well in a way that they didn't before. As the millennials age into the target audience. 100%. And I do think that we talked a bit about design and I don't think that excellent design is enough to help you stand out anymore. It's become sort of table stakes for FMCG. But in the past, that was genuinely disruptive. But now that's just not, you just have to have new things to ponder. You're totally right. I'm just agreeing with you. So thinking about lessons learned from that time, what do you think founders get wrong when they think about category creation?