Meet the godfather of the protein boom

0:00Actually, the masculine part's really the hardest part. And why is that? You can't use male models because men are jealous of them.

0:10Welcome to By Design. I'm Liz Stinson. And I'm Grace Snelling. I'm a staff reporter at Fast Company, and I'll be guest hosting today's episode. Today on the show, we have one of the godfathers of the protein craze, Peter Rahal. Peter is the co-founder of David Protein, the maker of those sleek gold foil wrapped protein bars. Yeah, and David has been in the news a lot lately. The company just dropped its first ice cream, and it's this protein-packed$15 per pint product that reportedly sold out in its first batch in just 28 minutes. Peter is something of a veteran in the protein space. He came onto the scene over a decade ago as co-founder of RxBar.

0:48Peter and his co-founder sold RxBar to Kellogg for$600 million back in 2017. David launched a few years later when Protein was an even hotter wellness trend. The company's first launch was its flagship Bars, but weirdly enough, it's since gotten into another product line, and that's canned cod. We wanted to talk to Peter about how David Protein has managed to use design to help us stand out in this increasingly packed market, how the brand deals with backlash, and the very unusual lineup of products that David seems to be continually rolling out. I wanted to start with an observation. You, as the founder of David Protein, in my opinion, have been uncommonly successful at making people pay attention to your company.

1:32And that's not really an easy thing to do right now. And I would love to hear from you just to start. How do you think about not just getting or grabbing people's attention, but actually keeping it? What's the trick? Well, I think it really starts with a strong identity, which would lay a foundation for what we do, how we do it, where we do it. So that identity for David is really clear and strong. Its purpose is defined, its values, beliefs are defined. And so that allows us, that gives us like the framework to think of ideas.

2:16So having that to operate out of, yeah, I think it makes it easier to sort of come up with bigger ideas, push the boundaries. And I think for me as a second time founder, I have a degree of confidence that allows us to do bold things.

2:40So, I think that's my point of view or how I think about enabling the team to do things to get attention and build the brand and the market. Peter, can you rewind us to when you were first going into building the brand, obviously off of founding RxBar and how you landed on the point of view that the brand has? Because I think it really stands out in market with the simplistic and clear communication to consumers. So curious, like how you decided what that should look like. So it starts with understanding the history of protein bars and studying the category and what role do protein bars play in people's lives and sort of what have been the trends and why have brands won, why have brands lost.

3:41um so having that like historical context was really helpful and the where that landed for me was like protein bars like the fundamental job they have for people in their life is a tool for body composition um a tool for uh increasing muscle or or decreasing fat typically So like – because like when you think about it, like – and you'll see protein bar consumers are really like, I eat these or I don't. They're very binary. And so the people that eat them are typically in the gym, typically on a diet or typically on some like body journey. So that's the job. And then in designing the tool, it's like, all right, if that's really what people want, that's the assumption, how do we best deliver that?

4:40And in an objective way, right? So like in a measurable way. So like a lot of times in nutrition, it's very ideological. It's like, I believe dairy proteins from New Zealand are superior, or I believe, there's like a lot of belief. like at Rx for I was like I believe that dates and egloids are the best combination and so coming off of that I was like I wanted it to be less ideological the positioning and more intellectual right like and agnostic agnostic to sort of trends and and to stand the test of time And so to be objective, the thing that matters most for consumers was this metric we came up with, which is pretty obvious, actually.

5:32It's this protein to calorie ratio. So it turns out, like, what do people really want in a protein bar from a measurability standpoint? It's like the most protein with the least amount of calories, like a protein delivery system. And then on top of that, it has to taste good. It has to be palatable. It has to have textural contrast. Um, and so, um, that was really the, like the product and then carrying through the, so like you start the product and carrying through, all right, what, what, with this philosophy and a point of view, more intellectual one, what clothes should the product wear? Right.

6:11So like, let's finish this identity as a person. Um, and then studying the history that, that body composition change. So like in our brief, the key idea was like, all right, how do we how can we be a weight loss company without being a weight loss company? And then how can we achieve prestige, this idea of like a status symbol that is affordable? You had these ideals and you said you had a brief. Like, where does the brief come in? Is that at the very beginning of building a company? How does that work for you? Starting a company, you need two things like the raw product and then the brand. the identity so it's like the naked human and its personality and what it tastes like and then the clothes and style and who are its friends all the other like exterior pieces what actually we think of brand but when i think of product in the food space like i think it's like brand and and product are one thing um because they're so interconnected um so um but the the the insight of like we're a weight loss company without being a weight loss company is important because if you look in the 90s there was slim fast jenny craig south beach diet weight watchers they were like kind of big businesses like nutrisystem but they were so tacky right like they were just like you're never going to want to wear a weight watcher shirt like you kind of want to deliver to your house with and like a you know in disguise um and so um so that riddle there's a riddle to solve and the way to saw of the riddle was a symbol.

7:50The Michelangelo's masterpiece, the sculpture of David. And so in the sculpture of David embodies our values. And so the root of those values is the tool that Michelangelo used, which was the chisel. And the meaning of the chisel, like a chisel, like the symbolism of it is like, it's this crude tool, right? But if you apply discipline and intelligence, you create something, a masterpiece, something beautiful. So our brand values, and this is like what defines on brand would be rooted from the chisels meaning, which is around discipline, intelligence, and beauty. Did you already have this in your brief?

8:38Or is this something that you worked on with an outside agency? I mean, how much raw material do you come to the brief with? Quite a bit of raw material. But like once we got the name, I was like, okay, got it. We can go build further, build the identity. Once you get the name, it needs to go into a brand book. Right. And like, I always think as a marketer, the most toxic thing is like in a company that is like in brand marketing, they're like, like abstract, abstract defining of the brand where it's like, oh, that's not on brand. That's on brand. It's like when it's not, when it's like really not clear, it's a huge problem.

9:17And that's what I'm saying for us as a brand is like, it's really like we can go push the boundaries of what's on brand or not, but like the identity of what we're working with is very, very, very clear. I know you worked with the creative agency day job. Can you tell us how they helped you sort of shaped that raw material and how they took the brand concept further after you paired up with them yeah i mean i would well i would say they they executed the brief flawlessly right and i think my wife like they're they're very talented and um but one thing i always say is like if you have a bad experience with a designer a good designer usually it's your fault not theirs um and so yeah it was just it's a very it was a very collaborative approach um and um and we worked to yeah making the brand book and brand come to life what drew you to them specifically like did you find any of their past work that you were interested in i saw range in their portfolio right so like you didn't see a pattern of like a certain style i saw some range So that's a very good sign.

10:25And then I saw they understood the concept very clearly in their work. They understood the importance of tension, like a little bit of high-low tension paradox. It was very clear they understood that. And it's something in art I love to see, and I love the coexistence of two things that don't make sense, that do make sense. It's like a beautiful thing. Let's talk about the packaging because I think your point right there, that idea of tension really shows itself in the brand and the packaging itself. It is a foil, a gold foil wrapper with very, you know, I would say sophisticated sans serif type.

11:06and the flavor packaging, you can kind of not really tell what the flavor is just by looking at it. I would love to hear a little bit about how you all thought about that packaging. What was effective? How did you come up with that gold? Yeah, so the gold in the brief, the packaging has to be completely gold. You knew from the outset. Yeah, and the reason why I knew from the outset is because was there was a brand called Power Bar back in the late 80s, early 90s. It was the category. It was the Kleenex. Categories used to be called Power Bars. They had this gold, and it was like a really strong brand.

11:52And actually, when I started the company, my original plan was to acquire the trademarks of Power Bar and rebirth it. But that deal fell through. So I took that DNA from Power Bar and carried that through, and it was a foundational thing. So that was a static thing that was non-negotiable. What does it communicate? It communicates power. It communicates luxury. It's premium, but it's also a little feminine. So it works really well with the name David, which is super masculine. So our product and brand is very gender coded. It's like, it's both masculine, feminine. The feminine is the color actually, like gold should really be monochromatic.

12:37Gold really exists with like black and white, like it doesn't really look good. It's like, so it's that. And then the name David's super masculine, like very strong name. So that came through the design process. and the other like tension point that is more of a riddle it's harder to understand is is which which makes it stickier is that our namesake is is uh from michelangelo so so the renaissance but then our ingredients are super innovative um they're really on the like we're like a high-tech food product um but yet we like respect antiquity um so so that's another tension point um and uh yeah it's like it's a piece of art i like to think like in a packaged good um is branding art to you oh yeah for sure yeah yeah good branding i mean like branding is just identity it's a creating an identity um and like it's just a good analogy like a good brand's a human and some humans are totally forgettable.

13:48Right. Like some people need to forget that like some humans are like special and, and they're memorable and they're entertaining or valuable or whatever have you. And if you study that, you've realized like the great, most interesting humans are usually like some sort of like paradoxical or like they're polarizing. I'm really curious about what you mentioned with the balance between sort of feminine and masculine elements of the packaging, especially because I think in recent years, this concept of protein maxing has really emerged in sort of a male culture sphere on the internet. How do you think about your target audience?

14:24I would say like the super users or early adopters of it are simply anyone who is looking for body comp, like wanting to gain muscle or wanting to lose body fat. So who anyone wants to get in shape like um dave is like really a tool to to help that like um so that's one group and that can show up in very very very different ways um and then another one is sort of people who um are trying to hit a protein target for their day like if you have a well-balanced diet three three meals a day it's it and you're trying to get one gram per pound of body weight if you're training for something it's actually hard you kind of need to supplement protein.

15:09So that's where David's like a good tool to like a well-balanced diet. Um, so there you see a lot of people like, Oh, I'm trying to hit 150 grams of protein a day. It's hard. And so those are a group of people. Um, and then another group where I broadly define is like just yuppies, uh, like healthy, like healthy yuppies. And the reason why that's specific is like, so young urban professionals that like are healthy is because in a city life, you're just on the go. Like you're, you're just, you're just not in time. This relationship with time is different. Like if you're on a farm in the suburbs, I think COVID, when everyone's at home, you don't eat protein bars as you shouldn't.

15:48Um, and look at the good examples like COVID, when everyone was out of the cities and at home, like the protein bar category fell 50%. Wow. So office life, city life is very conducive to the form of a, like a convenience. snack like a protein bar so it's the perfect subway optimization culture yeah yeah great great airport snack but you have a choice right like you can go and spend whatever like seven bucks on a pro david protein bar at the airport which like is legitimately what it costs or you can spend i don't know ten dollars on a uh a smoothie right so like you know you have to you do sort of have to make the case for for like that person who is who is health minded to go with go with your product and I in in my opinion a big part of what you guys do so well is this like it is like a brand led it's a brand led product and that doesn't you don't see that very often I wanted to ask you about how you are thinking about brand you know compared to to what you were doing with the RxBar.

16:58Your previous company took a very different approach to its packaging and branding. I think I read somewhere that you designed the original wrapper for RxBar, probably not the one people are familiar with on PowerPoint, which is hilarious to me. But how have the rules of branding changed between launching RxBar and launching David? Like, what have you observed in terms of what works and what doesn't work? And with RxBar, I was 25, had no idea what I was doing. So even the name RxBar was a problem that we used design to figure out later, to solve that problem. So through that pain of moving fast and picking a name, I actually had to study branding a lot.

17:44And so when I came into David, I was really a good student of branding and was very intentional to not repeat some of those branding mistakes at Rx. So I think the – I don't know if anything's changed, but it's a very clear pattern. And you just have to be contrarian, at least in consumer goods, like packaging.

18:16Like, for example, like David is out right now. And like a lot of people are probably looking at like following our architecture, following our claims, like sort of imitating. And that's like the worst thing you can do because you'll always be the copycat. And even after Rx, like Rx was arguably a way better design product. It was like won design awards. It was like really breakthrough. And like two years later, you just started to see everyone doing that. And so when everyone goes right, you have to go left, I think as a general. So if I see a category with a lot of negative space and everyone kind of following the same architecture, my view is like, all right, well, one way to stand out is just do the complete opposite.

19:00So how you communicate is really important. And I think you have to be different and you can't follow the leader. You have to go the other way. Yeah, when I was talking to Ryan Harmon about the branding back in January, he told me that one of the key sort of guidelines for the brand was that it's not necessarily your friend and it can even be a little bit arrogant or aloof or aspirational. And I'm curious if that's one way that you see the brand as contrarian. Like, how do you define that contrarian point of view? Yeah, I wouldn't call a brand like it's confident, which is a, you know, know, very close to arrogant from an objective nutrition perspective, we have designed the best protein bar.

19:46We have reached the biophysics limit of what you can do from a macronutrient perspective. And so from that position, we are like quite confident in our, in like the word we use is grandiose a bit, like, but it's a fine line. It's super, like, I hate arrogance personally. So, but what David sort of symbolizes is like, it's like, it's really about high performance. Like we have a really well-designed, well, like the best product you can make with the materials available. And so it's for high performers. It's a very intelligently designed product. And some people might have a problem with that. And so like one thing in branding that's really, really hard to do, and sometimes we've done it well, sometimes we haven't done it right, is this concept of polarization.

20:49So the best type of polarization, because if you're for everyone, you're for no one, as you might probably have heard. And it's true. Like if you just go to the medium and you just do what the averages are, like you have no identity, you're forgettable. And that's what most brands are. um but the polar this like idea of polarization is like how can you like have a position or point of view and be true and irritate people or like upset people some some part of the population but that that the part of the population you're polarizing still buys the product Yeah, that's definitely that that's a hard that's a hard balance to strike.

21:32But it seems like you all have done a pretty good job. I mean, I wanted to just talk about this idea of confidence, because one of the, I guess, marketing moments that really struck me with David, and you've had a lot of them, right? Like you've done a lot of like interesting campaigns. But this one was simple, right? And like, it sort of embodied this idea of confidence was your Subway ad. I think it was from earlier this year. I remember walking on, maybe it was the C train and seeing the ads that were plastered across the inside the subway. Just your bar, nothing else. We know for people who live in New York, how big those ad spaces are.

22:12And to just like have a tiny little bar and nothing else was, I think, like the right level of provocative. Yeah, and like credit goes to day job on that one. And in general in design, I like love negative space. I don't think it gets enough credit for how powerful negative space is. And I think you see a lot of like marketers or people like they don't respect simplicity. And so they'll sort of like, oh, well, we have this claim and like we should add this. And simplicity is, like, generally the way. If I had more time, I'd write a shorter story. And so the product shots are just really strong and memorable.

22:58And so by just having that negative space there, like, that was art. It was just like, wait. You, like, you pause. Like, whenever you, like, pause and say, like, oh, that's clever, that's the sign. It felt clever. Yeah, it felt like an ad, like amidst all of like the, my AI product is for you. And like, let me explain how. It just felt like advertising, right? Like it felt like an ad and it's so nice to see that. Yeah, I'm curious, Peter, because when we talked about that Subway ad campaign in January, you said that you viewed it as sort of anti-marketing and that you're kind of like not a huge fan of traditional marketing generally.

23:44So I'm wondering how you define anti-marketing for your brand. yeah like anti-market it's anti-marketing because if you showed that to a performance marketer they would say wait we're not claiming our like you can't see how much protein we have like well but they don't know we're at Wegmans like and then they try to like achieve everything and therefore it just like ruins the power of it and so um anti-marketing is like contrarian in general or paradoxical or like many, many, the performance, the data would say like, that doesn't make sense. You need to be doing prioritizing this, but through these little things of tension, negative, like these are different tactics you can like actually achieve more by getting people's attention.

24:32Yeah. Something that interests me about the approach is that the branding has this very like no fluff, no over explaining approach, just getting right down to the basics of the product. But then at the same time, you're also pulling some pretty like audacious stunts. I'm thinking about Julia Fox and obviously the COD iconic launch. And I think there was like a moment where you sent out vibrators and PR packaging. I'm wondering how you balance the brand's seriousness with these moments of irreverent humor. So one, I think humor is super powerful. And in general, like my, I want intelligence, intellect is a part of our brand.

25:13And I think being funny and clever is a good signal of that. Like COD was not of our values. COD was intelligent because it was a riddle. It was a riddle. It like was confusing. It like, it was like, it was fundamentally that trait. Right. And then there's like so so that's the framework is like beauty, intelligence, discipline. And so what I like to do is oscillate between those. And so we might do a supermodel or something in fashion or a sculpture, a piece of art that's beautiful. And then we might move to a scientist or something more intellectual, whether it's a funny, clever puzzle. and then we might move to something that's very disciplined, like an ultra marathon runner who's running in jeans.

26:03So as a framework, back to that original thing, I like to move between those things. And so when you see David, it's like, oh, and as time builds, it's like, okay, it does something smart. It does something beautiful. It does something with discipline. And if we oscillate between those things, it sort of creates this impression of what we're about in our identity. And I think as a customer or consumer of the brand, we all, I think, aspire to be smart or respect intelligence. We all, whether we are or not, wish to be disciplined and we respect discipline. And we all, I think humans, with envy or not, appreciate and admire beauty.

26:44And so it sort of pulls on the cord of what we all instinctually desire, want, or respect. And so the important part, though, is it's not just hammering one of those. It's oscillating and creating a brand rolled around those values. So there's a method to the chaos. You know what I mean? There's actually enough structure behind it. And actually, the masculine part's really the hardest part. How so? And why is that? You can't use male models because men are jealous of them. and so what would like men respect like sacrifice and suffering i find like um like so it's just hard to find what so like what men the masculine part's hard the hardest like a beauty's beauty like it's just sort of we all can there's like a it's defined in a way um intelligence is sort of just cleverness and and outside the box thinking but the masculine like discipline part is actually quite hard um to do it and not in not a tacky way you know what i mean to do it in a way that's like it's i find that's actually the hardest um men are harder harder to market to i think how does that show up in the branding in the marketing like what is the masculine part of david protein we look for like men men or women doing extreme feats and sacrifice and like displays of discipline and sacrifice that are like, there's like no argument about it.

28:20And it's a story. And that shows up in the marketing? Yeah, yeah. And it needs to show up more, but it's hard. I'm thinking about, and I know this isn't probably fair, but I'm thinking about your recent launch. So you recently launched Ice Cream,$15 a pint. It sold out in like, what, 28 minutes or something like that. it got a lot of attention from the outset because Bella Hadid was photographed with it on her yacht, right? Like, not exactly sacrifice. But beautiful. Right. Like, you definitely claimed one of those quadrants. Oh, they all don't coexist at the same time. Yeah, no, no, of course.

29:03I'm just curious, why do you think people got so hung up on that? Like, why did people care if she was photographed with your ice cream? I mean, were they worried it was a product placement? Or, like, and if it was, does it matter? When you say people got caught up on it, what do you mean? I mean, people talked about it, right? Like, they were trying to understand, was this, like, an intentional marketing moment? Was it just, like, you know, you sent the ice cream and it showed up? Like, I'm just, like, why was there chatter around this particular launch? Okay, so here's why. Launch. Well, one factor, which is a double-edged sword, is like if you talk about David, you get engagement.

29:40Interesting. It just happens. So people talk shit. People talk positive. For some reason, we're striking a nerve, which is good and bad. And then, so this is like, there's a lot of tension here. Okay, ready? Ice cream being eaten by a supermodel on a yacht. like ice cream and a model why is a model who's known for you right what models don't eat ice cream right like so there's a lot of like wait that doesn't make sense but wait it makes sense because david's is low calorie and high protein so it was like loaded there's like a lot of like oh like this doesn't make there's a tension in the idea of a supermodel on a yacht eating ice cream like a bar wouldn't I don't think a bar would have done as well no eating straight out of the pint yeah I mean like I have it's high low it's like it's like yeah it's like eating eating fucking ice cream to the face is not is not what models do right so it's not like David yes there you go yeah unless it's David ice cream and was this I have to ask like did you know this was going to happen or was it just like a brilliant like happenstance marketing moment for you guys she's a fan of the brand and we we sent her she was on our PR list and we sent her to send it it was like hey we you know with her team was like where are you going to be we'd like to send you some ice cream they're like we'll be in south of france i was like great okay i i want to go to something that i've been curious about which is the cod so for our listeners david launched cod fillets, I think last summer, that are like fished by an independent fisherman.

31:28And then when we talked about it in January, Peter, you said that the cod was not that convenient and also expensive to source, which kind of makes sense that you're shipping cod in the summer. But then after we talked, the brand launched tin cod in May. So curious what happened there? Like, was the original a stunt and then people really liked it was this your plan all along how did cod evolve so i think it's just really funny um and cod's an cod's an amazing has the best protein to calorie ratio um as a food and so uh one obviously it's like reinforcing our position and protein to calorie ratio.

32:14And my like, so when we did the first COD one, it was really successful and like, it's just funny. When you say that, like, did it sell out? How was it successful? No, it's like financially not successful, perhaps. Okay, I see. But it was just, you know, it's like, it was a very smart thing. It was just clever. We sold a good amount, but like, you know, relative to our core business it's not significant okay so just like visibility and people talking about it yeah yeah yeah like we had like you know like ink magazine like everyone you know all your like everyone's talking about it it's like a valuable thing to have people talking about your brand but there was an obvious problem with cod one it was frozen inconvenient it was expensive wasn't portable and so you know we're all about innovation at the company and and pushing boundaries And so came up the idea of cod 2.0, which is canned cod, cooked cod.