A Peek Inside Brand Strategy

0:01Hi, everyone. It's Kelly, and this is a solo episode. I wanted to take you behind the scenes of how I build a brand strategy for an emerging CPG food and beverage brand that's coming to market. I am currently working on three brands that are coming to market in the better for you space from a dip brand to a kid's meal brand to a pudding brand, which is really exciting. and also one of my clients, She's the Sauce, is coming to market very soon, which is so exciting. And I just love nerding out with you about brand strategy and I haven't done a solo episode in a while and thought this was the perfect time.

0:51So I wanna break it down into three different sections that you could be thinking about your brand strategy. This is super important to do before you launch, before you start your visual branding, your packaging, even manufacturing, I always like to say rule of thumb, after you've filed your trademark, start brand strategy because you're going to need brand strategy to launch your product to market so that when you're ready to show proof of use for your trademark in about eight months or so, you are actually selling because you need that proof of use that you're actually selling with the name and this is just a great way to get started and put all the pieces together for really solid foundation and launch.

1:45So before I nerd out too much I want to remind you to grab a pen, a paper. This is very much a take notes type of podcast episode. I love sharing this information. I've advised thousands of early stage founders at this point. And I really love to give you information that gets right to the point, that helps you save time, money, stress, exhaustion burnout I know that being a founder is not easy I give anyone starting a new business especially in CPG so much credit because it's not for the faint of hearts and I just want to be that person in your corner to make your life as a founder easier and simpler and take stuff off your plate so that you have a really great direction to focus on and execute from.

2:45So in this episode, we'll talk about identifying what makes your brand stand out, how to understand who's actually going to shop your brand, and how are you going to create that buzz in sales when you're bootstrapping your launch. So I'm going to prompt you with different questions to think about, to focus on, because I'm a big believer in finding the answers with the right questions being asked to you. One of the things that I feel like so many founders fall into is that you're in information overload, that you're just being told what to do every step of the way. And that it quote unquote should be a certain way when you're building a brand.

3:34But there's so many different paths. And personally, my style of brand strategy is yes, there's industry best practices, things that are non-negotiable. However, there's so much when you're building a brand and especially a brand that has a point of view. When you are a founder, when you're setting out to build a better product, when you're out with a product in the market that's solving a real problem that maybe you face, you created a product you couldn't find. Those are the types of brands and the founders I personally work with. I just find that the work is so much more fulfilling and it's one thing to start a brand, sell a product, make money, have it acquired.

4:23Okay, that's fine. But I really love building brands that have, again, that deep-rooted why and purpose around them with great story and just good vibes and a founder that cares deeply about what they're building. That's what I like to focus on. If one day you get acquired or you sell, awesome. But for me, I always love to start with brands that I know the founder is really passionate about what they're doing and they're not just jumping on a trend like this is something very genuine to who they are and what they want to bring into the world and that's the perspective and the questions I'm going to prompt you with are coming from.

5:07So like I said pull up your pen and paper or take notes if you are driving or doing something you can't stop and write down your answers that's totally fine you could go back to this. So I'm going to literally, I'm pulling up my brand strategy Q &A as we're speaking and really walking you through what I ask founders when I'm working before I even jump into their brand strategy. This is the questions that I'm asking them. So let's start off with your brand, right? What's going to make your brand stand out in the marketplace? There are so many brands coming to market. I literally get pitches from new brands every single day, whether it be on Instagram DMs or a publicist reaching out.

6:04It's awesome. This is what I live, breathe, and sleep. So it's always so exciting. And at the same time, though, my main work is a brand strategist for emerging CPG brand. So I want to make sure that my clients stand out in the marketplace. And I want to make sure that I'm putting them in the right position to be successful. So I always start with uncovering what makes this product different? What will make it stand out? What will help it stay top of mind with consumers and also retailers? So I'm going to give you, like I said, the questions that I ask founders there is more questions that are I go into I don't have time for all of that today but I'm gonna go through with you the really important ones and then if you want to have the pdf where I have the full q a you could send me a dm or email me and I'll send this to you But for the podcast, I want to keep it within my 20 minutes or so.

7:13So if you want more, just send me a message. Okay, so let's start off with your brand and founder story. This is where I always start off with. Also with the podcast, you'll notice I always start off with asking a founder, what's the brand story? Why did you create this brand? And what was your career prior? I feel like this is a great starting off point because knowing what inspired you to create the product and the brand usually is a very big through line for how you're going to build the brand from where you are now to possibly the ingredients you're using, sourcing, to future launch events, to partnerships, to the content you're creating, what inspired you to create this brand and product in the first time is usually that through line that connects the dots.

8:11And it's literally the first question I ask a new client, a possible client, or even on the podcast. So really understanding what inspired you. Again, I really want to challenge you not to just think about a trend that's inspiring you. Trends are cool, but if you want to build a brand that lasts beyond a trend, I want you to dig a little bit deeper into what is inspiring you to create this brand. Then the next question, which will probably take some deep dives, looking up some data, going to the grocery store, going to quite a few grocery stores, which I'm not going to lie, is one of my favorite parts of my work.

8:55But it's understanding what makes your brand different than any other products in the market. And this is really important to identify that what makes your brand different is actually going to speak to who you want to sell it to. I had a possible brand reach up, possible client reach out to me and they were explaining what makes their product different. But at the same time, they were telling me who they wanted to target. And those two things didn't necessarily line up. So what my suggestion was, was realizing for that or sharing with them is understand what's the most important differentiator and what is that messaging like with that differentiator that would actually speak to who you want to target through your visual branding, distribution, content, etc.

9:50And so it's a really important piece to think about of what makes your brand different than any other product, but also doing that next step of thinking about, okay, does my target consumer really care about this differentiator, right? and we'll get into who's going to be buying your product in a moment but I just wanted to plant that seed early on of look at what makes your brand different and in the age of better for you brands this is the space where I primarily work many brands focus on the benefits the functionality which is great I would also say though dive a little bit deeper and see what could be the story around that differentiator if it does have like a better for you angle just so that it could still have legs when the trend possibly changes and so just diving a little bit deeper in your differentiators I like to think about around three different differentiators that really makes a brand stand out because you are going to focus on who is that early stage person that early adapter who will buy your product right when it hits, go live on your website or in retail.

11:10But then there's going to be different target segments of consumers that you can sell to, but they may be attracted to different aspects of your brand and what makes it different, right? So maybe one type of consumer really loves the convenience of your product, but another segment really enjoys the ingredients and sourcing of your product. And maybe there's another segment that really loves the taste and the way that you have uniquely blended certain flavors together. That really speaks to them because they're more of that foodie. So depending on who you're talking to, you may shift what you focus on as your differentiators.

11:57but again I wanted you to just put that in mind when you're doing the work around differentiation is to think about it from a few different angles um differentiation could also be your branding or your packaging or the form factor of your packaging there's so many different ways that you could stand out um it doesn't have to be only one thing and also I would caution don't try to do all the things at the same time. I also recently spoke to an emerging brand founder and she was really wanting to do so many different things to stand out all at the same time that I cautioned her to take a step back and think about what are the most important differentiators and start there.

12:46Because sometimes when you put too many different things, you essentially erode out what the product actually is and there has to be some sort of understanding of how your product will be used and where does it fall within products that people are already using you want to make sure that it feels like it fits in but also stands out and that takes work so just know it takes work And again, I'm saying these things to help you just dive a little bit deeper and get to some things that really resonate the most with you as a founder. Then going on, as you could tell, I could talk about brand differentiation for a long time, but I'm going to stop myself.

13:34Moving on to the next piece I always think about is what was your career prior to launching a brand? I hear so many founders, especially female founders, founders who are moms, founders who may not have a traditional CPG background. Personally, I love working with those types of founders because you are coming with a fresh perspective. You are coming from different experiences. and something that I remind founders who I'm working with who don't necessarily come from a marketing background or a branding background, but they're really strong in finance. They're really strong in operations. They're really strong in manufacturing.

14:19They may have these really unique work experiences that don't necessarily make sense on paper to make them a CPG founder, but we could really leverage what they've learned from those different quote unquote kind of random career choices, which if you read my resume, it sounded really random for a long time. Now I think it's making sense, but I know that it could be daunting if you are becoming a founder in a space where you're like, I don't know if my resume or my career really lines up to this. challenge yourself to dive a little bit deeper and think about the skills that you learn from that and how you could apply that to building a brand.

15:07And I bet you could fill up a whole page probably front and back with what you're bringing into this brand that makes you a really compelling founder and the right founder to bring this product to market and really grow the business. Something else I always like to think about is that turning point. What was the thing that made you say, yeah, I'm going to go for this. I'm going to do this crazy thing called become a CPG founder. And I'm going to probably use my savings. I might rack up some credit card debt. I might raise a friends and family round. But I am going to figure out how to bring this product to market.

15:50And there's usually many things that could happen or maybe one big thing that happened. but really understanding what is that moment because that moment is something that you're gonna refer back to in your brand story, in your founder story, in interviews, in content, in maybe even your packaging or messaging. Knowing that story really well is a very powerful way to storytell and build the brand. Okay, then we go into, let me scroll down. So in that section in brand I dive into your founder story again brand differentiators in more details the brand vision what is the problem you're solving. You're going to want to do all that work but I want to focus on the next section which really dives into who's going to actually buy your product.

16:53So before we dive into the types of consumers, I want you to really hone in on the product itself first. Because as an emerging founder, you have so much on your plate and sometimes it's easy to get lost in all the big steps you need to do and lose sight of the product you're actually creating that's different. So thinking about even from the product name, the actual SKU, to how many SKUs you're going to launch with, to how it's made, where it's made, what are the flavors, what stands out about this. You want to do that work and make sure that, again, I'm going to highlight product SKU name as a really important one, that it tells the overall brand story and the flavors also tell the brand story.

17:54It's really easy to have that field disconnected from the brand you're actually building. and I've seen this too many times and that's why I'm emphasizing this point. You want to make sure that all of this connects and that when you are telling the brand story and you're getting the brand in front of people, every detail tells that story. And really, it could be super subtle, but every touch point for a consumer feels cohesive. That's probably one of the biggest things that you want to focus on is that all of these elements of building a brand and bringing a new product to market make sense. So really make sure that this is something you think through thoroughly.

18:43I like to also think about different use cases because that also helps inform the consumer you're targeting and how you're going to target them. Most likely you're in the stage where your use cases is probably you, which is awesome. How are you using the product? And get as nuanced as you can. I think nuance here is super, super valuable. When are you using? How are you using it? Getting it into friends and family's hands. What are they using it for? How are they interpreting the product? That is gold at this point. You want to get, again, nuanced, focused, as detailed as possible because that will help inform your next steps.

19:33If you're able to, I would definitely get it out to people who are on that next periphery of friends. Maybe people who you don't know as well so they could be a bit more honest with their feedback or a bit more direct with their feedback. But the more people that you could get your product in people's hands at this point, and it doesn't have to be the final product. It doesn't have to be the exact formulation if you're not into manufacturing yet. But just getting feedback early on is super, super helpful. And so definitely put a star around that one of if you haven't done that yet, definitely get feedback.

20:16Okay, that is a good transition to the second section that I focus on called the buyer. This is, again, focusing on who's actually going to buy your product and how are you going to reach them. So my hot take on building out customer avatars, identifying your target audience, there's different ways of going about this, right? You've heard of demographics, geographics, psychographics. Yes. And I personally like to focus on lifestyle profiles and use cases. Why am I saying that? It's because the products I work on, again, fall in that better for you lifestyle type of brand. it's a product that people can integrate into their lifestyle they feel aligned with the brand the brand values what the brand stands for the type of product it is it falls in line with their buying habits and that's the types of brands I personally love to work on and I've always been fascinated with lifestyle, how people live, how they make certain choices, and how products integrate with that.

21:44So I find it easier for an emerging brand to focus on the lifestyles of the consumers they are targeting. And again, getting a bit more nuanced so that when you go to content, when you go to brand activations, when you go to possible partnerships, collabs, All the things you do early on and continue to do actually, not just early on, but the things that you're going to constantly need to do to build a brand and get a brand awareness and drive sales and do all the fun things and the important things like driving top line revenue. You're going to need to understand how your consumer lives. and I think sometimes that gets overlooked when conventional marketing could get really cut and dry.

22:40I have a background in marketing. I studied international business as well. I've heard all the boring hot takes from school and just being in this industry for 15 years. I just, it's not for me. I don't find it very helpful. So I could also go on for a long time on my rants about how marketing is, you know, the conventional marketing versus for emerging brands and how I focus on brand strategy. But that's another podcast episode. But going back to consumer lifestyle profiles, this is where I like to think about in more detail, how does your ideal consumer live? What are their buying habits? Where do they shop?

23:26Where do they work? How do they live? And again, getting as detailed as possible. Better understanding what motivates their buying decisions, who influences them from people they follow or different industry experts they follow, friends. You want to think about how would this product get on their radar How can this product easily integrate into their lifestyle? How can this product feel like it's elevating what they're switching it out for? Thinking about what they're going to be replacing with your product and really drilling down life examples that your customer can see themselves in. Personally, I love creating and building a brand from that place.

24:26The next step you're going to then focus on within the buyer is really the selling points. Drilling down the problem you're solving, top features, benefits, tasting notes. I think sometimes the better for you products get really focused on the benefits and the functions, which don't get me wrong. I think those are really important. But at the end of the day, if you are building a food or beverage company, it also has to taste really good. It does. It has to taste good. Gone are the days that consumers are making swaps just because something is vegan or gluten-free or has a health benefit. The competition has gotten to a point where your business could only last so long if it doesn't taste good.

25:17Consumers have way more choices. So as a person who was a partner of a restaurant, that's how I got into CPG. And someone who has been very much in the culinary space from a marketing perspective, you want to make sure that things taste good. And getting it into different people's hands, not just yourself, to make sure that it tastes good. And people who might be on, like I said that next stage of not maybe those early adapters who they're like okay it tastes fine but I like the benefits you want to get it into the hands of people who might be a little bit of a reach that you can that you would think would be a customer but if they like the taste that's usually a good indication you're on the right track um well like I said I was a partner of a restaurant and it was a plant-based restaurant and it was in a market that was really competitive in culinary and we weren't going to be successful if we just focused on getting vegans to the restaurant like it was not going to be sustainable and so we had to really focus on making food that people who were not vegan at all in the very least they're in think about someone coming to Vegas and they didn't really have on their bingo card to go to a vegan restaurant but somehow they found their way here and they're going to have an amazing meal like that's what we always focused on and so making sure that your product just tastes so good that it's almost in a no excuse that people would want to try it at least and buy it to to because it taste really good okay so in that to thinking about what will be your um product positioning around roughly around your retail price point this also plays into how people are going to find your product selling points etc that is a whole other um podcast episode and I always turn to experts within that space who could really drill that down.

27:38Shout out to Danielle of It's All Happening. She has a great, it's called the CPG School Launch Lab. She was just on the podcast. She's really great at understanding retail price points, distribution, and making sure that all connects with a brand strategy. So definitely check out her program. It's really great. And I have a link in last week's episode with her. Okay. Back to brand strategy. You want to then focus on the buzz. So that's the third piece of your brand strategy. First is the buyer, then it's the, sorry, first it's the brand, then it's the buyer, then it's the buzz. and the buzz is the I think the really fun part but this is where a lot of emerging founders come to me and they're like okay I figured out what is the brand who could possibly buy it but they're tapped with ideas they hit a roadblock they're consuming so much content from other brand founders and just feel like okay I don't know what else is possible to cut through the noise and make my brand stand out, which is totally understandable.

28:55But again, I feel when you have those other pieces really dialed, the buzz is kind of the icing on the cake and really rounding it out. That's why I like building brands from the perspective of brand strategy is that you're looking at things in a more holistic way. You're not siloing content from your brand messaging or brand positioning. Like it all is looked at so that you have a really solid foundation. So one of my favorite ways to build buzz, and it's how I built the restaurant back in the day to how I build brands today, is really through activating and through events. One of the things to definitely put on your radar that is really fun and a great way to create content, to get in front of people, to create new energy and fresh content is having a launch dinner or a launch party of some sort.

29:57It doesn't have to be over the top, crazy expensive. Do something that you can afford, but make it nice. Make it feel special. I think so many founders put this pressure on themselves that they can't celebrate bringing a product to market if it doesn't feel super flashy. I would argue the opposite. And so I definitely want to put this on your radar of thinking about, and it doesn't literally have to be on your launch day, but having some sort of special event that you can activate in your local area to, again, make the excitement around your brand. be creating content, hire a photographer, invite all your friends, family, friends of friends, people within the industry if possible, and get it into people's hands.

30:48Have samples, have tastings. That could go such a long way. And also goes into sampling your product, how you're going to literally have people try it. If you are launching in Pop-Up Grocer in New York City, they have a opportunity to sample your product. I always recommend that to people. Do the sampling. It's worth it. Again, for the content, for the exposure, brand awareness. It's such a great way. And there's even companies out there that help sample and demo your products when you're up to that stage. So definitely make sure you're thinking about that because that's something you're going to consistently have to do of having people try your product.

31:36There is one thing of creating great content and absolutely that needs to be a part of this. But also like old school, like getting people to try it is super, super important. Another thing to think about is different brand partnerships. Are there other emerging brands, founders, businesses that you can collaborate with, partner with? think about who's in your area who's local who you've connected with online there's so many different opportunities that you can work with other brands and founders that are in a similar position as you maybe really early on that are open to doing a collaboration or a partnership the one thing I would keep in mind though with this note just put a star next to it is that you want to make sure that you are establishing yourself first before you go into too many partnerships or collabs because you don't want to dilute what your brand actually is by collaborating too often too soon.

32:47With CPG, it's a bit easier to separate brands, right? Because it's clearly defined products. But I would just say start building and activating your brand yourself, meaning the brand is getting awareness, you're creating content, talking about the product and how it's used and what does it taste like, etc. Then start integrating partnerships and collaborations. That's my personal rule of thumb. And the last piece to put this all together is thinking about your content and how you're building that community. So I like to think about different storylines from your founder story, brand story, product story, to how you're building in retail.

33:36All the different nuanced things that you're naturally doing as a founder. Thinking about the storylines around that. I think that is a great place to start with your content. And it's one of the things that even after 15 years of working in social, the thing that has always remained beyond different platforms or trends, hacks, is really good storytelling. That seems to be the thing that no matter what, people are still genuinely interested in hearing the stories behind products. And I love that for us. It's something that I've always done with building brands from 15 years ago to today. So I definitely encourage you to think about those different storylines and how you could consistently tell those stories, but with some slight adjustments depending on where you are.

34:33The thing I would also note there is that there tends to be this pressure of sharing so much in real time when you're building in public. I would say if you're not ready yet to start sharing, maybe you don't even have a brand name yet and you're really, really, really early on. That's totally great and amazing. I would just start capturing and documenting that content so that you could use that later on. And the last piece I would highly emphasize is thinking about your team. So you as a founder, maybe you have a co-founder or maybe you're working with a brand strategist. Hi. Or you're working with an advisor, whatever the case may be, but really thinking about what is that team around your brand?

35:19What are their backgrounds? What are their strengths? And what are their unique capabilities to help build this brand, launch this brand, and scale it? That's something you're going to need to be speaking about for many different chapters of your business. So start thinking about it now to really help you. I hope this unedited, unscripted, behind the scenes was helpful. If you, again, want that doc, that Q &A, let me know. I'll send it to you. It does take time to fill out, but I highly recommend you taking the time to seeing what answers do you have and what answers don't you have because that really helps inform those next steps.

36:05And just to help you high level with next steps, if you haven't already trademarked your brand name. Do that as soon as possible. Shout out to Bread and Butter. You could go to breadandbutterlaw.com to do so. And so you want to get that done. And then like I said, brand strategy and fleshing all this out, making sure that it all makes sense. I've had people contact me and saying, hey, I had ChatGPT spit out a brand strategy, but I don't know if this is even good. I hear you. This is where I come in as a real human with real insight and expertise and connections of helping you put the pieces together in a really streamlined way and a curated way that you as an early stage bootstrapping founder, probably a solo founder, you could actually implement and feel really good about the business you're building.

37:05There is quite a few steps. I outline the top ones again in that PDF. But I hope this was helpful to get you started. Let me know if you like this style of solo episodes. I like doing them, but they also make me nervous. I feel way more comfortable doing an interview, but let me know if you found this helpful because that's motivating to hear. So thank you again for listening. Hope you found this as a great resource today and I look forward to hearing what you're building. Bye.