Herman-Scheer

0:00John Scheer:Welcome to the Emerging Brands podcast. Sharing the stories behind brands you'll want to shop next. I'm your host, Kelly Bennett. I am a New York City-based brand strategist for CPG Food and Beverage Brands. In each episode, I'll take you behind the scenes of founders that are building better-for-you products and bringing them to market. it. Also, I talk to brand builders, retailers, industry experts, and tastemakers who help bring those cool products to your shopping cart. You will hear stories of real-life founders, their launch strategies, and practical advice you could use to grow your own brand or simply discover what's next on shelf.

0:42John Scheer:And the best part is you could shop all the brands featured on the show. This podcast is brought to you by Glimpse. Glimpse is an AI powered deduction management tool that disputes and recovers invalid deductions, winning brands, thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours back to founders so that they can focus on what really matters most. If you're a brand selling in retail, go to tryglimpse.com backslash trial for 30 days free and let them know I sent you. Now let's dive into the new episode. Hi everyone. Welcome back to a new episode of Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. I interview hundreds of emerging brands, brands that are just coming to market or scaling and really taking their brand to the next level in retail, but I find it super important to make sure I'm also bringing on the creatives, the people behind the scenes that make brands stand out in the market.

1:50John Scheer:I'm sure you've all seen those brands that just feel like they stand out to you. They genuinely speak to you. There's a deeper connection that you feel with a brand. And John Shear, he is the chief creative officer of Herman Shear, and he has a very cool perspective and method of building brands. So John, I'm so happy to have you on the podcast. Hi, Kelly Bennett. I am so happy to be here with you. Awesome. So to kick things off, can you tell us more about the agency and how the agency first came to be? Yes. So the Herman to my share and I, we started right out of college back in 2010. And he and I had complimentary skill sets.

2:41I grew up here outside of Cleveland, Ohio, and he was in Santa Monica. And when we graduated, he wrote me a message along the lines of, you know, hey, man, you don't want to work for the man. You don't want to live in Cleveland. Come stay on my couch. Let's figure something out. So I moved out there and we just kind of omnivorously took on any creative project that anybody would trust two children to do. And, you know, sometimes we got paid in tacos. Sometimes we got paid in stays for hotels. And, you know, we just built up a portfolio of work that we were more and more proud of. And then we started hiring people that were better at us at certain things and fast forward you know eight years we were like oh hey look there's a we've got an agency and around that time we did a review with our advisor at the time and he was like look boys you guys are kind of running this agency like a two-headed monster each of you are doing a little bit of everything you're stepping on each other's toes clients don't know who to go for two for what and we didn't even realize but he was right and so after a review with him and some of our team, Chapin got voted in as the chief executive and I got voted in as the chief creative.

3:58And it was like, we both got promoted in our own agency. And that was like rocket fuel for us because it gave us clarity in our respective roles and what we could own.

4:07John Scheer:Right. And it was just so fun. And so that was, that was the first big breakthrough. And then And the second breakthrough was, you know, we were in Venice Beach and we were surrounded by a really supportive and inclusive entrepreneurial community, venture capital community. And, you know, early 2020 to 2022, a lot of venture capital dollars were going in direct to consumer businesses. Right. And we saw a lot of branding agencies that were capitalizing off of this in New York, but nobody really put their flag on the ground and said, hey, we're the go-to branding agency here in LA. So that was our thesis.

4:48And we built up an amazing portfolio of exciting brands there. and then about i don't know end of 2022 the market shifted and and we had to decide okay how do we shift with the market and we made a number of strategic choices one was to try to go up market a bit more so we aren't just working with um amazing entrepreneurs who are going from zero to one, but we can work with teams that are trying to scale businesses at any different inflection point besides launch. And the other was to go all in on healthcare, self-care, and wellbeing, because a lot of our clientele was already in the health and wellness space in general.

5:41And personally, Chape and I had kids three months apart. We unfortunately had to help our parents, our respective parents battle disease. We were knocking on middle ages door as were our partners. And so we realized we were part of this so-called sandwich generation where we were not only responsible for the health and wellbeing of ourselves, but that of our children, our partners and our parents. And the opportunity to tap into that deep, purposeful, personal journey with our professional journey just really made sense. And luckily, you know, the market, as everyone listening to this knows, everything, especially in where your listeners are focused on in the, you know, early, better for you food and drink products, everything is functional, everything is how do we optimize everything is on the hell.

6:41And that's, that's where we've been building the intellectual capital in for years now. And then the last thing we did was we brought on a third partner, a woman named Alison Servey, who now serves as our president. And she came from a really amazing, huge global insights firm. And the value she brings, not just being an amazing partner in person, is two decades worth of really deep consumer insight work. And so now, as we help brands across different inflection points, zero to one, like a lot of your listeners, or bigger brands trying to regain relevancy, we can tap into her insights, background processes, methodologies, partners to really get really close to the consumer and what the hell they actually care about and reorient the brand, the messaging, look, the feel, product features towards that.

7:38John Scheer:very cool well thank you for talking through the whole trajectory of the brand it's really impressive how and I feel like a lot of service providers creatives myself included can relate to you know that you want to work for yourself you know you want to do something different and creative and you know you want to have your own point of view out there but it does genuinely take time to find your niche and to find how it works best. So for myself, I started out building consumer brands 16 years ago, also freelance this whole time and have just said yes to a lot, right? But then over time, honing in on CPG, food, beverage, and then pre-launch, that also was an unlock for me.

8:30John Scheer:So I think for the service providers listening, knowing that it is a process to find your groove and find your niche but once you do and I'm sure John you can agree to this it really unlocks so much more of how you could scale your business who to bring around you the clients you're going after how to connect with them it really creates this ecosystem that is so much stronger once you find that thing so thank you for explaining how you all landed on your niche and then also bringing in your third partner. What a great skill set she brings to the table and how all those dots have really connected.

9:13Yeah. Yeah.

9:14John Scheer:Very cool. So can you walk us through how your agency goes about and we'll break it up because I think it's helpful for the emerging consumer brands and then those that are already in the market, but looking to rebrand. Can you walk us through what those processes look like? I know you also work with naming brands, to visuals, consumer insights. Can you walk us through the behind the scenes of it? Yeah, I'd be happy to. So on the, I like to call it the zero to one side where our entrepreneurs will come to us and say, hey, we've got this idea or, you know, we've partnered up with this manufacturer and we've got a really nice relationship with them.

9:58They're going to handle all the manufacturing, the formulations, the this, that, and the other, and we'll handle all the operations, marketing. So a great example of that was a duo, Nate and Zeke from the absorption company. They came to us. Gosh, I don't even know. I don't even remember now. Time is like a vortex.

10:20John Scheer:I know. Especially in entrepreneur land. Oh, for sure. We live 10 years and probably a week, right? It's true. It's true. It's true. So those two guys came to us and they were like, hey, we've got this amazing

10:39proprietary formulation that is five times more absorbable for making supplements. And so the task there was help them hone in on what are the products that they're going to come to market with and what are all the steps to get there so that's that's how they came to the table with us and the first step is just talking and you don't push a pixel you don't do anything until you spend what we call officially like the immersion time where you know you're getting to know each other the dynamic of their internal team and you're getting your whole team on board and really trying to understand before you talk creative, what are their business goals?

11:27What's their product roadmap? You know, one of the things that we're helping businesses outside of the zero to one launch that I wish I could have told them at the beginning is think really deeply about how you position yourself at the beginning, even how you name yourself at the beginning.

11:45John Scheer:Yes. Because a lot of people get really excited about launching a, let's call it a adaptogenic guacamole brand, right? Yes. And they're like, Hey, I got the best avocados. And I got the, I got the adaptogenic hookup and this is going to be the bomb. And I want to call it, you know, adaptamole. And I'm like, awesome. But when you launch with adaptamole, then they're like, Oh, now I want to make salsa. Right. Well, now everybody knows you as adaptamole and you're going to go on shelf with a can of salsa that says adapt them up you know so you you oftentimes a lot of what we have to do as an agency is undo some of the strategic foundation that isn't there right i was going to say not strategic foundation right right yeah so we have to like read redo that and you know i think a great example and i can get back to the absorption company if you if you still care but yeah a great example is you know that i have a can i have a bottle downstairs but you know the yerba mate uh tea brand it was called guy you can't pronounce it guy a cocky or something okay and they rebranded because nobody knew the brand name they just knew them as yerba mate and now they're yerba madre and it was it was such a uh a case in point of like product versus brand name and hierarchy on pack and just a really good case study there.

13:21But anyways.

13:22John Scheer:But for the absorption company, I think that's a great example of how you all come in with a founder, with a product idea, has an understanding of what's going to make them stand out. But to your point, you have to go way deeper. And especially in the year 2026 and beyond, so many more products are coming to market. at a much higher speed, right? Because we keep removing barriers to entry, which is great, but it just keeps getting more competitive. And I think the work that you do just becomes more imperative in those days to make sure that this brand genuinely hits all the marks and thinks through the bigger picture and not just what they have in front of them now.

14:09Yes, yes. And the absorption company, I'm really proud of that work and the trust that their team gave us because to their credit, they were really early to, they knew instinctually or just from being amazing entrepreneurs or a combination of both that the manufacturer in this kind of highly absorbable format for supplements, they were a few years ahead of the curve of people, you know, the supplement industry grows every year like crazy and the health iq of consumers now is going way up and the scrutiny and the discernment the discernment of consumers who understand what ingredients are and also understand that they're not all created equally the guidelines and i don't know what else the the what's the word i'm looking for the guidelines and the kind of protocols that these supplements have to go through to get on shelf and the claims that these brands make.

15:18It's kind of the wild, wild west.

15:20John Scheer:And it still is. Yeah. And so they knew that we reinforced it with our own research and decided to build the entire brand strategy on not only the truest product feature and function, which was the absorption, but also So that was their point of view. And it became a really great singular focus message that was tight enough for them to own and beat the drum over and over again. But it didn't matter now what product they come out with for the next three decades because it all comes down to absorption. So even if they get into topicals like, you know, a topical oxytocin cream or something like that, like, hey, it still has to be absorbable.

16:10Right.

16:11John Scheer:So that's a great example. Yeah. So so I'm really proud of that work. And and the juxtaposition of a really institutional kind of dry sounding name, like the absorption company with the identity that we created for them. You know, I what I strive for is our as chief creative is I always encourage our creative directors, our design directors, the art director, anybody who's making anything visual or verbal is how do we find a healthy tension? Because that friction of novelty and familiarity or institutional with unconventional, that friction is what makes things interesting. Yes. And, you know, I think you hear a lot of people critique the direct to consumer aesthetic as being, you know, the millennial brand where everything was like new.

17:01And, you know, at the time that was that was that was friction. But now it's become it's it's become table stakes to have clean, modern, you know, and so now.

17:13John Scheer:so yeah which is really interesting as a millennial myself of seeing just the shifts and the ebbs and flows yeah i always say that cpg food well food in general but also design it's like fashion there's trend cycles there's what's hot and new and then it kind of fades out and then it comes back again can you also give an example of and to that point a rebrand that you all have worked on and what that looks like because I know there are many brands and I spoke to a lot of brands at Expo West who were featuring new rebrands because they've been out in the market they've gotten some data and it's cool I was just talking to a founder the other day they were able to say it was evergreen that I was interviewing she was able to point to actual real data of how her sales jumped from a rebrand.

18:08John Scheer:And I think that's such a powerful way to then, you did the hard work, you got a product to market, but now what? How do you keep going? So can you walk us through how you all approach a rebrand? Yeah. It starts the same. Okay. Okay. uh all about immersion and just gathering as many hypotheses about what wasn't working what's sacred what has equity what doesn't have equity um where what what was the inflection point and the true business reason for the for this rebrand so in the case of neuro neuro gum and mints i'm chewing it now so nobody's watching this right okay hopefully nobody's chewing it but kent and ryan from neuro they came to us uh probably seven years ago now six six i don't know again time yeah they came to us and at the time they were a single skew directed consumer brand and they had aspirations to get into mass retail and expand their product portfolio And at the time, they were just NeuroGum with an energy mint flavor, and they had no design system or verbal or positioning to allow them to grow into their aspirations.

19:35So from a name perspective, we dropped gum from the true brand name and had them lean into Neuro. And then that allowed them to then have either be NeuroGum or NeuroMints based on the format.

19:51John Scheer:Right. And then each of the product names, we created a naming convention where it was two benefits, two simple benefits each. So it was energy and focus. That's what I'm doing now. It's amazing. You've heard all sorts of people talk about now. Then there's, they had common clarity, which was something that was intended to like calm your nerves. It had GABA in it, magnesium and and then they had then they wanted to expand into sleep so we had sleep and recharge and so then they started coming out with other skews and formats i mean in products that fit that naming convention that we set up for them so it was this two energy and focus calm and clarity blah blah blah um and then we create a design system that allowed them to scale too where color became the means for them to showcase flavor instead of doing any sort of busy graphics we also what i'm proud of the team for was we contextualized all the ingredients that like the top three ingredients that gave you that benefit so for energy and focus on front of pack We said, powered by natural caffeine, balanced by L-theanine, and boosted by B12.

21:21And so we kind of spoon fed and contextualized what these, at the time, were slightly foreign ingredients. And so in a glimpse, you kind of understood, oh, I'm getting energy and focus from these three main ingredients.

21:36John Scheer:Right. And so that was a really strategic foundation for them to grow into. And you were talking about results from your conversation with Evergreen. And listen, it's not all just the work we did. These guys are amazing and having a great team and just two of the most ambitious driven dudes ever. But after the work together, they went on Shark Tank, got a lot of recognition there. uh and fast forward today you know they've broken 100 million dollars in in sales they're wow beach and wide and cvs whole foods they um they're the fastest growing one of the fastest growing brands uh in the country and they were the number one tiktok shop product for like a year straight and incredible yeah they're just crushing it so um so that's you know that's that's a that's a kind of, and you were talking about how things don't happen overnight.

22:32Like it's taken, like we did that work and I knew it was a great product, but it's taken six, seven years for it to become an overnight success. And they were in business for three years prior to coming to us.

22:46John Scheer:Wow. That's a really great story of again, laying the foundation and thinking through the things that could fairly easily be glazed over when a founder is excited, when a team's excited, they're like, we just have to go to market. We just got to get the product in people's hands. But when you really take a step back and create a solid foundation for your brand, how that really then puts you into that next level of trajectory of growth, that's a really cool case study. So thank you for walking us through that. I am obsessed. I'm such a nerd for all this so like this really yeah I love this story this is a really good one that I will be sending to clients be like listen to John this is a really good example of why you need to pay attention to these things now and that brings me to my next question for these founders who are super early on like I shared before we were hitting record I work with founders super early on They're maybe creating something in their kitchen and their friends or family are like, ooh, you're onto something.

23:57John Scheer:And they don't have a formula yet, but they know that they want to build a cool CPG food and beverage brand. What is something else that you, you've shared a lot today, but anything else that comes to mind that you would love to put in their ears super early on as they start flushing out the concept and the brand they want to build that you find really helpful for a founder to be aware of in those super early days? Gosh, there's so much. I would just say that it's twice as competitive as you think it is. That's a good one. Is it? Yeah, that is good. See, a lot of the things that come to mind, I think are duh, like what I call no shits, but I, I have to, it's not, it's not to others.

24:52Yeah.

24:52John Scheer:No, it's not to others. And I think sometimes when the things come so naturally to yourself, cause you have your own point of view, you live, breathe and sleep what you do. It's like, duh, of course, but to someone else who's not in your brain, that's really helpful just to think of that one point. So can you expand on that too? Yeah. So we have so many tools now to get a brand and product out in the world and it's amazing. You know, the barrier to entry to launch a brand is kind of, it's 25 minutes and maybe$50, you know to uh get a url get a shop you know shopify right and now with ai like you can kind of slap something out there and start even like doing fake pre-orders and things like that so the barrier to entry is kind of nothing and and you you know it's i just always assume that you know let's say your name is jill if jill is making adaptogenic guacamole she should just assume that bill across the country is also making adaptogenic guacamole right and the listen i'm a i'm a brand builder i get paid to build people's brands so take this with a grain of salt but to me the times of being able to slap something together put it out there and hope that enough people try the product that they love it.

26:30And then you'll figure out brand and all that down the road. It's kind of over.

26:38John Scheer:Thank you for saying that because this is what I talk about all day long. And I appreciate you emphasizing that point. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. Good. Yeah. Now, listen, Tim Ferriss wrote, you know, the four hour work week and he had this whole theory about if you have a thousand true fans, you have a business and that's great. Like if you get a thousand people to buy your product once a week, once a month, whatever cadence, like you can build a business, but even that's hard. And the problem with these CPG consumable brands is on the operation side that I really don't know much about, it's super complicated, especially if you have refrigeration needs or freezing needs or transport needs.

27:33And you can grow yourself out of business because, you know, you can have such early success, but if you don't have the capital to pay for orders and have the margins or the margins. Yeah, so I don't want to discourage anybody, but it's hard. And you don't want to set yourself up for not even being able to experience and navigate those growth challenges because you're spending six months trying to force feed people of something that there's 12 other options for them to get at. You know, if anybody is paying attention to what people are talking about at Expo West, everything is well designed. So design and a cool package is table stakes.