Strategy Before Spend: How to Avoid the Most Expensive Pre-Launch Mistakes

0:00Welcome 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. 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.

0:42And 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. Today is a solo episode.

1:29I am experimenting with the format this year and I want to help you really hone in on how you're taking all the advice and insights, wisdom, strategy, best ofs that you hear on the podcast and really help you understand how you could start applying it to the brand that you're building. Most people who listen to this podcast are also working on their own emerging brand. And that was the whole idea behind starting this podcast was to really skill share and share insights with founders who have already done a successful launch, people who are just in the early trenches of their launch to really take a pause and share what they've learned to the next generation of founders who are right behind them.

2:24So this episode today is really about helping you not waste money. I personally hate wasting money. I hate seeing founders waste money. And it's part of the reason why I have doubled down. And now my whole business is specialized in working with pre-launch CPG food and beverage brands because there's so much that could happen very quickly when you start turning your product idea into that first production run. and not everyone's path is going to look different. I mean, not everyone's path is going to look the same. There is some nuance, right? But by and large, there are some tried and true steps that I want you to really pay attention to because at the end of the day, especially for my founders listening who are bootstrapping, right?

3:26This means that you are using your own savings, You are putting things on credit cards. You are maybe taking out your own personal loans. Maybe have some money from friends and family. But essentially, you are betting on yourself. You are investing your own money into turning this idea that you have into something real that people could shop. And so before you spend money on a production run, that means literally producing your first run of product, there is some things I want you to be really mindful of. So this is definitely a pen and paper episode, and I hope that this brings you some really great clarity so that you can take the right steps in order so that you have some really great foundational things in place before that first production run.

4:28And why I'm saying this is that too often I have people reaching out to me for brand strategy and they've already produced their product. And usually in those instances, especially that first run, they've realized quite quickly, oh shit, I either need to work on my retail positioning. The name may not work. The way that the product is being described isn't landing. Maybe their branding isn't doing it justice. There's so many things that are happening behind the scenes before that first production run. And so these are really the notes that I keep in all of those calls when people are reaching out to me and saying, hey, Kelly, I need brand strategy.

5:21I just did my first run, but I'm hitting a roadblock. And so I really want to get to founders before then, right? Before you do that first run, I want you to have these important pieces in place so that when you do that first run, you are in a much better position to know what's working, what's not working, what would resonate, what's not going to resonate, and laying this foundation. So the first thing I want you to start thinking about when you're starting to take your product idea into a brand and into an actual product that you're starting to produce is don't jump right into packaging design.

6:08I see this all the time. I was at a social gathering just the other day. I was talking to someone who happened to be starting a food brand and she admittedly said she skipped strategy and was just working on packaging design. And so I politely said, please pause. Make sure you have some things in place. I gave her some quick tips and she was like, oh, thank you so much. I didn't even think about this. I got really excited about the idea. I got really excited about the design of it. And I jumped right into the creative. And so that is, I would say, the first thing that I see from founders who are getting into taking action to start producing their product is just jumping into the design.

6:59However, your designer will need to know the overview of your brand. Who is it for? Why will people shop? What are the use cases? What's the storylines? What are the pack claims? Meaning, what are the icons in the front of the bottle that will really catch consumers' attention to buy your product instead of something else? um who who what retailers are you targeting to be at all of these things I mean I could go into a whole episode and I will do an episode around that but there's so much that you need to inform your designer to give you the best possible packaging to get started with now as you grow and evolve and you move from say specialty to larger retailers you're probably going to tweak and edit your packaging right that's part of it and maybe there'll be a new certification that comes out that you want to get maybe you're realizing that consumers are really drawn to the fact that your product is gluten-free but at the beginning you didn't have the gluten free certification so now you do there's just so many things and also there's trends too right I was talking to a founder just the other day when they started their packaging did not mention that they were seed oil free.

8:29Well, at the time, actually, I should say they did have seed oil. Now they're seed oil free and refine their packaging to communicate that because that is something that consumers currently are really looking for. So there's so much that goes into your design and it will, yes, evolve in time. But you want to make sure from the beginning, because your packaging is really your number one sales person on shelf, right? In the very, very beginning when you're getting started to validate your product idea, maybe you're selling at the farmer's market. Maybe you're doing some D2C direct-to-consumer sales on your own website.

9:10Maybe you're doing a few local pop-ups. those are more under the guise of validating your concept validating that there's a demand for this product but when you start going to that next step of actually producing it and taking to the next level of working to get it into retailers you really need to make sure that your design is informed based on your strategy. So take a beat, take a pause and make sure you have that foundational strategy in place before you start the fun stuff. And I get it. Branding, packaging is the fun part. It's creative. It is collaborative. It is literally your ideas becoming real.

10:01And it tends to be the part of the process where founders start feeling like it's real because in the beginning when you come especially the founders that I work with pre-launch they come to me with their product idea and they're usually in those very early conversations of this is what I want to create this is what I want to make sure is in it this is what I want to make sure is not in it speaking to ingredients and I really help them flush out all those next steps and then that's what we give the brand strategy is what we give to formulator that's what we give to their co-man that's what we give to their designer but usually in those early conversations they too need those reminders like is this a real idea is this a real brand that I'm doing because you're doing something totally new out of your comfort zone and I get that the visual piece of it makes it more tangible.

10:58I promise though you want to make sure that you have your strategy in place before you jump to beautiful design. There's so much that goes into packaging design especially for CPG products especially for food and beverage and you just want to make sure that you are the best partner possible to your designer to give them exactly what they need to make the most informed design choices. The next thing that I see, and this is something that I talk with a lot of my clients with from usually the first meeting together, is people get really excited about finding a brand name. And they get really excited about finding a brand name and they get really attached to a brand name only to realize that that brand name, either one, they can't get it trademarked and two it does not actually fit with the brand that they are building and that is usually my job to break that news that hard news of hey the brand name you came to me with does not work and I could think of three brands right now that are coming to market that I've worked on that they had totally different names than what they're coming to market with.

12:25And that could, again, be another whole episode. But I knew gut check right from the beginning, this brand name is not going to work. It doesn't tell the story. It doesn't feel buzzy. It doesn't feel like it's going to speak to consumers. It doesn't speak to the brand differentiation. It doesn't give me a sense of a brand world. And it's hard to see founders feel really bad about that because people get excited. They're like, oh my gosh, this is a real thing. I have a name. I'm starting to work on my packaging. However, brand name is such a critical piece that I don't want you to rush into. it's totally okay and I actually prefer it most of the time that someone comes to me and they say I don't have a brand name I don't have a website I don't have social media yet I have nothing but I have this great product idea I started experimenting and taste testing and I feel like this has legs.

13:39Like I see that there's a gap in the market. I see how I could fill it. And I've been doing my research and there's something here. I would much rather work on that brand versus someone who's really stuck on a brand name that doesn't work. Because that's going to make your life so much harder. Your brand name is a huge piece of this. And especially when we talk about CPG, you want to make sure that your brand name is protected. And this is why I'm so obsessive about trademarks is working with Nicole Schwartz for so many years. My trademark attorney, I sent all my clients to her. We even collaborated last year to launch a brand that specializes.

14:32It's a trademark law firm specializing in CPG food and beverage brands called Bread and Butter, which I think will always go down as my favorite brand I've named. And Bread and Butter specializes in protecting CPG food and beverage brands. And something to be really mindful of is that when you are building a CPG brand, if your name is not properly protected with a trademark, someone can send you a cease and desist and you have to pull your product off shelf to change your brand name. That could put you out of business. And also you wanna make sure that you are protecting the brand that you are building, right?

15:17And so it's vital. It's a non-negotiable piece of this puzzle that you're building in CPG. So you don't wanna get too attached to your brand. And also when I'm bringing it back to the main theme of today, this conversation of not spending money before a production room, before you do these things, is that the last thing you want to do is spend money on packaging with a name and logo that you can't even trademark. Then you have to do it all over again. And that is a nightmare. Even if you were fully funded and you had some fancy schmancy VC behind you, that also looks like you're not doing your due diligence as a founder.

16:03So regardless if you have funding or you're bootstrapping, I don't care. Either way, you need to do your due diligence to make sure that you are setting your brand up correctly. So before you hit go on that first production run, make sure that your name makes sense with your brand and also you have that trademark, not only searched. So something else I want to put in here because I hear a lot of founders get confused on it and I get it. It's a little confusing. Looking up a brand name in the trademark office database is not doing a trademark search with a lawyer. Essentially when you look up a brand name in the database it possibly could come up or not.

16:55It's not a great website. I think many trademark attorneys would say the same. And it's not looking at what could be a conflict in similar categories. So that's why you want to have a trademark attorney do a thorough trademark search to see what is the likelihood of you getting this trademark registered. And so do not rely on the database that is very, very bare minimum to give you maybe an idea of is this something worth taking that next step to have a trademark search done for. But it is not a thorough trademark search. So that's why, again, you want to make sure you work with a trademark attorney to do a thorough trademark search to give you the likelihood.

17:51They can tell you 100%, yes, you're going to get the trademark registered. But they could give you that sense of, do we think you have a compelling case to receive the trademark? Or do we think there's no shot in doing this? Like it's very, very unlikely you would get it. You need to know that before you spend money on a production run with a brand name, labels, branding on it. So definitely make sure you do your due diligence there. Another thing I want to put on your radar before you spend money on your first production run is nailing your positioning in retail. This is why now I bring in a retail consultant.

18:37I talk about her all the time. I'm Nicole Croswell-Smith. She is a expert in retail positioning. She has worked on the sales side in CPG and she's a retail buyer. She specializes in working with emerging brands, coming to market, usually their first retail partner. And I have her vet all of my clients. And why I do that is because you need to understand literally where you're going to live on shelf in retail. And also going beyond that, making sure that your product SKUs will also live next to each other. This is something that I have personally realized the importance of over the years. and something that I'm really adamant about when looking at product SKUs for a brand, we want to make sure that even the SKUs that you're coming out with, maybe you're coming out with one SKU or three SKUs, depending on what your approach is, your strategy.

19:46I want to make sure that those are actually going to live next to each other because a big part of retail and doing well in retail and getting your velocity up and making a splash in retail is that you have a presence. I hear from so many emerging brand founders that they almost have the opposite mindset of, I don't want to take up too much room in retail. I'm not looking to, you know, take up so much space. I just need a little space to get my first product on shelf. And I'll be so grateful if there's like one product of mine on a shelf. and I get it. It's that mentality of like, we don't want to take up too much space.

20:30We're not trying to ask for too much, but one, we just need to let that go. I see that with a lot of female founders. I know I had that mentality back in the day and something I personally still work on, but it's really the opposite when you're building a CPG food and beverage brand. You want to make sure you have a presence on shelf And this is something else I also hear from many emerging brand founders is that they look to brands like say Goodles, Fish Wife, Graza. They really admire these brands that have saws, that have broken through, that have really hit more of the mainstream, that are better for you, emerging, cool branding.

21:18These are the brands that I hear so many founders refer to as what they admire and look up to. And what I will say, one, is they all have their own unique look, feel, vibe. They all are building their own brand worlds. And two, they have a presence in retail. They take up space. Unapologetically, they take up space. And so that is something I want to make sure founders are mindful of, that when you're creating a product, you're not just creating one product, you're creating a brand, you're creating a brand world. And you want to make sure that brand world has a presence in retail and that all of your SKUs not only speak to the category, but could sit next to each other so you have that presence.

22:10So these are the things that I really want to get on your radar sooner than later. because again, I hate seeing you waste money. So I want to make sure you're thinking about these things early on. Another thing to really think about is your flavor choices, which is similar to what I'm saying as SKUs. Making sure that your flavors are also telling the story of your brand. Something cool that I do now with clients is that after we work on brand strategy and after we really have nailed my checklist of their brand and then moving into formulation and then manufacturing, making sure that I'm in those early conversations with their formulators or food scientists, manufacturers to make sure that even the formulation, the ingredients, the flavor choices are also telling the story.

23:06Those need to connect. I met with a founder not too long ago. So she's really excited about what she's building. She has some good experience. However, I had to be honest with her and say, I don't think your flavors tell the story that you want to tell. And I don't think that they go together either. Like it just felt very disjointed when it came to the actual flavors. I like the concept and I liked what she was going for. I see that there's a shift in the market and I see this subcategory growing, but the flavors did not convey that. And it didn't even speak to the use case. And when I say use case, are people eating this in the morning?

23:53Is this an afternoon treat? Is this a lunch? Is this a dinner? Is this a post dinner? Like when are people consuming it? Is it at home? Is it on the go? Is it travel? Is it at the office? Like really understanding when people are going to consume this product and use this product. Your flavors also need to make sense. So it was a breakfast item, but the breakfast flavors skewed very much lunch dinner. And I get where she was going with it. And with some tweaking and some working, I feel like in some world the dots could connect. But the way that it is now, I had to be honest. I said, no, if you really want to do brand strategy with me, we're going to have to change these flavors.

24:40And she was really, I could see, like upset in the sense of like, I just spent all this money on formulation. I spent all this money R &Ding these flavors. But also, again, going to the first thing at the top of this show today, I hate seeing people waste money. And I said, if you haven't done your production run yet, yes, it sucks to spend money on formulation again. But it's much more worth the money right now than to go to market with something that isn't going to land. You're going to waste so much more money in the long run. So these are things that, again, be mindful of before you're doing that production run for the first time.

25:24Also too, thinking about your flavor system, this is essentially the way that you're describing your ingredients, describing your flavors, how you're wording it. That takes some time and finesse. And so this is why I also recommend pre-launch content is to really hone in on one, talking about the flavors of your product, sampling, sending out tasters, getting feedback, doing surveys, all of that fun stuff pre-launch to really have a good understanding of how your flavors are being explained. If you haven't already, go listen to my interview with the founder of Lil Organics. they go into detail about their flavor system and how they took a number four their fourth selling SKU and turn it into a best selling SKU with changing the order of their flavor system that blew my mind I love very niche nerdy stories like that because that's the real life part of building a CPG brand So if you haven't already listened to that episode, it's a really great one.

26:47But these are the things, again, to be really mindful of before doing that first run. Now, I will say that in time, once you're in retail, once you're getting feedback, once you're growing, you're going to tweak, you're going to edit. This is more so of how can you launch on your best foot possible, right? There are definitely going to be tweaks and edits along the way. but let's launch as best as we possibly can. And the last thing I'll leave you on in this episode is really testing your messaging. Again, similar to testing your flavors, it is through content, activations, pop-ups, small rounds if you can self-produce in the meantime.

27:36Those are the things that are so critical to then when you are about to go to production and you're finalizing your branding, your packaging. Those are the things you could really tweak. A great example of this is Cotto. So Cotto, when we were first creating her brand strategy, we had an idea of what would land with her ideal consumer. And very, very quickly, we realized that cottage cheese was really the thing that was catching people's attention. And we weren't sure, to be honest with you. We knew that cottage cheese was having a moment, but we're playing around with different ways that we can message.

28:17And so Kendall, the founder, she was playing with different ways of saying it. And she, I remember we landed of, okay, whipped cottage cheese. So making sure we're using the word whipped so that people know it's a smooth cottage cheese really was resonating with people. So we edited, tweaked the messaging. So her next round of packaging, and now she's going into manufacturing, will have that verbiage. And I think it's such a great example. If you haven't already, also listen to my interview with Kendall on the podcast. Super proud brand strategist behind the brand. and it's a great case study of testing, refining, and then putting that into the brand when you're ready to then do your first production run.

29:09So I hope that these reminders were super helpful. There's so much more here, but I'm going to leave you here to, again, put pen to paper, start brainstorming what this looks like for your brand. If you have any questions, you could always go to withkellybennett.com. Check out how you could work with me. I'm more than happy to do a call with you to give you a good sense of which direction to focus on next and if brand strategy is the right next step for you. I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you're liking these solo episodes and I will absolutely see you on the next episode. Bye. This episode was brought to you by Glimpse.

29:55As we know, building a brand is not as sexy and glamorous as it looks on social media at times. A lot of those unsexy problems come into play when brands start to scale in retail distribution. Founders are always incredibly excited to see their products on shelves at major retail chains, but they don't realize all the hard work that starts to begin. Retailers and distributors are known for their processes of deducting amounts from invoices. Most of the time, those are totally valid. Promos, slotting fees, free fills, and all the things that brands agree to to be part of the retail experience. But sometimes those deductions are invalid, costing brands thousands to millions in fees.

30:47Actually finding those needles in the haystack though and fighting to win back lost revenue, it's a costly, manual, and time-consuming issue. And that's where Glimpse comes in. 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, scaling their businesses. With a team of in-house deduction experts who come from some of the most successful and profitable CPG companies and custom-built AI with 100 % accuracy and precision, you'll recover money that you never should have had leaked in the first place.

31:41If you're a brand selling in retail, go to tryglimpse.com backslash trial for 30 days free and let them know I sent you. Thank you again for listening to this episode of the Emerging Brands Podcast. It really means so much to me that you listen to this show, share it with your friends and support it. If you are a CPG food and beverage founder and you're ready to launch a brand, people want to shop, head to withkellybennett.com for the details. And as always, thank you so much for listening, shopping the brands featured on the show and following brands I'm working with. It means so much. See you on the next episode.