Out of Nothing: with Emunah Winer and Margaret Kerr-Jarrett

0:28This is the podcast. Esther rum. Okay, that's the main point. At drink Esther. At drink Esther. That's the whole thing. That's why we're here today. Just keep repeating it. At Esther rum. Sorry, is that on Instagram? Sorry, at drink Esther. We're on MySpace. Yeah, myspace.com slash Esther rum.

0:53Three, two, one. Cabin. What's up? We are early and we are on the run. How are you doing? We got like 25 minutes. Yeah. No, we don't. We have 35 minutes. 35 minutes. Well, we should get straight into the bio because Nilo is an award-winning creative agency founded by creative directors Amuna Weiner and Margaret Margie Kerr-Jarrett. Did I get it wrong? You have pronounced all the things correctly. Wow. That's right. Based out of Columbus, Ohio, they create brands that get picked up off the shelf, explored and talked about their client range from tequila, cannabis, and dog food to global fintech logistics operators and healthcare providers.

1:34Welcome to the show, Moon and Margie. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Is it at Drink Esther, Rob? Yeah. Is that the – Let's mention that at least every five minutes. I think it was our first promo. Yeah, first promo. Yeah, at Drink Esther. This is not paid. First one doing press. This is not even paid promotion. Are you guys morning people? Absolutely not. She is not. I am. Okay. Actually, it's a bit of a problem. because I like to wake up early and do extra work before my kids wake up. Okay. She likes to do it after her kids go to bed. And I can work. I'm like a big, big night person. Okay.

2:06And I'm getting old. Yeah. So that's no longer sustaining itself. You guys have a studio, Nilo. We do. And you both have three children. We do. How the fuck do you do that? We basically barely, we barely do. I think having the three children is our flex. I'm not going to lie because we are forced to be incredibly efficient and to make decisions and to move quickly. And I think it helps that we're both like equally insane. That's good. Yeah, it's very good. If one of you was insane. That would not work. Well, if one of us was very sort of process driven and needed everything to go very systematically.

2:43Or if either one of us were calm in like any way, it wouldn't work. Also, we're so like pumped up from the kid thing that we get to work and immediately need release from the kid thing. So then plug it all into the work. And then that's like its own cycle. Got it. Yeah. You're like, I'm dying to get to work. Yeah, exactly. Like work is the break. It's heaven. Work is the refuge. So question for you guys. You both grew up in Ohio and met in Israel. What's the story? How did you guys meet? It's a very good story. Okay. I want to hear it. I grew up in Ohio. Okay. I grew up in Cleveland. You know, if I was ever on a subway and I got my hot take, it would be that everybody knows at least one incredibly cool person from Ohio.

3:25At least one. Can I pause you right there and say this podcast is hosted by one cool person from Ohio, Kevin Batori. We did not know that. Yep. Wait, where in Ohio? Cincinnati. Oh my God. Oh my God. We are one Jew and one person from Ohio. So we have a lot in common. Exactly. Exactly. If you just combined you two. That's right. Exactly. Father, son, and children. So I'm actually from Indiana. Okay. Equally Midwestern. But we did meet in Israel. I don't even know how long ago, like eight years ago? We were working at an agency there and then we found each other. So two Midwestern. Yeah. Well, it's a Jewish thing.

4:08Okay. But I don't understand. And there are Jews in the Midwest that go to Israel to work at agencies? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. They go there for religion and history, and then they stay. Both of our husbands at the time were in rabbinical school. Okay. They're both rabbis. No. Well, I mean, they have the certificate. I'm also not married. She's divorced. Okay, okay. The husbands have the rabbi certificates, but they're not practicing rabbis. There are certificates that say rabbi. With their names. That's good. You probably need that to be a rabbi. For sure. So, but, okay. So you guys both at the same time are at an agency in Israel and you meet and you're like, we're both from the Midwest of America.

4:52That was like barely the connection. Yeah, that's not very exciting. There's a lot of Midwestern Jews living there. The connection was really like, we are both insane and also desperately starved for like creative. Fulfillment. Expression and fulfillment. it and then we're like okay cool guess we're gonna make an agency amazing and then basically our whole play from day one has just been we've like constantly been coming from nowhere but just like meeting people and talking to people and then deciding that we're just gonna make shit up yeah and one is a poet and one is a designer you're the poet she's yeah i was gonna say you are giving a poet aura oh my god what's a poet aura oh my god i don't know it's just i'm into Yeah.

5:32She's so smart. Aw. Aw. We love each other. So when did you guys meet and how long ago was that from when you started the agency officially? So we met about, I would say like seven or eight years, maybe seven years ago at this point. And then we did not start the agency right away. We both ended up quitting the other agency. It was very bad. And then we both freelanced for a couple of years and we each had another kid. Yeah, it was great. Okay. And then we started the agency. four and a half years ago. Well, before we started the agency, we actually like made up this bizarre little project. Called Two Jewish Women.

6:07Oh my God. Come on, I do research. Yeah. I do research around here. So you guys meet and you're like, we have a lot in common. We're both crazy. We both have a lot of kids and we both want to do more than what we're doing. Yes. And so you start the project Two Jewish Women. Do you want, let's, so tell us about it. Well, we are Two Jewish Women. I put that together. In case you couldn't tell. Yeah. and Margaret Ker-Jarrett is a poet and we're like we're going to do a writing and design project and we obviously had no client work at that point so we're like okay we'll just make up a project and then we did and then what we realized very quickly from that project that we were really good at is getting press so that one got picked up by like It's Nice That which was at the time shout them out thanks It's Nice That Matt Alagia is the one thank you Matt I don't think he's there anymore but um at the time that was like a big deal and sort of demonstrated like okay this is what there's something here and then we're like okay I guess we have this visual and verbal thing which wasn't going on then and we like kind of made that up and coined that and then we're like I guess we're making an agency what I love about it is that it felt like you wanted to like educate people and help people understand what makes you guys who you are.

7:24I don't think we ever cared about educating people. Okay. Then you just wanted to confuse them. Absolutely. Yes. That was it. Also, I think we both have, like, we both love shocking people. Shock value. My number one desire is to confuse people and to make people feel very bizarre and perplexed and be like, what the hell is going on? Well, and to feel very ambiguous. Where do you think that comes from? Let's unpack that. I mean, you gotta ask my therapist. Yeah, I was gonna say. Is your therapist on the line? can we uh she's great yeah she's absolutely great but i think that what let's not your mics your mic's not on kevin wow all right cool let's dial in the therapist yeah yeah yeah but um and it got you guys impressed it got people noticing and then you're like oh this is fun we like working together i assume that yeah that was the first time you guys have ever i think people are always like how do you work with your best friend and i think the fact that we work together first made it a lot easier because our friendship was built on working together yeah so were you guys a team at all like at that agency or just kind of like i mean there there was a team it was a rather dysfunctional team but there was a team yeah we were the best and so so then you start the agency and you decide to move away from israel okay so yeah so that that's an interesting turn of events as well So we kind of, we were both ready to leave.

8:48Got it. And then we like kind of orchestrated that we were going to move to the same place together. Although we also didn't. We were like, we're not going to force it. But if it happens, it happens. It all kind of fell into place, honestly. Are the husbands or family friends, like is this one big group and you're like, we're making decisions as a big family? It's still a unit. It was more before the split, but we're all on very great terms. We're all friends. Our kids are friends. It's all good vibes. I mean, it's really like sort of, I love like the juicy bag just like standing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

9:23That's art. That's art. That's right. Yeah. We have some art in the studio. It's apps. Sorry, it's distracting. No, I just keep being pulled to it like the sparkle. So you had the agency for a bit in Israel because I saw your brand new talk, which I really loved. Yeah. And you were talking about sort of working on crazy hours and sort of doing a lot of your presentations to, I assume, American clients at 9 p.m., fake drinking coffee, really drinking. Oh, my God. You paid so much attention. No, that's. That's where our beginning. Our love for alcohol started. So when you started the agency, did you think that you wanted to prioritize booze or spirit brands?

10:06No. We did not. No. No. Booze and Spirits wasn't on our radar at all, but what always was on our radar was some kind of ownership over the products that we work on. I think we're also a bit different. I kind of saw the design world as a means to do something really creative and kind of break out of my bubble, but I never had these aspirations to be a designer because I came from this writing back around and I just saw things differently. But I think from the beginning, we saw our agency as a way to get in with the kind of companies and products that we wanted to be invested in, but we had no idea what that would look like.

10:46In the beginning, we were like, oh, it's creative capital. We're going to be investing with our creative capital and we're going to get ownership. And then it's kind of evolved from there. But it was always a goal of ours to kind of move more towards having more ownership in some way. Yeah. Even like what Nilo comes from, create your ex Nilo to create something from nothing. Like the idea was always, whether or not we knew it at the time, but to make Nilo into some sort of vessel, like a holding company, which is what we're pursuing more and more now. Like we're opening up Nilo holdings and every client that we take on becomes one of our portfolio companies essentially.

11:25including either we're making our own or we're partnering with partnering and taking equity in theirs and helping build so how does that work if a client comes to you and they're like hey we want you guys to do our branding and design but we maybe aren't as interested in this sort of model equity thing it depends like is the cash worth it is the project worth it um and then vice versa too we've had clients come to us and say like we want you to basically be co-founders in this and take equity in it we're like i'm not really sure i believe in it that much but we'll take your cash got it yeah was casa malka the first project where you guys sort of tested this model yeah so it kind of happened to us transparently it was my brother who came to us okay yeah that's like he's the founder of the he is there's four co-founders we're two of them he's one of them and his ex-wife so there's a lot of a lot of amicable divorces going on in the family yeah yeah that doesn't sound complicated not at all no no it's really it's a fun time but he he approached us three years ago more like four years ago three or four and he he was just like i have the name of a tequila casamalka and we're like cool and that was it and that was it and you guys were like we're in but we need to be partners well it wasn't even that at that point he was like let's make a brand and so we just made up the whole thing and then we worked with haruko and put the renders out there and then we put we we launched the case study nothing existed like there was no tequila oh really yeah that there was not even an llc it was just an idea literally it didn't exist it was just a concept and then we started getting approached by investors um like the venture arm of diageo approached us and we're like they're like hey we don't know anything about this company you guys are the only people associated with it like on the internet and we're like yeah it doesn't actually exist, but we might make it.

13:13And then from there, we made it. That's so fun. I mean, it makes perfect sense, right? It's a beautiful brand. It's the first time I heard of you guys. And certainly I imagine it probably put you guys on that sort of map in that way. Every studio has that project where you're like, this is the first time that I heard of them. And yeah, the packaging is everything I like about design in terms of it's like, it's bold, it's stylish, it's simple. The packaging is incredible. Yeah. It's just, yeah, just you want to have it. The tequila is really good. Yeah. And so that brand, that's so interesting.

13:42You know that Liquid Death actually was the same thing. I didn't know that. They created it. Was it created as a joke? It was created as a joke. I've been hearing more and more of these recently. It's like, it's a joke and then they make it. Yeah. And they made a commercial. It was actually, you can find it on YouTube. It's just like a fake commercial for, it's like an SNL skit. Yeah, exactly. And they took a Miller Lite Tallboy and just put packaging on it. And the rest is history. Yeah. And then they're like, oh, I guess people really want this. And so what people wanted it. Yeah. And then a business was formed.

14:10Yeah. I mean, then we worked for the next two years building the company, Margie. Right. When you say building the company, it's like, I mean, you know, when you run a design studio, a large part of what you're doing is mastering new subject matter. You're completely getting like absorbed in a totally new topic and learning a new industry. And so we just went head on and learned everything we could about how to create a spirit brand, which is highly regulated, involves a lot of loopholes and kind of bureaucracy. And so there's definitely a barrier, a knowledge barrier to entry. And once we had that, we realized that kind of combining that industry knowledge with what we do with brand felt very natural to us.

14:58Yeah. And obviously like the case study was incredible from an agency perspective, but the best thing we got out of Casamalco was we learned the entire playbook of like, we know every single point along the production line of how to make a spirits brand. And we learned that basically risk-free. And that's hugely valuable. And we're just like, all right, we'll do it again. Yeah, I was going to say, so you learned the operations of the alcohol business. I imagine that's totally, yeah, it's completely new, right? Yeah. And it's on shelves. It's not just, you know, so how is the brand doing? It's selling.

15:35It's doing well. It's growing it's on track it's it's now for sale so obviously online direct to consumer but then we have new york new jersey illinois florida texas amazing and then after sort of how many how many years was it in market before you said let's do this exact same thing again oh it was pre it was pre-launch it was literally pre-launch and then we were like okay well rum is nobody launches a rum brand, which is why we're launching a rum brand. Yeah. Because like there's, rum needs a rebrand. I mean, the whole rum. We looked around and we saw tequila. It was so much fun working on a tequila, but it is so saturated.

16:18There are so many amazing tequila brands. It's so popular. Sure. And then if you look at kind of what happened in history, tequila didn't used to be cool and popular. It also used to have a bad reputation. It was known for making you really sick and hungover and it was really strong tasting. And then a couple of things happened. There was some key brands like Patron and then later on like Casa Amigos that not only made cool brands that people suddenly felt attracted to, but they also kind of softened the flavor profile of the spirit to make it more universally palatable. And the same thing happened in gin.

16:52Like when Hendrix Gin came out, gin was like not cool at all. It was like old women drinking gin with olives. That was the impression. and Hendrix came out in Bombay to a degree and they completely changed the landscape in terms of what people think of gin and now gin is like been exploding for years but rum hasn't had that moment yet and there's no reason for it because it's just as good and cool as tequila and gin and there's like at least one if not two rum cocktails on every single menu and we're like there's a there's a huge opportunity here my Margie's husband's from Jamaica too we love reggae Yeah.

17:27It all made sense. I had a painkiller, which is basically like a pina colada two days ago by a pool. And I will say really delicious. It was delicious. Yeah. So what did you learn from the first project that you brought to the second project in terms of Esther at now available at drinkester.com? Follow Drink Esther. That's a really good question. So much. I think that from a brand perspective, our approach has really changed. I think with Casamaca, we were able to create this one kind of beautiful thing that was so iconic and that people were so attracted to, but that's not the only way to build a brand.

18:06With Esther, we've been focusing a lot more on the energy around Esther. And then the details of the bottle and packaging and the brand are evolving and are a little like more fluid. We have a few things that remain the same, but it's much more almost like open source the way we're building this brand. And we're less sort of precious and tied to every single detail being exactly this way or that. And that's given us a lot more freedom. And it also allows us to really focus on just creating that energy and vibe around Esther and inviting people into that. It's actually made me totally change how I think about brand and even branding for clients because what we used to do and what a lot of agencies are used to doing is like making this really perfect thing, handing it off and then it's beautiful and we have our case study and it's great and then it's like whatever happens to it happens to it.

18:57And what I realized is actually what we were talking about yesterday, but like clients don't, I mean, consumers don't care about, they need to be tapped into like a larger energy idea feeling. It's less about the details. It's less about the details. So we're like, we're building out in the open. Things are changing. This is not the final. Nothing about this is final at all. And it doesn't matter. And like, that's not what people are buying. you need to be smart enough to know what the subliminal messages are to know what people actually do remember but besides for that it doesn't matter yeah i love that you guys were kind of building in public in a way and you're like hey here's a bunch of designs these are not the final designs but join us on this process and yeah follow along yeah and then that's even become like part of the story too this like anti-authoritarian not perfect not like pretentious yeah yeah and the name esther obviously a biblical thing how much of your like judaism do you find is inspiration that's a good question um i would say there's really two answers to that like on a personal level it's hard to separate who you are from what you do i think that you know my or our worldview is very informed by the way that we grew up and kind of the community that we live in.

20:21On the other hand, I don't think it's, I would not say Esther is like a Jewishly inspired brand. It's really about the energy. Like Esther, the woman was like a badass underdog who kind of manipulated things to get her way in a way that was under the radar and kind of not out in the open and not so loud. And I think that's kind of the energy of Esther. It's a bit under the radar. It's a bit of an underdog energy. So that is how we feel that our Judaism inspires this brand. I wouldn't say it goes really - We don't want it to be like a Jewish brand. No. And I wouldn't say it goes like much deeper than that, but definitely, you know, how we identify or kind of the feelings we have come out in the work that we do naturally.

21:07And esters are the main chemical compound in rum. Wow. Yeah. Well, it's the main, it's the, not exactly. Okay, Margie knows things. But esters are the chemical compound that give rum its like unique flavor profile. It's something that happens in the fermentation process. So it's like a cool nod. It's also a weird name, like ester. It's not like beautiful. It doesn't roll off the tongue. It's like almost guttural, which is kind of cool. It's, we hope it's like bizarre and weird enough like us. Yeah. That's a lot of it. Yeah, I think it's a great name. And I think it feels, yeah, it's got this like sort of feminine, but like the brand obviously has this like very masculine kind of energy, right?

21:49And it's kind of like lion and black. We're actually making this more masculine and more kind of mass market. We like looked at this. Well, we did this whole thing. We're like, okay, this is pretty, but it's too pretty. And this is the whole thing is a prototype, clearly. But we're like, we need to make this uglier bit. I love this idea that you guys are just kind of prototyping, making, launching, and putting it out. That's something from a branding agency perspective I never would have felt comfortable doing. We have been doing that for months now. And not only has it been like, oh, people still really like it.

22:23It's like the amount that we've learned on the fly. Like, for example, bartenders can't actually open this. Also, like for pouring, like we got feedback from bartenders that it's very pretty, but it's like it's not comfortable to pour. So we're switching it out for a bottle with a slightly longer neck. And it's like now that we're actually the client, those things really matter because I want to make money. You guys want to make money? So much money. Yeah. That's so crazy. It's so wild. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now that you have two alcohol brands, three kids each, and an agency, how do you kind of divide the time?

22:57Where are you putting your energy? And would you rather be Collins or Pernod Ricard? Neither. So there's actually a few. If you know, do you know of, so Hendrix Gin was created by this guy, Steve Grassi. He owns an agency called Quaker City Mercantile. Have you heard of them? I have not. So they don't enter awards. And they fly. Our aspirations have changed. Yeah. They fly under the radar, but they do sick work. They've made Hendrix. They made Pathfinder. I don't know if you're familiar with that brand. The cars? No, it's like a non-alc. So they do really good work. They mostly work in beverage.

23:36It's a lot of their own brands, and people come to them to build their brands. Sorry, one more time. What's the name? Asking for a friend. Who's going to Google it? Of the agency? Yeah, the agency. Grandview Mercantile. No, no. Wait. Quakers. That's literally my furniture store. Quaker City Mercantile. Quaker City Mercantile. Okay. Keep going. Sorry. So essentially, it's a bit of almost like a brand incubator where people come to them, they serve clients, they make amazing brands, but they also create and kind of incubate and launch a lot of their own brands. And they have all the resources available to them from the design agency side, but then they're also building out this like different type of business model.

24:15So that's more of the direction we want to head in. Like the aspirations have changed completely from being a really popular and sort of famous and well-known agency to being a business incubator. Yeah. Which is oftentimes less sexy. But again, like we're really more interested in seeing ourselves as entrepreneurs than agency owners. Than maybe service providers in that way. But the tools that we have from having an agency is our literal secret sauce as entrepreneurs. And I imagine they feed each other, right? They totally feed each other. Your experience building these companies really helps when you're building brands for other That's the coolest thing too.

25:01So we're speaking at this beverage conference and we're feeding both funnels. On the one hand, we're promoting Esther. On the other hand, we're getting clients for the agency. And then we're building immense thought leadership and status in both. So that's cool. Right. I have this sub stack I just started recently where I interview beverage founders about brand building. So it's really hitting the intersection of those two things. And it's also from a creative point of view, I maybe in the past would have thought, oh, but once I get more into this kind of entrepreneurial thing, I'm going to lose that kind of creative focus that we love so much.

25:36But I think building something is so creative. We are having a blast building our own brand. It is so much fun. It's a lot more fun than running an agency. Yeah, I mean, having clients, Kevin, can you just mute or bleep this out? But yeah, clients are, I'll just, they're going to client. That's my quote. They're going to client. That's the thing. That's what they do. They can't help themselves. I was a client for a really long time. Client and a client. So everything that anytime any client does anything, you know, very clienty for us, it's just payback for all the years I did it to others. But yeah, I think learning and sort of having this experience of these companies and putting them out into the world and sort of, yeah, it really helps you understand the role of brand.

26:17Exactly. And really why, you know, what we do as those service providers, but what that service actually needs to do in the world. It's made me have a lot more empathy actually for founders. Yeah, of course. You know, for so long, and I still do believe in it, but like this idea of like creative capital, like we're investing and I'm like, it is our secret sauce. It's our number one tool to make businesses successful is like the design and creative thing. But I'm like, it's not the same thing as investing your own money and like risking everything you have to build a company and like having empathy for decisions needing to come from that and from like profitability and it shifts everything why ohio oh that's such a good question kevin do you i'll point the question at you too well we also have kevin's mic is dead oh my god is that oh i know kevin do you want to come share with me do you Do you want to come over here and dual mic together?

27:21But Kevin, you're so entertaining. Oh, this is, yeah. I was like, this podcast is missing something. I was like, it's Kevin. Wait, Kevin, come sit next to me. We could share. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Come. Come, Kevin. Yeah, yeah. All the Ohio people on this side of the table. Yeah, this will be the Ohio mic. Why Ohio? Yeah. I mean, I loved growing up in the Midwest. Yeah. And I have three kids. I mean, the real answer is because we each have three kids. There you go. It all comes back to it. They really exist. Like they're real. How old are these children that you speak of that are very real? 10, 7, or almost 10, 7, and 5.

27:54Mine are 9, 6, and 4. Yeah, these are children. They're real. They're humans. Those are real humans and lots of them. Yeah. So one thing that I really love about your work and I think even about your energy online is it feels rebellious. I think there's a certain attitude. There's a certain aura. I love that. like feeling that you guys are here to fuck shit up. We are for sure here to fuck shit up. Where does that come from? And why do you think that's important for what you guys do? I can say why it's important for me. I think coming from places that you're expected to be a lot of things, I want to not be a lot of things.

28:32And in fact, the second we start ourselves finding ourselves like fitting into any mold, we're like, okay, time to break it. In fact, like that's almost what happened with the agency. we built the agency it's going really well now now we're an agency and then we're like now it's time to fuck that up and say screw the agency model let's do something else yeah and every time that happens we're going to do it over and over again i mean i also think part of it honestly is just our taste and personalities there's so much like passion and like with the three kids and with their lives really pent up it's there's a lot of pent-up energy yeah and this is where it comes out and it's like, seriously.

29:15No, that's a great answer. Of course. Like it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it builds. It builds. And I would say I, again, I'm not an Orthodox Jewish person. You're not. I'm a Jew-ish as I like to say, you know, I've never been to Israel, but I imagine there's a lot of people that have preconceived notions of what Orthodox women should be doing or do. Well, and especially in the Orthodox world, when we started our agency, it was really weird. People were not, people were not done with it. They did not understand what we were doing. At least where we were at the time. Now it's obviously different.