Rohan Oza: The playbook for building billion-dollar consumer brands

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1:56I started looking around to see who could help make vitamin water cool and broad. Because the product was great, package was great, but didn't have that zeitgeist. Rohan Oza's new job was to make vitamin water stand out in a crowded beverage landscape. So 2004 year, right, the two guys at the height of the game in music were 50 and Jay. If you know, you know, but if you don't, that's rappers 50 Cent and Jay-Z. But vitamin water was a scrappy young brand. how could they possibly afford a global superstar as their spokesperson? And the vision was to get 50 in the room and how FIF could be the face of the brand.

2:35I'm like, I said to FIF, I can't afford you. But I have an idea. I said, we can do an equity game. I'll give you skin in the game if you want to do this. And he's like, I'm in.

2:51This is Masters of Scale. I'm Jeff Berman, your host. This week on the show, Rohan Oza. If we were erecting the Mount Rushmore of consumer marketing for the 21st century, there is no question that our guest today would have a spot on that monument. The mastermind behind 8 billion plus in exits, The guy who brought 50 Cent into Vitamin Water with an equity deal that changed the way not only that brand grew, but changed the way celebrities and influencers ultimately play in the world of brand. Recently, the co-founder of Poppy, which had a$2 billion exit to Pepsi. The co-founder of Kavu, which is a consumer brands investment fund where also you're partnering with founders.

3:37Rohan, thrilled to welcome you to Masters of Scan. Thank you. It's quite the intro. Really excited to dive in with you on the journey that you've had. Just take us back, let's set the stage. Where do your entrepreneurial roots come from? Probably my family. I'm originally Indian, born and raised in Africa, educated in England, and now I'm American. So I'm like the sort of the immigrant American dream story. And my family was all a bunch of businessmen. It's in the blood, it's in the culture. And initially the thought was I'd join my father's business. You know, Indian families, dad starts or the granddad starts to join it.

4:11What kind of business was that? And that's the problem. It was in agricultural equipment, hardware, things that I was, one, terrible at, and two, had no interest. And one of the things I push for is be passionate about what you're doing if you're allowed to do that, right? Sometimes you have to just work to get a paycheck, but if you're blessed to be able to be passionate about it, I think you can be a lot more successful. So I realized that if I did this, I would do okay with my dad, but I would never do really well. And so I kind of transitioned into consumer products, fire engineering, meaning I started in manufacturing, with Mars M &Ms.

4:44And then I went from there to Coca-Cola. Why manufacturing with Mars M &Ms? Mars has created probably some of the most iconic consumer brands in the world. The power of brand is one thing that I espouse a lot. And Mars is a great place to understand that. Like, how have you created such legacy brands that a hundred years later are still massive? So why am I not sitting here talking to the head of manufacturing for Mars M &M? Yeah, because they fired me. So I went there and I started manufacturing and I wanted to pivot to marketing. And so I'm like, what do I do? I came to the States, went to Michigan.

5:17And so why business school? Business school is not for everyone, by the way. But for me, it gave me intellectual maturity, which I think what I needed. It allowed me to shape where I wanted to go. And why Coke? Why did you choose to go there? I gravitate towards iconic brands. And that's why I think in my career, I've tried to build iconic brands because my foundational learning... Other than Mars, the other company that has probably some of the most iconic brands in the world was Coke at the time, right? Why do you think Coke took you and said, we want to make a bet on this guy? This was the Olympics year.

5:47So they didn't do a full summer internship. It was like an abbreviated internship. And one of the guys, a guy called Carl Sweat actually, ended up becoming one of my mentors there, was like, look, this guy is high risk, high reward. We don't know if he's going to be a brilliant or a train wreck. He's going to be one of the two. He's not middle of the road. Let's just take the gamble on him. So I was like the last man picked from gym class. Did you understand why they would consider you high risk, high reward? As I've grown up, I realized I'm high risk, high reward. But at the time, I didn't quite understand it.

6:18What led to the next step for you there? Well, the next step was I ended up on the brand Sprite, which I loved. And that's where I kind of learned what became one of my mantras was influence the influencer. Because Sprite had suddenly become the super cool brand. We did stuff with Kobe Bryant and Missy Elliott and Tim Duncan. And in the African-American community, Sprite became super cool because of all the hip hop that we were doing, which by the way, I had to learn whilst doing. And I learned from super smart, creative people. And then after that, I got under Powerade and I redefined Powerade because no one really cared about the brand.

6:51It was like a dying brand. And so it was like, sure, what harm can Rohan do? So I put an excellent team together, revamped the whole thing, and the brand took off. And so what did you do? What did you take from Sprite and innovate to make Powerade pop? First of all, packaging and redesign. Your package is the brand you walk around with. So we redesigned the brand, the packaging. I brought an influencer strategy to the mix. So we brought in different athletes into the mix because I think at the time, Powerade was just picking what Gatorade didn't want. I'm like, that's not a strategy. Picking up leftovers isn't a strategy.

7:23Go find people you want and drive forward. And so with new product, new packaging, and an influencer strategy, I was able to get the Coke bottlers who are critical to Coke success to actually get behind the brand again. On the product and packaging side, I sat with Jeff Curl from Stan Sucks several years ago, and he talked about walking up and down aisles at grocery stores, at Target, at Walmart, et cetera, to look what products look all the same and where is there an opportunity to differentiate? What was your process for figuring out how to reimagine the product and the packaging so it would stand out in the marketplace.

7:59It's funny you bring that up. My wife gets very upset when I go to the grocery store because it takes me two hours because I spend so much time going up and down, looking at product package. And she's like, I just sent you for four things. Can you get back here quicker? But yes, I think it depends on the brand and the need. The key thing is you have to stand out. So the product has to pop. There's no one thing. I think it's one, you have to have a vision for what that brand needs to stand for. Then you got to put a strong creative team together. And in the end, there's a gut feel. because if it's just research, then everyone's going to have great packaging.

8:30Right. Because you have the same agency, you'll show them 10 designs. I think finding the right designer and going with your gut is a big part of what makes packaging cool. On the celebrity side, going back to Powerade, it's not like celebrity endorsement was a new thing, right? I mean, celebrities have been endorsing products long before you and I walked the earth. What did you see as the opportunity to do differently to evolve or to reinvent to make Powerade stand out with your engagement with the celebrities? I think what I started on Learned at Power and I took it forward with me is the importance of engaging celebrities or influencers, because celebrities were the influence at that time, who felt your brand.

9:09Sometimes people just signed on a celeb because, hey, let's pay the money and get it done. But they didn't feel the brand. And I think it's important for them to feel the brand because when they do, they go above and beyond. And when we go forward, and I'll talk about other brands, it makes a massive difference, especially on entrepreneurial brands. How do you know when they feel the brand? Is that gut, the energy? I think you have to sit with them. I think a lot of it is the interaction. I sat with 50 on Vitamwater and Justin Timberlake on Buy. We sat with Alex Earle on Poppy and you can see how they react to the brand.

9:39Big difference. You have to sit with, because a lot of times if you just go through the agent and you don't connect with the actual artist, you have no idea how they react to your brand. I think this is a really critical piece because whether it's an agency or an agent or a manager or a lawyer, whoever the celebrity is working with, part of their job is to protect the talent, right? To protect their time. Like they don't want you to have direct access to them. God forbid you pitch them something that they wouldn't recommend or they don't get credit for. You at this point in your career can get in the room with anyone.

10:07But for an entrepreneur who's not known, who doesn't have your track record, how do you advise them how to navigate that maze? It's all about relationships. First, make sure you have a good relationship with the agent because you can't go around the agent. The agent's their go-to person. So there's no going direct to artists. So foster that direct relationship with the agent. And I've done that a lot over time. And that was number one, right? With 50, it was Chris Lighty. It was Rick Yorn with Justin. Like I established the relationships because then they trust you. And they know you're not going to try and do a sideswipe pitch on the artist.

10:41And then a core part of the final negotiation is I'd like to say with the artist. Because in the end, they're representing our brand. So all the upfront negotiation, you're never going to get there. But, you know, it's almost a house. Before you write the check, you've got to do a final inspection. Okay, so Powerade pops. Coke is starting to see the high reward, not the high risk side of having you on the team. What happens next? So, Brand's rocking and rolling. This is the high risk part. I'm kind of probably a little too cocky at this point because my team is the one running the show. Yeah. And instead of Coke moving me up the ranks, which I felt I deserved, they put someone above me.

11:18I just want to pause you for a second here because you are murdering it at Powerade. Things are happening. You're hard driving. You've got real vision. The best of companies would say like, hell yeah, like this is a weapon we've got. Let's go figure out what's the next brand we can give them to go do it with. Why are they layering you? Corporate America, a lot of chess moves. They get nervous. When you move very fast, I was too entrepreneurial in my approach, which is difficult to do within the confines of corporate America. I think this is just super relatable for a lot of entrepreneurs. I went to the end of - I like that phrase, entrepreneur.

11:51I mean, you're not sort of the inside of a big company. Okay, but so you get layered. What happens next? And at the same time, a guy called Mike Rapoli had reached out to me. Mike's a super successful entrepreneur himself. He was the number two guy at Vitamwater. He'd come in super early and they needed a CMO. And he's like, this is the guy. And Mike's also a gunslinger himself. So we kind of got along very well. And so I'd receive that offer and I'm like, you know what? things happen for a reason. I went to vitamin water and became the CMO and started what was the next and probably most important chapter of my life to lay the foundation for my future.

12:27Okay. So what happens at vitamin water? So it was an incredible product at the time, but the biggest problem was like, no one knew about it. And how do you do that? So at the time I took my Sprite experience, which was very much an influencer strategy. So with Sprite, I used to, you and I old enough on this. The influences back then, by the way, were radio DJs. Oh yeah. Remember back in the day? Sure. So I, back in the day, I flew in like about 80 DJs from the top 60 markets in the country into Vegas for a recording session and every artist around an award show. And so every artist could hit 20 cities in an hour and a half.

13:04So you basically created a Superbowl radio row around an award show. Exactly. That was a product promotion opportunity. Ahead of its time. Yeah. So I took that same thing and I started going radio DJs. Wow. And so I did partnerships across the country. I hired a whole set of field marketers that were cool, that felt the brand. Young, hip, dynamic. They knew the radio DJs. They knew the hot bartenders. But it was a lot of street marketing because the digital world didn't exist there. And so I started looking around to see who can help make Vitamwater cool and broad. Because the product was great, package is great, but didn't have that zeitgeist.

13:40so i looked at two guys it's doing my 2004 year right the two guys at the height of the game in music were 50 and j a friend of mine saw seth rotsky actually had uh 50s number or chris lighty's i had neither i was a nobody so he goes i can cut you to chris lady and chris and i bonded remember i told you the importance of building relationships he and i became good friends and incredible guy super smart came from the streets hard life he had a hard life guy gets pitched 20 times a day what broke through how how did you get chris to pay attention i actually think the product and package did the work for me in a big way because he saw it and then i painted the vision and the vision was to get 50 in the room and how fifth could be the face of the brand and he before had never done that he'd been like with sports and reebok and this and that music but actually the face of a beverage brand was first time here's a problem though i said to fifa i can't afford you But I have an idea.

14:36I said, we can do an equity game. I'll give you skin in the game if you wanted to do this. And he's like, I'm in. They're quickly shocked. He's a very smart individual. So he understands business cold. And he knew what he was capable of more than I did. Because I had a number in my mind of what I thought 50 could make. And I think he made 10 times that. Because I also didn't think the company would sell for$4 billion. and Fiff got fully behind it. And so that was a big part of, and he owned it. And funny, when he actually met Darius, the founder, Darius walked up to him and said, by the way, I'm the real founder of Vitamwater and Fiff, he cracked up because Fiff basically just put on his back and said, I'm Vitamwater.

15:19He basically refounded it. Yeah, but it was fine. It lifted the brand. Still ahead, more with Rohan Oza on how he turned his beverage brand playbook into multiple massive exits.

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17:33Find Pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Welcome back to Masters of Scale. You can find this conversation and much more on our YouTube channel, and be sure to check out the show notes for a link to our newsletter. The vitamin and water deal with 50 Cent fueled a wildly successful trajectory for the brand's parent company. It led to a$4.1 billion exit to Coca-Cola in 2007. But Rohan knew that working inside a giant company like Coke was not the right place for him. Instead, he took his winning playbook and built something new. It's called Kavu Consumer Partners. And Kavu blends traditional investing with hands-on help for brands.

18:14The result? Dozens of success stories for health-conscious companies like Poppy, Once Upon a Farm, Noom, The Farmer's Dog. The list of companies that you know well goes on and on. Rohan credits his co-founder for seeing the potential to make Kavu something different. My business partner, Brett, saw it. He was a hedge fund guy. He wanted to pivot into private equity. And he's like, but I've got to do it differently because he's a hedge fund guy. So hedge fund guys always want an edge, right? What's the edge? And in his opinion, like him raising a fund to deploy, there's no edge. He saw what I was doing and he's like, ooh, this is a vision.

18:55And so he approached me and said, look, let's go create a fund where we can provide real value add to companies we invest in. So we created CAVU. CAVU stands for ceiling and visibility unlimited. It's a flying term, I never knew that. But what it means that we help entrepreneurs guide, assuming they're flying, they're flying their brands, through turbulent times to clear skies. So when you get on a plane and a pilot says, Carvu, great, that's going to be a nice flight. So we created Carvu against his vision, which was how do we leverage what you and Steve have been doing and now do it in a much bigger scale.

19:32So that's why I pivoted, because before I was writing much smaller checks. Now as a fund, we can really go disrupt the landscape. And the mission for Carvu was like, okay, it's to democratize better living for all humans and their families. That was our scenario. Is it founders come and are pitching you and you fall in love with the founder, you fall in love with the idea, you fall in love with both. What's your process for choosing where you're going to invest your money and your time? Unfortunately for me, no one ever just walks through the door and is, hey, guys, I'm here. I'm brilliant. To find the best, you really have to go find.

20:05It's a hunt. So we have a great team that goes out there and there's a hunt. And so we've got to find the best brands and then you bond with the founders. It's their company. We're not running it. Let's be clear. We just become the wingman or wingwoman to them on their branding journey. And by the way, think of our Swiss army knife, right? I don't have to fix everything on your brand. It's like you pick. You want packaging? I got you. Influencer, Amazon, DTC, billboards. Like we've got all these things in the mix where we can offer you either great pricing, great relationships. We do it ourselves.

20:40It really varies. And so they love it because they're like, oh, I'm getting money. Oh, and you guys can help me with the brand. And brand is king. Like brand is king. If you don't have that brand moat, what do you have? Yeah, right. I think part of it is also having a real combo of the founders. Are they willing to work together? Again, not my show, their show. And they should run at 80%, 90%. But they should be willing to maybe work a little bit on the stuff that we can provide value on. And I think 90 % of the time the founders have. So let's use Poppy as an example here. How does Poppy become Poppy in your world?

21:12So, I mean, step back a little bit. So I went on a shark tank. So I was a shark on shark tank. And the funny thing is I did that as a pay it forward because I'm blessed. I'm living the American dream, right? I'm an immigrant. I've come to America. I'm an American now. I've been very successful. And my personal belief, I don't care what side of the aisle you sit on, this is the greatest country in the world to be an entrepreneur, hands down. almost nowhere else on earth can you create products from scratch and in five years be worth two billion three billion five billion i mean i think it's inarguable this is not a political statement it is the environment for entrepreneurs in the u.s all the conditions for it are better than anywhere in the world and there are literally thousands of examples yeah and we're blessed i mean probably like for me i i wake up every day i'm like i'm blessed to have been able to do this so i go on a shark tank pay it forward and sometimes you don't know but when you do that it actually got paid back to me, which is crazy.

22:04So I'm sitting there and I had always had this vision because understand I started my career as a soda guy. I love soda, but I stopped drinking it because, you know, I'm like, do you want sugar? I don't want the artificial sweeteners. And I always wanted a soda that I could just feel good about. So every deal on Shark Tank, I lost money, basically. And then this one deal comes on. I'm like, here we go again. Another beverage. It's called Mother Beverage. First of all, I don't like the name. It's a terrible package. It's in a glass bottle, which is no one can carry around because it breaks and no dice.

22:33But the entrepreneurs seem cool. Great vibe, good-looking couple, like straight out of Central Casting. Husband-wife founder. Husband-wife founder. She's like seven months pregnant. I'm like, that's commitment. You know, she's on a show. She's about to give birth. So they make the pitch. So I like the founder as a mother. I tried the product. I like two. And the one I liked the most was the orange one. Still my favorite today. and the reason for me, it was a cross between Fanta and Orangina. I'm like, oh my God, those are two drinks that I drank as a kid. I can now drink it every day and not feel bad.

23:08It's got fiber. It's got low sugar, natural ingredients. There's zero guilt. It's what I call permissible guilt. It's completely permissible. It's all good. And so I said, I'm in, but what am I in for? I'm in for a brand that has no scalability in a package that's terrible. so and i give you know alice and steve a lot of credit i said guys we're shutting the company down and we are going to create a new company together and i think that's a lot of faith in their end yeah that's a scary moment for an entrepreneur and the company wasn't big but for them it's still a lot of money obviously and so their trust i give them that so basically alice and steven me and stevie sat down and with carvoo's backing basically co-founded poppy Wow.