237. Innovation that Wins: Smarter Risk-Taking & Packaging Insights with Christy Lebor of Smashbrand

0:01Christy Lebor:Welcome to Startup to Scale, a podcast by FoodBevy. I'm your host, Jordan Buckner. Join me as I talk to aspiring entrepreneurs, seasoned industry experts, and everyone in between as we unlock the keys to growing from startup to scale.

0:18Christy Lebor:Today, I'm joined by Christy Lebor, who's a partner and head of the strategy group at SmashBrand. Christy has worked with countless brands to bring their innovation and products to market the right way. avoiding costly missteps and maximizing the chances of success. So in today's conversation, we're going to be diving into innovation and brand strategy and what that means for emerging stage brands, how to take the right risk, and why your packaging might be one of the single most important innovation lovers you have when explaining your product to customers. Christy, welcome to the podcast today.

0:53Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here.

0:55Christy Lebor:So when you think about innovation within the food and beverage space, what do you see as the key drivers and how brands should think about bringing a new product to life? Yeah, that's a big, big topic. We could probably talk for days about it. And in fact, I've talked for 25 years about it and done it for 25 years. I'd say, you know, innovation is such an awesome opportunity. Typically, whether that is innovating your way into the market for the first time, you're developing and launching your brand from the start. I would argue that's innovation. A lot of times when our industry talks about innovation, at least from my angle, they might be talking about your second product or like your second platform.

1:34But actually, that process of bringing brand to life or a new product to life is very similar, whether it's your first product out of the gate or your fifth platform. You know, and overall, I would say that the biggest takeaway that I've learned, well, I've got many, but the one I would maybe want to express to your audience would be it's not a mystery and it doesn't have to be guesswork. There is no like magical serum or like mystical way you can really identify the right ideas and then make sure they're fully optimized all the way through before you launch. It's it really there is a foundational process to do that.

2:20And so I see so often these emerging brands just kind of throwing spaghetti on the wall.

2:25Christy Lebor:Yeah, right about that. And I've often seen this problem of innovation being too big of a word because someone might launch a potato kettle chip that's fried, that's cooked in avocado oil. And that can be called an innovation because there previously were not many, if any, potato chips cooked with avocado oil, but it's very familiar. and then you could do what you know perhaps i did which was create our tea infused energy snacks which was a product that was kind of far out of left field where they were bite-sized energy squares it's kind of like an energy bar made in a single square that infused black and green tea inside for natural caffeine boost and it was doing like too many things at once and so i see such a wide spectrum.

3:13Christy Lebor:Do you have a sense of like where founders in the kind of food and beverage space find the most success? Is it that kind of like far out idea or is it the closer in like a better take on an existing product? Such a good question. So I've got kind of a two-phased answer for you. So the first one would be there's actually a place in your portfolio for all kinds of innovation. you need close-in innovation which in my old days at craft and pepsi we would call that a line extension so let's say you're a fruit punch brand or like you know like a juice brand you're gonna do something citrusy something berry and then something punch oriented like that's what you're gonna do there's gonna be a three so what's that fourth flavor is it a strawberry lemonade that could be highly incremental to you and oftentimes that's a low-hanging fruit that's innovation it's just close in, online extension.

4:09Then next out, think about Horizon. So that's very close in, Horizon 1. Horizon 2 would be maybe a new platform. So if you're a juice brand, are you now going to do energy shots? It's kind of weird, but I don't know that you can do that next.

4:24Christy Lebor:I mean, alcohol is spiked juices, right? Yeah. And then maybe third out, you're now going to do a bar. It's not a liquid anymore. It's a bar. That's breakthrough innovation for you. Now, your second part of your question was how how much are you changing? I actually have got a very simple model for this that I've learned and I've heard people express it different ways. This is my way of expressing it. And it's so simple, but it is very, very helpful. When you step back from our industry and actually look a little bit broader at consumer psychology and behavior change, it is generally true that you can, like the hardest thing to do is change consumer behavior.

5:03Like that is the hardest thing to do on the planet. I'm not kidding. And so the best way you can do it, by the way, changing consumer behavior could be by this brand instead of that. And there's degrees of change there. But think about it this way. The most successful innovations and the most successful companies are only asking you to change one thing. For example, the one that you just gave earlier, it's a potato chip and it's kettle cooked. You already know what kettle cooked is because it's been around for 15, 20 years. It's just now cooked in avocado oil. Right. Okay. Oh, I get it. And so you're changing one thing.

5:36Oh, it's like in your example, your tea infused energy bite.

5:40Christy Lebor:I can't even remember it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of two things, right? And so now it's tea infused and now you're not buying bars, you're buying bites. Yes. You also have to look at it. It's not just what your product is. You have to look at like the threshold of willingness to pay. Are you opening up a new price tier? Well, that's going to be, or like, are you asking people to change their frame of reference? Here's another little example for you. And, you know, if you think about it, it's the types of things you might be changing for a consumer might be what is the product itself, like the product formulation.

6:11Like, oh, it's got tea in it now. Oh, it's avocado oil. Another thing you might be changing is the form of the product. Usually you eat yogurt with a spoon, but now you're going to drink it. Or usually you or now it's a yogurt gummy. Right. So so what's the form? then there might be again a really new value tier a price point like thinking about it in a different way and usually if you do that you might be coming in and changing the frame of reference which would be the most classic example of that i can give you is it's not delivery it's di giorno right so in that world this is what you know 20 20 years ago 25 years ago but it's such a classic case The reason why DiGiorno was able to come in and they paired strong innovation R &D.

7:00They had Rising Crust. This is a fun little story. They were going to call it Tombstone Plus.

7:07Christy Lebor:Interesting. They sound like the Tombstone brand. Yeah, they own Tombstone Pizza. This is before they spun off their pizza division to Nestle. But they own Tombstone and their R &D team developed this new Rising Crust technology. It was going to launch and it was going to be called Tombstone Plus. And that's when a very smart marketer, Julie Hennessy, I took her class at Kellogg School of Management. This is how I know this case study. She was like, wait a minute, this could be a much bigger idea than Tombstone Plus. We're burying the news. Like, we got to call this thing bigger. And so they, instead of saying it's a better frozen pizza, they said it's not a better frozen pizza.

7:42It's just like delivery. So we completely changed the frame of reference. They linked a new technology to it, and then they supported it with marketing to help consumers understand the change of frame of reference. And that's how they basically doubled the SRP that people were willing to pay for a frozen pizza.

7:59Christy Lebor:Yeah, because they're thinking about— Because it's not frozen pizza, it's like delivery. What? Yeah, comparing it to the frozen pizzas next to it, but in their mind, they're replaying that slogan like, why is it so expensive? Oh, wait, it's because it's like delivery, not— But think about it. That's the only thing they changed, right? So frame of reference attached to them because of that frame of reference price point. It's still pizza. You still eat it for dinner. It's still pepperoni and cheese. They didn't all of a sudden add avocado oil. They didn't make the crust cauliflower. It's just that.

8:29So they changed one thing and they maniacally focused on that one thing. And that worked really, really good. The last thing you maybe change is occasion. So you usually eat pizza for dinner. Now you're going to eat it for breakfast. So, I mean, there's probably more than that, but really, as you think about your brand, don't ask the consumer to change more than one thing. It's very challenging for you. I learned that firsthand. Yeah,

8:58Christy Lebor:I learned that firsthand because of T-square is really had four things that we were going after and changing. We are essentially a protein bar, but we had bite-sized pieces instead of one single bar. We launched in a multi-serve pouch with four servings instead of a single serving. We had ingredients like our tea in there. And then the texture was crunchy. We used a puffed millet and almonds and other ingredients, whereas like a really almost like a rice cake texture instead of a typical chewy protein bar. So consumers had no reference point to actually what they were buying. In my mind, I felt like, hey, here's this great innovation.

9:37Christy Lebor:and we're building a moat around any competitor. Like no one's going to copy this. But I didn't realize until later, we're also building a moat around our customers because they didn't understand what they're really buying. And it really hit me when I talked to a customer doing a demo and they were like, oh, I saw these on the shelf at Whole Foods. It looked interesting, but I did not buy it. And once they tried it at the demo, they tasted it like, oh, these are good. And they purchased it, but it could not sell itself. Correct. And so, you know, talking about this next piece here of it cannot sell itself.

10:10If you have an innovation or a new product or a new brand, again, ideally you're just changing one thing, all these things we've talked about, and it cannot sell itself, you are not going to make it. Like, and again, that's the discipline of really picking one thing to shout. You might have other things in there that are cool that deliver an experience or a nutritional component or something. but in terms of what you're actually marketing for your brand and what you're shouting on your with your branding but specifically your packaging you know most emerging brands can't afford 100 million dollar ad budgets or even five million dollar ad budgets you know and so really your packaging is doing the hard work for you and if you're the idea behind why you should buy this product why it's worth it and why it's a brand for them but even more importantly at the point to purchase why it's worth it.

11:00They have to understand what it is and why it's better. And it's got to break out. You got to break through. You got to understand what it is. And you got to believe it's better and worth the price. And if you can't do that in like nine seconds, less than nine seconds for most categories, you're going to lose it. You know, we've got studies would say, this is a fun little fact. I read this the other day. I'm reading this wonderful book. I actually recommend it. It's not new, but I was just reading it. It's called Fascinate. Fantastic book by Sally Hogshead. Anyway, one of the things she talks about is this very famous study about like the attention span of a goldfish and in general attention spans.

11:39And, you know, about 100 years ago, we had about a 20 minute attention span as humans. And now about 15 years ago is about nine seconds equal to a goldfish. Apparently, I think Facebook did another study and essentially post social media era in the world of like TikTok and whatnot. We're actually now at eight seconds. So we have less attention span than a goldfish. Think about that. Right. So if you can't hit it and quit it in like seconds on your pack, you are never going to be able to get the velocities up and get your to a place where your gross margin can even pay and get to a profit to make your business sustainable.

12:26Christy Lebor:So Chrissy, I love that. I love that you mentioned and talking about like what's the one thing your brand is going to shout because I think this leads into package design because when you're designing your physical real estate for the product, there's only limited space on there. And so it's really key to pick the right message or a few messages of which are going to actually sell your product. I made that mistake at T Squares and we didn't have a strong enough value prop that we were selling that was picking up people's attention. So I'd love to hear your thoughts and process on identifying and then shouting that like one key message using packaging and package design.

13:03Yeah. So the way we think about it at Smash Brand in terms of sort of the positioning and then the packaging is, you know, to get a consumer to buy your product, you have to win their head and their heart. That's not a new concept, but it's very true. It's we're all human. This is how we think. Winning the head is a very rational side. You're doing logics and facts. It's system two thinking. It's a little slower. And that's the thing. Usually what wins people over is really winning category purchase drivers. And typically, like we have a way of getting at that quantitatively, what those are and how to best express those at Smash Brand.

13:38Christy Lebor:But think about things like, okay, if let's say you're a beef stick, like a Chops or a Slim Jim or a Archer, something like that. Why is somebody really buying your category? What are they looking for? What do you have to make sure you communicate very quickly? And are you going to do that with your words or your visuals, right? And so certain things are better done with words. Oh, 10 grams of protein. You have to say that. Other things sometimes are done with visuals, but it's still a key category. Purchase driver and very rational. Ooh, this is going to taste good. Maybe you're going to show a bowl of salt and like cracked pepper and like a seasoned piece of Wagyu.

14:20I'm making that up. But, you know, like you're going to show the taste. There's so many ways to show taste, but you're going to do that. There's, you know, obviously other category drivers too, like more natural, anything like that, where you can not only show, hey, I have this category driver, but maybe the way I do it is different than everybody else. And that's why you buy me and that's why it's worth more. But there's the heart too. And a lot of that is the branding and the designs. typically when i think about the heart like if if the head is all about it's worth it the heart is about this is a brand for me and it's very much more connected to a little bit of aesthetic design emotional drivers and again we have a way of quantitatively getting to that at smash brand but uh as we design you you if you're all heart and no head you're gonna lose if you're all head and no heart you might have volume but it's going to be commoditized and you're going to be fighting you have no brand, you have a product.

15:15Christy Lebor:So here's one thing that I always I love talking about is really defining how to build a brand because a lot of founders will hear brand and they think logo, colors, imagery on a package. But it's really more than that. It's the values that you put forth and the things that you stand for. And I love kind of breaking down like how do you build out those brand characteristics? And then how do you showcase those through packaging, through the messaging that you're putting out in the world in your perspective? I'm going to be provocative right now and say, no, the brand is not a logo. That's a word mark.

15:54Typically, that's a design asset. A brand is a promise. A brand is a mental shortcut. It's how people can make shopping easier and trusted. I mean, there's actually great TV shows

16:07Christy Lebor:about this, the brands that built America, if you want to watch it on History Channel. But it was great. Anyway, brand overall is actually the entire value proposition and promise you are delivering to your consumer every day. Yes, you have the look, the brand identity, which is the look and the feel of your brand and the logo and some of those distinctive assets, those visual assets. It's also your product, the consistency, the quality, the benefits your product are giving. It's your value proposition, your price relative to your product. It's your availability where you are. It's your marketing message and how you show up in the world with your brand activation.

16:43It's your customer care, right? Your service. It's everything. Now, I think what you were asking was, what about your brand identity? How do you develop that? Is that what you were asking?

16:52Christy Lebor:Well, I think that's the, what you said is what I love is it's not your word marketing, your logos, everything else that you stand for. And I think a lot of people actually were talking to a founder and they got feedback about their packaging and the feedback was that their quote brand didn't stand out on their packaging and they were really confused because they thought it looked like other premium products as a granola product they thought looked like other premium granola it had like a nice quality bag and they couldn't quite place this disconnect between why people felt it did not look premium or have a personality, I guess, when the founder thought that it did and they were kind of looking for direction.

17:37Christy Lebor:And I know I'm not showing to you, but one thing that I found is like, it's a newer brand and they did not have a specific point of view that they were like shouting. And I think that led to people reading that in different ways. So yeah, maybe to put it in other words, perhaps what this founder was missing was what I would call brand distinction. So they might have a quote brand, meaning a look, but it wasn't different and it wasn't perceived. It got lost in a seed. Granola is a tough category. There's a lot of granolas. It's a little hard to differentiate in that category, although you can. Oftentimes, I see a lot of when clients come to us at Smash Brand and we get a lot of clients like this, they'll come, they've got a great product, but their, you know, their sales, their velocities aren't turning as fast as they want, let's say, at retail.

18:28And one of the reasons, and maybe they're, they have to charge a certain price because of the cogs and the quality of the ingredients, but like consumers just aren't willing to pay that yet. And then I look at their packaging and it basically looks like every other brand out there, whether it's that Chobani aesthetic or Whole Foods aesthetic or, you know, gourmet chef-y aesthetic, but like it's bland, unremarkable, and maybe doesn't kind of break through the competition. So the art and the science of design is really making sure that you are visually, with your visuals and your words, saying and showing the things you need to say to be relevant to the category and be what they want.

19:11But then in the areas where you can, push and drive distinction. Break through, look different. Show up in a different way that either directly communicates to a functional benefit that you're elevating that no one else has, or whether you are meeting, let's say, an emotional need or a positioning area that could bring in a new consumer to that category in a different way than no one else is. So it's the head or the heart, one or the other. Ideally, you do both. But the trick is being different, but being different and relevant. Sometimes, you know, I always laugh at this as a little example. I had an old mentor that used to say this.

19:47Being different alone is not, You have to be different or else you're never going to break out as a new brand. But you cannot just be different. You have to be different and relevant. And what I mean is, you're going to laugh right now when I say this. This is a classic example. Okay, let's say you're in the toothpaste category. I know we're talking about food and beverage here, but this is the example that's used. Let's say you're in the toothpaste category and you're like, I need to be different. I'm going to launch anchovy toothpaste. Boy, is that different. Not wanted. Not relevant. Nobody's going to buy anchovy toothpaste, right?

20:18And so just make sure you don't have an anchovy toothpaste problem. Obviously, that's dramatic. Like no one in their right mind would probably launch a product like that. But you'd be surprised.

20:29Christy Lebor:Well, I think it gets because a lot of people think I need to be different. So what can I do to be different? Not what are consumers looking for that they're not being satisfied for with that I believe in myself that I can use to differentiate from the category. And I think it's a different approach. Whereas they say, right, like don't be different just for difference sake. Like have a reason that you want or making the choices. Right. Different is critical. That's how you get breakout and sort of break through the clutter. But again, you can't just be unhinged in your difference. I love that.

21:05Christy Lebor:Well, Christy, thanks so much for being on today and talking about innovation and packaging design. I think you gave a lot of great pointers and tips on practical things brands can't or companies and brands can do to really stand out and combine those head and heart attributes to build successful brands. Thanks so much for being on. Thank you for having me.