#68 - Izzy Maxwell - Della Vite [Head of Marketing]

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1:27Hello and welcome back to Founders. Today I'm joined by the wonderful Izzy Maxwell. So Izzy, can you let everyone know where you work and how long you've been there please? Yeah, of course. So hey, I am Izzy Maxwell. I work for Dele Vitae. We are a premium Prosecco brand branded by Cara, Poppy and Chloe Delevingne. I'm the head of marketing and I have been there for two and a half years. amazing i'm sure those names a lot of people will be like i know who they are but uh how did you get involved in in their world of what they do and what is that so let's let's dig into the brand and you're involved yeah of course so the brand the brand is basically on a mission to change the way the world perceives prosecco um we're trying to premiumize the prosecco category and bridge that gap between cheap mass market prosecco and champagne so yeah as i mentioned we're founded by the kind of powerhouse british trio that are the delavine sisters they wanted to go into business together for a while.

2:18The brand was founded back in 2020. And they, for a while, were wondering, you know, they thought that all their skill sets, bringing those together, like something quite amazing could happen. And they all had a shared love of Italy. And a bottle of sparkling wine was basically always on the table at their family gatherings, occasions. It was something that always brought them together. And they realized between them that they could name so many different champagne brands, but they couldn't name a single Prosecco brand that they believed in and trusted. The category has become so devalued and commoditized and dominated by own able products that their vision was the category needed a brand to believe in.

2:52So they set out to tell Prosecco's real story, basically, and give Prosecco the global recognition it deserves. They saw a gap in the market for, you know, an exceptional tasting Prosecco. Prosecco has developed a really bad reputation. and I'd love to dive into a bit of context of why Prosecco has a bad reputation because then I'll touch on you know what Dele Vitae are doing differently and why we're calling ourselves premium but basically Prosecco and Champagne the only thing that they really have in common is that they're a sparkling wine they're both produced in very different totally different regions and ultimately Prosecco has always been produced more cheaply and you know quit more quickly than champagne has.

3:33Champagne, the fermentation process, which is basically the part of the production process that adds bubbles to the liquid. With champagne, that happens in individual bottles, whereas with Prosecco, it happens in these big stainless steel tanks. So it's always been a faster kind of production method and more cost effective. So it generally is just a cheaper product to make. So that's why it is cheaper than champagne. But what happened is the difference between Prosecco and champagne. Champagne is quite rich and complex in flavour. Prosecco is very light and refreshing. It kind of grew in popularity globally to the delight of the Italians.

4:05But back in 2009, they ended up having to expand the entire Prosecco region to keep up with that demand. And what happened is that, you know, the Prosecco was then being produced at mass scale and producers were cutting corners to basically rush the bottles to shelves, to the shelves. And over time that has now, you know, developed quite a bad reputation for the product. What a lot of people don't realize is that there is great Prosecco still out there. It's just being hidden in the hills of Italy. And that's where we come in because it was, as I mentioned before, it was there, the sister's vision to basically tell that real story of Prosecco.

4:41And so, yeah, there are a few things that we do at Della Vitae that basically sets us apart from the rest. The first is the location. So where we are made. We are made in an area called Val d 'Abbia. It's a DOCG region versus a DOC. and DOCG is basically the highest quality of Prosecco you can get. And DOC liquids are normally produced on the valley floor, on the flatland, so the grapes are all grown down below, whereas Valdobiadonate is situated higher, higher up in the hills. So the grapes are basically exposed to better altitude, cooler temperatures. The grapes kind of ripen more slowly and give them better flavours, basically.

5:21So it's just a better quality grape. Valdobiadonate is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's honestly one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. And we have partnered with a small family run producer. It's a third generation winemaking family. So that craft and kind of skill has been passed down through the generations, down through the decades. And all of that kind of goes into every single bottle. The girls and Numa. So Numa is our other co-founder and CEO. He's involved in the day to day. He's lifelong friends of Poppy, Chloe and Cara. And he's been involved from day one. and they all basically went out to the region to find their right partner and they found as they were coming out of the winery there is a stone outside of the entrance that says della vitae prosecco and della vitae means of the vine in italian and then della vine in french means of the vine so they basically took that as a sign that they'd found their right partners so there's that um we are all of our grapes are hand-picked the mass market prosecco is all kind of produced on the flatlands.

6:21They're all kind of harvested by big industrial machines. All our winemaking communities spend, you know, the entirety of September, which is harvest up in the steep hills, basically hand picking all of those grapes, hand selecting all the grapes that go into production. And that is a very kind of time, you know, time consuming process. And then what really sets us apart actually happens inside the wineries. The fermentation process, which I mentioned earlier is what adds bubbles to the liquid. We extend that entire process. So we double the process which basically creates a kind of more refined and smooth texture and it's kind of why we're known for our like wildly delicious flavor basically we're just very easy to drink um and that's one of our real kind of usps we also grow our own natural yeast strains which is quite a niche one but it allows us to have our own unique flavor only a couple of wineries basically practice that that technique um we're all with the winery itself is sustainable it's run by solar power and then one of the other ones is that we are vegan friendly and a lot of people don't know that wine is not vegan um and actually interestingly i was in majestic at the weekend and they've haven't been into majestic for a while but they've started putting kind of vegan labels in all of their wines because it's in the filtration process that most wines use animal products to filter that their wine and we use ceramic filters and vegetable proteins that we use in our in our filtration process which means that we're 100 % vegan and can be enjoyed by everyone so it's all of those factors that have allowed us to create an exceptional prosecco that's award-winning it's constantly recognized for its quality so proud to work for a brand that you know is it's exceptional quality is everything that we stand for and it's one of the I guess the things about the job is whenever we're out sampling or kind of you know getting people to try the liquid it never gets any bad feedback everyone always loves it so you know you know that we're really onto something special here so that's the brand story amazing yeah smashed it it's like yeah there's so much in that I think it's fascinating I remember when I first saw you and we'll touch on the like how I came across you and and that whole campaign and marketing side in a second but yeah I think when I went on the website and even um you very kindly sent me some products and just had their package with all the Italian hills and we love Italy we've been to Italy the last three years without fail like done our big road trips driving around all these different regions and like there's just something about like going to these kind of prestigious like docg areas or it's like yeah there's something about it you can see it's in the water in the air in the atmosphere like it's it's really like you don't you don't really respect it until you've been there and i think to be able to bring that back and as you said when something gets so heavily commoditized to the point that it's just becoming cheap like to me personally i'm yet to try the prosecco i tried one of the spritz which we haven't touched on yet which again that was absolutely delicious but the Prosecco side like I'm always of the mind that Prosecco's okay but I like I like champagne if it was like champagne or Prosecco I'd choose champagne whereas I think the price point that comes with that obviously is not always a that friendly so I think it's a it's a really interesting play to kind of be that middle ground between cheap Prosecco expensive champagne here's a premium Prosecco so yeah how how did you get involved in the brand personally like clearly you you know a lot about the the grapes and the the vineyard a big Prosecco drinker were you an anti-prosecco drinker and you went I finally found my one.

9:38No I'm a big prosecco drinker I actually had quite an embarrassing nickname at uni but I was called Prosecco Izzy. Nice fitting. But yeah so I'll touch quickly on kind of how I ended up working for the brand. I studied business management at University of Exeter and did quite a lot of event management modules within that so my first job out of university was working for an event production agency called Rose Productions It was a really small agency run by two women called Amanda Sheppard and India Langton. And we were doing end-to-end event production for some major luxury fashion houses, basically.

10:13I look back at it now and I just think how cool that job was at the time. I don't think I really appreciated it because I was so young and fresh out of university. But we were putting on parties for Vitega Veneta, Michael Kors, Ralph Lauren, Hermes. We were pitching for Formula One. We were doing all these amazing things. We also did private parties. So we planned like a large scale wedding. And then we also planned this guy called Stephen Fitzpatrick, who is the CEO and founder of Ovo Energy, his 40th birthday in Bodrum, Bodrum in Turkey. Now he's quite important in the story because he is now a lead investor in Dele Vitae.

10:49And yeah, we planned this incredible party out in Bodrum. There's about 100 people. I was very much involved in the kind of event project management. So I kept doing everything from the event design, concepting through to, you know, all the kind of VIP, you know, logistical management as well. So we planned this party out there. And then also there was Stephen's kind of right hand man. And I always remember this moment because it was about 1 a.m. in the morning and his name's Dully and he had lost his glasses in the sea. And I think this is, yeah, it's a point with working in startups or wherever you are, just getting stuck in and doing anything.

11:26But he had lost his glasses and it was my name in the morning. I was absolutely determined to find his glasses for him and spent an hour in the sea, one in the morning and ended up finding his glasses. Now, he is now on the board for Dele Vitae. So it's just all quite weird that I had this big interaction with these guys back in the day. And anyway, yeah, I was there for a couple of years. At the time, my boss, India, was on maternity leave. And Numa, who is our CEO, was hot desking her desk in our co-working space. We were in Shepherd's Bush in a tiny office there. And he was coming into the office.

12:00This was very, very early days of Dele Vitae. And he was coming in with lots of different bottles. And I wasn't working for the brand at the time. But he was coming in and asking us kind of what our opinions were on the bottles. And he was really at the beginning stages of concepting the brand. And he was about to go out to the region and start having a look at, you know, looking at different partners that we could partner with. And there was nearly a moment that I was going to go with him because he needed some help. But I was needed on an event at the time, so I didn't go. So, yeah, I was very much involved in the brand at the time without realising that one day I was going to end up working for it.

12:35I then ended up moving to, it was such a small agency that at kind of an early stage of my career, I really wanted to go and experience what working in a big agency was like. So I had a bit of a career change at that point and went and worked in a B2B marketing agency. A big one called Transmission has about 200 people. And that was an amazing experience just because I really kind of learned that was doing everything from social, digital, paid campaigns, print campaigns, really understood what it was like working with lots of different people, pulling the right people onto a project and, you know, making sure that was, that could get done.

13:10And that was a great job that I had over COVID because had I stayed in the events industry, yeah, that wouldn't, I wouldn't have, you know, I probably would have been out of work at that point. So I was working with brands like Dropbox and Citrix, which was an online workspace. So, you know, very relevant over COVID and Sky. So yeah, that was brilliant. But after a while, I really missed kind of that luxury lifestyle space. I then moved, I stayed within the agency world and I moved to a smaller kind of paid social and paid media agency that was again, working with luxury and premium brands. So we, some of our clients were the luxury sportswear brand, Perfect Moment.

13:50We worked with Face Gym, Hugo Boss, the luxury pajama brand, Olivia Von Halley. And there I was then really involved in all the paid media campaigns. A lot of my experience has been on the creative strategy side. So working with creators, working with designers, building creative strategy assets, etc. And I really, really love that. I think I just had a realization that I wanted to be on the other side and that team that was briefing in the campaigns to an agency and coming up with those campaigns. And I essentially had a moment that I really believed I wanted to go and work for a brand. And so I then got back in touch with Amanda and India, who I worked with at Rose Productions, because this was well after COVID at this point.

14:32And I know that they had wound down Rose Productions, but they were working with Stephen Fitzpatrick, who we had planned the 40th birthday for. Stephen had just bought the Roof Gardens, which is this members club in Kensington. So they were working on the relaunch of the Roof Gardens with Stephen Fitzpatrick. And I got back in touch with them just to see if they had any roles available. And I had a great catch up with them. But at the time, they didn't have anything for me. But India knew that Numa was looking for a new marketing manager at Dele Vitae. And so that's where I then met Numa. I met the team there, went through the interview process, had to put together a marketing plan and ended up landing the role.

15:11And it was kind of one of those weird situations where I had been exposed to it before. I always loved Prosecco. I think you ask any one of my friends, I'm a stickler for sparkling wine. Love the good stuff, you know, even to the point, you know, how it's served. I'm fussy about that. Yeah, it was kind of the stars had aligned really. And actually over COVID when the brand launched and my boyfriend and I ordered a bottle of Della Vitae over COVID because I'd been involved in that very early stages. Yeah, that's basically the story of how I've ended up there. Love it. Like I love how like there's these moments or these occasions where it's like, oh, you go to this event or you get involved in this project and someone or something at that moment is like okay we're gonna see each other again like there's a few people who i'm like hasn't happened yet but i know at some stage our paths will cross because it's just there was too much that happened but i think that's that's brilliant um now from a marketing perspective like when you came in obviously you've been there like two two and a half nearly three years now is coming into to market with almost like a celebrity-led brand like everyone knows who the delavine sisters are like you see a lot of these celebrity brands like you hear the influencer brands coming out and all these things like it's it seems very easy for a celebrity to just slap their name on a product and go that's mine great here you go you do everything but I'd love to know like from your time working there what's it like working with the sisters and Numa and and how involved does everyone get and yeah what's what have been some of your favorite kind of marketing marketing projects or things that you've done and because obviously you've got a great in-house team of people you can go hey you can get involved yeah yeah exactly well yeah so like you said i actually was over the weekend with someone who said who asked me how involved are the de la vines really you know that is that preconception that assumption that they it's just a celebrity endorsed brand like others and they're just the face of it but the truth is that they are they own the brand with numa and they've been involved in every step of the journey since day one they all play very different roles so poppy de la vene um she's actually on the board so she's involved in you know the business decision making at that level.

17:11She also definitely plays the role of creative director. So she was heavily involved in the design of the bottle. Our logo is actually her handwriting. And so we, she's always involved in anything NPD. So we've just launched a new range of Italian R2D spritzes, as you mentioned earlier this summer. So all of that, you know, she was along the journey involved in that to the, down to the branding, the different colorways, and also with our content production because a lot of our competent production involves the girls and you know she kind of always weighs in there um and then also her network um is brilliant earlier this year I wanted to partner with a brand called Glasset they're a online kind of homeware platform that's run by a woman called Laura Jackson and Poppy and Laura are good friends and that really helped kind of push that partnership over the line you know we got them together and did some really authentic and funny, amazing content with them both.

18:07And yeah, she's just kind of got this black book of contacts that opens doors for us. And that's the same with Cara. I think Cara is obviously the most influential. We involve her especially with listing conversations within the off-trade and on-trade. We brought her onto a pitch with a major airline the other day. It just, you know, it really shows that support because obviously everything that we do and the way that we activate, especially within the off-trade and non-trade. People want to see that support from the sisters. So it's important that we show that from the very, very beginning. Cara also lasts one of my favorite projects.

18:40Last year, we launched Dele Vitae Zero. So Cara had a lifestyle change about a couple of years ago where she stopped drinking. And for a while, she was unable to actually promote the brand because we didn't have a non-alcoholic offering in the range. So we worked with her from the very, very early days of securing the liquid. One of her main things that, you know, she felt about the non-alcoholic space was everything that she was drinking was really packed with sugar, especially in the sparkling wine section. And she was just kind of waking up with sugar hangovers the whole time. One of our USPs of our DV0 is that it's got the lowest sugar content of all of them on the market and lowest calorie content.

19:18And it's super light. And that's what everyone really, really enjoys it because it's super refreshing. so she was involved from sampling the liquid and then through to the actual campaign launch which involved her and we did a photo you know at the 11th hour we did a photo shoot with her because with her busy schedule you know she actually lives in LA so she's only in the UK you know a few times a year so we we kind of pulled together this shoot at the 11th hour and so she's a few years older than me but I kind of later on in my teens kind of grew up with Cara Delevingne being the supermodel of the moment so that was quite a cool moment where I kind of saw her in action um and we did a an amazing shoot with her in the penthouse of the London Edition hotel again that's an amazing opportunity and the doors that open when you have Cara Delevingne involved because I called up that hotel saying that we needed a space for the shoot and obviously you know they're going to give it to you because it's Cara um and so you know it was something the next day we're in the penthouse um and that was quite amazing we did an amazing launch party at the roof gardens again were able to kind of hire that whole space because cara was showing up and we were going to get photos of cara that we were going to then send out to the press um you know that was in the newspapers next day we did an exclusive interview with her with the sunday time style that was probably one of the most exciting 24 hours because i just sat watching shopify just ping ping ping ping after that that interview went live um and that was really cool so And then we also exclusively launched with Selfridges, actually, for our DVZero.

20:46And she came and signed loads of bottles down in the wine shop. And then we did like a press event in the Jackson Boxer restaurant in Selfridges. And our DVZero wine producer actually flew over and joined her for that. And they both did a speech and really made, really kind of communicated the story about why Dele Vitae have launched a 0%. And yeah, she was completely heavily involved in that as like her baby, basically. So she was very influential there. And then Chloe, we call her chief taster. She basically is meticulous over the detail and loves, she just champions DV, absolutely loves it so much.

21:22And we use her for quite a lot of our on-trade partnerships. We did something last year where we were kind of going around different bars that were stocked in and working with mixologists there. And she would create like fun cocktails with DV, with the mixologists, some of our on-trade partners. And yeah, she lives out in the Cotswolds. So she really kind of champions DV in that section of the UK. But yeah, I guess the main thing with them is the personality of them all. I think I've had so much fun working with them. They are the most hilarious, lighthearted, totally unserious people. We did a shoot last Monday, actually, to promote a competition that's going live in Sainsbury's soon.

21:57And just everyone there is just in hysterics the whole time, just because they're totally bonkers. But just everyone loves it. They honestly fill the room with just, yeah, a lot of joy. and I think that's what we really try and make sure shines through in the brand we always say that we're a serious liquid that doesn't take ourselves too seriously because they are you know totally free-spirited and yeah unserious so um and easygoing so yeah it's so much fun working with them at the same time and I guess the magic really comes actually when they come together as well so we launched our spritzes this summer and as I mentioned cars cars get all of their schedules actually they're so busy i managed to get one hour with them where i think car was in was in london and we managed to do our shoot but it's so important that we that they're together you know one of our main usps again is that that feeling of sisterhood we know a lot of people buy into the brand because they want to drink dv with their sisters or their friends and um yeah it's so important that we we promote that message as well love that yeah no it's great i think it's it's so nice to have that kind of knowing everyone's involved because there's too many brands or too many ways that it's like oh it's another celebrity brand coming out and i think there's a lot of kind of like eye roll or as you said even being asked it the other day yourself if that's the assumption then it's like a it's great to kind of dig into that more and understand actually yeah how involved everyone is because i think it's so nice that when when it's done right and it's done to the level and the quality and as you said it's the fact that it's vegan and not everyone knows about the fact that many wines and prosecco's and things aren't vegan um all these other things it's building that great brand now i think the branding how it looks it's all absolutely gorgeous but one thing that kind of stood out and why i first started speaking to in the first place was this cheat on champagne strap line so i'd love to touch on that because you have the champagne committee kind of knocking on your door saying stop using it yes it's been interesting uh few months but yeah so i think not only are we premiumizing the second category but we are wanting to build an aspirational accessible lifestyle brand that's basically packed with real personality I think the sparkling wine category has long been ruled by tradition.

24:02And our main thing is that we want to inject some fresh energy into the category and challenge those traditions. We know that, you know, young consumers are looking for those fresh, innovative wines that are disrupting traditional luxury. And, you know, our whole kind of mission as a brand has been to step away from that traditional, at least stuffy old-fashioned world of champagne and really a champion inclusivity and free-spirited celebration and spontaneous celebration and everything that the Delevingnes as well stand for we've essentially you know we've developed a liquid that we believe can stand against champagne and can be enjoyed in the same way that champagne can and yeah we believe that we've developed a liquid that rivals it but so we decided last year that we wanted to kind of go against champagne but we wanted to make sure that we were not trying to be champagne and we never have been and we were definitely we're saying that we're definitely not champagne so yeah last year I feel like we really found our voice we did a bit of work on our brand messaging and positioning I think we've always had so many things going for us as a brand we're celebrity founded we want to talk about the craft and provenance but we also want to do it in this kind of cheeky punchy provocative way that goes against the you know traditional champagne world and we wanted to come up with a kind of campaign platform that spoke to all of those things.

25:17We were working towards an out of home campaign that went live in London last Christmas. And we came up with a few kind of cheeky slogans, basically, cheat on champagne being one of them. And we had get off on taste as another kiss my glass as another and you've never had better as another. And those went across, you know, the underground bus shelters, billboards. And over the course of that campaign, we were seeing that cheat on champagne was resonating the most people were tagging us in Instagram um you know some people also not agreeing with that message you know I remember someone being no absolutely we'll not cheat on champagne but we knew that it was at least sparking attention and that's the best thing someone's really taking a photo of our bus shelter and tagging us on Instagram we know that something's working there um and so basically we doubled down on that message this year um we have initially kind of put it on everything we did a big large-scale heathrow terminal 5 activation in april where we had cheat on champagne on the front of the bar that was one of our most amazing activations to date because we were sampling dv to you know thousands of travelers coming through heathrow during that month it was easter at the time and i remember we went there for one day to do it to get some content of poppy and chloe at the stand and people were just kind of coming by and stopping in their tracks and asking you why are we cheating on champagne and then it's you know a reason for them to come and ask about the brand story and we've also launched heat on champagne supper clubs in the entree we've put it on you know some of our marketing assets we put it on this big drinks cart that we've got we've done influencer gifting around it for valentine's day so we've kind of yeah it's fed through everything now that we're doing in june we received a letter from committee champagne asking us to stop referring to champagne in our marketing because because it was damaging the reputation of champagne.

27:05Now at the time, I think we were all so surprised because we're such a small brand at the end of the day versus, you know, the entire champagne consortium, they'd gone out their way to send us this quite serious letter, which, you know, the intention of the campaign in the first place was, yes, to be a bit provocative, but it was fun and it was cheeky and it was not meant to be taken that seriously. So we were quite surprised. But then also from my perspective, I was like, you know, well, at least they've been noticed, it's been noticed I think the whole the whole objective of the campaign was to do something bold and punchy that was going to get noticed and the fact that it had yeah it was noticed by them actually was a real sense of achievement I think for all of us internally so we did sit on that letter for a while because we got it back in June I think we didn't really know what to do with it it was kind of you know we hadn't been in this situation before we launched our spritzers so that was the focus of the summer and then it got to October and National Champagne Day is in October and with Christmas around the corner yeah it's our busiest biggest time of the year kind of thought well it's now or never like let's try and blow this up if we really can and the times agreed to an exclusive so we you know that was the quite amazing 24 hours trying to get all you know all of that pitch ready and and then they ran it um as an exclusive and it ended up in page three of the times I think uh the day a day later which you know quite cool for your marketing campaign to kind of end up page three in the Times.

28:26And then it was picked up by The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail. It just kind of blew up. And this has all happened in the last few weeks. And I think, yeah, it's one of those things. We now, I think, are going to reevaluate our language. For a while, we're like, no, let's just keep going. It's fine. I think we obviously have the utmost respect for Champagne. And I think, you know, there's so many other ways that we can kind of get our values and mission across. without having to reference them. So we are in that process at the moment of kind of looking at what our messaging next year looks like.

29:01But yeah, we will be stopping referencing them now. But yeah, I think it was one of those things where, you know, if the established champagne world has noticed this, I guess it just means that we were doing something right. So I think it is, yeah, it's quite an interesting journey. Yeah, it's like one of those gold medal of honours as like a challenger brand going like, oh, someone big has actually told me to stop doing this thing because they they know who i am now i think getting that moment of like actually this is the whole champagne committee when as a producer we're a really small percentage of that i think that's brilliant and yeah i loved how it kind of became a bit of like a marketing machine and obviously hopefully that's going to translate to sales ready in for christmas so um for anyone listening going like oh i'd have to try it like where where can people firstly like buy it and secondly where are some venues that you're like these are some great places where if you want to have it served you said you're very particular on how people serve it or where they serve it so um Yeah, where are some of your favorite places where people can go and get cars?

29:54Yeah, so firstly, within the off-trade, our biggest supermarket listing is Sainsbury's. So yeah, over Christmas, we are the only gift box Prosecco on the shelf. So it is, yeah, best time for us. It's that special bottle that, you know, people love gifting to Prosecco-loving friends. We're on Ocado, Amazon. We're then in Selfridges, John Lewis. So yeah, I've got a really kind of good, good foothold in the off-trade across the country. And then we've always played in prestige Halo accounts. For example, we're listed in ETM Group where they have Wagtail and Avery and Kitty Hawk across London. And we do so well there because we are basically the cheapest Prosecco option or cheapest sparkling wine option on the menu.

30:38So, you know, you start at us where we're£60 for a bottle of TV and then it basically goes up from there. So we do lots of volume in that account. We are talking to them at the moment about launching a series of day parties next year. We basically this year we started a we started up a new day party concept called High Noon. The whole idea around it was, you know, we're premiumizing the Prosecco category. And there's also an opportunity to premiumize bottomless brunch. You know, it's the biggest Prosecco drinking occasion. How can Dele Vitae own that? So we've crafted a day party concept that is an elevated bottomless brunch experience where you have free flowing DV and we started it at the Roof Gardens.

31:19And then next year we're talking to ETM about about doing it there. So, yeah, and a really amazing kind of event for people to come experience the DV world. And that's definitely one of my favorite accounts. We're also stocked in the Ivy. so the Ivy group and actually another thing I want to touch on about working with the sisters is it brings so much opportunity within the on trade where a lot of brands will have to pay large listing fees to get into places like the Ivy whereas we waver those listing fees because they're much more the value is driven by the activations you know with Poppy for example we did a big Valentine's Day activation to launch De La Vitae across the Ivy she did a private event in the Ivy Chelsea Garden, Princess Beatrice came, which basically ended up gaining kind of global coverage.

32:06They were so happy. And she was kind of involved in lots of content that we promoted as well. And that's really what the marketing teams really love, you know, from the entree perspectives. The Ivy again, I think one of the things that we've found with group, big group listings is then you can't control how the Prosecco is served. You know, in smaller accounts you really can but what we found sometimes in the ivy is you know we need to make sure it comes with a delavite ice bucket or it's served really really ice cold and lots of different things that you can't control um in in those big group listings but um yeah i'd say that's definitely another favorite and then last year we um won duty free so yeah we can now take db across the world um and on any holidays that you go on so that's also another special listing which has really helped with brand awareness um lots of people have said oh i've seen that bottle and duty free so that happened last year and then that's how how we ended up doing our heat throw um terminal five activation as well love that no it sounds great i think it's really really fascinating i think it's it's clear how passionate you are about the brand the liquid the relationship with everyone you're working with um what is now a complete other end of the spectrum like a tough day at the office whether it's in this role in particular or if there's been a like through your career there's a moment you're like oh that was a really tough day and when things didn't quite go to yeah so you know we're a startup there's so many ups and downs I think yeah I had thought about this and we had quite a big moment before our Dele Vitae Zero launch where we basically had so many things as I mentioned lined up with Cara we had a launch party we had our Selfridges Selfridges launch we had everything going live on specific dates and we received samples of the bottle.

33:49The bottles had all been produced. They were on their way over to the UK. And we received some samples of the bottles in the office a couple of weeks before. And something had happened in the production process that the filtration hadn't worked properly. So there was basically sediment that had stayed in all the bottles of Dele Vitae Zero. And it was one of those moments, probably the most stressful thing I've experienced, knowing that we have a product launch coming up kind of a week later but it was one of those things where we stand for exceptional quality and there was no world that we were going to be putting on you know a product that wasn't 100 % right out into the market even though we had Cara lined up and it was the only time that Cara could do you know this launch and um and the fact that it was also meant to be going out to wine critics and journalists all the you know the week after but then we had to you know deal with our producers who were saying you know well we can't fit you in for another production process you know production run you know for another couple of months we're just gonna have to deal with it and it was kind of that back and forth working with them making sure they understood the gravity of the situation and working with them to basically find a solution and Numa our CEO is the best person at doing this he will go out of his way and you know whatever it takes to resolve a solution he will make sure everyone's brought in so what had happened all the bottles had landed and down in Portsmouth and he drove down to Portsmouth and basically checked all of the stock that had come over.

35:14And it turns out all the bottles had been defected. So and they'd all been impacted. So none of them were OK to use. But what we did is we we kind of earmarked how many we needed for this launch, how many we needed to send out to journalists. And we kind of basically saved about a thousand bottles. And we organized a driver to get a van to pick up these thousand bottles from Portsmouth and drive them back to. So our Zero is produced in France. And the reason being is because we haven't found a producer in Italy yet that does a Zero liquid that, you know, hits that quality that we want it to. So this driver drove all the bottles back to France.

35:52They emptied the liquid, emptied the bottles and then refilled them with the with the correct liquid and managed to kind of get them back to the UK in time for our launch. but obviously that was all totally to the wire and it is what happens when you're in a startup fmcg brand and company you know logistical things go wrong and especially when you're launching a new product and i think the most important lesson is everyone just comes together and gets stuck in together and worked out a solution and yeah it kind of we all came together and it worked out in the end thank god but that was yeah they're the moments that are tough to live through but good to look at look back on i think there's always a few of those where you're like i'd never want to repeat that but i'm so glad that it turned out the way that it did and we got through it but um no that's brilliant um final couple of questions this is the music one i ask everyone what is the one song that comes to mind if you think of your experience in the working world yeah so i i think i have a few but i'll say so the main one is um keep moving by jungle so i think the one thing you know that you really learn about in the startup is um and especially for us as we're completely trying to re-educate a category and, you know, completely change the perception of an existing established category is that, you know, that takes time.

37:07And yeah, it's the most important thing to kind of just keep going. The other one I did think about was Taylor Swift has a song called Champagne Problems, which I thought was quite relevant for us at the moment. I'm saying three, but the other one is, it just came on the radio the other day, Flo Rida has a song called good feeling and i think all of us are so passionate about what we're doing at della vitae um we've got such a good feeling about the product that we have out there and are so excited about it everyone's so passionate and it's just fantastic yeah brand to work for love that three great songs great suggestions yeah i'll add all three to the playlist let's let's get it packed out ready for christmas no this has been absolutely brilliant as i said i've got to got to dig into all the samples you sent me the spritz i had was delicious the hugo is absolutely delicious too and yeah I'll be looking forward to trying more but if anyone listening wants to get hold of you or ask any more questions where is the best place to do that for you yeah so that is LinkedIn obviously send me a message on LinkedIn and then obviously keep an eye on you know socials because as I mentioned we're launching um High Noon which will be taking place in April um at one of our one of our Entree partner accounts Wagtail so that is a an event that you know love to meet other like-minded people i'll have to secure my yes definitely mitch come along love that no this is this has been brilliant really really thank you for your time and yeah it's been an absolute thank you so much for having me i've really enjoyed it thank you and to everyone listening thank you so much we will see you on the next episode goodbye