I know “barriers” is a downer word, but it’s not just a marketing concept. It’s one of the more sobering realities entrepreneurs must face as they pursue growth. Deny barriers to trying your brand at your peril. Some premium innovations have few obstacles to uptake
From Episode 35 of Startup Confidential: So many founders, early on, they get sucked into what I would call a distributor first mentality, all hail the distributor. And that is because it’s often the only way into many of the retailers that you have available to
Most CPG innovators and founders are geeks of some sort. It doesn't matter if the geekiness was professional or amateurish or a committee of both. The point is that you isolated a problem, a gap in your category, and you filled it. Or
Door-counting is easy to pick on as a completely common, yet non-strategic, 'metric.' Door counting is the easiest public way to suggest growth without divulging your actual trailing revenue to your competitors. The problem is two fold. 1- Not every door is created equal in retail.
In my book - Ramping Your Brand - there is a line that gets at the fundamental danger in CPG innovation, the fundamental threat to above-average memorability in a crowded, oversupplied marketplace. "Rarity in its purest form—rare ingredients, rare flavors, rare sensory textures,
America is entering the worst phase of the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic. Ironically, it may be our obsession with individual 'freedom' that empowers both the intrepid entrepreneur's willingness to take risks beyond the comfort zone of one's family and friends AND the virulent spread of the virus
Although I'm a social scientist, my advisory work doesn't focus narrowly on team organization and organization design for fast-growing startups. I'm honestly still learning and continue to read the research on this space (so you don't have to!). But one thing I can tell you
In Part 1 of this series, I explained why a branding update/tweak is, unfortunately, the go-to solution for too many founders when the business does not perform to expectations, stagnant, or declining. It's literally as easy as the next packaging run and a web update.
"How we first communicate with the world is the work we do with a branding agency" TJ McIntyre, CEO of Bobo's What are the core functions of a branding agency? Packaging and brand identity (Logo, trademark, characters/mascots, color schemes, and other brand symbolism) are the
I have the privilege of advising some of the smartest entrepreneurs out there in CPG today. Yet, intelligence alone (IQ) does not prevent a founder or her team from literally becoming blind to very likely, but negative, interpretations of her brand's KPIs. Again and again