Writing a creative brief is one of those BigCo professional practices that should be taking place at every consumer brand startup. Yet, I rarely meet founders who even know what I'm talking about when I mention this. It's partly because it's a stuffy BigCo term.
As a public figure in the CPG industry, I get a fair number of inbound messages, mainly on LinkedIn (and I answer every single message!). And some of them still are from folks in a hot hurry to get referred to this or that specialist.
Understanding why your fans love your brand is essential to creating a quality playbook for exponential growth. Understanding who they are is less important but critical to critical aspects of execution. Founders new to consumer-packaged goods often focus only on who loves them and assume they understand why they do. In CPG strategy, who is like the soil in your garden. Don’t think of who is like a giant mosh pit of disconnected individuals.
An under-discussed reason why eight-figure brands stall? Founders lose their ambition. Cash flow is stable and ample. The salary is very nice now. Why rock the boat with risky bets on acceleration? Nah. Just reinvest those profits into owner payouts, not growth. I get it. There is
One very common, under-discussed behavior on American holiday weekends? Re-examining one’s life. It happens quietly a lot, sometimes in open conversation as well. What is usually going on is a fiery debate over priorities. And how much harder you want to push your top priority anymore. Which,
You will most likely accumulate tons of negative feedback about your brand over the years unless you are the next SkinnyPop and found a gaping, ‘easy’ innovation hole in a sleepy category managed by the arrogant (at the time, at least). The key is finding the
As of 5:00 PM EDT on Thursday, May 10, 2023, Beyond Meat has created a highly seasonal, lower midmarket, negative EBITDA business that peaked at $464M in annualized sales in 2021. Here is the annual net revenue trend since 2016, which I’ll return to shortly.5 Recent
Memorability. It's the most critical growth pillar for premium CPG brands. Why? Because you don't have the cash, credibility, or sales network with which to leap to 80% ACV in mere months. So, how do you enhance it? Design a superbly positioned innovation at the head of
I tell folks to stop joining all these local ‘startup clubs’ that popped up during the glory years of easy money and low barriers to entry. Virtually all of them were created and/or funded by the investor community as an easy, local watch list. Mostly angels.
Most early-stage consumer brand P&Ls exist on the knife edge of survival. Most are losing money until a certain point up the Ramp. In my most recent episode of Startup Confidential, I share thoughts on a dark topic: knowing when to shut down. I don't know