I think Leonard DiCaprio has invested in upwards of 10 consumer startups alone. Don’t quote me on that. His funding of Grizzly Man’s suicidal misadventures (Timothy Treadwell), though, should give you some pause for reflection. What is the most influential role a celebrity can play in
It's a truism in professional hiring that you always want to seek out talent that is already employed first. This may seem silly because it gives leverage to the employee, not to the company hiring, but that completely misses the point. The issue you face
As I prepare for a June COVID-19 update, here’s where my head is at regarding what will be changing in 2021 that may affect your early-stage brand (or not): Sampling – retailers may require pre-packaged samples only, which will increase the costs of this in-store technique
Classically trained marketers at BigCo can too easily assume they know WHY people buy their products. This is because they generally work for holding companies selling yesterday’s innovations that are household names in basic categories. The WHY behind repeat purchase has become essentially common cultural
If you don’t want your agency or marketing director to develop a communication strategy that’s totally disconnected from your actual competitive strategy, you need a creative brief. I don’t see it as a luxury at all. It has the same value for a small startup,
It's a law of marketing seldom discussed, but first popularized by Byron Sharp many years ago. What's the gist? Well, the evidence shows that consumers with a robust set of brands they're content within a category are much harder to distract with a new brand
Here’s a sneak preview of my upcoming podcast interview with Prof. Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School’s Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, author of Why Startups Fail. Airing in June on Startup Confidential – available on all major podcast platforms. Believe it or not, founders with prior business operating experience DO
I wrote a white paper almost four years ago on this topic, and most of it holds true still, four years later. Target is rarely a place you want to launch because you are very unlikely to be capitalized to spread nationally when the test
If you heard my recent podcast, you heard me opine on the future of trade shows as true industry events. There is a burning need to re-design these retailer-centric events better for the benefit of manufacturers and brands. Standing in cages for 8 hours hoping
Before the pandemic, I used to point to online sales as a great, less risky alternative channel to get initial sales going. It supplemented foodservice, café, and farmer’s market sales nicely and, if DTC, it provided a market research laboratory to iterate your offering. The