The Startup CPG Podcast

Janice Greenwald
Sometimes it is the packaging, which is hard because it is an expensive endeavor usually. But I was working with a brand for about a year and a half where nobody knew what the product was inside. And that's a really tough thing. The brand had the most beautiful artwork developed by a wonderful designer. And this is super interesting. Retailers loved it. So we had no problem. They had no problem getting into retail. What they had problem with was getting it off the shelf. And that because the packaging wasn't really communicating what the product was, how I use this product, how do I cook with this product.

00:43
Janice Greenwald
And so went through a whole brand evolution exercise where we kept the essence of the brand and the beautiful design of the brand, while bringing forward some of the more practical elements of how a consumer might understand the product itself.

00:56
Daniel Scharff
Welcome everybody, to another instant classic episode of the startup CPG podcast. A few weeks ago, we did a hugely popular episode on how to drop velocity with sales pro Matt Merson. So today I wanted to complement that with a marketer's perspective. We've got the expert, Janice Greenwald on. She's going to dive into all of those marketing levers for emerging brands. But those levers really only work if you've got the fundamentals right. So we start with an overall diagnostic of your brand to make sure you're going to benefit in the long run. So this is somewhere in between how to drive velocity with marketing and marketing 101 for CPG. And I hope you love it. Here we go.

01:34
Daniel Scharff
So, Janice, you and I met because you were in the Slack channel answering so many questions from brands and I just thought your answers were so pragmatic and showed that you've done this with tons of brands that are emerging, don't have huge budgets, and really have a lot of things they have to figure out and want to drive awareness and velocity on shelf. So let's get into this. I am a new brand. Tell me what should I do as I'm just starting when I have this idea and I want to get it out to market.

02:00
Janice Greenwald
Yeah, I take a step back and I really, I go back to kind of my classic training in marketing. And I really think about things in frameworks. Specifically, I use the Cs and Ps framework, which a lot of people who have studied marketing will be familiar with. And I've joked with you in the past that I've added some Cs into my framework through the years of CPG. But what these are thinking about the consumer, the customer, the category that you are entering of course, your competitive set, those are kind of my C's. And then the P's are the product itself, how you're going to price it, the packaging, how you're going to communicate it, where you're going to put this on shelf, meaning both what channel and then where in the store.

02:42
Janice Greenwald
And then of course, the promotion, which is what a lot of people think of with marketing right away is just the promotional piece. But really, marketers, we're looking at all of those pieces together.

02:50
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so that's a business school framework here. But what should the brands actually do? You mean like sit down with a piece of paper and try to write out all of these answers?

02:59
Janice Greenwald
I would do that, yes. I often do that with brands, even after they've launched and we take a step back and we say, okay, maybe we're having some problems, maybe we're not seeing velocity on shelf organically. Like, have we dealt with our fundamentals yet? And this can be like a one day exercise. This isn't something that's going to take you months and months, but it's taking a step back and saying, well, what problem are we actually solving for consumers? Are we actually differentiated from the competition? Are we actually building something that's going to grow the category so we can actually get into retail? You know, all of these kind of elements of it. If those things aren't solved for in the beginning, you're going to be going back to the drawing board over and over again.

03:35
Janice Greenwald
So all the promotional tactics you're going to do aren't going to matter if you haven't solved all of those season P.S. Right up in the beginning.

03:42
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so starting with a piece of paper and writing out the answers to all of those things to make sure that you have answer that makes sense to you. These things, if you sum them up equal, good product, good potential can communicate the value to brands. Solving a problem that's out there.

03:59
Janice Greenwald
Exactly.

03:59
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so that makes sense to me. And we'll drop that in the show notes in case anybody wants to reference this full list of C's and P's here. Janice, when you say all of that, honestly, if I were a brand in this moment, it would make me very nervous. I'm like, oh gosh, I'm going to hire Janice. She's going to come in like, you know, I got to step on the scale, you know, and like, look at all this stuff. And she's going to find stuff that's wrong with my brand that's already in the market. And I'm going to have to like, start over and change a bunch of stuff. Is that the reality when you work with brands, that they just have to, like, start from scratch in a lot of cases or what?

04:32
Janice Greenwald
Sometimes. Not always, no. A lot of times it's like one thing I found, whether it was full time or working with brands now in a fractional basis is they come to me and they say, I have a velocity problem, Janice, I have a velocity problem. Help me. And I say, okay, cool. Like, not cool, but I can bring you a list of tactics, which I will do. And I'm going to say, okay, we're going to do this series of tactics to jumpstart your velocity. But if you have a value proposition issue or there's something wrong with your product or your pricing, or there's no consumer need or your packaging isn't communicating the right things to you, then no amount of kind of trial driving things like these are band aids are going to solve your problems.

05:11
Janice Greenwald
So there are situations where we do take a step back and we say, maybe the brand isn't communicating what we need it to, or maybe the product isn't differentiated and we need to do something different with the product inside the bag to create something truly different.

05:24
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so Janice, do you have an example of a brand where you. They did have one of these problems, you diagnosed it, something changed, and then that fixed their velocity issue?

05:35
Janice Greenwald
Yeah. Do this a lot with brands. Sometimes it is the packaging, which is hard because it is an expensive endeavor usually. But I was working with a brand for about a year and a half where nobody knew what the product was inside. And that's a really tough thing. The brand had the most beautiful artwork developed by a wonderful designer. And this is super interesting. Retailers loved it. So we had no problem. They had no problem getting into retail. What they had problem with was getting it off the shelf. And that because the packaging wasn't really communicating what the product was, how I use this product, how do I cook with this product.

06:10
Janice Greenwald
And so went through a whole brand evolution exercise where we kept the essence of the brand and the beautiful design of the brand, while bringing forward some of the more practical elements of how a consumer might understand the product itself.

06:22
Daniel Scharff
Okay, and let me ask you one more question, because you got this framework and there are nine things in it. And to me, like, product is one of those nine things. But also, I mean, isn't it the most important or isn't just the branding the most important thing? I mean, if the product is not good, then it's kind of a non starter. Right.

06:40
Janice Greenwald
It's kind of like product price and brand. And what are those three things kind of mean? Is value proposition to a consumer. Right. So if one of those things is totally off, it kind of doesn't work. I mean, you could have an awful brand and an amazing product, but you're gonna have a really hard time getting people to try the product. Then if you have an amazing product and an amazing brand, but your price is completely out of whack with the category, then that's gonna be a problem as well for you. So you kind of need to get those three things to work in sync. Your product, your pricing and your brand, in my opinion.

07:11
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so that's your overall value proposition and product market fit. You can just hone down to is it a great product, is it a great brand that is beautiful, but also tells people what it is so that they will pick it up off the shelf and hopefully have good velocity and a price that makes sense to people and doesn't prohibit you from getting not just trial but repurchase.

07:33
Janice Greenwald
Correct.

07:33
Daniel Scharff
Okay. So Janice, when they come to you though, how do you know if the product is good or bad or needs a refresh or something needs to change? Would you just try it and give them feedback or do you feel like you would have to do some kind of research?

07:46
Janice Greenwald
Yeah, I mean, I might have my own gut feelings for sure, but oftentimes there's research that we have to do or something that they already have that they haven't looked at closely in many years that might have told them the answer that there was a problem, but they maybe didn't want to face it at the time. So I usually spend a lot of time kind of uncovering those data points and telling the story back to the client. But sometimes I do have to do research on my own and I work with really small brands. Most of the brands I work with are under 5 million in revenue. So we don't have a ton of money for like a million dollars of research, which is what I spent when I was at Sabra, I think.

08:21
Janice Greenwald
So, you know, it's doing things like Survey Monkey or using Qualtrics, things where you can write your own surveys. But the most important thing that you're doing is making sure that you have a really good sample that is your target consumers, that you're talking to the right people. You could also do qual research like you know, in depth interviews with potential consumers or focus groups and things to really understand the why behind kind of the data.

08:48
Daniel Scharff
And for anyone who wants a deep dive on that, you can refer to an earlier podcast episode that we have with Sarah Shore. That's all about qualitative research. And because I think that's the question, with like SurveyMonkey, you can get people mainly to look at images and branding and respond to it and even, you know, filter for who actually buys products in the category frequently and get heavy users and have their responses. But in terms of having somebody try the product, I mean, it's very important, right?

09:15
Janice Greenwald
I mean, I'll tell you, trying the product at home. Yeah. You could do in home interviews, which back in the day at a place like Unilever, you do what's called like an ihut, which is like hundreds of thousands of dollars, at least back, if it was back then, where you're sending product into consumers home and asking a series of questions and understanding how they're using it, when they're using it, why they're using it, what they're replacing when they're using your product, because they're probably replacing something else. But you could do that on a budget too. Like you do that with, you know, there's a number of people even out there in our community who are offering this service, putting the product into people's hands.

09:49
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, I know. Okay, so Highlight, which is one of our partners, does that in home testing. There are a couple different ways you can do it or you can go and demo somewhere, but you know, people are going to tell you it's better than it is if you're personally there demoing and telling them the story. I think what we're all trying to get to is just, hey, act like a consumer who doesn't know me and picks this product up and they're interested in it and what do you think of it? And I mean, I will just say, as somebody who started a brand from scratch and launched products from scratch, it's very hard and scary to get that kind of a feedback because mainly you're not ready to hear it.

10:21
Daniel Scharff
If you are one of those people who is just so open to feedback and even loves feedback, then kudos, because I am not that person. I'm just like, no, it's like, I'm right, you're wrong, you do like it. Even though you're saying you don't, you should like it or you do.

10:33
Janice Greenwald
It's hard. That's why I tend to like, lean toward quantitative feedback too, because then it's. It's really hard to argue with the data as long as you're talking to the right people. If you have a quantitative result, as opposed to like four interviews that you've conducted, it's easier, I think, to convince yourself or convince a founder that maybe.

10:50
Daniel Scharff
Something needs to change if you can get it. Yes. And I mean, I, I mean the velocity will ultimately show you everything, but it's hard to get that big of a sample when you're a small brand and you don't know exactly what's doing what. But yeah, I mean, I think just overall, what I hope early brands understand is you need people to call your baby ugly to you and you need people that you trust and can ask for their real feedback and listen to. Because I definitely have seen brands out there that just swear their product is good and it takes them years and then they learn that it isn't. And like, if you can, if somebody can just honestly tell you some of that feedback in the early years, it might save you just so much time and money and effort.

11:30
Janice Greenwald
There's also ways to do things like quick on a budget, like that's product, but for packaging and communication, for example, this is not the best methodology in the whole world. I'm not totally promoting it, but if you have no money. One thing that I did with a client was I took like a hundred dollars and I had two different versions of a package that were like the same, but they were slightly changing their communications hierarchy in terms of how were identifying the package. And I ran meta ads to the exact same kind of audience, but not overlapping. And I wanted to see what the click through rate was. And one was 3x the other one. And I was like, I'm pretty sure that this one drove more interest among our target consumer than this one did.

12:04
Janice Greenwald
And it cost me $100, you know, and that was just like a very simple way to gut check something. We were just making a hierarchy change.

12:10
Daniel Scharff
I like that. And I mean, even by the way, you might have a product that it seems like it's not that good, but actually there is a marketing change that could make it a lot better. And I'll give you an example. I just tried a product that is marketed as a soda. Like this is not a good soda. It's not full flavor. If this was marketed to me as a seltzer, I might think it was good, you know, and I think that just kind of goes back to your point about really understanding the proposition that you have to consumers and the characteristics of the product. Have you ever been in a situation like that?

12:39
Janice Greenwald
Yeah, I mean, a hundred percent I mean, I'm going through it. I go through that a lot with a lot of my clients. And the example I'm giving you was quite literally like what is the category name and how do we define the category? Because it's a category not that many people are familiar with. So it's exactly what you just said.

12:53
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so let me then ask you another question which is let's say in the world of sodas and mocktails, there are a lot of new products launching. Right. There are a lot of people who maybe they just were going to do it anyways or maybe they were influenced by the rise of modern soda and the non alk cocktails. But they're launching a lot of products in that space and they've got a recipe that they're excited about or they've got a brand that they're excited about and they're trying to get it out to market. How can you, in a world where a lot of people are also launching products because they've seen the growth of the category, have a brand that can do well instead of being just yet another offering in that category because it's popular?

13:36
Janice Greenwald
Yeah. I mean it can't just be a me too product. And that goes to kind of like one thing that I do a lot with the brands I work with is a competitive matrix and to figure out like on what points are we differentiated versus everybody else. Like is there actually a white space? So if we're talking about functional sodas one axis, like you might have like great tasting one axis and like high in probiotics or on another axis and it's like, okay, there's a bunch of brands playing in that same area. So what are you going to do to differentiate? Is it that yours is going to be with botanicals or yours is going to be, I don't know, I'm not a functional soda expert, but you get my point.

14:14
Janice Greenwald
And I spend a lot of time thinking about what those axes should be to really determine like where that white space is. And this might be something for the show notes because it's a little bit hard for me to describe it, but that's how I got with one of the brands I'm working with today to kind of a reformulation was saying, well, where is the white space? And we have to kind of play with these axes to figure out where it is, if that.

14:35
Daniel Scharff
And you would only put relevant brands on there. Right. Because there can be a bunch of no name brands that many of whom might be in our channel and they're just making their way and trying to grow. But, like, you wouldn't worry about them necessarily because they're not on most of the shelves that you're getting on. Right. You would worry more about national players or what?

14:50
Janice Greenwald
I don't know. There's always a dark horse. So I would. I would probably map everybody and say, like, because. Because you don't know who you're going to be competing with in six months and you don't know if they have national distribution coming out at Albertsons. You know, it happens all the time. And so anyone that I'm familiar with, I'd want to know how I'm differentiated from them. And it doesn't mean that you can't have a me too to another product. If you do yours better and faster, with better branding, better pricing, better recipe. Sure. Like, go for it and you're going to be first to market. That's great. But you can't be on top of everybody. Like, not everybody can be Olipop and poppy. And even those brands are pretty far differentiated, if you ask me.

15:25
Janice Greenwald
They have really different recipes and really different, like, just flavor profiles for the most part.

15:29
Daniel Scharff
If anybody's wondering what my axes are when I'm drinking a modern soda, it's just going to be taste and then probably calories on the other one. And I know they have some stuff in it. Prebiotics. I don't care about that. I just care that the two flavors that I really like of poppy taste really good. And I don't like their other flavors, but I really like the two that I like a lot and I don't like the rest. And I'm probably not going to drink another one unless it tastes better than theirs and has a similar calorie profile.

15:56
Janice Greenwald
Then with that axes, it's interesting, too. Like, I was actually just talking to a brand and I'm like forgetting who it was. But they. It's very similar because it was like a functional. Another functional beverage, but they don't use stevia and they don't use monk fruit. And so they have a much cleaner flavor profile. And so I was like, okay, well, this seems like this could be a real differentiator for you. So if we go through and we figure out what our differentiators are, then we could take those differentiators. We could not only tell retailers that we're different because of course we have to do that, but how are we then going to communicate it to consumers? And that's where it's going to land on pack and that's. That's what we're going to say.

16:30
Janice Greenwald
Like, this ends up on pack because this is truly differentiated versus the competitors, and we believe that the consumers are looking for this.

16:36
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so let's talk more about packaging, because usually I tell people, like, product is the most important but thing. But if you're only going to give me great packaging or great product, I'm going to go, great packaging, because that's the thing that actually gets it picked up off shelf. Right. Like an example you gave before about the product that everybody believed in and what was inside was great, but no one knew what it was. Right. Packaging. I've seen kind of crappy products be successful with good branding more than I've seen great products with bad branding.

17:05
Janice Greenwald
So I'd rather see good products in good packaging, not push for a bad product. But yes.

17:11
Daniel Scharff
So, yeah, I mean, why do you think that is just us as consumers. Why are we just such suckers for a pretty package?

17:18
Janice Greenwald
I mean, it's an emotional connection to a brand, right? Like, it's like, I want to feel proud when I drink this product or I want to feel proud when I eat this product. And it's like resonating with me for however it is, whether it's the colors or the claims of things that I'm interested in. I mean, the format, there's just so many good examples of packaging that changed the way we thought of a category once the packaging, you know, got reinvented. Whether that was format, because people do forget format. Format's a big one. It's not just the. The branding. I mean, I don't remember who the first one that came out with, like, the skinny can is, right? Maybe it was like La Colombe or something, but the skinny cans, those became like, really popular back in the day.

17:54
Janice Greenwald
And an example that I love to use that's very old now, but is method soap. I mean, that changed hand soap for people just by having a really cool format and a really kind of contemporary brand for the time. And then of course, like a brand like Graza today, I mean, it's just a squeeze bottle, as we all know, but it really did change things. And it's not just that it was, of course, the amazing packaging work, but definitely the format as well.

18:17
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, it's sort of interesting. Like me, I'm naturally like, yeah, but I mean, unless you have big money, it's hard to create a new mold. And, you know, you just kind of have to go with what's out there. And if we're Talking about skinny cans, the first thing people will tell you is when you're deciding what can to work with, think about what the comands can actually run. Because you don't have your own line and you don't want to start from scratch on like a 7.12 ounce can. Like, here are the options and go with what's out there. But I think you're right that in some instances it is an insight like that can make things very disruptive.

18:50
Janice Greenwald
There's like the new. I forget what the brand is, but there's new like hand purifiers out there that really do change the entire perception of an entire category just by coming out with a new format.

19:01
Daniel Scharff
It's hard for me to think of an example, but I'm sure there are many ways that brands can figure out how to innovate in those ways within the constraints of how much money do you have to do it and what equipment can you actually run brands on. Yeah, I've never had Graza, honestly, personally, but I think people who were critical of it would be like, oh, it's just in a squeeze bottle, like, that's the same stuff. It's not the highest quality thing out there. And people who are fans of it would say something very different, I'm sure. But pretty interesting, you know, because I actually used to buy squeeze bottles off Amazon to fill with oval because I saw the chefs at Just Egg where I used to work doing it, and I'm like, whoa, that makes a lot of sense.

19:36
Daniel Scharff
So then I would buy it and then, wow, they had probably that insight or some other insight, like, yeah, actually everybody wants to do that. That's a better way to do it and we should sell it that way. So that is just a super impressive thing. So, you know, when it comes to like, you're actually then designing the package, let's say you can't be so innovative on the format. Like if you're chips, you're going in a chip bag. If you're a dip, it's going in a dip box and you have like a dip jar, tub or whatever you would call it.

20:03
Daniel Scharff
So like, there are a lot of different ways to think about it where like, hey, should I try to do something that really looks like the stuff that's on shelf, or should I try to do something that really stands out and takes a different approach? Something artistic or something that's really clean? What are the different ways to think.

20:20
Janice Greenwald
About that you would definitely want to pop on shelf? So you have to study your shelf set because it's going to depend do you want something clean? If everybody else is very busy, then maybe you do want something very clean. If everybody else is very clean, maybe you want something a little bit different and more disruptive and kind of more artistic or something like that. So it's really going to vary. But I'll say this is as a marketer, I don't design and I don't tell designers how to design. I tell them what the problem is that I'm trying to solve and I let them solve the problem. And if you are a good marketing partner to a designer, you will never tell them how to design or what to design.

20:56
Janice Greenwald
You will tell them what you hope the consumer feels and takes away from the product when they pull it off of the shelf and you'll tell them what problem that they're trying to solve for you. And so one thing that I always tell brands and it's like the one area where I'm maybe less pragmatic as like were saying earlier in the podcast with kind of like the promotional things that I do where I'm very focused on what I'm spending and how I'm spending it is branding is like the number one thing that you could do for your brand is the packaging. And what if you're at retail focused product and how it's going to pull off the shelf.

21:27
Janice Greenwald
And so it's like the one area where I don't skimp because you need a really strong brief, you need a really strong strategy and you really need strong designers who understand what you're strategically trying to do and understand that you are on a retail shelf. It is competitive. And how are we going to communicate all of your benefits, what's inside your product, what your value proposition is, why you're a premium price product and why you should choose me over all of these established brands that already exist.

21:53
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so a lot of early brands don't have tons of money to pay for one of those high end branding agencies. Designers, they a lot, maybe some of them have read those books saying minimum viable product, like get something out there, you'll figure it out later. I see a lot of brands that I'm just like, I don't think you understand that you're crippling your own success by having cheap looking packaging. Even if the design is okay, you're using some kind of a label on the can instead of like a digital print or you know, you're using like a sticker on something and it just doesn't look good. Whereas, like, I always will tell them like you should run, not walk to go and actually upgrade the packaging.

22:33
Daniel Scharff
But I think a lot of them just have the constraints that they have, so that's the kind of thing that they launch with. So like how much, how big of a budget do you think they actually need to get design that you think is going to be really good? How do they go and find those good designers?

22:47
Janice Greenwald
Super controversial topic, I think, because people feel really differently. Like I would always push my clients to invest in strong branding agency, which we can talk about what that budget might look like. But that's because otherwise you're going to redo it every year or every two years. And you're not just redoing it for one SKU, you're redoing it for all your SKUs. And then you're redoing your website and you're getting new print plates. It's all of these different expenses and you're redoing all your assets and your expo booth and all of these things because you made a cheap decision in the very beginning.

23:17
Janice Greenwald
If you make the right decision in the beginning and you have the right packaging that you can see stay with for 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 years, then right packaging with of course you're probably gonna make modifications over time, but the right general look and feel, it's gonna be a lot cheaper in the long run. So to that end, I mean the pricing is gonna vary dramatically, but I mean there will be people who get something on upwork for a thousand bucks. But you could easily be spending 200,000 on brand launch with packaging. So it's a lot of it's gonna depend on like the cash and the stage of the company and what they have and what they're willing to invest.

23:50
Daniel Scharff
I totally agree with you and I think I see a lot of people post in the slack like, hey, I need five designs for 2K. Probably you'll find someone who will do it. But you may waste then the next two years trying to go out and demo and get on shelf with a design that is not good. And so what I like is the approach of hey, like whatever job you have right now, keep it and have money and then put money away and then pay a good amount for a decent design on the packaging that you're always going to change it. Right? Like maybe when you're launching, don't print 200,000 of it because you're definitely gonna.

24:24
Janice Greenwald
Have to change in the beginning.

24:26
Daniel Scharff
Yeah, get some nice digital print that looks super high Quality, it's going to make it more likely that you get on shelf. And wherever you get on shelf, you're going to have much better turns. I just, I really hate seeing the stuff out there that just looks like low quality packaging. Because consumers know and they might not be able to explain that to you, I think so. For example, if you see a label that's on a can and often it's poorly applied, or a shrink sleeve that just kind of looks all messed up, if you hand that to a consumer at a demo and you ask them what they think of it, they're probably not going to be able to verbalize that, just like, oh, this doesn't seem like it's that good of a product maybe.

25:01
Daniel Scharff
But they know it just feels like it's not as high quality as a national brand with a, you know, high quality product that's out there. And so stuff like digital print I think is changing the game. I would recommend to almost anybody, just be a little patient. No one's going to take your idea like at the moment, you know, it's still going to be there.

25:19
Janice Greenwald
Like a lot of the brands that we work with and talk to in the startup CPG channel are premium products. They're coming out with really unique things with really premium ingredients and they're going to sell it at a premium price. And then suddenly they say, oh well, I can't afford good packaging so I'm just going to put it in this paper bag and whatever. And like that's just, you know, you have one chance on shelf with consumers and with the retailers. You know, you might get a second chance at the retailer, but it's really hard. And the thing that has to work the hardest for you in the entire marketing mix is your packaging. When you are retail focused, obviously D2C is different, but generally speaking, like you can't rely just on your couponing program or your trade promotions to drive your velocity.

26:01
Janice Greenwald
Your packaging needs to work really hard for you on shelf. And if it's not doing that, then you're going to have a hard time.

26:06
Daniel Scharff
Janice One of the questions I get a lot in the slack is from brands who say, hey, I like, I have a designer I really like, but they don't know cpg. Should I work with them? Or hey, I posted about my project and I got four or five different designers that are all really interested to work with me. How am I going to choose one? How am I going to know who's good and who's going to actually Execute this well and get that beautiful branding in the end.

26:28
Janice Greenwald
Okay, to answer the first part of your question, I would definitely try to choose somebody who's worked in CPG before or at least really understand cpg, because one of the most important things you want to do is understand how your product compares to the shelf set. So even if you are working, let's say like your sister in law is a designer and you've decided you want to work with your sister in law even though she's a tech designer, great. But please make sure she is designing in the context of the shelf. So always putting your product up in the shelf set to see how it's going to pop and be reasonable with the number of facings you have. Please don't give yourself six facings if you're probably going to have two.

27:02
Janice Greenwald
Like, let's be honest about it in terms of picking designers, I mean, it all starts with the brief and what you've. You know, I never go to a designer without writing a brief or a request for proposal. So I have a really clear understanding of what I'm trying to achieve and that the scopes are the same. Because a lot of times designers will come with you with all different scopes. And then it's really hard to compare apples to apples if one is giving you a full strategy and one is giving you just four SKUs, but you need six SKUs. And then you also need a style guide and like whatever, some sort of big brand book at the end. So you have to make sure your scope is really tight, you know what you're asking for.

27:34
Janice Greenwald
And within that I also give a lot of information about like, who's the target, what's the problem I'm trying to solve, what's the competitive set? To make sure that the designers have a really deep understanding of what we're trying to do. So then when you're looking at the proposals, you'll say, well, who took this really seriously? And even further, I evaluate proposals based on like, did they understand a brief? Like the end, what kind of designs have they done before? Do I like their style? Is there a large breadth of style or do they design in one sort of way? If they design in one sort of way, like always contemporary, do I like that? Am I comfortable with that? You know, so I'm kind of evaluating it on a number of different things, including price. In the end, should you expect that.

28:13
Daniel Scharff
They'Re going to give you some kind of their idea for what they would do with your brand? Or more relying on showing you work that they've done in the past.

28:21
Janice Greenwald
I would say definitely the latter. Most often they're not going to show you anything that they've done that they are thinking for your brand.

28:28
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so like you were saying, you need to see, here's the stuff that they've done. Does it all look a certain way or is there a lot of breadth there? If it all looks a certain way, are you going to be happy if they apply that treatment to your brand?

28:39
Janice Greenwald
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'm usually looking for breath because it depends, like, because, like, it really depends on what your brand is. And if you know, you're looking for, like a hippie, crunchy kind of feel and that's what the, that's what you see that designer do, then great. But oftentimes you don't know what you want. Like I, as I said earlier, I'm not a designer. I don't know what I want. I just know what problem I'm trying to solve. So I hope that the designers have a nice breadth of design so that they can kind of tap into those different, like, styles, I guess, when they're proposing something back to me.

29:07
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so, Janice, now I've got my packaging, I'm ready to go. Let's say I've just gotten my first regional account. You know, a good number of doors, 20, 30. I'm expecting to get some more. What should I do from a marketing standpoint? Because I need now the velocity clock is ticking. I got to get velocities up. I need to get trial. I need to get awareness up, you know, people buying it so that I can stay on shelf, expand on shelf, tell that data story to other people. How much do I need to spend? Where should I spend it?

29:35
Janice Greenwald
How much you need to spend is going to depend quite a bit on your cash situation and what you've built into your P and L. Presumably you have a PNL where you've built in a marketing line that is different than your tradespend line. And I want to emphasize that because a lot of times people do lump it with trade. And I do not want to take from trade spend because they have their own function. And marketing is layering on top of trade. So it's really going to depend on where you are. But at a big CPG, it might be like a Unilever. It might be 5, 10% of net revenue. At a small brand, it could be anywhere from 5, 10% to 100 plus percent. If you have cash that you want to invest to see your product Successfully move off of the shelf.

30:12
Janice Greenwald
So I would say on the low end, 10%. I do often see panels of startups where marketing is like 3%, 5%. And that makes you feel a little bit uneasy if you're doing, you know, a lower revenue number. So the first things that I'm going to do for a brand that is, you know, in 20 or 30 doors, we're focusing on velocity is kind of the bottom of the funnel. People talk a lot about the marketing funnel, like awareness, consideration, you know, and then ultimately purchasing. And that's where I'm going to focus the most, is on that bottom of the funnel and just trying to get the product off of the shelf. So depending on the retailers that you're in, there's some really tactical things that we can do right out of the gate. And that's going to be things like retail media. So.

30:53
Janice Greenwald
So retail media is probably the most efficient spend in our current environment. Things like Instacart, things like Whole Foods Market on Amazon, Critio. There's a bunch of different retail media providers. And what that means is like the retailer, well, instacarts its own thing, but then the retailer coms have their own that they are working with as well. Like Target has Roundel or you know, Albertsons works with Critio. But you want to do the retail media, which is like the sponsored search on the websites.

31:21
Daniel Scharff
How do you actually do stuff like that? Like the Whole Foods Market on Amazon.

31:25
Janice Greenwald
You can do it yourself. Actually, Whole Foods has like an entire video and lots of documents on how to sign up for a sponsored search. You can do it yourself. I often hire media buyers once I get to a certain level of spend. I don't do it in the beginning because you can just do it yourself. A lot of the platforms have like automated. They don't all have it, but it helps the novice folks like myself to get it going. And then once I'm spending a more sizable amount, I'll bring in somebody who does a professional media buyer.

31:51
Daniel Scharff
So that is Janice's favorite roi. Retail media. Instacart, Whole Foods Market on Amazon, Criteo, that kind of stuff.

31:58
Janice Greenwald
Yeah, for sure.

31:59
Daniel Scharff
Why, why is it so high? ROI is what I'm asking.

32:02
Janice Greenwald
Why is it so high? Because the shoppers are already there. They have a very high purchase intent and that's just. I mean, they're already there. They're already shopping for your product and they're already searching for terms that are relevant to your product. So. So they are very interested in buying your product. And that's why the ROI is so high.

32:17
Daniel Scharff
All right, I buy it. What's next on Janice's list?

32:20
Janice Greenwald
Okay, sure. Demos. I love demos. In food and beverage specifically. I would say they are expensive. They are expensive. Not everyone loves demos. They are hard to scale. I'm not going to say any of that is not true. However, you are getting a really high value consumer when you win somebody over at a demo, these are going to become lifetime consumers. Because when you think about it, they've already tried your product and they've already said, oh, I like this product. I'm going to spend money and buy this product. You didn't give them the product for free. Most likely you're not giving them a VIP coupon at the demo. You might be getting them a dollar off of a $7 product. They're going to go invest their own money.

32:55
Janice Greenwald
So I try to look at demos and everything I do really in more of like a lifetime value of a consumer. I say with a demo they're going to be pretty high, likely to repeat and then build it out from there. You can build out a model and say, okay, this will pay back in X period of time if I move enough product through demos. So big fan of demos, super high value consumer. That would be the next thing I would do.

33:16
Daniel Scharff
Anything that you've learned about how to optimize demos because they are expensive, you need to pick the right regions and stores and materials you're going to use at the actual demo time of day, what kind offers you can couple it with to try to juice them up. Anything that you've learned, gosh, I've done.

33:34
Janice Greenwald
Like thousands of demos in my life in all different methods. I mean, the best demos are usually your internal people when you can build it up yourself. It's really hard to do that though for an early stage brand because it's like basically when you running a bunch of brand ambassadors, you become like an HR manager. Because I've never like, there's a lot of, you know, the dog ate my homework sort of thing and people not showing up to demos. And that's a really hard thing to deal with as a founder. So you do end up hiring agencies and you know, a lot of agencies are really strong. I know the team partners with Grassroots. I've worked with Grassroots a of times and I think they've done a really good job and that's an easier way to scale in terms of when to do them.

34:16
Janice Greenwald
I try to line them up with promotions. So if you can line them up with when you're on sale, that's even better because you might have more placement. You're trying to move through more product. Your product is obviously at a lower price point. If you're not on promotion, definitely try to marry it with some sort of discount, whether that's a physical coupon or a digital rebate. Something to kind of give that extra umph to moving the product time of day. I mean weekends are always really great, but they're really hard to secure. And it really does vary. It might depend on who your consumer is as well.

34:44
Daniel Scharff
And there's some stores that are sort of work area stores and then on the weekends they're empty.

34:49
Janice Greenwald
So one thing too that every retailer has or most retailers have are their A stores and their B stores and making sure you're going to the high volume stores. And this is actually something that people talk about a lot is and people have different opinions on this. But do I demo at my stores that are highest volume and doing best or do I demo where I'm struggling? And I tend to choose the former like the whole one plus one equals three method, like pump it where the people want your product. If you try to force it like the slower stores, it's just you're going to be spending a lot and not moving that much product.

35:20
Daniel Scharff
I totally agree with that. I think demos are most effective when you focus on the best performing stores. Also, I have never heard a buyer really say that they focus more on just looking at every individual store. And so if you can get more juice out of a demo at a bigger store, I feel like that can be more effective. Also I'll mention for the community you mentioned Grassroots. We do have a demo partner, Grassroots. They do a special price for our community. It's 180 for a three hour demo. They also can do shared demos so you can check the show notes if you want to learn more about them. Okay, give me another on Janice's list of high ROI marketing activities.

35:55
Janice Greenwald
High roi, we're going kind of down the list here is probably digital coupons and rebate programs. So it depends on the retailer. But a lot of different retailers have digital coupons that they offer. So for example, Sprouts works with Inmar. Publix works with Inmar as well. And that's there like when you're on shop.sprouts.com and they have a coupon section. It's powered by a company called Inmar. Just a quick tip on that is please don't pay Inmar's fee, which is like 1200 bucks. If you demo at the right time at Sprouts and line it up with one of their seasonal events, you get that fee waived and your coupon clip is 8 cents instead of 12 cents.

36:30
Janice Greenwald
And that is a really important tip because the Inmar coupons are not that efficient if you're paying a fee and not doing a lot of clicks because you have to kind of spread that fee across the number of coupon clips. But if you can get that fee waived, that's good. Or try to negotiate it. I had one retailer, one inmar rep negotiated away a fee at a retailer and a different inmar rep would not. So always try to negotiate. It's worth at least trying to. Then there's also the digital rebate programs that people talk about, such as aisle. I think a lot of people have heard of aisle or grow flow r Cart. There's a lot of them out there. They are good too. I measure everything that I do in these kind of velocity buckets in a cost per unit moved.

37:08
Janice Greenwald
And I fully bake everything in. So something like an aisle where you're going to put media against it. You have to bake the aisle fees, you have to bake your rebate what you're paying, and then you have to bake in the media that you're going to spend. And so when you're comparing tactics and you're saying, should I put more into Instacart, Should I put more into Inmar? So I put more into aisle. I just urge you to look at how much is it costing you to move a unit coupled with how valuable is that consumer? So I would argue that a demo consumer is going to be a higher value consumer because again, they purchase the product at almost full price versus a bogo consumer or a free consumer that you're getting through ielts, specifically a free consumer. Right.

37:47
Janice Greenwald
Who might just be like grabbing product off the shelf. So I love IO and I work with them, but I think that they all have their place and you just have to prioritize how you're spending it.

37:56
Daniel Scharff
I like how you put that a lot. And I've actually, it was years ago, but I've chased through this math before where there was a big coupon company that were paying a lot of money to, which actually enabled us to get some analytics from them. And then I chased it down. It was like, okay, so of all those people who were giving a free product, who were deeply discounted, how many of them actually came back and bought the product? And they did have that number and they had to give it to me and it was very low. So, you know, that's something people value. If you give it to them for free, then that's kind of what it's worth to them.

38:27
Janice Greenwald
Look, sometimes you just need to drive velocity. Like you are going to get discoed and you want to pour money into it, go for it, give away a bunch of free samples, like, be my guest. And it's going to cost you a lot per unit moved. It's going to cost you 15, 18 per unit moved based on whatever your product price is. But if you want a repeat consumer, you're not just trying to just like drive velocity, then giving proj for free is like, maybe not the right target consumer. So probably not the right target consumer. So what I'm comparing something like a demo to aisle. I do use both and for different reasons, but I probably won't do the free aisle, which is how they kind of started off in the beginning. I'd probably do like a buy to get one or.

39:08
Janice Greenwald
Or something like that for one of this. That has to be. I'll be grow, flow or sorry. I mean, it's like promote a specific partner. There's so many good ones out there.

39:16
Daniel Scharff
Okay, what about merchandising? Where do you stack that?

39:18
Janice Greenwald
Yeah, so merchandising is definitely in partnership with sales. I love merchandising. I think it's hard to, you know, worked with some of the national merchandisers in the past. And the number one thing when you're launching in retail is to make sure you're in retail to make sure you're actually on the shelf. And if you have any doubts about whether or not you're on the shelf, making sure that you have people going in and checking the stores for you, pulling in backstock, just getting your shelf tags up is going to be the number one thing that you can do. Then after that, upgrading your shelf placement when they can, and they can oftentimes. And then of course after that would be things like secondary placements. So merchandising is amazing. I used it recently to help close a bunch of voids.

40:02
Janice Greenwald
So I didn't necessarily see like the most positive ROI per se, but like I know for sure, I close a lot of voids that wouldn't have otherwise been. Been closing close. So I think that over time it's paying back for us.

40:15
Daniel Scharff
All right. I like when I hear marketing people talk about voids. That's a very salesy term. It makes me know that they know the sales struggle and think about it when designing their lofty, sometimes marketing tactics. But speaking of, let's say lofty marketing tactics, which probably this like shows you some of my natural skepticism as a sales guy about some of the marketing stuff where I'm like, but I can't see it like actually hitting the shelf be like, I don't know, which is why I'm not good at marketing. So let's talk about some of the like let's say top of funnel or awareness tactics. Right. Some of that stuff is a little hard to measure sometimes really important whether or not you're actually on shelf where people can buy you like you were saying.

40:53
Daniel Scharff
So can you tell me a little bit about some of the awareness tactics? Which ones you like more than others for early brands?

40:58
Janice Greenwald
Sure. We think about awareness. It's things like earned media, which would be pr, you know, getting press hits, getting founder features. And then also when you think about pr, I would also break it into like trade pr, which is, you know, the nosh or startup CPG features as you will versus consumer pr, which would be like Good Morning America or People magazine or something. And those are really distinct, different types of PR that you might go for different reasons. And then there's of course paid media, think Google Ads, meta ads and then field marketing, which isn't really awareness, it's really more like trial. But I still kind of sometimes lump it in awareness depending on the situation because it' a little bit of an in between in terms of when and why I would use awareness tactics.

41:43
Janice Greenwald
This is really tricky for early stage brands. I'll just say that. So retailers will always tell you what are you doing to drive people to my store? I would argue that's not my job as an early stage brand to drive this. Is this the truth? To drive people to Whole Foods? You have a series of shoppers that are already going to Whole Foods and let's get those people in the bottom of the funnel first and get them to buy your product. This might sound very controversial. Yes, of course you need to create some awareness. But if you don't have strong distribution, creating awareness is very, very expensive and wasteful. So when you think about what you're doing with awareness is you are basically buying impressions. So whether it's PR or paid media, you're paying for impressions, which is like eyeballs.

42:32
Janice Greenwald
And the way I think of it is like if there's a helicopter driving over Manhattan and they, I live in New York and they drop like sparkles over the island and they just land in Random places on Manhattan. You've just bought yourself Manhattan paid media and you're only in 20 doors. Like, did you even. Did the sparkles hit? Like anybody that wants your product near a door that you have distribution in. So that's. I hope that explains it well. But that's why bank for awareness when you don't have a lot of distribution is really tough. I mean, this is like I learned so much when I worked at Unilever 100 years ago because back then the way they taught you was you didn't turn on awareness until you had 70 or 80% ACV, which is distribution, basically.

43:12
Janice Greenwald
And unless you have, unless you're in 80% of doors in a given market, like, there's no point in turning on the awareness kind of tactics. And yes, of course, digital media has come a long way and there's geofencing and all of those things, but there's still so much to do at lower end of the funnel versus the awareness, if that makes sense.

43:31
Daniel Scharff
So in a given market, 70 or 80%. So you can do it in a specific city that you're in if you've got a lot of good distributions, a.

43:38
Janice Greenwald
Lot of really good distribution. You could turn it on if you've exhausted all of the other tactics, in my opinion. I mean, there's going to be some level of it for sure. I mean, pr, for example, like trade is going to be totally different than consumer. So let's stick to consumer for a minute because trade would be a different. You would be using trade PR for something different. I can go into that trade PR you would use to get retailer attention to show that you're getting all this great distribution. And I want to get more or investor attention or just like industry recognition. Right. So trade is a different type of PR than consumer pr, which is more like traditional paid media where it's just kind of like landing haphazardly. Like, yes, you're buying it and you're buying it for the Boston market.

44:16
Janice Greenwald
But again, like if you don't, if you're not in 80% of the doors or 50% of the doors in that market, like, there really isn't a point in paying for impressions unless D2C is your primary channel. But this is. I'm speaking more from a retail perspective.

44:30
Daniel Scharff
I gotcha. Yeah. So trade media to get that buyer fomo, investor fomo. That makes a lot of sense to me. And I also really like what you said about if I'm a small brand. Honestly, it is not my job to get people into Your store. You really think that my post to my 2000 followers is going to cause a stampede in your category? It's not. You built the store. That's why you get that margin from us because you brought all the people in there. And I'm trying to have a product that will ideally increase sales in your category. Right. But because I'm going to get people to buy it and I'm going to trade them up or I'm going to bring them from another category.

45:05
Daniel Scharff
Hopefully that's an easier story to tell than I am going to take my tiny little marketing budget and geotarget, you know, the one person who lives in that neighborhood to come into the store just to buy my product. It's sounds just very lofty.

45:21
Janice Greenwald
Anyways, I will say this like I will write the sales slide and that's like goes to partnering with sales a lot. Like I work with sales like we're attached at the hip and if the salesperson says janice, this retailer wants to know how you're driving traffic to my store, I will all day every day tell them how I'm driving traffic to their store with my social media posts and my geotargeting and maybe I am doing $50 of geotargeting and maybe I am doing a small campaign to get people off the couch and into their store but the majority of my dollars are going to be spent more on that bottom of funnel.

45:53
Daniel Scharff
Yes, I have also written that slide and please don't let this come back to bite me in the future if I ever do a brand again. But it is mainly poppycock we would say in the business as like it's not true. It's like I put this together because you asked me and maybe you asked me as the buyer because your boss told you this is something we need to drive towards as a KPI which brands are going to bring people into the store Because I hear buyers say that all the time.

46:18
Daniel Scharff
But yes, let's all just agree the small brands are not actually mostly going to do that effectively and that's why a lot of them want those big influencer brands now because they know the big influencers have a big following and they dream that maybe they're going to send their people into store to buy their products which probably is true in some instances. So that's another thing that you know, some people with a built in following will have a little bit of an easier time telling that story. But good thing buyers don't only want.

46:44
Janice Greenwald
Those brands going back quickly to the awareness piece I touched on field marketing really quick and I want to speak to that because it's definitely trial, not awareness. But it's like, it kind of depends because again, if you don't have good distribution and you say, I'm going to go to this music festival in you're not distributed in Boulder, then there's really no point in doing that event unless that event is pulling in from a geography where you actually have distribution. So I'm a huge proponent of field marketing. Once you've exhausted some of the kind of true bottom of funnel tactics. Because getting the product into people's mouths, again, if it's food or beverage or even personal care, whatever it might be, don't eat the personal care. But yes, if you're using it's great to get it into people's hands, but it's very expensive.

47:26
Janice Greenwald
And if you don't have the distribution where people can go and buy the product immediately, that's where I kind of tie it back to the awareness a little bit. Like it needs to be distributed and sampled somewhere that people can go and buy the product immediately.

47:39
Daniel Scharff
And I've done those events before where it sort of seems to make sense. It actually ties to my branding and I'm going to get some content out of it. But yeah, none of those people are ever going to be able to buy it anywhere that we are in the timeframe where they'll still remember what this is. And so then you're like, all right, maybe if it's a content thing though, like, what are we even doing this for? Because I think at least, you know, when I was growing a brand, let's say three years ago, it did feel like there was a lot of pressure to have an Instagram following and to grow that, and we needed to find new people to learn about us on Instagram over time. And that was just like really important.

48:13
Daniel Scharff
Looking back on it, I don't think it was important at all. And I wish I had the money back that I had spent on every single photo shoot and campaign because. And it just didn't feel like there was anything meaningful there, which I think generally it can feel that way until it's actually big enough where it's an engine that's working really well. But I mean, I don't know, what's the playbook that you recommend for people on social media? How important do you think it is for people who. And like, should they have that strategy defined of like, here's how much effort and money we want to put into social media? Versus retail and like we'll stick to that.

48:49
Janice Greenwald
I mean this is definitely going to become a thing that's brand to brand and probably also people will have different opinions on this topic. If you are very focused on velocity, it's, that's likely not the social media that's going to drive your velocity. The social media is going to definitely 100% support your brand building efforts and you do need some level of brand building. I mean you can't just be completely stagnant on social media. I will say this, there's really no playbook for social. I mean brands are doing in all different ways. They have to go where the consumer is. First of all, is it Instagram, is it TikTok, is it Pinterest? I mean, you know, people are finding your products in lots of different ways. But I've seen brands be successful in a variety of different methods.

49:28
Janice Greenwald
Like ones that are super successful sometimes have the founder in the forefront telling the story day in and day out. And if you don't have a founder that's willing to do that, then that method's not going to work for you. Or maybe that founder shouldn't be the face of the brand. They're more of like, you know, presidential type and not wanting to represent who the brand and target consumer is. But there's brands like, you know, Midday Squares is such a good example of one that grew because they told like the behind the scenes and I'm sure that their social helped them gain distribution and help the consumer pull ultimately great for them. They are amazing. They're geniuses. They did a wonderful job. But not every brand is going to have that kind of level of genius and creativity behind them.

50:06
Janice Greenwald
Then there's brands that have a built influencer network. So there's a number of brands out there that have equity influencers that are owners of the brand. An example that I think of a lot is June Shine. Juneshine Hard kombucha. If anybody go check them out. You may or may not be a hard kombucha fan but they built their brand based on a bunch of people who own a piece of their brand of like surfers and I think skateboarders and skiers. And they were these really like niche influencers that had a lot of ultimately had a lot of following across all of them and really drove interest and excitement around the brand.

50:41
Daniel Scharff
I would like to know how much each of those influencers made with June Shine and like how did they actually, how much did they think that they had. How much did that motivate them to post stuff versus getting paid? Or maybe it was both, who knows? But I think that's really interesting. And the thing that I go back to is, okay, so you brought up the Midday Squares example, but it didn't just work because they were creative and smart and it was a cool idea. They worked their butts off on it.

51:07
Janice Greenwald
They have full time, like full time videographer with them. I mean, it's kind of. You have to have real money to be able to do that.

51:14
Daniel Scharff
And that's, yeah, money, but also just, I mean, actually allocating the time and resources to do it. So, you know, I wouldn't just say like, hey, look at that. Okay, hey, let's do a video where we're doing behind the scenes, right? And so I think it's really important to look at your brand and look at the thing, your strengths and your weaknesses and the kind of things that might work and then test a bunch of different stuff and do it really intentionally. And maybe social media is going to be your strong suit and maybe it's not, and maybe it doesn't even need to be. And they're going to be other things that you're going to do.

51:41
Daniel Scharff
And yeah, I heard like applos that we had on the podcast previously, he talked about just because they had a lot of connections in the fashion industry and then they ended up using fashion influencers to promote this beverage brand that they had, which is, you know, a different way. You wouldn't necessarily think of that, but they were looking at what their strengths were. So I really like to see when founders are doing that, figuring out how to tap into stuff that they know how to do that they have passion, energy to do and figuring out how to make that work for their brand instead of just trying to do all the stuff that all the other brands are doing.

52:10
Janice Greenwald
And if they don't have that kind of innate desire and heart for the social media, it's probably not going to happen. And at which point you're outsourcing it to an agency. And that's really hard, I think, to get something like truly viral and exciting a la Midday Squares when you're outsourcing it to an agency. So if that's what you're looking for is something viral and like super, super energetic, it's probably happening internally. And that's a really hard thing and that's really expensive. And it's no guarantee either, because you need to have a lot of personality and a lot of willingness to get in front of the camera.

52:43
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so Janice, sometimes I see on the Slack channel a brand will be like, hey, I need somebody to help me with shopper marketing. And someone will get tagged in who? That is what they do. So if you ask for that person, they're going to come in and they're going to do shopper marketing for you. But I've also seen that not really be that effective in driving the overall brand. Does that happen with you? How do you think about that?

53:01
Janice Greenwald
Yeah, definitely. That's a really good question because sometimes people want to just like solve the problem with shopper marketing, which are the things that we just spoke about, like retail media, demos, all of that. But there are times when there's just like an innate problem with your value proposition. And that's when you go back to things we talked about earlier. Is your product good enough? Is your packaging communicating what it needs to about the product and the benefits and how it's solving a problem for the consumer? And is the price where it needs to be? Are you on shelf where you need to be? You have to kind of take a look at all those kind of P's that we talked about and say, well, are all these things working as they should? Are we appearing on shelf? Is our price right?

53:39
Janice Greenwald
Is the product good? Is the packaging communicating? And if it's not, there's a real problem and we need to address that problem first before we just put these kind of band aids on of shopper marketing, which is going to drive trial, but it's going to be endless paying for acquiring new consumers.

53:54
Daniel Scharff
How will I know when it's dialed in and good to go first? There's still things that I really need to fix in a fundamental way.

54:00
Janice Greenwald
I mean, I think you'll see your base velocity increase. Hopefully if you can afford to buy some data and you see a gradual increase in your base velocity, you're going to know that you're doing things right. You shouldn't need all of these tactics for your product to sell on shelf. Yes, you need to do trade promotions to trigger some sales, to trigger that trial. You need to run some of these shopper marketing programs to trigger some trial. But over time you're not going to be investing in this like non stop. So the product needs to be able to move on shelf. And if those kind of fundamentals of the Cs and Ps aren't first dealt with, then you're going to have a problem.

54:36
Daniel Scharff
Okay, so Janice, you're fractional marketing person, there are a lot of Shopper, marketing people out there, freelancers. If I'm a growing brand, I'm starting to do well. Maybe I raise money, maybe I just have some money to spend on stuff. Should I hire fractional people and freelancers? Should I try to get somebody on my team? What do you advise?

54:57
Janice Greenwald
I'm obviously a little bit biased. I think it depends on the stage of the brand you're in. But it makes a lot of sense to have somebody who really understands the strategy but could also execute, which is where somebody like me, and there's a lot of versions of me that come into play. Because it's really hard if you're the founder, first of all, to make all the decisions on your own. You need an expert that you can lean on to do that. And then the expert can hire all of the subject matter. The fractional marketing person or fractional salesperson or fractional finance person, whatever it might be, can hire all of the subject matter experts below. So they hire the shopper, marketing person, they hire the performance marketer.

55:34
Janice Greenwald
If you're D2C, they hire the market researcher, they hire all those elements for you and they kind of take it away from the founder having to do it all. Or in my case, I do a lot of those things myself because I've been doing this all, you know, for 20 years. So it depends on the brand and the stage.

55:48
Daniel Scharff
So if you're, but if you're an early founder, you think they should then try to get a higher level person as an early marketing hire or try to get somebody more junior. Junior that, you know, maybe doesn't know all of the strategy stuff at the beginning but is going to be more affordable and can turn on stuff. What's the right level of person?

56:05
Janice Greenwald
Yeah, I mean you oftentimes need somebody who's a doer. So the best combination that I've seen is when there's a junior person with a fractional leader that's overseeing them as their manager. The fractional leader is able to set the strategy and cut through all of the BS and just tell and help them understand what they need to do to achieve the goals. And then the junior person can execute. Oftentimes if it's a small brand with a small budget, somebody, a fractional person can do it all. Because we've done it so many times, it doesn't take us 40 hours a week. So, you know, we might be cheaper than a full time hire. We might be cheaper than a full time junior hire.

56:43
Janice Greenwald
Maybe not maybe, yes, but I would argue getting it Right in the beginning is going to be a lot easier and a lot cheaper and a lot better than hiring somebody super junior who hasn't been down this road before.

56:54
Daniel Scharff
All right, so let's end on some fun ones.

56:57
Janice Greenwald
Okay.

56:58
Daniel Scharff
What is the worst marketing investment you ever saw a brand make in your history of working with emerging brands?

57:06
Janice Greenwald
A $400,000 website for a non D2C brand.

57:10
Daniel Scharff
Okay. I have been very close to an investment like that was also a horrible use of money. Another one that I saw was buying, I think for like a hundred thousand dollars or a couple hundred thousand dollars a full banner on the Walmart website for a product in a tiny little category that needed to be purchased in store online. And it was just like, no, don't do it. No. Okay. And then best marketing investment that you can remember.

57:40
Janice Greenwald
I mean, definitely, I think branding, I think like the getting the brand right from day one is the best investment. So a brand like Magic Spoon that came out of the gate with a breakthrough disruptive brand did it right. They had a really interesting and exciting product, but a lot of it was the brand and they used a really reputable agency to develop that brand.

58:01
Daniel Scharff
All right, thank you, Janice. This is exactly what I hoped it would be, which is just a lot of very pragmatic advice for early brands. Some of it they want to hear, some of it they need to hear. And I definitely learned a lot as well. Especially I just. I always have considered myself so far behind on marketing because I'm just much more of one of these doer people. And it's just. But it is so important for people to think about at the early stage. So I really appreciate you explaining it to me and everybody in a way that was just so easy to understand. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast and we will see you on the slack.

58:35
Janice Greenwald
Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate. Appreciate it.

58:37
Daniel Scharff
All right, bye. Bye. Bye. All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. If you loved it, I would so appreciate it if you could leave us a review. You could do it right now. If you're an Apple podcast, you can scroll to the bottom of our Startup CPG podcast page and click on write a review. Leave your company name in there. I will try to read it out. If you're in Spotify, you can click on about and then the star rating icon. If you are a service provider that would like to appear on the Startup CPG podcast, you can email us@partnershipstartupcpg.com lastly, if you found yourself grooving along to the music. It is my band. You can visit our website and listen to more. It is superfantastics.com thank you everybody. See you next time.

59:28
Janice Greenwald
Sat.