Stay ConnectedBrand Builder brings you the people, stories, and lessons learned from the most innovative brands in the world. Presented by SnackNation. Hosted by Sean Kelly, Jordan Cohen, and Jeff Murphy.
Similar to How I Built This, The Dave Ramsey Show, and Seeking Wisdom by Drift.
"What we're going after is almost once in a generation."
Dosist CEO Gunner Winston has big plans for the brand.
Founded with the goal of creating the first cannabis products based on the science behind the plant, dosist first made a name for itself through product innovation. Their dose pens, which deliver a consistent dose of THC, even landed them on TIME magazine's 25 best inventions of 2016 list.
But what really drives dosist is a strong brand identity, one that elevates benefits over features, taps into customer aspirations, and has more in common with Nike, Apple, and Starbucks than your typical cannabis company.
Why is this the approach? That's what we cover in this week's Brand Builder.
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Brand Builder is a co-production of SnackNation and ForceBrands.
We've interviewed a lot of great jerky brands on Brand Builder: Country Archer, Field Trip, Chomps, all progressive brands who have helped people see the category in a whole new light. But every single one of these brands give props to one brand that did it first and paved the way for the rest - KRAVE.
So of course, we've been dying to get Jon Sebastiani, the founder of KRAVE jerky on the podcast for a while now. The wait is over, as Jon joined us in the Brand Builder studio for this incredible interview.
Jon founded KRAVE way back in 2007. At the time, the brand was revolutionary - an elevated jerky that had more in common with gourmet foods or fine wine than the typical gas-station fare that existed at the time.
In fact, what Jon created with KRAVE is pretty remarkable when you think about it - a market big enough where all of these brands can coexist and be successful.
Jon walked us through his career path which has been marked with milestone accomplishments, including the founding of KRAVE.
What you might not know - Jon also founded Smashmallow, sits on the board of brands like Dang, and is now an investor through Sonoma Brands, his consumer products incubator and venture fund.
Takeaways
Links
Join our Exclusive Facebook Group!
What's your biggest takeaway from the episode? Join our invite-only, private Facebook group just for Brand Builder Community members, where you can connect with fellow entrepreneurs and founders, crowdsource ideas, share best practices (or lessons learned), and get your most important questions answered. Join now!
Brand Builder is a co-production of SnackNation and ForceBrands.
To celebrate our 100th episode, we're launching The Brand Builder Playbook, featuring advanced tips to help you skyrocket sales, grow your brand, and become a household name.
We're living in a golden age of CPG. An influx of capital, lower barriers to entry, and a consumer that cares more than ever about ingredients, health, and the social impact of the products they purchase - it all adds up to massive opportunity for the right kinds of emerging brands.
But there's a flip side. Competition is at an all time high. The margin for error is razor thin, and there's a mounting pressure to grow quickly. One wrong move, and your venture can fail.
So what's the secret? You have to learn from those who've been there before. Sure, some lessons can only be learned the hard way. But if you want to win in the modern CPG landscape, you have to limit those failures as much as you can. You have to stand on the shoulders of those who came before you. That's why we put together this playbook.
We're also giving away a free ebook version of the Brand Builder Playbook, which contains two exclusive bonus tips.
So listen to the episode, and then download The Brand Builder Playbook for more in-depth details plus two exclusive bonus tactics.
This week on Brand Builder we have a conversation about how to get close to the customer, and why that's so important.
It all stems from the idea of infinite supply - that in the era of nearly infinite consumer choice, the way consumer brands innovate has to change if they want to survive.
We have to give credit to the team at Drift and their book This Won't Scale, where the idea for this conversation first came. Here's the passage that inspired this episode:
"You can only achieve hypergrowth by being close to the customer… We realized that in a world of infinite supply, the customer has all the power." (p. 7)
The infinite supply dynamic has long been at play in digital products like software, but it increasingly applies to physical products like CPG and snack brands. Consumer choice is approaching infinity, which means competition is too, and brands have to realign their approach.
Here's what we cover.
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Brand Builder is a co-production of SnackNation and ForceBrands.
There are things you're doing right now that are hurting your business.
It's ok. You're not the only one. It can be hard to keep up in the constantly shifting landscape of social media platforms, direct to consumer retail channels, marketing best practices, and latest and greatest growth hacks.
Luckily, we've got a marketing expert to help you identify and avoid these mistakes. Joining us is Erik Huberman, the founder and CEO of Hawke Media.
Erik knows his stuff. Hawke is a full service marketing consultancy who has done work for literally thousands of brands, including household names like Red Bull, inCase, Proactiv, Verizon, and tons more. Plus Erik has been named to Forbes' 30 Under 30 list, Inc. Magazine's top 25 Marketing Influencers, and he's a frequent keynote speaker and contributing writer.
Erik starts with the fundamentals, then gets really granular and nuanced when it comes to tactics.
Pay special attention to the "three pillars of marketing" that Erik describes. If you come away with anything from this episode, that should be it. But of course there's a lot more to it than that:
Takeaways
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Brand Builder is a co-production of SnackNation and ForceBrands.
What if you could take 15 years of CPG experience, distill it down in a 30 minute podcast interview - would you be interested?
If you said yes, you're in luck, because that's precisely what's on deck on this week's Brand Builder.
We interview Dustin Finkel, the CEO at the Ancient inGRAINed Snack Co., makers of Ka-Pop! snacks.
Dustin is a 15+ year veteran of the CPG business. He's got an MBA from Northwestern, and he's an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
But With Ka-Pop - it's the first time he's started his own brand, and he was surprised by how much he still had to learn. He told us that if he's struggling with these things, he know there are other entrepreneurs who need help with this stuff too. He's all about paying it forward and giving back.
Ka-pop is a popped chip made from ancient grains. It's made with clean ingredients, it tastes great, contains omega 3s, and has a great brand to support it.
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Brand Builder is a co-production of SnackNation and ForceBrands.
This week's episode is all about hard choices.
We're talking to Bob McClure, one of the founders of McClure's pickles, an artisan pickle brand based out of the twin capitals of cool, Brooklyn and Detroit. It's a true family business - Bob launched the brand in 2006 with his brother Joe using their great grandmother Lala's recipe.
For many, their first introduction to the McClure's brand was their great tasting pickle-flavored potato chips. And I was super surprised when they discontinued them.
Pivoting away from a popular product in order to focus on doing one thing really well is never an easy decision. But Bob explains that diversifying their offering in that way wasn't quite the right move - even though they had a fantastic product that a lot of people loved. He tells us how they knew it was time to make the hard choice to shut it down.
Bob also provides fantastic practical advice about how to approach your relationship with buyers, and cutting through the noise in a digital world.
Links
Brand Builder is a co-production of SnackNation and ForceBrands.
When you look at the numbers, the meal replacement category represents a gigantic opportunity. We're talking about a $4 billion market in the U.S., and $12 billion globally. What's more, the category lacks product leadership. It's as if the market is just waiting for an upstart brand to seize the mantle - and the marketshare. This week's Brand Builder guest is on a mission to be that brand. We're talking to Nathan Gordon, the CEO and C0-Founder of SANS Mealbar, and his goal is to make SANS the undisputed product leader of this huge category.
Right now, SANS' primary challenge is awareness. We talk a lot about how they're overcoming it and how that informs their overall strategy. Plus, we learn about the personal connection that inspired SANS ambitious social mission.
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Brand Builder is a co-production of SnackNation and ForceBrands.
Resilience is something that every entrepreneur needs - and that this week's guest has in spades. We're talking to Andrew Cates, the co-founder of the Wine RayZyn Co. Andrew takes superfood wine grapes, dries them, and covers them in dark chocolate - to make Cabernazyn, Merlayzyn, and Chardonayzyn Wine RayZyns. The result is a healthy yet indulgent snack loaded with antioxidants. We ran through a ton of topics with Andrew, including his founding story and the on-the-ground way he stays close his customers. But perhaps the biggest lesson was on the topic of resilience. As you'll hear Andrew, faced catastrophic loss after the devastating Napa fires of 2017, and it was his resilient spirit that enabled him not just to persevere, but to emerge triumphant. How he rose from the ashes is enough to inspire anyone.
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Brand Builder is a co-production of SnackNation and ForceBrands.
We just wrapped four epic days at the Natural Products EXPO West, the center of the CPG universe. We came, we saw, we sampled.
Expo is a big deal. According to New Hope Network, who puts on the show every year, there were more than 3,500 exhibitors and 85,000 attendees at last year's Expo. And I heard estimates that there were more than 90,0000 this year.
Rather than getting caught up in the madness that is Expo West, we narrowed our focus to one topic: data.
Our mission was to find out how brands are leveraging data to innovate and stand out in this fast growing but insanely competitive space.
With that, we hit the floor.
Brands in this episode:
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