Saw the powerful movie Food Inc recently and could not help but reevaluate the political process and where our food comes from. In fact, as my two and a half year old daughter prepares for a summer preschool they sent a flyer to all the parents mandating all lunches include a meat (or meat alternative) and dairy product in all lunches. Since a Washington State law was referenced, it really highlighted the influence certain industries have in our daily lives.

When you are building a new brand, there is nothing more inviting and potentially damaging to your business than quick, un-disciplined expansion. More often than not, emerging brands find themselves with convenience store distribution in Texas, regional grocery distribution in Boston and interest from a discount retailer in California.  It’s easy to say yes and everybody is happy.

A few months down the line, you confirm that your brand is moving slow.  You need to drive trial and build brand awareness but marketing to these big geographies against one or two retailers is highly inefficient.  Your stuck and now, if you are not careful, you are managing your distribution losses and hoping that your competitor does not leverage your failures with other retailers to block you from expansion.  This is a very real problem.  Success, if not managed can kill your brand.

The better option is to formalize a focused outlet strategy to include trial building outlets.  A good friend of The Touch Agency introduced a RTD tea a few years back.  His introduction is a case study in successful outlet strategy.  He introduced the tea in one market but secured distribution across multiple channels.  Convenience for trial building (single purchase, chilled for immediate consumption and cooler door/window signs), Natural Channel for validation (clean, better for you) and Grocery for volume.  During the first two years, the brand secured distribution in 40+ food service accounts and even invested in outdoor branded umbrellas for outdoor cafes.  Lots of branding, trial building and awareness.

During that first year, a major regional power retailer contacted the brand wanting to stock the product.  The founder was smart enough and disciplined enough to say NOT YET.  That had to be hard to do but he understood that the freight cost of shipping a beverage far away and the marketing inefficiency could hurt the brand and quicky reverse the good momentum that he had build in his early, limited distribution.  Seven years later, the brand is pushing $100 million in annual sales and growing.  Sometimes NO is the best strategy.  Pick your channels carefully, stick to them and tease out your success stories.

The next class of New Brand University will be held in Austin, Texas on July 14th and 15th. The focus of this day and a half workshop will be on fact-based selling and trade spending optimization.  For more information and to reserve your seat, send an email to info@newbranduniversity.com

I had the recent pleasure of meeting with a new digital marketing company called True Anthem.  They are based in San Francisco and are building on a terrific platform.  They partner with musicians and other “Uber Influencers” to provide digital content delivered via a media player that allows the user to blog, send, share or find places to buy the sponsoring product.  The unique point-of-difference is that the sponsoring brand already has a unique audience in that most of these bands have a large following audience.  An audience, by the way, that is emotionally tied into your brand because they already love the band.  Visit True Anthem to check out their service.  It is very affordable and a great way to get the FAST work out on your brand.

This experience reminds all of us that emerging brands cannot out-spend the competition but you can and must out-think the competition.  If your a start-up or emerging brand, no buyer is going to believe that you are spending millions on traditional media.  They may very well buy into the fact that you have discovered a SMART way to get the word out on your new or emerging idea.

Think digital.  It’s smarter, much more efficient and affordable!

This November, The Touch Agency will be twelve years old.  Over that decade plus of working with some of the leading and fastest growing CPG brands, our team has witnessed and worked through a number of industry and brand challenges.  Together, we figured this blog space is a great vehicle for sharing some of that learning as well as marketplace observations.  We are committed to keeping this fresh, current and relevant to your growing brand.

Please feel free to jump on with a comment and let’s grow your brand together!