Rebranding a $400M Meat Snack Leader | Andrew Thomas, Archer

Speaker 1: 00:00
Welcome to Shelf Help. Today we're speaking with Andrew Thomas, who is joining us from Santa Monica, California. Andrew is the VP of marketing at Archer, formerly known as Country Archer, one of the fastest growing meat snacks brands in the world that I believe is tracking for roughly 300 million in revenue this year. Andrew led a big rebrand for Archer that was unveiled at Expo West this year, which definitely we're going to spend a lot of time chatting about. Private Archer, Andrew spent time leading marketing for a handful of well-known brands like Cavita, Chicken of the Sea. Bottom line, Andrew definitely knows CPG marketing as well as just about anyone. So excited to be chatting with you. Maybe just first off, for probably, I would say a small group of listeners that aren't that familiar with Archer. Give us just kind of the quick lay of the land in terms of origin story, why behind the brand, some of the core products you guys offered. And you got so many, maybe some of the recent ones you've launched.

Speaker: 00:55
Yeah, for sure. First of all, thanks for inviting me to speak, Adam. Uh appreciated being here. Yeah, so the uh the Archer founding story. Uh so our uh founder, Eugene Kang, his uh parents were immigrants from Korea, and when they came to the States, they bought a bunch of gas stations up and down the highway between LA and Vegas. So he grew up around jerky in roadside jerky and you know the meat snacks category. And so in 2011, he and his aunt Susan were on a road trip to the Grand Canyon, and uh they stopped by a roadside jerky stand, as they tended to do, and they bought some jerky, and it was this grass-fed beef jerky. It just blew their minds. They couldn't believe how tender it was, how great it tasted, knowing that it was grass-fed beef, the ingredient labels really clean. And so they talked to the owner of the stand and they actually tracked down the manufacturer of the product. And uh it was this guy who had a 10,000 square foot industrial kitchen in San Bernardino, California. They found him, found out he had been white labeling this product for a really long time. The name of the brand was Country Archer, but that brand never showed up anywhere. And uh, you know, he's a little uh a little bit older, and his kids didn't want to take over the business from him, so they offered to buy the business from. So in 2011, they acquired the business. Now, Eugene, at the time was 22 years old, knew nothing about jerky manufacturing, CPG, sales, marketing. So he really learned it as he went along, which I think is extremely impressive because he's still at the helm today and he's doing a great job running the business. You don't often see that of the founders who start it, rarely make 200 million, let alone uh you know three or four hundred million. So, yeah, the business was largely the grass-fed beef jerky business for a long period of time, you know, made uh made its moves in the natural channel places like Sprouts and Whole Foods, started to make a name for itself, but then in 2018, the brand launched mini sticks, so grass-fed beef mini sticks into Costco, I believe here in Los Angeles, and uh the mini sticks really started to to take off. Um, grass the grass fed beef jerky business is doing well, but the sticks have really been what the business has has been scaling on over the past really three, four years. And the category overall has really been scaling and growing on that. If you think about the meat stick segment of the category, and this isn't throwing any stones at Slim Jim, they're a they're a fantastic brand, but that's what most people have known meat sticks to be is up into a slim gem. But from an ingredient perspective, they're not what everyone wants to put in their body, and the sticks segment really hadn't changed a lot over the decades. So when these grass-fed options came to bear, that's what's been driving a lot of the growth. So so we now produce the grass-fed beef meat sticks, the jerky. We also have some turkey items. We do have a bison jerky as well. We have an ancestral blend stick, which is grass-fed beef, as well as heart and liver organ meat. And we're continuing to push the envelope in terms of an innovation. But yeah, so orange story found on our roadside stand, and now we're uh we're actually pacing to 400 million in revenue this year. Yeah, yeah, that's impressive.

Speaker 1: 04:02
Yeah, if we have time on it, I was curious about the the ancestral blend, but hopefully we'll have time for that one. But yeah, I definitely want to jump right into the rebrand. I know that's the big thing recently. Where I wanted to just start was just a simple question of why, meaning just what led to the decision to go through a massive rebrand in the first place, because I feel like that's the question that should generally be asked at the beginning is is if someone says that they're gonna think about a rebrand, the first question would be why.

Speaker: 04:28
Yeah, no. It's it's it is it is the question, especially given how significant of a rebrand that it's been. You know, I started I started on the business in October of 2022. And when I joined, the business was very, you know, what we call commercially focused. So it was about boots on the ground, driving distribution, getting items on shelf, fish and trade promotions, strong selling materials and selling decks. There wasn't a lot of marketing. There wasn't much to drive awareness and trial. And by the way, that had been working for the business for some time. So when I joined, I knew there wasn't a lot of traditional marketing to be done. At the same time, what I was tasked with was figuring out what's the roadmap, what's the vision for building the brand over time. And when I came on board, we didn't really know a lot about the brand. We didn't have any metrics around brand health, brand awareness, brand preference. We didn't know our household penetration, a repeat rate. So I spent about the first year of my tenure signing on partners like numerator and getting some brand health trackers up and running, really just figuring out where do we stand today. And then after that, we said, okay, well, now knowing where some of our gaps are, so we were the fifth largest meat snack brand. Our aided awareness was the length in the category, highest. And so to me, that was the big why. Why we needed to go down this path is we were selling a lot of product, but not a lot of people knew what they were buying. We would anecdotally hear from folks, they're like, oh yeah, I buy the minis. I buy the grass-fed beef minis. And it's great, but we needed them to say, I'm buying the country archer grass-fed beef. And so looking at that brand awareness gap versus the size of our business, our our household penetration really needed some geosine. We set out to learn, all right, who's our target market? What are the consumer segments within the category? And we did a really deep dive into that. It was about a 1600-person uh quantitative survey, understanding folks' snacking needs, how meat snacks scratch some of those itches for them, their attitudes and behaviors around meat snacks and the various brands. And we identified four segments of which we are targeting one primarily and another secondarily. And then we said, All right, now knowing that, how do we position ourselves? Because we didn't have a clear positioning statement either. And so out of that work, we said, All right, we're gonna develop a brand positioning statement so we can tell our retail partners what's our right to exist. But then that'll frame up for consumers why should you care? Who are we? Why should you care? Why should you come by us? After that positioning work, we then engaged with a design agency named Hatch, given them a really thorough brief on all of our objectives, what was working, what wasn't, what we wanted to achieve. We said, look, this is about closing that awareness gap, and we have to do it by being more distinctive. Yes, we still have to differentiate ourselves, we still have to talk about what makes us different around grass-fed beef and real ingredients, but we also have to be distinctive. And uh they really took that assignment, you know, they they got the memo, so to speak, and you know, six to eight month projects making our way through it, but we're really happy with where we are where we landed. But yeah, at the end of the day, it was that gap that really drove drove the project.

Speaker 1: 07:43
That makes a lot of sense. I think part of that was related to that conclusion to to move away from that word country and just focus on the shorter archer.

Speaker: 07:54
Yeah, so there was a a few things at play there. The first is before I even joined, they were already considering removing the word country and moving to archer. So the old this ID, which is still in market for the most part, you can see archer's the biggest word on there. Country's smaller, and then provisions is even smaller. So there was already some momentum behind that. The second piece is that our unaided awareness was really low. All the people who typed in anything, they all typed in the word archer. Not one person from an unaided awareness perspective typed in the words country archer. And then anecdotally, we heard from a lot of people they're like, Oh, yeah, yeah, I buy Archer, or I see Archer at Target, or I see Archer at Whole Foods. So between the three of those things, it was really a no-brainer to satisfy it. And then it makes it a lot easier to talk about. It makes it easier on the packaging, makes it easier on swag, makes it easier on the website. So making that move was was probably one of the easier decisions of the entire rebrand.

Speaker 1: 08:50
Yeah. On yeah, on that topic, what were what decision points were the most contentious internally and ended up requiring the most debate?

Speaker: 09:01
Yeah, uh there were two. So the first is uh using the color orange. And look, I think a big part of it was such a dramatic departure from where we were, which is black and white. Which look, a lot of a lot of smaller brands, emerging brands, go with black and white. Uh I think it's I think it's clean, I think it's simple, it's easy. In some ways, you don't have to make a decision and take a risk on a color because they're not really colors. Uh so you're not trying to own any one thing. So I think that's one reason why folks do that. So going with orange being such a big change, I think made people a little bit nervous. And then there's a lot of like, well, why orange? But part of the answer to why orange was well, it's orange. It's bright, it's it's bold, it's it's attention grabbing, there's a reason construction signs and cones are in orange. There's actually some psychology behind the color that when you associate it with food, it actually drives taste appeal and is highly stimulating. So the orange was a big piece of it. And look, no one else in the category was really using orange. You know, Slim Jim, bright yellow and red, chomps, bright red, jackling's dark red. But most of the other folks in the category, it's a lot of grays and blacks and browns. And so we needed a color that was, you know, one of these brighter bolder colors to really make it stand out on shelf.

Speaker 1: 10:18
Yeah.

Speaker: 10:19
So orange is where we landed, but that was that was a contentious conversation for sure.

Speaker 1: 10:23
That doesn't surprise me. He did a bunch of that work for a year or so when you first came on board, work with some of those partners, just getting a really understanding of the state of the brand. Yeah. Eventually made that decision. Yeah, we need to do a rebrand. Once that decision was made, what did that just that process look like from beginning to end in terms of like the key steps that were involved? And how long did the whole process take from yes, we're doing this to launching it in market?

Speaker: 10:48
Yeah. So the the length of time we engaged with Hatch, I want to say in March of 2024. And we landed on the final design, I want to say sometime in September of 24. And then, yeah, all the internal processes to get the design applied to the mechanical files and proofing and USDA approvals and all that takes a while. We have just now, uh, this month started to see the new Viz ID hit market. Uh, and places like Sam's Club, uh, a handful of Whole Foods have some of it as well. So it's a long process from soup to nuts for it to happen. In terms of getting the stakeholders on board, I think um, you know, having Eugene, having our president and CFO, Adam Razik, involved in the entire process, bringing them along on the journey made it easier to get those key stakeholders on board because we were all making decisions and evaluating the options in real time. I did have to push the orange a little bit at points, but they they eventually got on board. I'd say one of the larger challenges was probably getting the board of directors to approve and to be comfortable. And it's not that they didn't like the design. Their biggest question was well, are we sure this is the right design given where the business is today? We we are growing so rapidly, and we were growing so rapidly when we brought the design to them. There was legitimate concern around, are we gonna break something? We're growing so rapidly right now. Like, is this really the right time? And you know, the way I framed it up was I actually think it was a bigger risk for us not to do it at this time rather than wait for when we felt we needed it. Because in my opinion, if you wait until you feel you need it, then it's probably too late. You know, you're trying to turn the ship around at that point. And if anything, the fact that we were doing so well without a strong brand just told me this is pouring gasoline on the fire. Like now's the time to go. We have a lot of freedom and permission to go do this. And we did we did some we did a lot of consumer testing to validate that this was the right move. So the testing gave them comfort as well. But getting the board on board was um, you know, it was a process, but it was walking in through the journey and the rationale and hearing their concerns, hearing where you know they're they were highlighting some of the risks, making sure they understood we had plans to mitigate those risks and really giving them comfort that this was the right path for it. So yeah, it took a little bit of work, but that's their job. It would be weird if they just passed this through, given how significant of a change that it was.

Speaker 1: 13:13
Yeah, totally agree with that. On that, on that topic a bit, talking about are we gonna break something here? It seems like that's one of the can be one of the more delicate, challenging things of doing this rebrand is is balancing that need for a fresh look. Obviously, you're doing this rebrand for for a reason, but you don't want there's also that importance of keeping some aspects familiar, some of those legacy brand elements for one. So do the existing customers feel like they still associate and resonate with the brand, but also from just, I guess, a practical standpoint, walking down the aisle, want to make sure they can find the brand again and not feel like they don't even know where to find it or what to look for anymore. How do you think about that?

Speaker: 13:52
Yeah, so this is where the data was really, really helpful for us. Our repeat rates were really low. So that told me we didn't have a lot of people coming and looking for us again, even if they loved the product, outside of places like Costco. Limited assortment, big part of our business is there. People are going back to bulk by the things that they love. So repeat rate was was great there. But that environment in particular actually made it a lower risk for us to make the change. Because you got these big billboards of the pallets, it's easier for folks to find the thing and connect the dots. So the risk was mitigated already by nature of that environment. Elsewhere, the repeat rate was low. And we looked at the panel data and we saw most of our growth was from new consumers all the time. And actually, if you if you follow Byron Sharp's how brands grow, that's how most brands grow is new consumers, new penetration, new trial all the time. It's the whole idea of double jeopardy that he talks about. The larger brands have loyalty, not because people are loyal to a Coke or a Pepsi, they're loyal to them because they're available everywhere. And it's the brands that everybody knows. And it's honestly the same in the meat snacks category. Jack Lynx and Slim Jim have the highest loyalty. Well, they have the highest loyalty because they're in every gas station, every convenience store, every other place you want to find jerky, they're there. So of course, people are going to repeat on it. So I actually saw it as not much of a risk for us because we didn't have like a big base of loyal consumers. We were always attracting new consumers anyway. So for me, I felt as long as we're still clear on pack, communicating the thing that people have picked us up for today, which is grass-fed beef and minis. We basically ported that design over from the old design onto the new one, slapped it right in the middle where it exists today. But then it was about amplifying the brand on top of that. So that's how we thought about mitigating those risks was why do people buy us today? Make sure we're still communicating that, but later on, that nice branding so that they know to come back or they can find it or they can look for it. And honestly, accelerate even more new users finding the brand and trying us. Yep, that makes total sense.

Speaker 1: 16:06
And it's a similar track back up in terms of that process around getting the board to sign off and getting some of the key stakeholders involved, really valid. That's just part of the process of working for a big company that's growing super fast. But also, it feels like in my experience, especially in the design aesthetic side of things, you you often hear decision by committee is like considered like less than an ideal approach to these kind of things. And I'm curious how much of that do you feel is true? And I guess depending on how much you feel true, like what what is that decision, what does that decision process look like, especially for some of those contentious aspects, taking that into account where it's seeming kind of wrong, but it seemed like the concerns where decision by committee can lead to is more watered down changes or updates, I guess.

Speaker: 16:54
More dilution for sure. Yeah. It's funny, actually, in uh because it's so not only was I selling in to you know the CEO and president and the board, I had to sell into the sales team. I was selling to all our retail partners in the internal team as well, just to let them know why we're doing it. And I bring that up because one of the slides I included in some of these decks was uh was a cartoon from uh Tom Fishburne's brand camp. And it was talking about the dangers of pack design. And well, we got to follow category conventions and we got to appeal to everyone and make sure it fits the space and all these things. And then the end frame is a pack that looks like everything else on shelf. And the same thing happens when you make decisions by committee. I think we were fortunate in that we're still a pretty small and scrappy team. And as much as we were trying to be inclusive and involved, you know, more the marketing team and other people in these key decisions, it ultimately came down to Eugene and myself. Even our president and CFO, he had a lot of great input. There were probably times where he wanted to zig, where we wanted to zag, and we ultimately we had to get him on board as well. But it's a really honest and collaborative culture where no one takes things personally, which is great. I mean, I feel very fortunate to work for someone like Eugene, who's very humble. And he will say, Hey, if you know, I trust you, if this is the way you want to go, then then we're gonna go that route. And I think we have a little bit of a risk-taking mentality as well. So we we largely avoided that decision by committee problem, which which I think actually shows in the pack design because not only do you have the orange, you've got what we lovingly call this Picasso bolt on the front. You know, having this uh kind of art deco-esque steer on the front, that was another thing that took a lot of sell it and took a lot of conversation to get to. But I think it really is the culture of the organization and the trust that we have in each other that really enabled some of those, I would say riskier decisions, but maybe unprecedented decisions or atypical decisions to occur.

Speaker 1: 18:56
Yeah. Fast forwarding a bit, you got the brand, the the uh the rebrand done and everything. You guys did the big unveil at Expo S this year, just the caveat. I've I've not been on the brand side of a big launch or a rebrand at Expo S specifically, but seemed like it's a great event for these kind of things because every important stakeholder and CPG is there, you can really get the message out. But maybe on the flip side, and I could be thinking about it wrong, but it seems like because every brand is there, I imagine it's not as easy to really rise above the noise to a certain extent. So I'm curious from your perspective, looking back, you did this big launch. What what did you find was was key to launching a successful rebrand, or maybe just some sort of big launch or event at Expo OS in general?

Speaker: 19:40
Yeah, it's it's funny you say that because it I would say both things happened. It was both successful for us, and we got lost in the noise. Yeah. By which I mean there's a million and one Expo West recaps after the fact. And of course, selfishly, I'm coming through all of them to see if they mentioned us. And for all the ones that didn't, I was like, well, where were you? You obviously didn't go to the basement. You weren't looking for us hard enough. But that just underscores how many people are there. There are so many people there and so many brands. So, you know, I on one hand, that makes it hard to break through. On the other hand, we have a really, really strong PR team, a crafted communications. They did a wonderful job seeding the press release right before Expo and making sure it was all tied to Expo. So we got a lot of folks that came by the booth and visited the booth and stopped by to talk to me and Eugene because of that press release. Not only that, the PR team also did a good job talking to uh different publications and saying, hey, do you want to interview Eugene at the booth about the rebrand? And we actually got a handful of media interviews out of it as well. Uh and then LinkedIn, you know, you got to have a strong LinkedIn game these days uh for this sort of stuff. So we pushed pushed heavy on that. And I would say, you know, the the amount of foot traffic we had at the booth was dramatically higher than what we've ever seen before. We got a lot of people just walking by randomly who gave us tons of compliments. Ton of my old colleagues and coworkers from past jobs stopped by to congratulate us. I mean, I there was I there was a couple days I didn't get to eat lunch and I actually almost lost my voice at the end of it because I was talking so much. So we felt it was hugely successful for us because it hit the right notes and it got to the right people. So even if it didn't get to everyone in the trade, we really felt confident that it got to all the right folks and right stakeholders that we needed it to.

Speaker 1: 21:35
That's yeah, it sounds like it was what you're guys hoping for, which is great. From a rollout standpoint, you did that XOS big relaunch, then it's time to start actually rolling this out. From that actual rollout standpoint, from my experience in every rig rebrand or packaging update that I've been involved in, one of the the biggest puzzles or part that always just feels frustrating and there's never feel like there's a perfect solution is. How to best make that packaging switch in market to help minimize those instances where you've got the old look and the new look on the shelf at the same time, which is like the ultimate thing you really don't want for how many doors Archer is in. I think it's when I read it's 20,000, 30,000 plus doors. Like, what's what's your approach to that that challenge look like? And yeah, especially at Archer scale, like I said.

Speaker: 22:21
Yeah, there's a there's a lot of consternation around that, especially on the sales team side, which which I can appreciate. You know, this might sound a little bit cheesy, but the thing that I reminded everyone or that I told everyone as we were talking about this was a year from now, no one's gonna remember. A year from now, it's all gonna be new visit on shelf, and we're all gonna have a whole host of new problems and new work tasks to tackle. We're not gonna have to worry about it. So that's that was a way to say, like, look, I I understand it's a little anxiety-inducing. Now it's gonna be okay. But in the meantime, how do we make sure that from a customer and consumer perspective, that we are smoothing that transition? So the first thing was customer. Like, how are we talking to the retailers? How are we making sure, you know, whether it's putting labels on our master cases so that people are stocking it, you know, we actually print on there that new look, you know, Sam Archer new look, something to that degree. It makes it easier for them to make sure they know what they're putting on shelf. We're also going to do a lot of in-store marketing. So things like floor talkers and shelf talkers to make sure people know that it's the same brand. So some digital stuff that may aid with that as well on platforms like Instacart and whatnot. But we are actually seeing some of the new Viz ID already in market here in Southern California. And as much as you theoretically don't want the old Viz ID and new Viz ID on the shelf at the same time, it actually is working because when you see the new stuff next to the old stuff, it's helping connect the dots, what it is. That archer to archer, and we were very intentional about making sure that Archer name still had the same kind of energy, still in cursive. You know, we made a lot of improvements and optimizations to it. But I actually would argue that having them on the shelf next to each other for a period of time is is gonna benefit us more than it's gonna be any sort of negative. So it's um it's been an ongoing conversation, and I think it's something for a lot of people to think about because depending on what you're doing from a rebrand perspective, you may need to think about it differently. Totally. But I think for us, we had a good risk mitigation plan. And at the end of the day, I don't um I actually don't think it looks too bad when it's old and new send next to each other.

Speaker 1: 24:38
Right. That makes a lot of sense. I feel like that's a practical way to look at it. From a number standpoint, what were or or are the key metrics that you're focused on to gauge the success and impact of the rebrand? And you know, what are the what have the numbers told you thus far?

Speaker: 24:54
Yeah, you know, it's uh it's funny because the business is doing so well right now, it's hard for us to measure a lot of this stuff. A good example is Instacart. So we've been really leaning in on Instacart, and you know, you get the return on ad spend metrics and all that, and some of that is a little subsidized because it's purchases people were gonna make anyway, but they've been a great partner and we love using the platform. I've had my supply chain team reach out and be like, hey, could we dial that down a little bit? Because our velocities in certain places are too high. You know, we we we need, you know, from a demand planning perspective, we weren't anticipating this. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, I I don't know if I can even take credit. I would like to, but I don't know if it's the if it's the investment or if it's just organic growth in the category. Yeah, that makes it hard for us to tease out what's working and what's not from a from a pure number standpoint. Now, what I am gonna look for is going back to the reason why we did this in the first place, brand health. Is my unaided and aided awareness and then consideration all the way down the funnel, is that growing year over year? And we actually signed up with a new platform just recently uh called Track Suit that gives you basically always-on brand health monitoring. We're really excited to get up and running there because there's so much that's going on in our business. There's the rebrand, we're launching the national ad campaign in August. Uh, we just signed a partnership with the Dodge, the LA Dodgers back in April, a lot of news around that. So we have so much going on. We really need to have an always-on way to measure that. But that's how I'm gonna measure success is is the brand awareness and trial picking up. And look, down the road, am I gonna want to measure velocity increases as well? Absolutely. But those are increasing so organically on their own, it's tough for us to know what that's attributed to. But those are the things we'll be we'll be reviewing.

Speaker 1: 26:43
If you guys think you could have worse problems, business is growing so fast you don't exactly know how to track it. I feel like it could be worse.

Speaker: 26:49
I don't, it's it's a very good problem to have.

Speaker 1: 26:52
Some uh recommendations or uh some other marketing leaders that maybe don't have as much experience for you that are in the process of going to this rebrand. Any metrics that come of mind that that come to mind that maybe often focus on that are not actually as relevant and that could actually maybe end up creating a distorted view of the impact of a rebrand, whether it's over-emphasizes it or maybe doesn't actually show the impact that it's actually having.

Speaker: 27:20
Yeah, I would actually this might not be exactly the answer you're looking for, but I would say be careful as you look at things like virtual shelf set, uh like pack design testing. Not that you shouldn't use them, you absolutely should. But I I think I think what happens is uh people's expectations of rebrand are like, oh well, it better via this virtual shelf site generate all this incremental lift, not realizing a few key parts of this. One, people are familiar with the existing design, consciously or not. So you're always going to be at a disadvantage. Secondly, you're asking people to shop on a computer screen. Well, they didn't just come home from work, they don't got their kids in the cart, they're not hungry, they're not tired, they don't need caffeine, they're not worried about their budget for at for their shopping trip that particular evening. So as much as we try to replicate the real world environment for a lot of these, you just you just aren't. As much as you can pick up the bag by clicking on it and it zooms in, you're not actually holding it, you're not looking at what's inside, you're not reading the label. So in terms of you know, your question on like what may distort those things, for me, the pack design testing, whether it's virtual shelf set or some other means, is a disaster check. Am I breaking this thing in a way that I shouldn't break it? Am I taking too great of a risk? And if there's no major red flags and you perform at parity, then I think you should feel good to go. I think you can get way too focused on, man, I need you know, those airplane lights, I need someone doing this, like go, go, go. And I don't know that you're ever gonna have the data that's gonna tell you to do it and give you the confidence. You this is where if you've been in the industry for a while, you got to rely on your experience and your gut and your intuition and your strategic mindset. And you you gotta go. And I've said this in other spots. You're taking as much of a risk not doing the thing as the risk to do the thing. Yeah. Relying on data is great, but I think sometimes we can get a little too caught up. And well, if the data doesn't tell me I I need to go, then maybe I shouldn't. I don't know that that's the best way to look at it.

Speaker 1: 29:32
Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's that's super helpful. And this this rebrand stuff up kind of in a bit of a boat, kind of a two-part question. Just now looking back at this Archer rebrand, maybe some other ones you've been involved with too. What do you feel like are just some of the biggest learning lessons from the process? And kind of a related question for you know, marketing brand leaders that are embarking on a similar rebrand process, maybe don't have as much experience for you. What are a few things you'd recommend they they focus on or kind of use as their North Star?

Speaker: 30:00
Yeah, um, I think the first thing tied to the last question is be bold. Don't be afraid to take some risks and make some make some big recommendations. They might not ultimately see the light of day, but I actually think it's the marketing, head of marketing's role to push the organization. If you're not, again, it's about distinctiveness and differentiation. I if you're not pushing your brand in that direction, I think you're doing the brand a disservice. So that's the first thing is be bold. The second piece is when bringing people along on that journey, whether it's internal executives or the board, I think sometimes it can get really easy as if you've been in marketing for a while to quote the Byron Sharps of the world and to bring the marketing science and the marketing data. What I've learned is do not come across as like too professorial, too condescending, too educational. You really got to meet people where they are. You got to make sure you're understanding that what's really driving their hesitancy or their questions, and almost have that conversation in a more informal way, if that makes sense. Because if you come in, we're like, well, this book says, and this data says, and we got to do this because these other brands did it, you're almost saying your fears are not valid. Don't you know better? That is never gonna go over well. So a much softer, more human approach in getting that buy-in is gonna work far better than coming across as some sort of you know, quote unquote marketing expert. So those are the two key things that I really learned throughout this process. Yeah. And uh I think you know that being bold and uh not being condescending are the two points I'd make on that.

Speaker 1: 31:43
That's really helpful. Really helpful. Shifting gears a little bit away from the rebrand, much more kind of a tactical question, just talking about marketing resources. When you think about resourcing, what frameworks or how do you think about what frameworks do you use and or you know, variables that come into play as you're building out your plan with regards to just internal versus external resources in terms of which ones are you gonna you feel like you definitely want to hire internally versus you know leverage agencies or some sort of external partners? And are there certain functions like uh influencer management or creative agencies or packaging design that you always tend to bring in house versus always contract out, or is it pretty situational?

Speaker: 32:23
Yeah, I'd say it's pretty situational. Uh although I think in terms of creative agencies, my my personal preference is to is to outsource the big ideas. So as it comes to campaign development and what what's the you know, what's the look and feel of the campaign gonna be and the assets, I think that's better done by bigger teams who have you know the strategy and insights folks and more creative, you know, creative department members, just to get more eyeballs and more brain power against it, which is great. But then after that, having some sort of whether it's freelance or contract or internal creative director resource who can work with the designer to help you churn out all the little stuff you need after that. So I think it's not only situation dependent, but after you get that big stuff out of the way, you probably don't need an AOR, at least at the the size of business that we are. Yeah. Social and influencer is tricky. I've done it both ways. I've had both ways work and both ways not work. We're currently outsourcing the influencer work, but we've found that a lot of the platforms that are out there that you manage internally are great for getting reach, but aren't necessarily great at establishing strong influencer relationships that drive greater credibility. Uh and for a brand like ours, we really want to find those partners who can work with again and again and again. And uh the platforms, I don't think necessarily scratch that itch. So that's something that we have an internal person managing an external resource there. Yep, that makes sense. So yeah, it, you know, the the social media stuff is also a little tricky. We have someone who does content calendar internally, but they leverage a lot of outside resources to generate the content. So it's a lot of the the doing and the creating of stuff, I think sometimes is best done outside of the company while the strategy and planning and the thinking work is done internally.

Speaker 1: 34:16
Yeah, that makes sense. From uh for those ones that you do engage external agencies, just curious in terms of that due diligence process, what is your what does that process look like for you? And I guess yeah, how does some sort of external agency or contractor, some sort of external partner win win your business?

Speaker: 34:35
Yeah, so we um whether it was the the research work that we did around the brand positioning, the design agency, or the creative agency, we reached out to partners that either I had already worked with or someone else in the organization had already worked with. Uh, there were a couple that we reached out to just because we knew people who knew them. But we also had a consultant, uh, someone I've worked with in the past, and his job is essentially to connect clients like myself to agencies to RFP the business app. Uh, his name is Steve Schmeck, and uh, he helped land us our creative agency, uh he helped land us our PR agency, and he's also working on helping us find an experiential agency as well. And that has been helpful because there's so many agencies out there, it's really hard to know who can be good and who won't be. So him finding the right fit for us based on our budget and our needs has been really helpful. And then once we have that list of agencies, I actually like to basically have that RFP document essentially be the brief. You know, it's it's a very long and thorough document that I put together and provide. But I find that I get much better clarity on who has the chops to do what we need to do and who's honestly gonna be the best culture fit if I give them more to respond to. If I give them a one-pager, hey, I need some creative work, we need a new campaign, here's generally the idea. They all can do good work, but they're all gonna give me their capabilities and other brands that they've done, and that'll all be fine. I need them to show me that they get the insight. And that's ultimately how we've decided our agency partners is not can you do good work, not are you well resourced, not have you done other really good things. Do you understand what it is that's driving our need? Do you understand what it is that's driving the consumer's need and how we're trying to square that circle? And that's ultimately how we've decided what agencies to move forward with.

Speaker 1: 36:28
That makes total sense. That's super interesting. This guy, he said Steve Schmidt. He's sounds like he's kind of like a recruiter, but not for internal team members. He's kind of like a recruiter for agencies. It's super interesting.

Speaker: 36:39
Never heard of that. It's funny because uh, as we were looking for a PR agency, Eugene's like, What do you think? And I was like, I got a guy. He's like, Oh, you've got a guy. I'm like, I got a guy. But that's what it feels like. It's like you got a guy.

Speaker 1: 36:50
That's also that seems really helpful to be honest. Yeah, shifting gears again, but there's one question I'd I wanted to ask you in terms of just for these the founders that are fast-growing up-and-coming brands, thinking about Eugene, you know, way back when that are just starting to get on shelf with some of the big box players. And let's just focus on Target Walmart and Kroger as an example. What should they expect are going to be like the key differences between each of those big three ones in terms of how you you win with each? Because I imagine you know, founders are starting to think about some of these big box players, they don't actually understand the nuances between between each of some of the key big players.

Speaker: 37:26
Yeah, you know, Whole Foods is Whole Foods is interesting because I feel like they're always willing to take a flyer on new brands. You know, they like to be in an environment where consumers can discover something new. You know, if you're if you're positioned or differentiated around a lot of the better for you attributes and your product tastes good, because it's always got to taste good. People forget that a lot in the better for you space. It's still better tastes good. Then I think they'll give you a shot and then they'll partner with you on programs, whether it's you know, display or other promotions or their own marketing programs to help help drive those velocities. But of course, ultimately they're gonna want to see you support the brand and turn on your own. But I think you probably have a little more leash to hang yourself with uh when it comes to Whole Foods. The big box guys, you know, Target's interesting because I think Target really wants to see themselves as a business that does lean in on smaller brands as well. Yeah, I think where they've been challenged is just the assortment and the space available. I do think the buyers really want to say, hey, we want to be a forward-thinking, innovative uh grocery destination, but their assortment across the entirety of that store is so large between clothes and toys and electronics. You know, it's I think it's makes it challenging for them on how much space can they allocate and how much can they actually take some of those risks. I would say Target, though, they um you know they've been great partners of ours and they've been very trend for it. They've recognized what's going on in the better for you meat sticks category, and they've really leaned in with us and a couple of other folks. So I give them kudos for that. I would say they respond very, very well to data. They want to hear your story, they want your brand to look good, they want the product to be great, but they also want to understand how are you doing, where are you turning, how are you meeting my customers' needs, sharing numerator panel data with them, like leakage trees and shopper comparisons and all those things have really, really worked for us. So having a strong, strong data story is always gonna work well for a place like Target. It'll work great at Whole Foods. You probably don't need it initially at Whole Foods as you're getting started. Yeah. And look, Walmart's really interesting because they're such a behemoth, as we all know. I was at a summit uh in in Bentonville uh a few months ago where they were telling uh vendors, they're like, we want everything you sell. And what they mean by that is, yeah, we don't have all the room in the store for everything, but if you feel there's a customer need or consumer need on these things, get them up on the website. And so I think they're also trying to be more inclusive on their assortment as well. There are things that are going to turn better in their stores than certain other products. It's just it's their consumer base, it's about all about the value. But I think what they are attempting to do is say, hey, online is here to stay. You know, for emerging brands who want to play a Walmart, you can get on Walmart.com and get some proof of concept that your brand will turn, it will sell, and that there's a there there. And they they really appreciate that. Having that online proof of concept, I think can help get you into their stores. But yeah, look, the the problem with all these guys, it's limited shelf space. So it's a tough, it's tough to crack crack into that. But strong data story, online proof of concept, and you know, strong product, I think are three things that'll help you with all three of them.

Speaker 1: 40:41
Very helpful. Similar question, totally different channel than the C-Store channel, which I know seems like this meat stick category has a lot of success in that channel. What's the playbook for winning in in C stores?

Speaker: 40:52
So we actually are very we have some penetration in C-Store, but not a ton. And one of the reasons is it's a very challenging route to market. Uh, it's highly fragmented from both a you know C-Store customer retailer perspective, but also the distribution network. Uh, sometimes you you'll go through a couple just just before you get to the C store, and the price markups you experience when you're already a premium brand makes the price point a little more challenging for the consumer at the end of the day. So that the route to market is a challenge. What's also a challenge is, and we uh recently got some some panel data from Numerator on this. A better for you consumer might be shopping in a convenience store. But what the data says is they're not buying better for you in that convenience store. There's almost an element of you go in there, it's almost you're either on the go, you're in a rush, you're by yourself. There's a little bit of waving the white flag on the better for you stuff. And you're like, you know what? I'm gonna grab that bag of Cheetos because that sounds good for me right now. So C-Store is a different beast. Given the route to market, given the different consumer mindset, you know, I would say we're still figuring our way through how to win there, but it's it's a very, very different place to approach and to win than large format club or mass. That's a great out for you. Really helpful.

Speaker 1: 42:10
Last question for you. Kind of a fun, a fun one. If you had to put your life savings on the line, what's one prediction you'd make about the CPG space overall over the next, I don't know, months, years, or whatever you however you want to take it?

Speaker: 42:24
Man, uh, this is probably gonna be something you've heard from other people, but I think AI is gonna be extremely disruptive, specifically in the creative and content space. Uh, you know, we're already using an AI platform to essentially mimic photo shoots, which is not perfect yet. Well, actually, that is the problem. It's too perfect. The bags don't look wrinkled. They're too perfect, so it doesn't look real. But the tools will get there. So I think as it relates to you know, creative agencies and content creators and whatnot, what that looks like for them, I think it's gonna be, I think it's gonna be a challenge. My guess is the the agencies that are gonna win and come out of it, you know, to the extent that they can come out unscathed, are ones who get back to what I said earlier insights. I don't I think AI is so far away from really understanding those insights at a human level. The agencies who are strong at saying this is the kind of creative I need to go make because of the insight, those guys will win. Because then you can just go use the AA platforms down the road to make the videos, to make the ads and whatnot. I think there's big disruption coming in the creative space for CPG. I think that's probably inevitable at some point.

Speaker 1: 43:34
Andrew, this has been awesome. Really appreciate the time. What's the best way to for people to follow along with you? And also best place to follow along with Archer. I'm sure there's many places, but yeah.

Speaker: 43:43
Yeah, we uh as I mentioned earlier, you know, you gotta have a strong LinkedIn game these days. So I'm doing my best. So if you can find me on LinkedIn, posting or reposting what we're posting from the company perspective. And then from a brand perspective, uh, Instagram is at Archerjerky, and then uh archerjerky.com is our website. And uh we will soon have a pretty active TikTok up and running as well. But yeah, we we got a lot more news coming. Uh so for folks who are interested, stay tuned. There's gonna be some exciting stuff coming.

Speaker 1: 44:14
Perfect. Well, and this is great. Appreciate the time. This has been awesome. That's the pod.

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