
This Week in CPG 02/10/25
News from W, Lotus Foods, Glonuts, My Better Batch, Tiny Sprouts Foods, Spritzal Cookie, Koia, Rotten, Daddy’s Homemade, Curious Elixirs and Daily Crunch Snacks.
Alex at Geletka+
In our first Must-Have (but often secret) Ingredients series, we focused on building a brand from the inside out. Brand Personality that emerges from the beliefs of the company and its founders will always be stronger than a flimsy persona based on a trend or a marketing ploy. Be real, be yourself, and you will find your brand’s journey leading right into the next ingredient: Audience
Maybe this seems out of sequence, i.e., the other ingredients (Unique Propositions, Being Social, and Transparency) might feel more urgent. However, your brand needs to find like-minded people to bond with, and convert into customers, referrals, and influencers, aka, Your People. And if you don’t know your people, you won’t know Jack. Or Jill. Or that really large and emerging cultural force that your brand will bond with.
Once upon a time, researchers would go out into the field and observe humans in the wild. They took notes and pictures. They documented behaviors. Once the raw data was collected they looked for commonalities, preferences, patterns and points of intersection between the brand and its people.
In the early days of TV a company, Nielsen, put black boxes on participating consumers’ television sets to collect information on what they watched and for how long. That seems quaint compared to the terabytes of data routinely collected now.
Somewhere between going out in the field and drowning in a sea of research data. It’s actually pretty simple. Thanks to social media you can rapidly prototype some test audiences. What are the brands that you admire? The ones that match your core beliefs and personality. What are the brands that have a loyal audience that also believes in the product and mission of these brands?
Let’s do an exercise with a unique food business as the model, a lifestyle brand for ex-urbanites, off-the-gridders, and organic farming traditionalists. (See how identifying those core values comes in handy? ) You could type them as Whole Foods meets Holy Grail–they are a bit cultish. If they wanted to find their audience, and even the names of people who share these beliefs, a quick search on any social media network will produce 100’s of relevant accounts with 1,000’s of relevant followers. #offthegrid #organicfarming #farmtotable (Don’t worry, we’ll show you how to efficiently execute this in more detail in an upcoming article.)
Conduct a simple diary-based audience research project. This is the modern version of field-based research, but without you going into the field.
These are the bones of identifying your audience and getting ready to reach out to them in a meaningful way.
We’ll talk about what to ask them and how to reach them in upcoming articles: Unique Proposition and Social Outreach.
Missed the first article? Read it Here
This article was contributed by Alex at Geletka+.
Geletka+ is a Chicago-based, creative-driven collaboration agency with a focus on new and emerging methods of delivering experiences across channels to build brands, empower consumers, and create art that doesn’t waste people’s time. We’re not throwing away the traditional agency model, but we’re working to make it a little better by removing layers of process, being open about partners, and using data as a tool, not CYA. We make content, experiences, films, poems, books, stories, and digital products together with our clients and partners. We work with brands who believe in great design and value outcomes over billable hours
News from W, Lotus Foods, Glonuts, My Better Batch, Tiny Sprouts Foods, Spritzal Cookie, Koia, Rotten, Daddy’s Homemade, Curious Elixirs and Daily Crunch Snacks.
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