A CPG brand founder discusses marketing failures and the philosophy of “do it right or don’t do it at all” — from avoiding one-off billboard buys to refusing to enter retail markets before they had the resources to execute properly. The core lesson: concentrated, well-funded market entry beats broad, thin presence every time.
Speakers: Guest (CPG brand founder), Interviewer
Marketing Failures and the Philosophy of Focus [00:00:00]
Interviewer: Were there any marketing failures from your perspective?
Guest: I would say a couple of things to that. First, I was in advertising before, so I always had this theory that unless you could really get the frequency, it wasn’t worth it. We never went out and bought one billboard, because one billboard just doesn’t do anything. It’s just wasting money. If we’re just doing one thing — that’s not enough.
So we’ve always believed: buy a chunk in an area and do it right, or just don’t do it at all.
And that philosophy wasn’t just from a marketing and brand standpoint — it was also from a distribution standpoint. We believed that if we couldn’t actually do well in a store or in a market, we shouldn’t be there.
I think the same philosophy applies: don’t be afraid to take your time.
Which is sort of not what everybody would say. We’ve had so many brands tell us: “You’ve got to get across the US. You’ve got to get into Kroger, you’ve got to get into Publix, you’ve got to get into Costco — fast, fast, fast.” And so many of those companies aren’t here anymore because they just spent too fast. If you don’t have the money to go into those markets and really do it right, my best advice is: just do the markets where you can be really good. Period.