Building your brand cannot be accomplished overnight. No one decides to start a business today, goes out in the market tomorrow, and expect miracles to happen. Instead, this calls for comprehensive planning focused on your passions and values. Elliot Begoun is joined by Anna Bell of E&J Gallo Winery in discussing the ingredients that make up an effective brand, how to maximize funding, and the typical mistakes entrepreneurs make. Anne also shares her thoughts about the resurgence of direct email marketing, how to choose the right people for your team, and how to catch buyers’ interest through unique and well-designed packaging.

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Listen to the podcast here

Building Your Brand The Right Way With Anna Bell

Without going any further and starting the process too much, let me pause and ask Anna to introduce herself and tell you all a little bit about what she’s doing and her background and then we’ll jump in. Thanks so much for being here and joining. I am excited to have this conversation.

Thanks, Elliot. I’m excited to be here. I appreciate the invite. As you said, I’m Anna Bell. Sometimes I go by Anna, I don’t go by Anna Bell, but I am a marketer. I hate to admit that I’ve been a marketer for almost two decades now, so it’s been a while. I have worked in all different companies. I started at Wrigley chewing gum back in the Midwest. I worked at SC Johnson and in the high-end luxury wine business. I have been here in California working for E&J Gallo Winery. For the last few years, I have been the vice president of marketing for Barefoot, plus a couple more wine brands, things like Apothic, Dark Horse, things you’ve heard before. It’s an exciting job, a wonderful industry to work for here locally in California. A lot of folks know the Gallo family. It’s a private company, so we get to be innovative and build brands. That’s what I love to do.

E&J Gallo has built a lot of brands. A lot of people don’t realize how many of the wines and the spirits and the things that they drank are E&J Gallo. The other thing that is interesting for those reading is one of the foundations of the Gallo family has always been incredible stewards of the environment and stewards of the land. They have some of the vineyards and places that they do store it. I can think of one in particular where their commitment was that they would return half the land to open wilderness and the other half they would use to grow grapes. They were early pioneers and that recognition of the importance of being environmental stewards and putting sustainability front and center as part of not only good business but smart.

Just a side note, I took us down a bit of a diversion there. The conversation that I want to happen, that what I framed is that founders don’t often have access to bigger brand marketers. Much of what founders are trying to do is grassroots scrappy or they’re very much at the mercy of the great agencies and boutique agencies and the freelancers that they bring forward. Now the world is different and building a brand and then connecting with your consumer is maybe more important than it’s ever been. Consumers are demanding more from their brands than they ever have. I’m going to take the moderator’s prerogative here and start with some of my own questions for you. In terms of thinking around that, as you think to build Barefoot, Dark Horse and Apothic, they’re pretty iconic brands now in this space. What are some of the pillars that you think are foundations that you feel are important to effective branding?

It’s an interesting question because it looks invisible to the outside world, but it is quite a lot of work to build and create a brand that sticks that consumers love. Foundationally, it always has to start with an insight and a point of view. What am I trying to solve for? What does the world not have? What is the problem that I have that I can’t find a solution for? That insight has to be there for a group of consumers. That group ideally is a large group of consumers. You don’t want to find a solution for a very small segment. You’re looking for something that could be as universal as possible. You need to start with that insight and then have a point of view. You’re not likely going to find an insight that hasn’t been thought of before.

Lots of things have been thought of, but what’s your perspective on that insight? If there’s a problem out there and it hasn’t been solved, do you have a way in that might unlock it for folks? Brands have to have both. They need to exist to solve or entertain or help. They need to do it in a way that ideally no other brand is doing or isn’t doing well or isn’t connecting with the right consumer in the right way. Having those two pieces, no matter what category I’ve ever been in, have been critical. Brands that don’t have it ultimately don’t have growth. You can push your way so far, but then it stops if you’re missing one of those two key ingredients. It’s fundamentals and you have to have it, you have to know what that is.

It begs an interesting follow-up to that and that is establishing or determining that point of view, especially for smaller emerging brands. They’re feeling around in the dark a little bit or they’re trying to assess or guess what that point of view is. Any words of wisdom or suggestions about how to ferret that out or to begin the process of thinking through? Where is it that I want to plant that flag and begin to stand for something?

With small business, especially with truly the entrepreneurial space, it’s got to be authentic. Your point of view has to, in a lot of cases, be your point of view as the founder or the owner, the person that came up with this insider problem. It has to reflect your values. It has to reflect what you yourself would feel proud to put on your own Instagram page or your own Facebook page. Normally most people, as they’re solving, especially early with early brands, early businesses because so often it is solving an insight or a problem they have for themselves. If you can do it from your own point of view, the consumers will feel that. They will respond to that because they trust that you yourself will put your name, equity, money behind it.

Searching out what’s true for you is a great place to start after that. Once you’ve figured that out, take a look around. Who is your competitive set and what are they doing? What’s their point of view on this problem? There might not be a direct competitor, but there are going to be people that are vying for the same dollar, vying for the same occasion, maybe the same space on the shelf if you’re a retail brand or the same eCommerce outlet if you’re selling direct to the consumer. What is their point of view? Is yours unique? Is it something special? Is it personal? Those are the types of places to start to hone in on it and find that centerpiece for who your brand can be.

The importance is it doesn’t need to be authentic. It does need to be something that’s different. It’s a bit of a beachhead. I’m going to give you a cheat here because I personally subscribed to this as being of high importance in marketing, but you’re completely allowed to call BS on this. What role does empathy play?

It plays a huge role, especially if you are not the consumer. This is one of those things that we see it all the time. People are trying to make a brand or a product work for a set of consumers that they might not know well. Very quickly, it’s obvious if you don’t have empathy for that consumer. You’ve either missed the cultural mark, the language. The real problem for them, the why behind it, that always comes from empathy. Understanding what that problem and insight is only happens if you understand that end-user, that end consumer. Quite frankly, if you’re selling through someone else, having empathy for your customer as much as your consumer. What does that retail or eCommerce entity need in order to get excited about your product? That’s important too. Empathy all around will make you a much stronger marketer, but more importantly, a better business.

Dan has a good question here and I know you’re likely guilty of this because I certainly am. As somebody who does this professionally, I’m sure to watch lots of other brands and look at lots of other brands and you go, “They’re doing a great job,” or “They’re missing the mark.” When the latter happens, when they’re missing the mark or they seem like they’re tone deaf, etc., what do you typically see are some of the foundational mistakes that brands are making?

Some of it is the brief. When you’re thinking about what is it that you want to say and who is it that you’re saying it to, are those things cohesive? If you’re solving for a specific consumer, needing the empathy to understand that consumer and be able to talk to them in their language with your tone of voice, that’s the brief. It doesn’t have to be going to an agency. It can be going to yourself as you’re shooting your own Instagram shot or anything else, but am I responding to the who, the what, the how, and the why cohesively enough that someone else can understand it?

My simple trick is finding someone in the community that represents your consumer and ask them before you post anything. I promise you, they will give you an honest answer and you’ll see something you didn’t see in your own work or in your own messaging. It’s very obvious to them and it might be a complete blindside to you. Always test, even if testing looks like one person in the community that happens to be a follower on LinkedIn or Instagram or a shopper as you’re walking down the aisle at one of the local grocery stores, “Look at this.” I have been guilty of doing that before and it’s helpful.

My kids, when they were younger, would hate to go grocery shopping. In every other aspect of life, I’d be pretty introverted, but I go to the grocery store and I would randomly walk up to people and say, “Why did you choose that?” My good friend, Jenny, here has an interesting question that I’m sure is salient to so many of the readers. Is the brand winner ultimately always the brand with the most funding, the biggest bank?

No, not at all. Pre-1980, yes, for different reasons. Quite honestly, marketing has been democratized in the last 10 to 12 years and it has a lot to do with the internet and social media. It costs $10 to start targeting your audience on social media and start testing your brand and your product. That used to cost $100,000. You needed a billboard, you needed a newspaper ad, whatever that is. It doesn’t cost that anymore. Honestly, I think that’s how some of the big brands have gotten themselves in trouble, they’re realizing how democratized marketing is. Some smaller brands are doing a tremendous job focusing on their consumer, targeting them directly, not worrying about the old tactics and thinking about that consumer where he or she is and communicating to them directly. That is extraordinarily powerful. I will be honest, sometimes too much funding is a problem because you end up making choices that are easy instead of right.

Sometimes too much funding is almost poisonous because you get confused by what’s interesting versus what’s important. You sometimes spend on things that make you feel good because of their activity, but not necessarily valuable. Farrah asked a question and I find this interesting to me. “It’s so often now that brands put most of their effort towards social media or influencer marketing at the expense of doing some of the old school stuff, like email outreach and more traditional. Is that smart? Is that well-placed to put all of your efforts there or are there some lower hanging fruit or some other things that should be part B, other arrows in the quiver, so to speak?”

I don’t think it’s smart to put all your eggs in the social media basket. It’s a good basket. It’s a nice basket for testing. Once you have a good message to broadcast that out. There are somewhat I would call old-school tactics maybe done in a new way that can help PR. The oldest tactic in the world, especially for a small startup brand with a story is highly effective. If you think about the 24-hour news cycle, people need content and content that they’re interested in. It’s entertaining. It’s something unique. It’s a personal story, a new brand that solves a problem that lots of people have. It feels intimidating, but every editor for every magazine, newspaper, local news channel, it’s pretty easy to get the name of that person and sometimes the email and phone number.

Give them a call, drop them an email, send them a gift box with your card attached to it and say, “I’d love to tell you a story.” You’ll get 90% noes, but you get 1, 2 or 3 people that start telling your story for you for basically free. That’s a nice old school tactic and it works, especially in a place where you have a good story to tell. You’re going to stand out in that way. I do think things like that are still very relevant, and in some cases, a little bit easier than it used to be when there were five news channels and six newspapers. That was harder to do back then. It’s easier now.

You have to be thinking about some of those tactics. Thinking about that ultimate final point of purchase, not so sexy. It’s not as sexy as social media but just as important. Is your brand and your product showing up when someone’s ready to click in the right way? Have you thought about that customer service? What does it look like after they’ve clipped and purchased? Are you giving them a reason to tell their friends and family? The things like that are still very relevant, and then finally content. There’s social media content and then there’s content in terms of YouTube and other places that for most people is now traditional. A lot of people aren’t watching TV on a stream with a cable box anymore. YouTube is traditional. Create content, create entertainment, create stories and information, make something people want to watch and they’ll watch it.

Thinking about what you’re saying about YouTube, it is such a huge change. When I started my career, to try to get on TV, to try to build a budget, to do one 30-second spot. Now, to your point about democratization, any brand has the ability to be on TV because our TVs are on our phones. They’re on their iPads, they’re streaming in our living rooms. There’s no barrier. I say this all the time. The editors and people who are content producers, they’re desperate for content. They need content. If people will take my content and use it, you know that desperation is there. You’re absolutely right.

I’ve become a bigger fan of PR because I do think it’s highly effective, especially because it can be much more curated than it used to be. PR in the past was a broad brush and now it can be very nuanced. There are publications both online and still physical that reach targeted audiences and give you good opportunities. Even a simple one is guest blogging posts. There are bloggers who’d love a day off or a week off. If we do something that speaks to their audience and it’s a great way to do it, all you have to do is reach out to the bloggers that you respect and watch and do it. Jenny has another question that I’m going to jump to because it’s in line with what we were talking about. “Any thoughts on the resurgence of direct mail marketing?” I’ll add the second caveat or direct email marketing as well, which I see making a comeback.

I’m not a huge fan of direct mail marketing, but that’s also because I’m a little bit of an environmentalist and I hate the amount of paper that shows up. I personally haven’t seen a whole lot of success in recent years at all from that, but direct email marketing has made a resurgence. I do think that people are going into their inboxes, clicking on the newsletters. When you have the right content, when you have something to offer, make it enticing. Don’t just send them a newsletter about yourself. It will be deleted, and you will get unsubscribed. Send them a newsletter that has an offer, that has a story to tell. Something shareable, something interesting to read, a guest blogger or a guest, anything is helpful. Free recipe if you’re a food company or things like that. You’ve got to give them a reason to open the email. We have seen across the marketing universe, regardless of brand, people are still on email. A lot of folks thought that was going to go away, but it’s still here.

The other thing that is a corollary to that is communities. One of the nice things about Facebook communities is it’s a little bit like an email newsletter, except that now you’re talking back and forth with the group. Maybe the group can start talking to each other with your brand being at the center as a facilitator. There are different roles for you or your business to play. Facebook communities have become interesting. I’m watching them a lot personally to think about how do we use them both to market to get that content, to share stories, use cases, UGC, User Generated Content. It’s interesting, it’s a fast, good way to have that consumer relationship that you’re looking for when you’re doing email or other outreach with direct mail.

We did an episode a while back with a guy by the name of Jono Bacon who talks about the power of community. He has written two books. One is The Art of Community and the other one is People Powered. He speaks to that same thing and that’s what you want. Part of branding is a sense of belonging to something itself. Identity are the brands that we use and especially those that are tied to lifestyle. I would think Barefoot, for example, would be as very much a part of self-identity and what you do. Communities can be a great source of that. He had spoken and you might find this interesting as well. I spoke to the fact that the best brands basically build three distinct types of community. Their consumer community, their community, the champions and their community of collaborators.

For anyone who hasn’t read the episode, you need to read it. He’s an entertaining guy. He’s British. He has the British quirky humor and is brilliant. I invited him after reading both of his books and hearing him speak once. That was great. Another question here and this is timely because it’s something I wrote a piece on. I feel like it’s often overlooked and now so more than ever, it’s critical. It’s discovery. On shelf discovery for brick and mortar and/or on digital platform discovery and trial. Any thoughts or best practices around how you can generate that or do a more effective job off of that?

It’s tough and it’s getting tougher. This is a little bit of the fundamentals of your four Ps for anyone who has an MBA right or not but seeing the framework. What’s your product, what’s your price promotion in place? While it’s a very old concept, still one that breaks it down to say, “Do I have the right product in the right place at the right price, telling the consumer something of use or information or entertainment? Am I standing out in that way? Your label does matter. Your packaging format does matter quite a bit because I don’t know any category anymore that doesn’t have 3, 5, 10 competitors on that shelf next to you and you’ve got to stand out and be priced competitively. Thinking about all four of those key levers for marketing in the store still holds true.

The one that’s not in there that we talk a lot about because wine is a complex category is also engaging the actual retailer. Who are the people in the store that might provide a recommendation for your product as someone’s walking through with their grocery cart, looking at a shelf and going, “What do you think? Which one do I pick?” You want to engage the folks in the store. Have that personal relationship with the retailer. Regardless of what type of retail environment you’re in, they’re always going to see value in that if you provide them with value. Give them something that’s useful, provide them something interesting to say about your brand, give them some margin. Whatever you can do, that helps. I don’t know if I would put a P next to it. I had to come up with a good P for that fifth one, but the actual person. There you go. The person is a nice new one that is hard. It’s hard to do as you get bigger. You have to be thinking about that.

I’ll give you a couple of case studies to speak explicitly to that because I think you’re absolutely right. First of all, let’s talk about brick and mortar retail. The average retail grocery store has somewhere between 100 and 150 employees. Shockingly, those employees tend to shop there. They shop on their breaks for whatever they’re going to eat often, but also on their way home. That’s where they get their food. You’ve got 150 consumers in that store that are there five days a week, that if you built a relationship with that, if you did that in every store you had, that’s not a bad better base business.

We did that with a brand, and we put together a campaign where we did employ frontline worker coupons with a handwritten note to every store director in the chain nationally. We gave them 150 coupons to give to each of their employees or a free item would thank them for being on the front lines and for being there in this moment. First of all, it built an amazing amount of goodwill, but it also had a huge number of redemptions. We tracked 90 days pre and 90-day post philosophy numbers. We saw significant philosophy increases because of two things. They started buying the product themselves and they became in-store ambassadors. You’re right. Thinking those kinds of things and leveraging those out of the box outreaches, they’re force multipliers. They’re cool ways to do things

That’s something the big brands can do. They’re using a sales force or a distributor network or something else. It’s a competitive advantage if you can pull that stuff off. It’s a great example.

The advantage of a small brand is nimbleness, to put it more bluntly. The ability to try shit and it doesn’t always have to work. You don’t need to have twelve people around a table and high agreement and building consensus. Another question that Lisa has here is, “If you could point to one mistake that you see early brands make, what would it be?” That’s pretty open.

One too big. To me, I get it. You’re trying to get that revenue. You need some profit, and you’ve got to get cashflow. At the same time, if you don’t have it honed in, if you don’t know your insight, you don’t have your equity quite right yet, maybe you haven’t gotten that consumer empathy quite right and you start to expand, it’s hard to change it. It’s fixing the engine while you’re flying. It’s hard to get that engine and then fly. It’s easy to say when you’re not in that stage, but important to have that patience to get it right. Test small. You can do a lot of stuff and get shit wrong in the beginning. Do that stuff because you don’t want to do that on a big scale. You’re going to lose a lot of money or end up worse.

I want full disclosure here. We did not rehearse that answer, but for those who are reading, this is exactly what we talk about all the time. You have to be disciplined, that growth for the sake of growth, trying to speed or accelerate too quickly is often the single biggest contributor to a brand’s long-term failure. You don’t learn the lessons in a small enough chunk to, one, react to them and two, where they don’t become existential threats to the business. You don’t want to be wrong in 10,000 stores. It’s much better to be wrong in ten. This is a cool question, “Of the brands you’ve been involved in building, what was one of your biggest surprise hits and why?”

I’ll give you one. This goes way back, but it’s one of my favorite stories because it was so fun. Early days as a marketer, so it’s a long time ago, I was a lot younger and less wrinkles. I worked at Wrigley and I was working at Wrigley in the UK. We were in England and they had a brand that had been established before I was in marketing called Airwaves. For anyone who’s international, you might know this brand. Back then, it had launched before I got there and was successful like a menthol eucalyptus gum. Think Halls in gum format and it was marketed that way. It was marketed to people. The UK is pretty wet and cold, so was Germany.

There were lots of places where this is a super product and it had done a good job and then plateaued and stopped growing. Of course, that’s when I got the job. They said, “Here you go, new ABM. Why don’t you see what you can do with this thing? It’s going downhill.” I went out and we had no budget. This hopefully will relate to folks that are reading. We had no budget for this thing because it had plateaued. It was starting to fall off. It was not a priority brand anymore. We went out to do some research simply to see why is it falling off? We were talking to a lot of folks in the target audience who were at the time, a little bit older than the average gum chewer. Gum chewers on average are teenagers and younger.

This was targeted to a little bit older consumer. They’re like, “No, it’s good. I still like it, but I like my teeth. I don’t want to be chewing gum anymore.” You got to this place where you thought, “We’ve aged out our consumer.” The research person said, “Let’s get a couple of teenagers in. It’s a gum product. Let’s see if they’ve ever heard of it.” That was the brief. We got six teenage boys in the room and they said, “Have you heard of it?” They said, “It’s my favorite gum.” We had this moment of, “Tell me more.” They said, “You can’t ignore it. You put it in your mouth and stuff. It’s super strong. It wakes me up in the morning. I get to school, I’m on it because otherwise, I’m super groggy,” and all this other stuff.

This super powerful thing, it became an interesting insight that we thought was completely different. It had nothing to do with cold and flu. It’s cold and wet outside. This thing wakes you up the second you chew it. It was a cool insight. We overnight decided Airwaves was an energy gum instead of as something else. We didn’t even change the package that much because it was a fun and quirky package. We started going to X Games. We started doing all this stuff and it was a complete hockey stick in terms of velocity because we started to target teenage boys instead of middle-aged men and women. It’s night and day difference.

As you’re saying that I had this memory of an old gum, I don’t even know if it’s still on the market, but Quench, the product that you put in. Turning the conversation a little bit to the more mundane, which is around things like budget and team and so forth. This is a question from Donna, “I’m looking to make my first marketing hire. What role should I look for first?”

Always start with leadership. Unless you plan to be the leader, you’ve got to put somebody in place that’s going to give you the vision and the track. I always start with leadership. They set the culture, they’ll set the expectations, they’ll provide the learning you need for your organization. While it’s probably a little bit more expensive up front, you’re going to get the payback a lot faster than if you start with someone that’s super junior. That’s good for execution, but not going to push you forward. Marketing is expensive and you want to be able to make good, strategic choices and to do that. You want to bring someone in that has enough expertise to lead that group and push you forward. Otherwise, why hire? If you’re looking for project work, hire a project manager. You want to get somebody that’s in leadership.

Emily has a good question that is related to that. I agree, by the way. As an early brand too, sometimes you’re going to bring people on that need to grow into that. That’s one of the benefits that an early brand can offer. It’s that you can bring somebody into the leadership role that wouldn’t have access to that role yet in a bigger company. Both the brand and the person can grow together if there’s that upside. Emily has an interesting question and it’s around a similar thing and that is, “I’m thinking about making a marketing hire. Should I hire somebody who is pretty junior or pretty green or should I consider hiring a fractional person to do that who is more senior and has more experience?”

It’s hard to answer without knowing the real business situation. Depending on what you need, probably a fractional leader might be better than a doer. You can hire doers. They don’t need to have the expertise or the specialty, it’s teachable at that level. Fractional marketing expertise probably is going to pay off in the long run for you, even if it’s 2, 3 hours a week, 4 or 5 hours a week to get some thinking, some work, some foundation and platform would payout.

Jessica has a question around agencies and that question is, “I’ve had some agency disasters and I fired them and not work. How do I do a better job of setting expectations or picking the right ones?”

The number one thing I would tell you about an agency is it’s the people. It’s not the brand, it’s not the name, you’re hiring a specific subset of people when you’re hiring an agency to start thinking from that perspective. A lot of people think about hiring a big name agency, but if you’re going to get the newest people there or the people that can’t work on big brands, then did you get what you paid for with a big name and agency? Start from the perspective of, you’re hiring specific people. You’re looking for somebody that understands what you’re trying to do, understands your vision and is interested in your business model. Ideally has expertise, but if not smart enough to understand what you’re trying to do is good. Shares your value system.

You want an agency that you feel comfortable with because the thing that I tell every agency that starts any project for me is if you’re not scaring me, why am I paying the outside world to do something for me? I can get unscary ideas inside. Your job is to bring me something unique, special and different that I would pay extra for. Think about the ability to say that to somebody. You’ve got to have the right value system and partnership with them and cultural fit. The other part of it is what work do you want? Most agencies over time, they grow around their clients, but they started somewhere.

They started with something that they’re good at. It might be ex-creative directors from somewhere or people who were awesome at digital and wanted to start their own thing. There is not a good one size fiddle agency or at least I’ve never been able to find one. You have to hire people for what they’re good at and what you need. Don’t be sold on something that you don’t need. Buy what you need. Get the right people to do it, have a cultural fluency and be super honest with them. You’re paying them to do a job, but if they’re not meeting your expectations, they need to know that. You’ve got to give them that feedback.

To add on to that last point, one of the things that I feel like is an important best practice is just that. It’s to sit down and say, “This is where we expect to be. This is what we expect to invest to get there. Can you do it? Is that reasonable? Also, what should I expect from you in terms of interaction and what should you expect from me?” Have that conversation upfront and talk about how you’re going to hold each other accountable. As an early brand, you can’t afford to make these mistakes. If you do make one, you can’t afford for it to last too long. You have that margin for error. The more time you take and clarifying the deliverables, the expectations and making sure that you’re both defining success the same way and you see the path to that success the same way is so important.

It is a true relationship with an agency, and you have to treat it like a marriage. You’ve got real money on the line. If you can get them to get some skin in the game, that makes it better. Form a partnership, form a marriage with them that you feel is open to the real conversation.

This question is from anonymous, but I’m going to guess it may have come from my wingman since he is the packaging guru. “E&J Gallo puts a lot of effort and a lot of attention on its packaging and on it the way a product looks on the shelf. What have you learned or what can you share about the importance of that and what makes for good packaging?”

Packaging is critical, even more so than any other time in history. I don’t know how many SKUs are in a grocery store but it’s a lot. Each category has a lot. Packaging matters. That’s why we do put a lot of time and effort into it. Best practices, whether it’s in wine or chewing gum or hair care products that worked in that space as well. There are a couple of things. Communicate. What is the one thing that the consumer needs to know about your product? Make sure that it’s easy to read, easy to see, easy to understand. Pictures go a long way. If you have a product that has fruit in it, put a fruit on it. It might seem obvious, but you would be surprised how many people don’t want to do that because it feels too obvious.

Your packaging needs to communicate what’s inside that pack. People are voting with their dollars and they need to know what they’re going to get. The other part, which is a little bit more of a recent thing, but again, it depends on what product you’re in. Make it interesting to look at digitally. You’re going to spend a lot of time with your consumers on social media, but more importantly, you want your consumer to show them in action with your product digitally. Think about is it Instagramable? Is it something that someone on TikTok could see what that product is? That matters now more than it ever did before. Last but not least, this isn’t the visual part of it, but make it functional. Functionality matters. If the top doesn’t open or the thing always spills out or it’s a weird thing that won’t fit in my pantry, I’m not going to buy it again, even if I bought it the first time.

Functionality and size, shape, format, the more you can do ergonomically. Someone told me a story once. It’s a lip gloss product called EOS. They were telling me a story that that whole product started with the idea of women lose stuff in their purses all the time. How do I create a package or a product that’s going to be stick your hand in a purse, pull it out, easy like that? They created this ball for lip gloss, which had never been done before. They were thinking about that packaging from a user perspective. There’s a name for it. It’s slipping from my head right now. IDEO does that user experience for the package. That stuff matters because there are lots of choices. Consumers have lots of choices.

I thought for the longest time, by the way, that I may have had a fourth kid lost in my wife’s purse for years. The things that were lost in there were always little things. It boggled my mind. It’s funny you mentioned one of the things around a function in the actual package form factor is so important. The other thing to think that gets back to empathy is what is that going to mean on the shelf for the retailer? Packaging is also important. All the way down to how many units in a case and thinking about all the people who interact with it is important. The other one that opened my eyes to, which is ironic, what I’m about to say, as it relates nothing with the eyes, is haptics.

The touch aspect of packaging is awesome. Of course, for us in the natural product space, and you mentioned before, but as the sustainability of that packaging, what’s the life cycle of it. I’m going to take moderator’s prerogative again because this is something that I see and I’ll editorialize. You already know where my bent is, but I’m curious as to yours. I find that one of the things that I’m seeing more and more of is this cacophony of messaging on packaging. Maybe it comes back to what we opened up with lack of point of view because you stand for far too many things on the package. You’re gluten-free, you’re paleo-friendly, you’re keto-friendly or you’re organic, you’re all of these things. Not just claims, but all kinds of messaging that if I’m a consumer looking at that packaging, I don’t know what you stand for. Talk to me a bit about message hierarchy, how you look at it yourselves, how you know yourself, and how the company as a whole does.

I start with the fact that three seconds is by far the most amount of time you’re going to get that attention.

We always say three seconds, 3 feet.

That’s assuming best case scenario without two kids in the cart and somebody yelling for the toy and grabbing the chocolate cereal. Best case scenario is three seconds. As you think about that, that’s why I’m obviously in same bias as you are. Single-minded messaging. You need to have a point of view, whatever that is. I’m 70 calories. I’m gluten-free, I’m whatever. Better be differentiated from your competitive set, either that you’re cheaper, better, more interesting way to get to that claim, but something has to be an advantage on whichever single point of view you’re going to take. You can’t be gluten-free anymore. What about that? Gluten-free is interesting for your product in your category. That’s worth stating, and then your brand.

At the end of the day, you do not want to be generic if you’re a branded good. The equity is the part that gives you that price power in the store. I am a very firm believer in balancing and making sure your brand is memorable and stands out and your single-minded message is obvious and interesting in that amount of time. That’s it. That’s all you get. I’m walking down the aisle, my kid is grabbing the stuff, I look over. “That’s cute.” The visual aesthetic. “That’s the brand I’ve heard about. I saw it on social media. My girlfriend told me about it. That’s interesting. It’s made with,” I don’t know what a good gluten-free claim. I shouldn’t have gone down that path, but whatever that claim is, got it. It’s in my basket and I’m onto the next thing.

I’ll give a shout out. How about made with Otto’s natural cassava flour? You can thank me later. I couldn’t agree more on that. One of the things that drives me crazy too is when I see brands waste valuable packaging real estate with what I call table stakes. What I see things like, “Tastes great.” It doesn’t mean nobody else is putting on their package, “Tastes like shit.” Maybe if you did, people would pick it up and give it to their least favorite friend. You need to pick what it is that you can stand for and differentiate and own it. Those other things drive them to your website. Put some of it in the back of package, use icons on the back, but keep that front messaging clear and simple.

Someone once related to me earlier in my career, it’s like dating. You don’t want to show them your whole you on that first date. Packaging in the store is a little bit that first date. Show the best parts of you. Get that first conversation going. You can share the rest of it later.

I’ve been trying to meter it out solely over 35 years because I’m still fearful that if my wife ever realized what she signed up for, she’d run for the hills. This is an interesting question too. It relates directly to the packaging conversation and that is the importance of packaging it on eCommerce and how you think of packaging differently when it’s not anchored against competition on the shelf. Any thoughts or recommendations around how to think about packaging for a digitally native brand or a brand that maybe lives in both places, but differentiates its eCommerce offer?

This is to the point about get them hooked in the store, but then give them more information on eCommerce line. I’m always amazed when brands don’t take advantage of the various ways they can talk about their product in eCommerce. They’ll show the product shot. Maybe they’ll show the back label and that’s it. In eCommerce, if you look at Amazon as an example, you have 6, 7, 8 squares that you can provide specific information. This is where you can hone in. If you’re 50 calories and that’s a big deal in your category, make that one of the boxes big. When I’m looking at that Amazon page and I see your beautiful packaging and it aesthetically looks good digitally, which means good color, clarity, good photography. Don’t skimp on photography. People will think that you skimped on other places.

Photograph well in the right context. Use those squares. You can even shoot yourself doing video using the product in one of those squares. That’s the thing about eCommerce where your single-minded message has to still be front and center. Now they’re reading recommendations. They’re thinking about, “Why would I pick this for something else?” They’re on the page a little bit longer. Give them something to stay on that page and learn more about you, your brand, and your product there. That’s important, but I do think the basics unpackaging. Things on digital look different. Test, shoot your product, put it on the website. Does it look good? Is it weird? Is the shape wrong? Does it work on mobile? All that stuff matters.

The other thing that I’ll add to that is eCommerce offers you something unique and that is you’re being invited in somebody’s home for the unboxing. You can enhance your brand story and the connection through your unboxing experience for that consumer. If you’re a luxury brand, you want to make sure the product doesn’t show up in bubble wrap. You need to make sure that that whole experience is aligned with what your brand promises, but also you have a great opportunity. It’s a form of permission marketing. You’re now in their home and you can speak to them in a different way and offer a resource, whether it’s open the lid on a box and there’s a great recipe card with cool pictures. It could be coupons to give to their friends, which we talked about. We miss often the opportunity to activate that tribal. Everyone likes to be in the know, the cool kid, and being able to tell people. All of those kinds of experiences exist.

I would look at eCommerce the way I look at every channel. They’re unique. They have different and special opportunities than something else. A grocery store versus the convenience store. You’ve got to think about those differently too. As you start getting comfortable with thinking about different channels and how the consumer and shoppers are behaving in those channels, reflect that in the package, in the content, in what you’re trying to tell them in that moment. If you’ve got a product in a convenience store, you can open it now and eat it right now. It’s important. Versus in the grocery store, it’s for prep later or to sit in your pantry for a month. It’s a different place.

When you and I had the conversation, you have a unique perspective because you’re also a founder of a small brand and doing some things as and you’d have that experience. It’s a social impact venture, but overall high level, what I’ve tried to do in these episodes is make sure that when people leave, they’re done with however they’re reading it. Whether it’s out on a hike or whether my velvety voice is what’s putting them to sleep, whatever it is, they walk away with some things that they can use that are actionable. I’m totally putting you on the spot here. I get it. Some thoughts, things that you would love to leave with them as nuggets of wisdom?

We talked about some of this, but marketing is about finding the right people who are going to fall in love with what you’re doing. If you can be in love with what you’re doing, it’s going to show. Much of the brand-building world starts with a founder who has a very personal and real place in the marketplace with their brand. Trying to communicate, do goods, sell something that’s going to be useful and informative. The more that you can make that show, the more successful you’re going to be. There are so many examples, especially in the last ten years in the food industry that look like that, that looked like founders who fought back against preservatives or fake ingredients, things like that.

You saw the founder and you saw that passion and you wanted to be a part of that because it meant something to you. Especially for small startup companies, that’s the biggest advantage. The bigger you get, the more corporate you feel, the harder it is to be that heartfelt, true person behind the thing. The more you can cling on to that, the more you can instill that as you grow in your employees that they have the same passion you do, the longer-term success you’re going to have. Passion, authenticity, story and a point of view.

By the way, you blew the bar off its rail. That’s one of the things that, I’m being completely objective here, looking at a gal that is unique to Gallo because it’s a very mature family business. It’s a relatively conservative business that within its walls has all these smaller entrepreneurial brands because it isn’t the amalgamation of all these entrepreneurial brands. That room to be that way is unique. I’m sure that you feel about that as well.

It’s why I’m still here years later and still excited. That passion for the industry and that interest in making sure that the employees are engaged. It goes so far to your point in, especially an older company like that to still have that energy. You can feel it and hopefully, you can taste it in the wine.

It begs a quick question and that is this thinking again about one of the pillars that as an observer of E&J Gallo is a community of alcohol and charitable giving. How important is that in brand building? It should be altruistic obviously, but there’s also a brand-building component to being a good community member.

Personal experience with Barefoot, it’s part of our brand values. Part of what the brand was founded on well before many years ago is about the community and being a steward and a community member that embraces helping out and having that love for the community. For brands where it is part of their DNA, go forth, go conquer. It can be a brand-building exercise, but only if it’s authentic. The thing that I quite frankly hate to see is when a brand is doing something “altruistic” for commercial reasons. It feels gross.

You’ve got to seem so disingenuous.

People know it. You’re not doing a good job. It’s not who you are. Don’t go there. There are so many other marketing tactics these days, but it can be good if it is part of the values, part of the purpose, part of who you are as a founder. It’s a great tactic. The most important thing I’d tell you is do it for a while before you talk about it because that is going to feel commercial.

I was going to say that to me and my experiences is when it works is when you don’t talk about it when you do it and it talks about itself. It creates its own awareness, not when it’s over. It’s organic. I’m going to put you on the spot. What is your favorite Gallo wine?

I’m not answering that one.

It’s like asking who your favorite kid is. I know you wouldn’t do it. I thought I would try to trick you into it. I know one thing that I’m going to miss this year is the Dark Horse Party that’s usually out of the barn. I have the advantage. We live in the same town. When you live close to Gallo headquarters and you kiss up to the right people, you get invited to some cool opportunity events and opportunities to try some amazing wine. Thank you so much for doing this. This was exactly as cool as I hoped it would be. The information you’ve shared and the insights are going to be well received by the readers. I’m sure it was for those who attended the taping. I’ll probably reach out again and maybe we’ll do another episode and dive a bit deeper.

I appreciate it. This is super fun for me. I get to talk about what I do. Who doesn’t love to do that? Thank you. I hope I helped. I’d be more than happy to do it again. This was a lot of fun.

Thank you so much.

Important Links

• E&J Gallo Winery

• Jono Bacon – previous episode

• The Art of Community 

• People Powered

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