The Most Game-Changing Rebrand of 2024 | Shani Seidman, Kayco

On this episode, we’re joined by Shani Seidman, CMO at Kayco, the family-owned brand house behind Manischewitz, Kedem, Gefen, Heaven & Earth, Tuscanini and more. 

Shani takes us inside the Manischewitz rebrand: why it couldn’t be “just a facelift,” how her team translated 130 years of equity into a modern, welcoming voice, and the very real mechanics of changing over hundreds of SKUs across thousands of doors. 

We dig into the frozen-and-deli push that’s helping Manischewitz become an everyday brand (not just a holiday brand), the packaging system choices, and the operational forecasting required to retire old packaging, sync printers, and hit a clean Passover reset. 

Shani also shares why “identity decisions” should be debated widely but art direction should be singular,  what to measure (and what to ignore) in the first 6–18 months (and beyond) post-rebrand.

—---------------

Episode Highlights:

💡 The real “why” behind the Manischewitz rebrand
🆕 New SKUs 
🗓️ Going from holidays to everyday
🧰 The tactical process of a rebrand
🏷️ Packaging changeover at scale
⚖️ Key decision points in a rebrand
🧑‍⚖️ Decision by committee: when it does / doesn’t make sense
🧪 Misleading data 
✅ Rebrand recommendations

—---------------

Table of Contents:

00:25:22 – Kayco overview
02:10:17 – Manischewitz rebrand – the “why”, it wasn’t just a “face lift”
04:50:14 – Manischewitz rebrand – new SKUs
08:35:08 – Manischewitz rebrand – becoming an everyday brand 
11:57:00 – Manischewitz rebrand – what the tactical process looked like
20:13:28 – Manischewitz rebrand – the rollout and packaging changeover at retail
20:13:28 – Manischewitz rebrand – the response from the media, etc.
24:53:14 – Manischewitz rebrand – key decision points
30:05:29 – Decision by committee, when it makes sense and when it doesn’t
32:51:07 – Measuring the impact of a rebrand
36:10:25 – Misleading data
37:51:28 – Recommendations and things to watch out for during a rebrand

—---------------

Links:

Kayco – https://www.kayco.com
Follow Shani on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/shani-seidman-profile/
Follow Adam on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/ 

For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out KitPrint.

Shout out to my friends over at Glimpse, the go-to partner for automating retail-related back-office operations and unlocking margin trapped in invalid fees and manual processes.

Are you in the market for a new flexible packaging partner? Check out HD Packaging. Third-generation, family-owned and built for the needs of category leaders like Newman’s Own and A Dozen Cousins. Faster launches, lower costs, and no artwork fees. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Shelf Help. Today we're speaking with Shawnee Seidman, who is the CEO, CMO, sorry, of Keiko, which is the leading kosher brand house in the U.S. brands like Manashevitz, Dirac Gardens, among others. And then prior to leading marketing for all of Keiko, Shawnee led marketing for the Manishevitz brand specifically, as well as another leading food distributor. So she definitely knows the space very well at a high level. Shawnee, just for the people that aren't that familiar with Keiko and all the brands under the portfolio, whatnot, maybe just give us super high level, just in terms of kind of origin story, how Keiko came to be, and then we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Adam. First of all, um thank you for having me on Shelf Help. Yeah, so um basically is the leading kosher distributor um in the United States, and it's a family-owned company. You know, I think that like many companies, starting wanting to create, wanted to serve the community, um, providing kosher food, starting with brands like TED M, which has been around since the 1950s, and just expanding since then. And you know, following the trajectory of Jewish culture, religious, like kosher Jewish culture, that has grown and the availability of kosher products have grown. So, you know, the brand, this, you know, the company has expanded and adding more brands to the portfolio. And manashevitz being one of those brands. I actually came from the world of Manashevitz. I was acquired with the family of brands that Manashevitz, the Manashevitz company owned. And I came over to Keiko in 19. I transitioned the business, and then, you know, I started running marketing for all of their kosher brands. And here I am in that role, six years later, living, you know, living the dream.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Living the dream. I love it. In 2024, you guys launched a pretty massive rebrand of Manashevit. So definitely love to start there. What led to that decision to go through that pretty massive rebrand in the first place?

SPEAKER_00 2:11

You know, when I came here, so I was got I came from the cup from the brand. So I was working with the brand when it was before, before the rebrand. And when I sat in this office, I remember speaking to the CEO and we're discussing the brand. What like what do you see? How do you see the brand? And I said, this brand needs a real shakeup. Um, not just the facelift that like that's cosmetic. It does it, it's more than that. We need like some soul searching. We need we need to go to a real agency, do real research, get to where the branded identity makes sense because it is a legacy brand. It means so much to so many people, which is why I feel very passionate about the brand, being a Jewish person who grew up with Jewish culture and traditions. I think that it deserves it. Like this brand doesn't deserve to just die. Um very slow. It would be very slow because it is a has very big brand awareness. It needs it. I think the audience is looking for it. And it started from my interview here, and we took it from there. We have the leadership here, is like absolutely, which is very important to get to have a leadership that believes in that too. And that's really the why. Why is that the brand deserves it and its audience deserves it, and it represents what it represents means so much to so many people.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Yeah, that's that makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

I I was just thinking like the awareness, the brand awareness. I mean, me like when you stop eight out um ten people on the street and say, Do you know what the brand amount of chapits is? Like eight out of ten, seven out of ten, depends where you are. In New York, nine out of ten, and maybe in Minnesota, six out of ten. They know what it is. The brand has awareness. It is, and it because of what it represents, it has awareness. It's also in categories that were declining, and you're we're fighting a category decline, but with such big brand awareness. So we were balancing opportunity and potential with reality. And it was like that's where the difference was. And we wanted to bring the reality up to the awareness. So that was like a big goal of ours.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Part of the rebrand, I think you guys also launched a series of new SKUs as well, assuming that my research is correct. Like, what were those new SKUs that you launched as part of the rebrand? And just curious what the thought process was behind each of those new products.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Yeah. Um, great, like it's a great insight that it came along with a bunch of the new SKUs. Again, it's not just a facelift. It was, okay, where are we now and where do we want to go? So right now we're offering very traditional products around the holiday time. So we're like kind of a holiday brand, and we're in like obviously we're in the kosher set. Where do we want to go? What do we want to provide? So we are we are like kind of a representation of Jewish culture through food. That's what we like the identity of the brand, right? So, okay, so that makes sense that we have these portfolio of the mopzah and the gefelta fish and macarons. Again, fighting a declining category just because of trends and how people are celebrating holidays and who's celebrating. So we wanted to trend, we wanted our new products to, we knew that we weren't gonna grow with existing. We're not gonna get more people to buy gefelic or matzah. We're gonna go get people to buy delicious kosher cuisine and who else to sell it? Who else has the authority to sell it? Manish evidence has the authority to sell it. So we're gonna come out with products that represent Jewish food culture in the best way. And we're also gonna do it in a format that's convenient. So we think back when we invented when the invention of like self-stable consulted fish was came out in the 1980s, 40s, you know, when like when food and production in general was scaled and industrialized. Um, that was innovation then, right? It used to be you had to prepare it for a day and get to go to the fishmonger and get fish. Now we did it for you. So that was an innovation in a format not seen before. So we wanted to replicate that. So something like a frozen ruglach that you par bake, you buy frozen and you bake off for 10 minutes in your oven, and you get like all of a sudden your home smells like a Jewish bakery. That is a new format for 2025 that we want to offer our consumers the same way we offered innovation 100 years ago. We're offering innovation in Jewish food now. Popco, we have a bake off bop that's the same thing. We actually have a strusel topping that you put on right before. Sinful, it's so delicious. Frozen kanishes we came out with. The frozen section really expanded because that is the format that people shop. People want the convenience of having it ready in your freezer. No one's gonna make a babka. If you're maybe if you're in New York, you can get a babka at a bakery, but not everywhere in America can you get a babka at a bakery. We also have frozen sala and lakas, um, hors d'oeuvres, again, on the frozen section. Because this is where again, it gets it out of the kosher aisle, right? We're not in the shelf stable kosher aisle, we're somewhere else in the store. So it gets our facing somewhere else in the store. And also it gets us out of the mentality of shelf-stable only, fresh. Because frozen, once you bake it, feels fresh. So we also came out with hot dogs, which is a New York style, like a very Jewish deli style food, refrigerated section, obviously not frozen, but still we're getting into deli-style foods because that's what every time you we just want to be, you think of Jewish food, we're gonna provide it for you. So that's where that's where the identity of these Jewish, these skews came from. Is it an iconic Jewish food or deli? Is it a grateful new format for our consumers? If that answer those questions, we're gonna, we're gonna provide it.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Yeah, that's uh those dots totally connect. Was part of the rebrand, and I'm just totally making some assumptions here, so you can tell me if I'm just way off base, but I imagine there's there was historically maybe a portion of the customer base of Manashevitz that maybe only really bought Manashevitz products around Jewish related holidays. Like they only think about, I they don't really think about it in their normal day-to-day grocery shopping, but they always think about it when they're buying stuff for Passover or whatnot. And was was maybe part of the rebrand to maybe shift, help try to shift like more of that part of the consumer base to shift their mindset where I'm they're not just thinking about it on those specific holidays, but it's something that every week they're going to the grocery store, they're thinking about managing that isn't something they want to always be making on a more regular basis.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Yeah, you got it. Like you hit the nail on the head for where like Passover is our Super Bowl. I there, guys, there's 50 other weeks a year we could sell products as opposed to just Passover. Like, obviously, we're we we're going to be spiked. Our sales and consumer behavior will still have holiday spikes like any other brand, but where we want to be an everyday brand, Shabbat happens once a week. You the hala that you want to bring to Shabbat happens once a week. And we the identity of the brand was for the culturally curious consumer, not just Jewish. So um, someone who's culturally curious and wants Matsubal soup will go to Man Shepard's and have it. Similarly, like I have with my family, my kids love Taco Tuesday. I don't have cultural ties to tacos. And um, as a very Ashkenazi Jewish family, but my kids love Taco Tuesday, and we are culturally curious, and we go and buy, we buy the ingredients and we have it. So why not Matzabal Monday? Why not having why not have a family have Matzabal Monday or you know, on Shabbat for a family who who wants to celebrate Shabbat once a week? So the idea of making it an everyday product, um, everyday brand is your spot on. Just like there's like this um resurgence of Jewish deli and bakery um happening, especially in the tri-state area where people are are, you know, Cat's Valley and things like that that are just like iconic. Um, we want to tap into that, not just because it's we're opportunistic, but because we have the right to own it. Um, because we've been serving our families have been serving it for years, and we've actually have a mozabal soup. And we actually have, you know, all these things that are just like we have a reason for being here. It happens, like you said, every day, every week. Um, when people um funny around like Thanksgiving time, when people complain, not complain, but they talk about this big Thanksgiving dinner is like, oh, I'm preparing it's so many dishes, it's so much family over, like there's so many courses. And we always joke, like in my like that's Shabbat every week. Literally, we Thanksgiving dinner is Shabbat every week, and we're just so used to it that like think the Thanksgiving dinner is like nothing for us. We actually have leftovers the next day on Shabbat. So, like it's part of our culture, like the family, the big meals, like it's not just done on holiday time. Um, and we invite anyone who wants to eat at our table, Jewish or not Jewish, to try our foods and eat with us, you know, dine with us.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

So once that decision was made internally, everyone aligned, okay, yes, we need to do this rebrand. What from there, what did the process look like and kind of the key steps involved as an example? It's like, okay, yes, we're deciding we're gonna do this. Let's go now find the right agency we want to gauge, and then you do some sort of discovery insights process. Then at some point you actually start, you know, shifting the visual identity, then you apply the packaging, then you have to go to production. Yeah, what did some of those kind of key steps involved in terms of actually going to the rebrand from beginning to end?

SPEAKER_00 12:54

Yeah, I mean, like you said, you definitely understand that process. Benefit of not being of a very corporate, I mean, we have we're very scaled. Obviously, our portfolio is very big, but our soul is not corporate, it's family-owned and it's entrepreneurship. So with the goal, the the beauty of that is that we're very lean in our decision making. It's wonderful. It's like me, the CEO, and a couple, we have some art directors that we just we know we want to get their input and stuff like that. But like we were able to make decisions together that felt right for the brand. I think that it was easier, the process I'll get into in a minute. But I think just in general, like the way we made decisions, I felt like it was we put our egos, it had nothing to do with our egos, it had to do in service of this brand. I think everyone knew that it's something bigger than us. And it wasn't like we're trying to build something that's that's like an extension of one person individually. It was like a representation of something much bigger than us. So when our we were making decisions, like it was in that service, and it felt like that. You know, it felt like let's say there was discrepancies, like when we're in for Jewish company and we're very telmunic in the way that we um have meetings sometimes, um, you know, for three people, four opinions. So like that happens a lot, but the discussions around it were, like I said, always in service of like the ultimate goal. When you operate like that, you come out with the outcome that we did. That we always wanted to make sure the soul was there and we were in the right direction. And the process, like you said, is you know, we decided um we were talking with JKR for a long time. They had pitched us something, a different, some other business. Uh and we felt like this was the right agency for this brand. They've done other JKR Jones Knowles Richie, the global agency. They've done other legacy brands like um the donuts and bush and they did impossible meet recently. They understand um what's at stake when you do take a legacy brand and a brand that actually has a lot of nostalgia. Um, and we felt like they were a good fit. They actually we felt like they also took to heart the meaning of the rebrand and how powerful it could be and how meaningful it could be. The way they assembled their team was very intentional. So when we were kind of discussing our key audience, they wanted to make sure they had representation of that audience in the group, like the designers who grew up Jewish in tradition, grew up who weren't Jewish who knew Manishabus, someone who didn't even know what that, you know, someone from Kansas that didn't know. Yeah, maybe I heard of it, like me, you know, the wine, maybe. Um, so we have this amalgamation of people that represented what the awareness of the brand in all levels were and what the attachment to the brand was. So that was very intentional on their part. Um, they brought in Lisa Smith, who is um she just like us amazing. Uh she brought the soul into the rebrand. Um, there was a point where we were like, I didn't feel the soul was in there. And we, you know, we pushed like it doesn't go with the outcome, it's always like there's a successful outcome. There's there's challenges along the way. There's never there's no such thing as something that's like not challenge. If it has if that's something good, there's there's gonna be obstacles. And there was a point where like I felt things were like flat, like we're missing the soul. And they brought Lisa in, and then from that moment it turned around. But before we even did visual identity, like you said, we did unpacking. We unpacked the brand. We did a lot of research on what the awareness is, what what the what the pe what the general perception of the brand is, where we want it to go, what the identity, what our tone of voice is, who we're representing, what our consumer is. We started with Jessica from Kansas, and then we reeled it in, realizing it's more Jessica from Long Island, like someone more Jewish adjacent, not necessarily Jewish, like just know, like had never met a Jewish person. Like we just wanted, we, we, we refined, we defined, and then we refined and then we defined again. Um, and that is all we built into their process. Like the process is keep refining until your brand has a very clear identity and audience and message. And then we walked in, we went and we went to the visuals. We had such, I don't know if I'm stealing questions from you, from your outline, but we had such a I'm like flying through. I'm flying through. It's fine. So we had such a history of visual inspiration from the brand itself. Like we did not have to go outside the brand itself for inspiration. Um, I always felt the brand was doing cool things all along. I don't have it with me because I'm not on my desk, but at my desk I have like all these old things from the 30s, 40s, 50s from the brand. I have this old cookbook I always pull out during meeting. And there's marketing tactics. They had meal planning in the 40s. I I'm just saying, like, uh, we're paying homage to a great brand who had great marketing minds all along, like partnering with Sammy Davis Jr. for the wine, like iconic. So it was just more of like making sure like we we were letting the legacy shine while also looking modern to the future. So when we were looking at the visual identity, we we saw orange obviously is a very equitable color. It's been a logo for decades. It is a little, it's warm, it's nostalgic, it has like a very 70s and 80s uh tone to it, like a CP, like you know, starched and and also represents. I joke, if you take all our food and you do like if you take a palette, color palette from it, you'll just get the color palette of the brand. Browns and oranges. So it it the representation of that was all there. So like it was an orange, and the the way, you know, we got a typographer, uh, typography artist to work on the logo, to add the little um uh again, a nod to like the Hebrew type face on the top of the A. Not like too distracting, but like tip of the hat. So, like all along the way, it was just looking back, like being proud of that legacy, while also saying we have something relevant to offer going forward. And then the the hard part that I mean, the whole process of of talking and refining and defining and the visual identity took like a year. And then um, and that was fun and fun and a little scary and fun, a little scary, but like uh ultimately like a good ride. And then like then the execution hits, and you're like, Oh my gosh, we have hundreds of products, several different manufacturers, printers, thousands of points of distribution. Our products are some people, some stores have inventory of old products, they still have two rebrands ago on their shelf, and you're like, What are you doing? The rollout was for that was crazy because I so I had a plot forecasting with our purchasing and procurement and our teams, and then I had to look at sales data on like how okay, the egg noodles we but we purchase millions of film at a time, and it takes six months for this to replenish and four months to this this cue to replenish. I mean, if you ever see those memes of like like people with like that's like the conspiracy theorists, like the thread behind them, like the red, you know, the strings and like trying to figure out. I knew I knew this because I I do head up the the you know, I had up marketing and part of it is labeling creative printing, all that. So I I understand that. I actually was like kind of ringing the bell early. Everyone's like, oh, we're just gonna re-roll it out, and it's gonna appear in shelves. And I'm like, no, ding, ding, ding, no. No. So the cascade. I'm like, this is cascading, and we have no control. So we as well, we need to understand that. Um at the same time, I realized that we have something then not a lot of other brands have. That we have a fresh start every Passover. Okay, so not so fresh. So sometimes people uh sorts of old inventory that's they they put up. Okay, fine. But for the most part, Passover sets, clean slate. And I'm like, this is a gift. First of all, it's a gift because every media outlet loves loves their token Passover story, and they always ask Manish Abits for one. So we'll we'll get what we'll have one for them. And it's a gift because that's it. We get to start new. And but at the same time that means we had to like literally change over 200 SKUs over. So I in thousands of occasions. Everywhere. So in order to maximal like maximize that, I so because JKR gave us like six master mechanicals and that was great. And then we had to blow them out to in thousands of iterations. So I have a designer here. He's amazing. His name is Boris. Shout out Boris together. Honestly, like I feel like we just shut ourselves in a room and just did it. I stopped listening to anyone's feedback at one point, which I love the you know, putting things up on the wall and seeing how it looks. And then we didn't have that luxury. I wish I did because our focus group was actually our first Passover. I did not do a focus group. I understood that I was gonna, we were gonna miss out on this. If we did that, we're gonna miss out on a whole year. Even the CEO's feedback, I just wait, I I was like, I'm like, you know what? You're gonna give me feedback once on the shelf. And that's very scary for me because you may, you know, like you may not like all the decisions being made, but it's the only way to get it all on the shelf. And we did it. And Passover 2024 happened, we made the announcement. The shelves were a like a spectrum of orange and brown, and it was all there. It was like our billboards, and we we rented to billboard space in the New York area, New York City, Tri-St area, New Jersey, turnpike. And the feedback was better. I couldn't, I literally could not have imagined a better um outcome, like in terms of the way media responded to it. Um, I think it was like a perfect storm of again media, a lot of pride cropping up around this time um with everything happening. Um, and people were just really excited for like a Jewish story that wasn't like heavy, you know, like food, tradition, you know. Um a 130-year-old brand re you know, rebranding, American brand, like the story like sold itself. I really, I really believe that. And my team was amazing. So that kind of was the process of like from when we'd started and to when it hit shelves. Again, I'm leaving out like a ton of crazy stuff that happened along the way, but total learning experience for everyone involved. But yeah, I think we did okay. Some mistakes, but mostly successes.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Were there any decision points going through the rebrand process, whether it was like new messaging or the new look of the packaging were decision points that were really contentious internally and that required a lot of debate at all?

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think like the execution part is where I was like, yeah, it's you know, don't get in our way if you want it done. For the strategic identity part, like I said, we can get really our discussions get very lively. I mentioned before they're all in service of the end goal, which is the brand. But there were definitely points, like I said, we pivoted from our core audience. That was a big discussion. Um, we like that was a big pivot. Like we reeled it in. We think that eventually everyone, like it'll be successful from Kantas. But we like we like that was a big decision to make. Our our hero products. What are our hero products? Those are really, those are round table, like, like, should it be the mozzabal soup? Should it be like is that is that the one that's crossing over outside the kosher? You know, those kind of discussions, identity. Also, are we we had this big discussion and we came are we a kosher brand or are we a Jewish brand? That at its core is a very big discussion.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Yeah, I imagine.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

And we so first of all, yes, we're both.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

A very Jewish answer is either or is yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Yeah, like, yeah, okay. But so we're both, we're always kosher, but that's not our identity. Um, our identity is Jewish, and that took some back and forth. So, you know, these kind of decisions at the the core of the brand, and it's also because we had a room full of it's like a microcosm of the audience. So we had a room full of perspectives that were very different, and it was really important to hear all of them. And again, this I think was unique to the Man of Show It's Free Brand, but I actually don't think it's re it's unique in any branding exercise. Having a microcosm of perspective in a room is very important. You're leading, everyone leads with their own biases. I grew up with my association with this brand is this. Or my association with this industry or product line is this. So you really need to gather, take into consideration different perspectives when you do, when you form a brand identity. And even if the answer is we appreciate this perspective, but that's not what this brand is, that is a very important decision to make early on. Because if you don't make those decisions early on as a brand, you will come across later making those decisions and not having the right people in the room or not having the brand, the strong brand identity to make these decisions of like who are we and who are we not? And they should definitely be discussions around it. So, like, so like just like here, so everywhere in life, right? Decisions around identity uh to be intentional. And when we set who how does this brand show up? What's the tone of voice? If you don't do it early, then you will mess up when you get to social media or if you're working with an influencer and you're not, they are amplifying your voice. But they say if you are not sure of your voice, then they can't amplify your voice for you. So those decisions have to have been early. They should not be led by one person with one perspective. So contentious, no. But spirited um and passionate, yes. And by the way, one of our brand identity personalities is spirited pad, is a spirited personality, like a spirited passion. Someone at Okay, a brand is also I have this, um, I have this way of comparing brands to people. It's I don't know if it's good or bad, but like a person is not one note. So like the brand doesn't have to be one note. We could show up in different spaces in different ways. Like we can be in social and be more playful, and we could be more serious and different, like just like a person has different facets, or even like a family. Like they have like the weird uncle and like the grandmother, and like brands have that, and they're multifaceted, but they again it has to fit this narrative that is cohesive. I have often heard about like writers' rooms, and I when they write about like characters, let's say on a TV show, a lot of times they have the question is like, would this character say that? Would this character do that? Like sometimes you're watching something and you're like, this is not, this is so weird. This character is like, this is so out of whack. So the brand is the same way. Would this brand show up here? Will this brand and you know it's always always in service of the audience, so you have to know your audience also. Um, so these discussions were always around like who's the audience, who's the brand. And like once you really get a real strong sense of that, it is so much easier. It also makes it, it just makes it so much easier for the the world at large or like to identify you.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Having having those spirited discussions internally, I think is is super important to your point. On the other side, it seems like more just really specifically in the kind of branding visual identity design side of things. It seems like sometimes, you know, decision by committees is often considered a less than ideal approach, also in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

Yeah, so there's a difference between that's vision. So I think that identity discussions should be diverse. The discussions around identity should be diverse. But once decided, you need someone with vision that sticks with it. So, like I said, when we when we like kind of locked ourselves in a room, obviously we just like worked really hard up here in this on our in the marketing floor. It was more that you need the vision to be very consistent. And if you keep getting feedback, and which is why I also blocked out feedback, this should this this should look like this. You know what, maybe we should add this. No, we're not adding, we're not changing, not because I'm rigid or I'm not holding it too precious. You have to learn when you have to be flexible, especially with different design pack sizes and things like that. You're like, you just need that flexibility. You can't always be in this one box, so to speak. Like we designed this on a box, and now this is uh fine. So there's that. Good designers understand that they get it. But the vision has to be singular. And I find that, yes, um, art direction in general. Like if I have a project, there's one art director on the team. And if it's not me, manushet is me. But if it's not me, unless someone asks me, especially the art director, I will definitely give feedback. But I know if there's a art director that's involved with something, my perspective on that will muddy. Um, and it's very hard, creative people, to like bring that in, but it's even harder when you're the when you're like steering the ship to make sure you have that vision and st and you stick with it because absolutely some things are a little subjective also. I have feedback. Oh, I didn't like the R I didn't like the orange. Some people when someone told me, I think you should use less uh orange. I'm like, okay. I'm not gonna know. Like we did sometimes, because it was like an intense. We did like walk away, but we did it strategically, not because someone in passing gave us that feedback. Oh, you know what you should do? So like those kind of comments. The committee is for discussion and for to get the vision right. And after that, the vision has to you have to be very clear on it.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

Yeah, that makes sense for sure. From a number standpoint, once you're getting ready to actually roll out this this your rebrand, what what were some of the the key metrics that you were focused on that you were gonna use to kind of gauge the success and impact of the rebrand?

SPEAKER_00 34:08

That is difficult because it wasn't imagined if it's in general, this specific brand is an uphill battle because of the trend. Like it's we not the not just for many shabbitz, or you know, for filter fish not just for many shabbits as a trend, you know, that can be declining. So you're you're up against a wave of declining categories. But all along our strategy was to redesign that, but not that that's not our focus. Our focus is on new and our hero products and how we're gonna cross over. And we always knew it wasn't. I'm not looking at the numbers of our existing portfolio to see if we made a difference. I'm actually making sure that we're at least we have some like some growth, you know, but at least like there is no decline. To me, that's an increase because you're fighting against something that's already declining. And you know what? Trends can change. I think we're seeing a resurgence of people having more saters. So you, I think, I think there is a world in where MATA MATA sales rise. I do, I really believe that. I believe the format can like there's so many ways to do it. I see a trend that's happening, um, but immediately our focus one is on new, our hero products, what our new consumer is gonna buy, not existing, our existing consumer will buy what our new consumer will buy. And that's our touch point and our metrics. And we're seeing successes in in our the product that we're releasing, like a hard thoughts. We're seeing, you know, our distribution, our points of distribution, we're seeing retailers take it, we're seeing getting a new um new new aisles of the supermarket. Those are our wins. We're gonna celebrate them. And we know it's a long game. I'm I feel very lucky that we all, you know, we're not short-sighted enough to know that um the first Passover is gonna make it or break it, you know, or even the second. I'm I appreciate that we all have it's been the brand's been around 130 years, we say it's been around 130 years. We can give it a couple years. We have the courtesy to give it a couple years. What I'm seeing now is like we have like a seat at the cool kids' table at lunch, you know, before the re-brand, like all of these big influencers would not even like we'd reach out to them and they'd be like, oh, I guess I guess I say I'll take your money. Yeah, it's just like don't know especially with the Manage Out's food truck that we were launched, they're reaching out to us. We are sought after, we are relevant. There's no numbers on that, right? I'm not there's no number right now, but the relevancy, the fact that people that Jewish influencers and then non-Jewish influencers are reaching out to us. I want to work with this brand because I see it as a growth brand. I I see that as a huge one.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

Are there any metrics that jump out that maybe are often focused on that are actually not that relevant and can maybe a bit of a straction and maybe create a bit of a store a distorted view in terms of the impact of a rebrand or some big initiative that a brand does in general, let's say yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

I mean, I would definitely say you need to wait. The scan, you have to getting sales data too soon is detrimental. I think we are obsessed with our rebrand as marketers because we live in through them and we're passionate people and we're creative people, and that's all we think about. But the average consumer doesn't even notice, or it takes them a year to notice. These things take time. It's interesting. I was at the fancy food show last year, I was there this year, this year. I got a lot of, oh, you I just saw you just rebranded. You know, it's been 18 months. But this is normal. This is first of all, so much noise. There's so much noise out there, especially like within the digital age, to get through, to expect to get through and have sales change in one season or even three or four seasons, I I really I feel like is um really detrimental to long-term growth. I think that the big thing is to be patient. And obviously in social media, the metrics are always changing because the targets, the algorithms always changing. I don't think you want to be just viral, and I don't think you need to just increase your followers. I think you have to have to have meaningful engagement. That to me, beyond looking at just numbers, comments, shares, like when people really engage is what's really more meaningful.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

Someone that's leading another brand, maybe you know, a bit behind you in terms of years of experience and all that they've done. They're saying, hey, we're about to embark on rebrand as well. And maybe two or three things that you'd recommend they should keep top of mind, or kind of use as their North Star and or andor the other side things to watch out for.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Okay. Brands. I mentioned it before, but brands need identity more than you think. Brands need like a story around it. People engage and relate. We're humans and we relate to stories. It's like the way to have real brand awareness that is somewhere. Don't I am guilty of this too? Sometimes I jump to what it looks like to the end. But also just my history and creative, the creative arts, like your brain just visualizes.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

You establish, take the time to establish your brand identity and take the time to be clear about it, who you are and who you're not. Like us on one side of it, it's really important. And again, it's okay to have discussions around it. It's okay to not be clear on day one. I think people think they need clarity, they need clarity. There's so much, there's so much thought and indecisive and indecisiveness that goes along with it. It's good, it's part of it. It means you're gonna have a meaningful outcome if you think about it and you have these like moments of are we this, are we that? Are we not? That's you need to, it's almost a struggle that we doubt what you are and what you're not. That's on one side of it. And the second thing I did is is know your audience. Not just like, okay, my audience is someone who buys this. Know your audience so well, you know what their daily, like day-to-day life looks like. Know your audience, like just study them. Is this your target audience? Why, who are they? What are they doing? What's their buying behavior? Why are they buying like this? You have to know your audience so well. This is psychology. My marketing is for psychology for sociopaths. Have you ever heard of that?

SPEAKER_01 41:01

I have not.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

It's I mean, not really, but sort of. But like, it's because we you have to understand who you are and you have to understand your audience. Like without these two things, you're just selling it's consumer, you're just like you're asking someone to consume something. So maybe you'll get in one sale, but you won't get a, you won't get you won't get a customer, or you won't get someone who is like dedicated to your brand, like a follower. So like you you want those meaningful return customers that that one day in 50 years will be this nostalgic for your brand. Like that's also I think like I wanted this brand to become a nostalgic brand. Like, how do I do that? You have to make an emotional attachment, and that's how you do it. So, like who you are and who your audience is. And then last thing is the your goal for the brand for both you and your audience. Like, you need to pay where we are now and what our goal is. Like where this is where the brand is now and what I want the goal is. So if you if those are your those are your north stars all the time, every decision you make will be is this us? Is this talking to the right audience? And is this going to where we want to go? If you have those two three things in mind, your goals in. Or maybe not, but at least you'll learn.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

Yeah, those are really helpful. What's the best place to follow along with uh with you? And then these days, what's the best place for people to follow along with Amanda Shepard's brand as well?

SPEAKER_00 42:22

Um, okay, so we're on our you know, our social platforms are on Instagram. I think that's our biggest, you know, we're growing our TikTok presence. I think that just being growing our audience and growing TikTok size in the same trajectory because we're just targeting those new audience. We're in both of those spaces. I personally am on LinkedIn. I share news about, you know, in the tr what we're doing in trade, what the brand's doing professionally, about me also. I think I also share things about other brands that we're working on because we take go as a portfolio brand that I manage. So I actually think that some people are naysay LinkedIn. I find if you that it's a space that can be very helpful and a nice, it's a nice place to go to share in industry insights. That's where I am professionally right now. Yeah, like I think you'll be seeing more. Go follow the food truck if you're in New York City or all around town. So that's where you can find us.

SPEAKER_01 43:23

Awesome. Perfect. Well, yeah, appreciate the time, Sean. It's been really helpful. Really appreciate you sharing the insights out of the rebrand. And um, yeah, appreciate the time. I think that's it. I mean, that's the thought.