Courtney Shane - Turning around Windex, Tollhouse, and Nesquik

On this episode, we’re joined by Courtney Shane, Founder & CEO of Challenger Brand Group.

Courtney led turnarounds for iconic brands like Windex, Tollhouse, and Windex and now brings big brand rigor to emerging, challenger brands.

We dig into how to think like a P&L-minded marketer, what she had to unlearn from “Big CPG,” the initiatives that change trajectories like nailing price-pack architecture, packaging design frameworks and storytelling strategies tailored to core stakeholder groups.

Courtney breaks down what belongs in a tight creative brief, the most common packaging mistakes she sees, and how to evaluate when you need a refresh versus a full rebrand. We also get tactical on “owning a color and designing for real store lighting.

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Episode Highlights:

🎯 From corporate turnarounds to challenger brand operator
🧠 What to unlearn from Big CPG when you’re scrappy
📊 Price Pack Architecture for early-stage brands
🗂️ The anatomy of a strong agency brief
📦 Packaging pitfalls that kill clarity at shelf
🎨 Why “owning a color” creates true brand blocking
💡 Small packaging tweaks that reliably lift velocity
🛒 How store lighting impacts design choices
🔁 Refresh vs. rebrand: how to decide
📖 Storytelling for consumers, retailers, investors, and employees
📈 Trends and challenger brands Courtney is watching

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Table of Contents:

00:00 - Intro
00:48 - The Challenger Brand Group
03:15 - Turning around Nesquik
06:22 - Turning around Windex
08:45 - (Un)learning from “Big CPG”
10:23 - Game-changing strategies and initiatives
11:59 - Pricing strategy
18:42 - What a well-rounded agency brief looks like
20:42 - Common packaging design pitfalls
24:00 - Owning a color
28:21 - Most and least impactful packaging tweaks
29:37 - Lighting environment and packaging design
31:14 - Packaging refresh vs full rebrand
33:35 - Storytelling
38:14 - Brand and trends Courtney is tracking

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Links:

Challenger Brand Group – https://www.challengerbrandgroup.com/
Follow Courtney on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtneyfshane/ 
Follow me 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_00 0:00

Welcome to Shelf Help. Today we're speaking with Courtney Shane, founder and CEO of Challenger Brand Group. After turning around big brands like Windex, Tollhouse, Nesquick, Courtney decided to build Challenger Brand Group to bring kind of big brand rigor to Challenger brands, bring fractional leadership, portfolio optimization, retail planning, fundraising support, among other things, I imagine. A lot of really great experience. So really excited to get into it. Courtney, first off, just for give us kind of quick lay of the land just in terms of the Challenger brand group, just as it pertains to kind of the origin story and kind of what led you to launch the firm, what a challenger brand is, since that's the name of the firm. And then yeah, maybe just highlight just kind of a few main areas where you helps help challenger brands.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Yeah, thanks for having me, Adam. Happy to get into it. So my origin story um I think kind of traces back to the fact that I'm a bit of a behavioral economics nerd. So things like thinking fast and slow, basically the science behind why people and how people make decisions. And to me, marketing and CPG is kind of the best business application of behavioral economics. So that's why I got into the space and I've loved it ever since. I've spent a lot of time, as you mentioned, with some big brands and I learned a lot of skills kind of foundationally, but eventually got to the point where I was really tired of the slow bureaucracy that comes with big CPG. And so I decided I wanted to bring that like foundational big brand building skill set to emerging brands where they move faster and I can make more of an impact. As far as what a challenger brand is, a challenger brand is effectively an emerging brand who is disrupting a category or changing the status quo and starting to really steal share from incumbents. Typically, these brands are providing some kind of new benefit or solving an unmet need that the existing brands either don't know about or can't address. And so that's why the emerging brand is able to build some momentum by solving that need. In terms of how I help challenger brands, I work across a lot of different areas ranging within marketing and strategy, things like brand strategy, portfolio optimization, innovation, retail support, and the like. And I typically work with brands in one of three ways. So either as a fractional head of marketing on a project basis or with coaching. When I think also about how do I differentiate compared to other marketers or agencies in the space, I really pride myself in being a general management trained marketer. So what that means is I am trained in owning the PL and understanding kind of the interdependencies cross-functionally that a business has and really thinking about marketing in a as a way to drive sustainable growth and not just growth at all costs.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

A lot of the experience it kind of lent from some of those big brands I mentioned in the beginning, like the Wendex, Tollhouse, Nesquith, et cetera, which are seems like some pretty big ships to move and change course. I know this could probably be a standalone episode on its own, but maybe just at least at least kind of a high level. What was the look at Nesquik as an example? Like what was the state of the brand when you when you kind of took the reins? And looking back, what were some of the kind of key strategies or initiatives you you implemented that you felt like had the biggest impact in terms of riding the ship?

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Sure. So what I found across the board generally is true when these big like heritage brands have been in decline, is typically they've kind of lost their way in terms of deviating from whatever their core reason for being is. And I often find that these brands have have wasted a lot of resources chasing shiny objects. I talked about like chasing the shiny object syndrome. And so things like innovation, really splashy marketing campaigns, unrealistic partnerships, and the like. And I found that to be true consistently across a lot of the brands I've worked with. For Nesquik, that was certainly true in a number of ways. Obviously, every brand is a little bit nuanced, but when it comes to Nesquik, the brand had been in decline year over year for many, many years when I joined. The history of Nesquik is it was perceived really in as a kid's brand, rooted in that like powder format that you and I probably grew up with. But the sales today actually are more in a ready-to-drink format and are consumed more by young male consumers, adults, uh, not kids. And most of them are picking it up in the convenience store channel. So the the situation there, it was a classic example of a big opportunity for rebrand repositioning. And so there were a lot of different things, um, a lot of different moving pieces and a lot of changes we had to make across the brand. And obviously it's a very much a team effort, but to name a few of the key pieces that changed, we updated our consumer target and usage occasion to really narrow in on that young adult male shopping in the convenience store who was looking for a post-workout recovery beverage. So chocolate milk actually has a lot of benefits for post-workout recovery. So narrowing in on that usage occasion. We modernized our packaging. So knowing that it's a young adult male using it for post-workout, we didn't want them to be embarrassed carrying like a kid's brand in their workout bag. So we needed to kind of grow up the brand a little bit. We really refocused all of our sales efforts to prioritize the convenience store channel, focused on the core flavors of the brand. So cutting the low performing SKUs, limiting the amount of innovation that we were rolling out with, and then doing kind of a broad refresh across the communications. So everything from new sports partnerships with DK Metcalf and Francis Tiafo, who are both like avid fans of Nesquik and really emphasizing that post-workout uh use education and highlighting the key claims around protein and real milk that support that use education. All that together kind of combined to make Nesquik go from a declining brand to actually one of the fastest growing brands within Nestle USA at the time.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Wow. That's awesome. Melly, I know you did kind of a similar turnaround for Windex, which is totally different category. Any strategies that were similar there that you kind of implemented with Nestwik, but in a totally different context.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Yeah. So again, I would say similar but different. That one was a little bit more tactically focused, but similar to Nesquik and what I've seen with other brands is it kind of lost its way with a lot of distractions and it was about refocusing on the core elements that make Windex special. For Windex, when I joined, the brand had been really significantly declining recently, especially because we had pissed off Walmart and lost some distribution and gotten bad shelf placement. And from a marketing perspective, there have been a number of marketing campaigns and like different marketing campaigns and messages, and they all kind of had flopped recently. So the brand had kind of lost its way. So turning that one around really started with making Walmart happy. So, so giving them what they wanted, which had to do with like pricing and pack format and whatnot, in order to get regain that distribution. Along the at the same time, we implemented a comprehensive price pack architecture strategy across all channels, which meant changing our pricing and promotion strategy by retailer, adding some different size bottles and bottle formats so that we could differentiate, even though it's technically the same juice in the bottle, looks and feels different, and it comes across from a from a pricing and value perspective differently, dependent on the retailer, refocusing on what makes Windex special in terms of what are the core claims that we talk about, focusing on core SKUs and cutting low performers and really shoring up the messaging that is all about what Windex is is made for. For that one, it was really a big learning for me, at least, in terms of it's really important to meet your retailers' needs and knowing that retailers are very different. Everyone has different needs, you know, everything from like promotional strategies and what the shoppers care about and and whatnot. And meeting all those needs across channels can be complex. But if you do it right, it can unlock a lot of growth.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah. This is great. I feel like we just stopped here. This would be some really valuable insights ready. When you just kind of like look back at some of those pretty, I would say transformative years and big CPG. What are the most like, I don't know, most valuable lessons you kind of carried forward now that you've been working with these more challenger brands or anything that you felt like you've had to, I don't know the best way to say it, like unlearn.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Yeah. So I think the number one learning that I take from big CPG is this idea of jobs to be done or need states or usage occasions. There's a lot of different terms out there dependent on the company, but Big CPG spends a lot of resources understanding what is the reason, what is the problem that you're trying to solve for a consumer. And that is something that is just a way of thinking that I've carried through for everything. It's great if you can make a product that has, you know, one extra gram of protein or less sugar or something like that. But like, what problem are you actually solving and why are you solving it better than anything else out there? And this is not just in terms of the product specifically in your category. This might be some kind of home hack that a consumer might have. So thinking in that framework is really helpful, especially from an innovation standpoint or new brand standpoint of really clarifying why you deserve to be there, why you need to have shelf space and whatnot. So it kind of carries through everything that I do. In terms of what I've had to unlearn from Big CPG, I could probably spend a good amount of time here. But um I think probably the biggest thing is uh this idea that was kind of drilled into me in Big CPG of me always needing to have like a perfect presentation and getting approval before acting. Obviously, that comes with like bureaucracy to some extent and the layers and everything. There was a lot of like, let's present and then we'll present again and then we'll present again before we actually do anything in market.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

So that I'm happy to be moved away from. Since you started Challenger Brand Group and been working with some of these challenger brands, what's one thing that comes top of mind in terms of a strategy or kind of initiative you you helped the brand implement? Or maybe that you didn't directly implement implement, but just as part of working with that brand you saw them implement that you felt like the most game-changing in terms of shifting the trajectory of that brand?

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Yeah, I think the the best one that comes to mind, and maybe it's just top of mind right now because I'm working with them, is I'm currently working with the brand Big Mots, Frozen Mots Relistics. And I've been working with them for a few months now. And one of the first things that I did when I joined the brand was really revamp the brand story. This started out of a need to like redo the investor deck, but it's really carried through everything from like a full brand repositioning that's in progress right now, sales stories, uh, marketing collateral, all like every your brand story touches basically everything. And being able to tell a really good story about the brand, the brand is awesome, by the way, but uh where it is today, we're not really telling the story as well. We're not taking credit for everything that's wonderful about the brand. And so being able to simply and clearly communicate what makes that brand special, we've already seen massive success in terms of being able to revamp how we talk about the brand in terms of like investor conversations have been way better, gotten a lot more traction there. We've seen better hit rates from a sales perspective, just better feedback just across the board. So that's been really exciting to see.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Steven, like the weeds the weeds a bit more. I know pricing is a thing that uh you put a lot of focus on. And I think I've seen you write about just kind of price pack architecture. Really loved reading through some of that stuff. Can you just kind of define price pack architecture and why it's especially important for the challenger brands that you work with?

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Yeah, absolutely. Price pack architecture is essentially it's understanding the various dimensions with which you can change your product for different channels or different usage occasions. So things like size, pack type or format, price point, bundles, and the like. It's a part of your portfolio strategy, and it's really important for all brands because it's a key lever in value perception. And it's a really important way that you can address different usage occasions or different types of consumers. Think about, for example, like uh large families typically want um multi-serve or multi-packs where they get a better price per ounce versus an individual single adult who's just shopping for themselves. They maybe want like a smaller serving size, but they don't want it to be a high absolute price at shelf. I think the the example I always turn to is looking at Coke as like a best in class example here. If you think about how many different pack types and configurations they have just on like their original Coke. It's the same juice inside each of it, but they've got cans, they have plastic bottles, glass bottles, minis, normal size, six packs, twelve packs, and so on. I could go on. They really are excellent in terms of being able to extract value and have all those different configurations to meet all those different needs.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Saw you also write about a five-step pricing framework that you follow. The first one is define overall brand price positioning. But what does this look like?

SPEAKER_01 14:14

So let me just caveat all of this by saying this is not a comprehensive pricing strategy. It's just kind of like five things I always think about as a starting point when you're thinking about pricing. Obviously, you can get way more advanced in terms of like pricing analysis, but kind of back of the envelope thoughts here. Um I always start with like as far as where you are in the market, where do you want to be positioned? Typically, there's different tiers within a category. So starting with like private label or value brands, kind of at the bottom, you have your mainstream incumbents, a little bit more expensive than that, but still a very approachable price point. Then you typically have like premium brands that have added benefits. And then sometimes you have like super premium brands on top of that. So, where along those tiers do you want to be as a brand? Just as like a starting point, that's like your strategy.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

That might be kind of a somewhat linked to the next one, which is anchor by the everyday pack.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

Yeah. So, and if it's helpful, I can kind of go through each of these.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

That's perfect. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, that'd be great.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Starting with what tier do you want to be, then determining your price point by looking at what that everyday price pack is for the mainstream competitors is a good way to determine where you should be. So if you want to be, you know, 20% more expensive than the mainstream competitor, are you looking at their multi-serve? Are you looking at their single serve? Well, what's their top performing SKU? That's their everyday pack. Um, look off of that, and then compare it to your everyday pack or what you expect to be the everyday pack, that's where the price premium should be. The third step then is around defining this thing that um that I call the price slope, everyone calls the price slope in big CBG, but the idea being effectively consumers expect value for buying more. So they expect to get a discount when they buy in bulk. So if you were to map out the prices of packs from a competitor in the category, for example, based on the volume within the pack versus price per ounce, you would see that the smaller size packs typically come at a premium versus the larger bundles, multi-packs, multi-serves, et cetera, are going to be less expensive on a price per ounce basis. So understanding what that slope looks like, that's kind of okay, you have your everyday pack that anchors it. And then if we have multiple packs or pack sizes, then where do we want to be along that slope? And you can use competitors as kind of a benchmark for how that should look. The fourth piece I have on here is the idea of premiumizing convenience and alt usage occasions. That's kind of a lot of mumbo jumbo in there, but basically the idea is you can effectively justify charging a price premium for things that add additional value, like convenience or special usage occasions. Could be think about like 100 calorie packs. You could typically come at a price premium because it's pre-portioned. On-the-go packs, same thing. Seasonal or limited items or limited time collabs, you can often justify a premium for that because you're adding value beyond what your actual product is. And then the fifth piece is always remember what your current business constraints are. So the first four are really more externally facing what's going on in the market, what are consumers looking for. The fifth one is about internally facing what do you know about your cogs and your company margin requirements. I've seen brands kind of falter on this on both ends of the spectrum. On one side, choosing pricing purely based on external factors and having no uh margin that their unit economics don't actually allow them to make money. And you've even seen where it's like upside down where the cogs are more expensive than the price they're charging. So you're losing money every time you sell that, which is not what you want to do. And then on the other side, I've also seen brands, and I've seen this in big CPG too, to be clear, um, where it's only basing pricing based on cogs and your margin requirements. So you're, you know, say your cogs are $5 and you need like a 50% gross margin. Okay, so you're charging $10 and then the retail price is higher. All of a sudden, the price at shelf is way, way above what other competitors are doing, and you won't smell anything because you're too expensive. So you kind of have to balance the two and make a best decision off of that. But those are some of the ideas that I always keep in mind.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

That's super valuable on the packaging side of things. Packaging design does generally kind of always starts with a brief. You've probably gone through this process a fair amount. And I think it's kind of like that phrase like garbage in, garbage out, is I feel like a sum of it is, you know, you have to give the agency working with the necessary info for action able to do the work. From your experience, what does a kind of a well-rounded brief look like? And what's the most common thing you see that's missing from one?

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Yeah, absolutely agree with you. It's definitely garbage in, garbage out. And I think it's it's also tough to strike the right balance of giving enough to the agency without over-prescribing what they should do, because you want to ultimately inspire the agency to come back with good work. But you also have to give them the right bounds in terms of like what's the problem that you're trying to solve, what can you do, what's realistic, what are you willing to look at. Some of the things that I think is super important to have in a in a good design brief, really be clear on what's the goal, why are you doing this in the first place, what's the problem that you're looking to solve, including your brand positioning. I think this is something that um a lot of brands often miss. Um knowing, even if it's super simple, what's your frame of reference, aka what's the category that you're playing with in? And then what makes you differentiated from others and better than others? Like you could boil it down to a very simple line, but the more you can have on brand positioning, the better insights. That's again another one that I think is often missing, as much of a rich picture of who that consumer is, what are their problems, what are the tensions, what do they care about, what are they looking for? That I think can be super helpful for inspiring an agency of like, oh, well, obviously, like we need to talk about this because that's super important for our consumer group. And I think again, just at the end of the day, it's it's about helping describe what problem you're trying to solve and letting the agency solve it. So inspire them, don't tell them how to do it, let the agency come back with the right creative. I always say this in any kind of design conversations of like, I'm not a creative. So like take anything I say about a creative part with a grain of salt, but here are the areas where I think we have a problem. I don't know how to solve it, but that's for the agency to figure out.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Yeah, totally. I've also seen you kind of write about some common pitfalls when it comes to going through this packaging design process. Three I want to touch on. First one was kind of overloading the front of pack with just way too many claims, just kind of show up and throw up type thing. Prioritizing the brand name when it's still really early, like making the brand name the main front and center thing, but people don't really know what it is and don't have a frame of reference and it's not well known. And then the third one was just kind of like an unclear product definition. So I'll let you kind of touch on all those, one of those, or whatever you want to kind of highlight those.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Yeah, so um, at the end of the day, it comes down to does a consumer know what you are and why you're better? And there's different ways that folks miss that. These are some different iterations of how I've seen this come to life in market. Overloading front of pack with too many claims is a very common one, especially with early brands where you're like, I'm organic and regenerative certified and women-owned, and you know, no artificials and everything. And it's like, oh, that's great. That's a bunch of attributes. Why does your consumer care? Do they care about all of those? Probably not. And at the end of the day, the one they care about, they can't see or notice because it's clouded by all these other ones. So prioritize the ones that really matter for front of pack. Great to have all. These other certifications, but don't put them necessarily on front of pack. As far as the brand name, this is also one I see commonly with earlier stage brands of like the front of pack is 90% your brand name. You have zero brand equity, brand awareness. So that's great that your brand is huge, but what is it? At the, you know, it's at the fault of not talking about what your product even is. You know, if you're, you know, Joe Schmo's, Joe Schmo's what? Like, is it chips? Is it salsa? Is it ice cream? I have no idea because all I know is your brand name. It's not to say that it's not important to build your brand equity and put that front of pack, but doing it in a way that sacrifices saying what it is is a problem. On the kind of on the reverse side of that, a well-established brand like Windex, for example, people know what Windex is. So if you just put Windex front and center, people generally know what it is. That said, it I've experienced when we've launched brand launched innovation under Windex and not said what the product itself is because it was an innovation and it failed. So it happens in big brands too.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

That kind of ties in that that last piece on the unclear product definition. But I think more specifically, I've often seen brands not say what it is in a way that's understandable to a consumer. Sometimes brands get too cutesy with what it is, or they say more about like the flavor rather than the product itself. Naming the product, if it's not a familiar category that's well established, of like this is cheese crackers, then maybe it's a little bit more nuanced. It's clusters of like granola clusters, is I think a newer category where I've seen brands kind of reiterate a little bit in terms of how they talk about what the product is inside, being really clear on like what are you getting inside of this bag? And is that something that a consumer will understand immediately by reading that description?

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yeah. When we spoke a few weeks ago, you were kind of touching on the importance of owning a color. You see a fair amount of brands doing in the market today where their full product set looks more like a rainbow than like one solid color on shelf. Why is owning one solid color so important? And why do you think the industry has at least to a certain extent gone the other way in the more recent years?

SPEAKER_01 24:50

So, yes, I could talk your ear off about this for a while. I feel like it's a little bit of a hot take to these days to feel like we need to have own a brand color and anything other than that is wrong, even though big brand learnings like this, you learn about brand blocks and in you know, marketing 101 classes, it's all about like branding and owning your color and um and whatnot. But that's not necessarily what you're seeing on shelves. To me, again, it goes back to the fact that I'm a behavioral economics nerd and I've read all these books on like how people make decisions, what do they remember, how do they shop in stores. And the thing that you have to keep in mind is consumers, when they're shopping, are on autopilot. They are not spending a lot of time in the shelf, they're not really aware of your brand. So you have to make it super easy to shop you and find you really quickly. And so the value of what we call a brand block, and I hear this term used a lot as just a brand block means all my skews are next to each other. Well, if your skews don't look like each other, the value of the brand block is lost. So the real value of a brand block when you have an own color is that your billboard expands. So instead of having your billboard is the size of one skew, it's the size of as many skews as you have next to each other. The examples that I like to call up is like Activia yogurt. You can see that wall of green from like a mile away. Kraft mac and cheese, you think of like it's the blue box. Um, that's something that stands out. So that immediately draws your eye to that whole section. So that to me is why owning a color within the set is really important. You also have to remember that there's thousands of SKUs in every grocery store. So if you have a lot of differentiation within your portfolio, that's sitting amongst a lot of other brands that all look different. And then you're just adding a lot of confusion and noise. As much as you can simplify that for the consumer, it'll be easier for them to find you and pick you out. The other piece is it's really about also building memory structures. That's a whole point of brand building and building brand equity, helping consumers remember who you are and get them to come back and repurchase you. Again, they're on autopilot. Consumers do not care about your brand. We like we in the industry, we're very focused on our brands. We know about like all the different brands in the space. The average consumer does not. And if you ask consumers what they have in their cupboard, what brands do you buy? Most can't name more than a few. And they'll name things like, oh, I buy the purple box with the bunny on it. They don't know they're buying Annie's mac and cheese. And I apologize, I love mac and cheese, and I'm using a lot of mac and cheese examples, but it's giving them one other cue to remember you, even if it's not your brand name. The one thing I will say is like you need to balance shop ability within your brand. So it's not to say all of your slews should look exactly the same, because that's not a good experience when you want to buy the jalapeno flavor versus, you know, the ranch flavor or something like that. So you need differentiation within that, but it's kind of like what's your master brand approach? And then how do you balance it with knowing the different flavors or the different varieties and understanding kind of the brand architecture within that? When you think about what is happening with the rainbow brand block, that's very on trend right now. We've kind of gone, I would argue, too far along that spectrum of like shop ability within the brand, which is great when you have no other choices, but when you're amongst you know a retail set, it's it's just harder to find you as the brand for that first decision point.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

I would argue that this probably stems from like direct to consumer, where on a website it's really helpful to have that shop ability within the brand and the differentiation there, but I think that's carried too far into the retail space.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

If you had to call out a a single kind of packaging change that you've seen has the best chance of having a material impact in terms of boosting velocity for Elira Stay's brands, what might that be? And then on the flip side, what's one that a good amount of founders and operators think may have an act may have an impact, but in reality actually doesn't really have much of an impact at all. That's kind of a waste of time.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

So let me start with the what doesn't have an impact. Um, least impact is back of pack story, typically. Uh consumers don't typically turn over the pack. If they do, typically they're looking for like the ingredient statement, which if you can simplify that, great, or change the nutritional label, awesome. But the story of the brand, I don't think is gonna move the needle. In terms of what would make the most impact in the positive, it really depends on where the brand is today and what the challenges are today. But if I had to choose one that generally is true, I think simplify. Simplify front of pack. Just make it really clear on what you are. Um, again, make it really easy for the consumer.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

This is a really in the weeds question. How should a brand think about or take lighting into account in a retail setting? So, example, like should a brand be planning around their packaging sitting under bright fruit fluorescent, fluorescent lights or more dimly lit lights, depending on the channel or maybe the part of the store that the product sits in. Is this totally overthinking it?

SPEAKER_01 30:23

No, I don't think you're overthinking it at all. I think it's really important to think about how your packaging shows up in real life. Oftentimes we're evaluating designs on a computer screen and often it's against like nothing else in the set. So it's really important to look at look at any design in the context it will be in. So it depends on where your brand is. If you're like in convenience stores, for example, the lighting is not good and the shelf set looks different in every single store. It's kind of the wild west. If you're in frozen, you're behind, you know, a freezer door that gets clouded up, and that's you talk about only a few seconds. Like, consumers don't want to open that door for very long and sit and look that they like go in, take it, and then take it out.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

So I always think of it as like just assume the worst, and then you can only go up from there. Just assume the worst lighting conditions, but most importantly, go and evaluate in the real context. Look at it among the competitive set. Look like literally, I will print out designs and bring it to the store and like hold it up on the shelf and like take a step back. Do I notice it? Can I see it? Can I read it? That's that's the right way to you know evaluate based on like real conditions.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Yeah. Yep. Okay, cool. As I wasn't overthinking it, how do you decide a brand just needs a packaging refresh versus they need to go through a more comprehensive full rebrand?

SPEAKER_01 32:28

So I think it's a spectrum in terms of like degree of change. Um, I don't know that there's exactly like this is the line where it's considered a brand redesign versus a refresh, but it's a little bit of an art and a science, and it's very dependent on the context of the brand and how well established are you? Do you have a lot of brand equity? What is the founder, if the founder is still involved, what is their appetite for change? Some founders are very particular about like, nope, this is our color, this is our logo, this will never change. And so you kind of have to work within the constraints of the business. But um I think some of the indications for like smaller changes that would be more of like, we just need to change our packaging hierarchy or clear, you know, clarify a few things, do smaller tweaks. Some indications is like your consumers can't find you. There's confusion between your SKUs. Maybe you have new claims or messaging that you want to highlight. And one that I think you don't always think about when you're thinking about making these decisions is merchandising changes or challenges. Oftentimes it's like, oh, you're going to be placed in a different set and the box needs to be smaller or bigger or shorter or whatever. That would indicate more of like a smaller change, a larger change that would be like a full-scale rebrand. This is more about honestly a positioning challenge, typically, where the brand itself and the value proposition that the brand is offering is really not resonating with consumers for one reason or another. That might suggest that you need to do a bigger scale change. Or if you're doing like you realize you need to go after a different consumer target, then the brand you're starting with might not resonate with that new consumer target. So it requires either a totally different brand or like a complete shift in terms of how that brand shows up. Also, one example is like you could have a brand that's really limiting in terms of like the product name. One example that comes to mind is the pizza cupcake, which is actually a coaching client of mine. They recently rebranded to the Incredibles because pizza cupcake is very limiting. It's just the pizza cupcake. And so they wanted to do line extensions um that are not pizza. And you can't do that as easily with a brand that's called the pizza cupcake.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

Great point. Yeah, great point. Expanding on packaging a little bit, talking about storytelling in general and just kind of the importance of this in the CPG world. You've written about kind of the idea that the brand really needs to take into account and like kind of tailor the narrative to four different core stakeholder groups, which is consumers, obviously, retailers, investors, and then also employees of the the company as well. You need to keep them excited and motivated and bought into the vision. Um I know you mentioned um Big Moss. Looking at that brand in context, what are the the four narrative tracks for those four stakeholders look like for Big Moss?

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Yeah, so you definitely need to to speak in a language that makes sense for each audience and talk about the things that the audience cares about. For the example of Big Moss, um, for consumers, it's about what are the benefits of the brand that matter to the end consumer. So this is like this is the best tasting mozzarella sticks, and that's because it's made with 100% real mozzarella and fresh ingredients, and you want to show like the cheese pull and all the like experiential aspects. For retailers, need to you can talk some of the same language in terms of like why it resonates with consumers, but it's not about getting the retailer to consume the product, it's about why does this product fit for them and their shopper? So it's about how do you fit into their goals and their category growth story. So instead of talking about, you know, we have the best cheese bullets, we talk about why our consumers are the same as their shoppers. Like we're looking at the, you know, more higher income consumers and millennials or Gen Z and this fits with X retailer because X, Y, and Z. And also telling that growth story of we're not just stealing share from within the category, we're actually trading people up because it's a more premium product, and we're bringing new consumers into the category. Anytime you can tell that story is a big positive for a retailer because you're incremental to their category. For investors, totally different audience. They care about why are you gonna make the money? So it's more about talking about this is a big side surprise. We're not just going after mozzarella sticks. We have a vision to take over frozen foods, you know, more broadly. Um, we're at we're disrupting a category that's growing and we know our consumer, and this is what we can talk about, but we're not gonna tell them like, and we can talk about that, the attributes and the benefits and whatnot, but we're not gonna speak to them like they're a consumer. And then employees is kind of its own special audience in and of itself, because you need to inspire employees to want to be a part of of the company. And so it's more about like the mission and the culture and why are we doing this? Depends a lot, obviously, on the brand. And some brands are more like mission-driven than others. So you play up the mission in terms of the story that you tell to employees. But even if you're not, there's still um a lot around like, well, why do we exist? What problem are we solving? Why do we believe that this is something worth doing? And that's uh, you know, just a very different audience to speak to.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

Totally. Anything jump out in terms of common storytelling mistakes that you see early stage brands make and across any of those stakeholder groups or just in general?

SPEAKER_01 38:08

So one I've seen for sure is using the same narrative across different groups and like mixing it, especially towards investors, where I've seen folks really not succeed with investors where they're talking like they're a consumer and like that's not that's not the right audience. I think the other big mistake that I see is being really self-focused in terms of like, we're just gonna tell you all about our features and our brand, and we're doing great, and this is why you like us and we're better than others, without putting it in the context of like, well, why should you care? Like, why am I helping you? It's not like it's not about me, it's about you at the end of the day, especially like retailers sell in stories. I've seen that a lot of like, let me just tell you about how we're great instead of how we are going to help you achieve your goals.

SPEAKER_00 38:55

I I can totally see that. That makes a lot of sense. Oh, yeah, Courtney, it's been great. Last question for you've been in the C BG space for so long, tracking a lot of things, work with a lot of different brands. Um, any specific brands, maybe other ones that you're you're obviously working with, or just trends in this space in general that has been piquing your interest lately, or things you've started tracking pretty closely.

SPEAKER_01 39:17

So some of the trends that kind of come to mind, um, I found interesting. Obviously, like everybody's talking about how gut gut health and fiber is the next protein. It's interesting because we I was tracking gut health back in my days at Nestle like four or five years ago. But now I I feel like within the last, I don't know, year or so, it's really broken into more mainstream with like Olipop and Poppy and people actually talking about fiber more specifically. It's like this ingredient, fiber maxing and all of that. Um, a brand there that's really interesting that I've been following is Flora, which is by the um founder of Jenny's Ice Cream. I think a really interesting proposition there. I think the other another trend that comes to mind is this I feel like there's been a shift in like moving from clean label being really important to clean label being about real food. And I think that's really an interesting shift of like using real ingredients and real food because it it's tastes better, not as much about like the health implications. Actually, a space that you know we're talking about a lot with big moths is like we use real whole milk mozzarella, and it's not because it's you know healthier or anything like that, it's because it makes a better mozzarella stick at the end of the day. So I think that that shift of like, yeah, you don't want the artificials and whatnot, but actually like real food is better. Other brands in this space, Jesse and Ben's, I'm sure you're familiar with Gorilla's Pickles is a great one, like super simple. Um, also love the content they're putting out. And then I think the third trend I'd highlight, and this is more just like personal satisfying my needs as a parent of two young kids, is this like better for you convenient kids products. So things like Little Spoon, we're like big consumers, Happy Wolf, they have little snack bars for kids.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

I love that brand.

SPEAKER_01 41:16

They're a client of mine and Bobby, like the formula. I think they're doing really interesting things, both on a product side as well as a marketing side. They just did like a big partnership with Cardi B. So those are the ones that are top of mind for me.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

Well, yeah, Courtney, this has been awesome. Again, so many great insights in here. What's the um best place to follow along with with you? And then if it's different, uh, what's the best place for people to follow along with the Challenger brand group and some of the work you guys are doing?

SPEAKER_01 41:45

So LinkedIn is probably the best uh spot for following me and andor challenger brand group. I have a challenger brand group page and occasionally I put out content when I have the time.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Um I also have a website, challengerbrandgroup.com. Occasionally I put out blog posts on some of the topics we talked about here.

SPEAKER_00 42:04

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 42:04

Um hope to continue to to do that and share learnings and observations in the industry as I can.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

Yeah, Corney's been awesome. Really appreciate the time. Um looking forward to getting this one out.