Every brand has a story. That might be the ‘fluffy’, ‘cutesy’ thing that was the inspiration behind starting the brand, or a key piece of the jigsaw you added later on to help build a community. The important thing is making sure you place this story correctly – don’t make the mistake we made.

When we launched Tasty Mates, ‘meaningful moments with mates’ became our thing pretty quickly. That primary messaging encompassed everything we did, to the extent that on Dragons’ Den, it became the whole pitch (although within the two hours of filming it was only mentioned three or four times).

By focusing on the staory, we lost the product, proposition and USPs. The product itself became completely redundant. The story was the only differentiating factor.

When it comes to food and drink, people rarely make their purchase decision on the brand story. And even if they were to, how do you get this story across coherently to the mass market? It’s not like you can stand at Taste of London or in every store engaging with customers – and even if you could, this is obviously not efficient.

Building a brand

There are three stages of building a consumer-focused brand, that all have a different goal and methodology.

Firstly, you have to encourage a new customer to purchase and try your product for the first time. Here it is about helping the consumer make the decision to purchase your brand over a competitor. You need to do this as quickly as possible, so you can begin them on the route of becoming a brand advocate. The ultimate goal.

Next, it’s about the repeat purchase – this is where you can, for the first time, really understand the quality of the product. Of course this rate differs per category. If you’re a spice or herb (a low-repeat item), the metrics you are looking for are less likely to be on the taste of that specific SKU, but more so on whether those customers are coming back to try other lines within your offer.

Only at that point do you have a chance to achieve goal 3: brand mission. Once you are converting customers at this stage, you are likely to create more interest via your website or social media, and can continue building that through activations and events. Ultimately the aim is to create a community of ambassadors, who will refer, recommend and support you as a brand because they love what you’re offering.

With Tasty Mates, we moved in this order: Promote ‘meaningful moments with mates’, focus on the product, highlight the USPs

These days, I would have the messaging hierarchy in the exact opposite order. With HomeCooks, I’m doing exactly that: pushing what makes it different, focusing on the product and finally selling the story of independently chef-crafted dishes.

This messaging hierarchy of course changes for retailers, and those who have more time to connect and engage with consumers. But knowing that each message has a place, and where that place is, can go a long way to launching a startup fmcg brand.

So, yes, having a brand story is important. If anything it may give you, as an entrepreneur, purpose. But put yourself in the shoes of a customer who does not know you or your business, when they are seeing your brand whilst rushing around the store on their lunch break. Don’t get lost in your own brand story.

 

This piece is part of a series. Read Joe’s previous lessons for startup founders here.

Topics