An Interview With Martita Mestey
Your ‘Why’ or Reason for Being
And I don’t mean this in the life-coach, searching for meaning way that you may have heard it before. I mean quite literally what is the reason that you exist, why wouldn’t I just buy what I’ve always bought instead of trying something new?
As a part of our series called “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kennedy Roberts.
With 7 years of experience in CPG marketing for better-for-you brands, Kennedy began her career working for a bottle cold-pressed juice brand working as a Digital Communications Lead — managing multi-channel activations touching direct to consumer website, email marketing, organic and paid social, SEO and more.
In 2017 Kennedy left her in-house role to build community-first content, strategy and creative for brands like Chosen Foods, Favour Gum, Tapatio and more. Kennedy now leads digital strategy and creative as the founder of KAR Creative, supporting a host of natural and conventional channel clients including Stratia Skin, Pop & Bottle, Craig’s Vegan Ice Cream, Gooey Hazelnut Butter, the Flora Code and many more.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I was born and grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. And in case you aren’t familiar it is very cold there for a large majority of the year, so I got creative in how I entertained myself. I loved reading and writing and drawing and taking pictures on a tiny instant camera. Eventually, we moved to California (in search of a warmer climate) but my curiosities around creativity stayed and eventually became large parts of what I do for work. I often think about that little version of myself trying to occupy herself and wonder what she would think of what I do now.
Can you share with us the story of the “ah ha” moment that led to the creation of the food or beverage brand you are leading?
While working as the digital communications manager for a pressed juice brand, I had the pleasure of interacting with our consumers on social day in and day out. I got to see what they posted about when they talked about our brand and how they interacted with us via comments and direct messages. What became very clear to me was: to the customers I interacted with the green juice that they drank in the morning was more than just a juice. To them it was a part of an important ritual, a marker of who they were and what they believed in and an opportunity to take part in something that supported other likeminded individuals. I think this is true for most people consciously consuming at that level, the things they use daily are about so much more than just filling an immediate need. And so, I started to wonder how we could create the experiences ‘beyond the bottle’ that our customers craved, through value-driven content and meaningful community. This ah-ha moment was ultimately what led me to build KAR Creative and is the principle that guides the work that we do with our clients, putting their community first and finding ways to meaningfully participate in their consumers world’s beyond simply selling them product.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Like almost anyone who has worked in social or digital content, I accidentally posted something meant for my personal account to the brand account. Thankfully everyone who saw it in the 25 minutes it was up thought it was funny and enjoyed seeing the person behind the content. Just further proof that people want to consume things made by real people. We’ve caught onto that by now, but in 2016…it was a real uh-oh that my face ended up on the story.
What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they start a food or beverage line? What can be done to avoid those errors?
Trying to be everything to everyone. Starting with a small, focused product line, that is very clear about why it’s made and who it is for will make your job much easier when it comes to marketing. It’s nearly impossible to build great community and organic marketing around a product line that is too broad or is trying to speak to too many people. Focus on your core consumer that will trend set and encourage others to join them.
Let’s imagine that someone reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to produce. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
I would begin with getting very clear on your story and why you believe your product should exist in the world. Ultimately, the best brands right now have created a strong story and make every single decision from what they make to how they make it to what it looks like from the place of that story. This kind of brand gives people a reason to believe. As I mentioned in my ah-ha moment, people are looking to spend money on brands that align with who they are and what they believe, and so if you have a great product and no story, you aren’t giving them much to latch on to or a reason to even think about you when you aren’t in the room. In this case your growth story will become about outspending your competition on ads and coming with a lower cost to benefit ratio than your competitors. That kind of brand is less fun to build, less fun to buy and ultimately, in my experience, less successful.
Many people have good ideas all the time. But some people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. How would you encourage someone to overcome this hurdle?
Just start. At KAR Creative we have worked with founders with all different backgrounds, some branding others finance and some product, looking to make it in a variety of verticals. And I can confidently say the one thing they all have in common were that they just got started. If you look at the road from where you are to getting a product on shelf in a major retailer you would probably conclude that only a crazy person would do it (maybe true) but if you believe in your idea, I truly believe you should take whatever step feels the most feasible to you first and then keep putting one foot in front of the other.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
This really depends on the idea and the category. We’ve worked with many brands that came out of someone’s kitchen and evolved into brands on grocery store shelves and we’ve also worked with many brands that collaborated with consultants to bring their product to life and ended up in grocers. The one rule that seems to exist is that products interested in speaking to a functional or supplemental benefit have always benefited from working with someone in the space who understands production, sourcing and legalities of these kinds of products.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
As a marketer this falls out of my prevue from a brand perspective.
Can you share thoughts from your experience about how to file a patent, how to source good raw ingredients, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer or distributor?
As someone on the branding and marketing side this doesn’t fall under the work I do with clients.
What are your “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand” and why?
1: Your ‘Why’ or Reason for Being
And I don’t mean this in the life-coach, searching for meaning way that you may have heard it before. I mean quite literally what is the reason that you exist, why wouldn’t I just buy what I’ve always bought instead of trying something new?
Brands have a million different reasons for existing, of course but here are a few of my favorites:
- A non-alcoholic aperitif brand that believes everyone should be able to enjoy elevated and complex beverages even if you aren’t imbibing.
- An instant rice brand that believes even if you struggle with gut health you deserve something convenient and tasty.
- A bottle latte brand that believes you deserve to indulge in something that tastes great without sacrificing on clean ingredients.
In each of these reasons for being the brand speaks to a specific demographic that they are seeking to elevate by providing a better option than what is currently available to them. A great reason for being goes beyond just ‘being cleaner’ or ‘tasting better’, it’s about concretely making a difference for the individuals you serve. It will make everything easier from decision making about what to put in your product, to deciding how to market your product.
2: A Product That Backs Up Your Why (And Tastes Good)
Go to the grocery store shelf and you’ll see that there are a lot of brands with so many call outs. Everyone is competing to be the most clean or functional on the shelf. When you start to dig into the ingredients of the ‘clean’ option or the amounts of adaptogens in the ‘functional’ option and oftentimes the product doesn’t really back up what it’s claiming to be. Consumers are way too savvy for that kind of marketing now, if they don’t see through you at the shelf they will once they get home and give you a try.
You’ll learn quickly that it’s easier to create repeat customers than it is to acquire a new customer every single time, so be sure that the proof of who you are is (quite literally) in the pudding. And that the pudding tastes good.
3: An Understanding of Who Cares About Your Product
At KAR Creative we’ve worked with a lot of brands whose target market is quite literally their founder. This isn’t a bad thing, sometimes we dig in and find out that it is in fact true. But other times we dig in and realize that they have been marketing to a group of people who don’t truly value what their product is or their reason for being. Not to say that their target doesn’t care at all about what they have to sell, but your customer is making a lot of choices in their day, when you’re just starting out you want to be speaking to people who make choosing a product like yours the most important decision of their day.
I’m not suggesting you go invest in robust market research from the jump. But when you do have opportunities to interface with your customers pay very close attention. Whether this is on social media, getting started at a farmer’s market or sharing your big idea with friends, listen to what they say about your product and the other products that they are purchasing at the same time, listen to how they speak about the taste and the questions they ask, and ask them questions about themselves (what do they do for work, what is their typical day like). The more you know about them, the easier it will be to make decisions about your marketing that really reach them.
4: Strong Packaging + Branding
The average grocery store has 39,500 different items to choose from and the average American is buying about 22 items in a weekly grocery haul. It goes without saying that your customer, no matter who they are, has a lot of options to choose from. You have some convincing to do. All that convincing comes before most of your customers have ever even tasted your product…your packaging has some serious work to do.
Once you have a great reason to believe and an incredible product, I can’t say enough things about the importance of working with a brand designer with experience in the space. Someone who can take a hard look at your category set and understand what will make you stand out and best communicate your reason for being. You’ll also want to work with someone who can create brand elements that extend beyond your packaging so that when you dive into content marketing strategy you are set up well to create clear and memorable connections across your verticals allowing your consumer to recognize that the brand on the shelf is the one, they love on social media or whose emails they love receiving.
5: A Great Content Marketing Strategy
And finally, you need a really good content marketing strategy. At KAR Creative we truly believe that while awareness is often created at the shelf brand loyalty and evangelism is almost always won digitally. We love brands (and I mean really love them) because we connect with them on a level deeper than just taste. With a million brands to choose from the ones we revisit again and again have done something that tells us that they uniquely ‘understand’ us.
Great brand experiences are created digitally when brands look at their content as a secondary product where they are providing great value to their customers. And when we have great experiences with brands that just get what we need and are looking for we purchase them again and again, and we tell our friends, and hey maybe we even post a TikTok about it. That is the magic you are looking for. And while you can’t track it’s ROI like you can a paid ad, it will pay for itself a hundred times over if you do it right.
So, invest up front, think about how you can build a brand world and experience beyond your product that speaks to your customers and then have a lot of fun creating that world everyday through every decision you make and everything you do.
Can you share your ideas about how to create a product that people really love and are ‘crazy about’?
As I mentioned before, I think it really comes down to having a ‘why’ that people can believe in and creating a brand personality and experience around that why that resonates with them and offers them the opportunity to be a part of something that’s bigger than themselves.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
For me, the work we do at KAR Creative is important because it allows people to feel seen and understood and gives them a place to belong (even if it’s only digitally). More than marketing and selling food and beverage products, I always want us to work with our brands to create spaces and content that allows the most diverse group of people to feel seen and heard especially when they have been historically left out of better-for-you spaces in the food and beverage industry previously.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
This is so unoriginal, but it would be to ‘make social media real’ and fun again. Somewhere along the way everything became so hyper-curated and perfect, and I think it’s really taken the fun out of it. I love seeing where the social landscape is going with platforms like TikTok offering people and brands the opportunity to be honest and share more behind the scenes content, that kind of real-ness is how I think we actually create communities and offer people the sense of belonging that brought them to social media in the first place.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Kennedy Roberts Of KAR Creative On 5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.