Andrew Thomas - Rebranding a $400M Meat Snack Leader

On this episode, we’re joined by Andrew Thomas, VP of Marketing at Archer, the fast-growing meat snack brand formerly known as Country Archer. With a new name, bold new packaging, and a fresh retail strategy, Archer is repositioning itself from niche natural to mainstream powerhouse on track to hit ~$400M in sales in 2025.

Prior to Archer, Andrew led marketing at brands like KeVita, PepsiCo, and Chicken of the Sea

In this episode, he breaks down the strategy behind dropping “Country,” the rebrand process from beginning to end, and what it takes to execute a full pack change across mass, club, and natural channels.

We also dive deep into how to win and what’s changing at Target, Walmart and Whole Foods, and C-stores, and  how Andrew uses an “agency recruiter”.

Episode Highlights:

🎯 Why the name “Country Archer” had to go
📦 How Archer’s new cream-and-orange packs were built for shelf impact
🏪 What mass retailers want to see before approving a packaging change
🛒 Multipack strategy for club vs. conventional grocery
🔄 Resetting 30,000+ facings without breaking everything
📈 How to time a national rebrand to hit seasonal buyer resets
🚫 The flavor that didn’t make the cut—and what replaced it
💬 Key language shifts that helped Archer win broader household appeal
🔥 Tactics for launching new SKUs in Target and Walmart
📊 Retailer scorecards, velocity benchmarks, and what buyers really care about

Table of Contents:

04:11 – Why the Rebrand
07:04 – Rebrand: Visual ID and Packaging Design
21:40 – Rebrand: ExpoWest Launch
24:40 – Rebrand: Key Metrics
26:16 – Rebrand: Packaging Changeover
37:05 – The Difference Between the Key Retailers
42:10 – Trends

Links:

Archer – https://www.archerjerky.com
Follow Andrew on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-j-thomas/
Follow me on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-martin-steinberg/
Check out https://www.kitprint.co/ for CPG production design support.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to Shelf Help today we're speaking with Andrew Thomas who is joining us from Santa Monica California Andrew is the VP of marketing at Archer formerly known as Country Archer one of the fastest growing meat snacks brands in the world that I believe is tracking for roughly 300 million in revenue this year Andrew LED a big rebrand for Archer that was unveiled at XPO West this year which definitely we're gonna spend a lot of time chatting about prior to Archer Andrew spent time leading marketing for a handful of well known brands like KeVita, Chicken of the Sea bottom line Andrew definitely knows CPG marketing as well as just about anyone so excited to be chatting with you maybe just first off for probably I would say a small group of listeners that aren't that familiar with Archer give us just kind of a quick lay of the land in terms of origin story why behind the brand some of the core products you guys offer and you got so many maybe some of the recent ones you've launched yeah for sure first of all thanks for inviting me to speak Adam uh appreciate you being here yeah so the uh the Archer founding story uh so our uh founder Eugene Kang his uh parents were immigrants from Korea and when they came to the States they bought a bunch of gas stations up and down the highway between LA and Vegas so he grew up around jerky and roadside jerky and you know the the meat snacks category and so in 2011 he and his Aunt Susan were on a road trip to the Grand Canyon and they stopped by a roadside jerky stand as they tended to do and they bought some jerky and it was this grass fed beef jerky it just it blew their minds they couldn't believe how how tender it was how great it tasted knowing that it was grass fed beef the ingredient labels really clean and so they talked to the owner of the stand and they actually tracked down the manufacturer of the product and it was this guy who had a 10,000 square foot industrial kitchen in San Bernardino California they found him found out he had been white labeling this product for a really long time the name of the brand was Country Archer but that brand never showed up anywhere and you know he's a little a little bit older and his kids didn't want to take over the business from him so they offered to buy the business from him so in 2,011 they acquired the business now Eugene at the time was 22 years old knew nothing about jerky manufacturing CPG sales marketing so he really Learned it as he went along which I think is extremely impressive cause he's still at the helm today and he's doing a great job running the business you don't often see that at the start it rarely make 200 million let alone you know three or four hundred million so yeah the business was largely the grass fed beef jerky business for a long period of time you know made the made its moves in the natural channel places like sprouts and Whole Foods started to make a name for itself but then in 2018 the brand launched mini sticks so grass fed beef mini sticks into Costco I believe here in Los Angeles and the mini sticks really started to to take off um and you grass the grass fed beef jerky business is doing well but the sticks have really been what the business is has been scaling on over the past really 3 4 years and the category overall has really been scaling and growing on that if you think about the meat stick segment of the category and this isn't throwing any stones at Slim Jim they're a they're a fantastic brand but that's what most people have known meat sticks to be is you know step into a Slim Jim but from an ingredient perspective they're not what everyone wants to put in their body and the sticks segment really hadn't changed a lot over the decade so when these grass fed options came to bear that's what's been driving a lot of the growth so so we now produce the grass fed beef meat sticks the jerky we also have some Turkey items we do have a bison jerky as well we have an ancestral blend stick which is grass fed beef as well as heart and liver organ meat and we're continuing to push the envelope in terms of an innovation but yeah so or just a story found on our roadside stand and now we're we're actually pacing to 400 million in revenue this year yeah man that's impressive yeah if we have time wanted I was curious about the that ancestral blend but hopefully we have time for that one but yeah definitely want to jump right into the rebrand and that's the big thing recently where I wanted to start was just simple question of of why meaning just what led to the decision to go through a massive rebrand in the first place cause I feel like that's the question that should generally be asked the beginning is is if someone says they're gonna think about a rebrand the first question would be why yeah no it is the question especially given how significant of a rebrand that it's been and I started I started on the business October of 2022 and when I joined the business was very you know what we call commercially focused so it was about boots on the ground driving distribution getting items on shelf action trade promotions strong selling materials and selling decks there wasn't a lot of marketing there wasn't much to drive awareness and trial and by the way that had been working for the business for some time so when I joined I knew there wasn't a lot of traditional marketing to be done at the same time what I was tasked with was figuring out what's the roadmap what's the vision for building the brand over time and when I came on board we didn't really know a lot about the brand we didn't have any metrics around brand health brand awareness brand preference we didn't know our household penetration or repeat rate so I spent about the first year of my tenure signing on partners like numerator and getting some brand health trackers up and running really just figuring out where do we stand today and then after that we said okay well now knowing where some of our our gaps are so we are the fifth largest meat snack brand our aided awareness was at the end of the category of highest and so to me that was the big why why we needed to to go down this path is we were selling a lot of product but not a lot of people knew what they were buying we when Annie totally hear from folks they're like oh yeah I buy the minis I buy the grass fed beef minis and it's great but we needed them to say I'm buying the Country Archer grass fed beef and so looking at that brand awareness gap versus the size of our business our household penetration really needed some some geosin we set out to learn all right who is our target market what are the consumer segments within the category and we did a really deep dive into that it's about a 16 person quantitative survey understanding folks snacking needs how meat snacks scratch some of those itches for them their attitudes and behaviors around meat snacks and the various brands and we identified four segments of which we are targeting one primarily and another secondarily and then we said alright now knowing that how do we position ourselves because we didn't have a clear positioning statement either and so out of that work we said alright we're gonna develop a brand positioning statement so we can tell our retail partners what's our right to exist but then that'll frame up for consumers why should you care who are we why should you care why should you come buy us after that positioning work we then engaged with the design agency named Hatch and then really thorough brief on all of our objectives what was working what wasn't what we wanted to achieve we said look this is about closing that awareness gap and we have to do it by being more distinctive yes we still have to differentiate ourselves we still have to talk about what makes us different around grass fed beef and real ingredients but we also have to be distinctive and they really took that assignment you know they they got the memo so to speak and you know six to eight month projects making our way through it but we're really happy with where we landed but yeah at the end of the day it was that gap that really drove drove the that makes a lot of sense I think part part of that was related to that conclusion to to move away from that word country and just just focus on the shorter Archer yeah so there was a a few things that play there the first is before I even joined they were already considering removing the word country and moving to Archer so the old vis ID which is still in market for the most part you can see Archer's the biggest word on there country's smaller and then provisions is even smaller so there was already some momentum behind that the second piece is that our unaided awareness was really low all the people who typed in anything they all typed in the word Archer not one person from an unaided awareness perspective typed in the words Country Archer and then anecdotally we heard from a lot of people that like oh yeah I buy Archer I see Archer at Target or I see Archer at Whole Foods so between the three of those things it was really a no brainer to simplify it and then it makes it a lot easier to talk about it makes it easier on the packaging makes it easier on swag makes it easier on the website so making that move was it was probably one of the easier decisions of the entire rebrand yeah on the on on that topic what were what decision points were the most contentious internally and ended up requiring the most debate? yeah uh there were two so the first is uh using the color orange and like I think a big part of it was such a dramatic departure from where we were which was black and white which look a lot of a lot of smaller brands emerging brands go with black and white I think it's I think it's clean I think it's simple it's easy in some ways you don't have to make a decision and take a risk on a color cause they're not really colors so you're not trying to own anyone thing so I think that's one reason why folks do that so going with orange being such a big change I think made people a little bit nervous and then there's a lot of like well why orange part of the answer to why orange was well it's orange it's bright it's bold it's it's attention grabbing there's a reason construction signs and cones are in orange there's actually some psychology behind the color that when you associate it with food it actually drives taste appeal and it's highly stimulating so the orange was a big piece of it and look no one else in the category was really using orange you know Slim Jim bright yellow and red chomps bright red Jack Links dark red but most of the other folks in the category it's a lot of grays and blacks and Browns and so we needed a color that was you know one of these brighter bolder colors to really make it stand out on shelf yeah so orange is where we landed but that was that was a a contentious conversation for sure that's that doesn't surprise me so once I did a bunch of that work for a year so when you first came on board worked with some of those partners just getting a really good understanding of the state of the brand yeah eventually made that decision yeah we need to do a rebrand once that decision was made what what did that just that process look like from beginning to end in terms of like the key steps that were involved and how long did the whole process take from yes we're doing this to launching it in market yeah so the the length of time we engage with Hatch I wanna say in March of 2024 and we landed on the final design I want to say sometime in September of 24 and then you know all the internal processes to get the design applied to the mechanical files and proofing and USDA approves and all that takes a while we have just now uh this month started to see the new Visa ID hit market uh in places like Sam's Club uh a handful of Whole Foods have some of it as well so it's a long process from soup to nuts for it to happen in terms of getting the stakeholders on board I think um you know having Eugene having our President and CFO Adam Razik involved in the entire process bringing them along on the journey made it easier to get those key stakeholders on board cause we were all making decisions and evaluating the options in real time I did have to push the orange a little bit at points but they they eventually got on board I'd say one of the larger challenges was probably getting the board of directors to to approve and to be comfortable and it's not that they didn't like the design their biggest question was well are we sure this is the right design given where the business is today we we are growing so rapidly and we were growing so rapidly when we brought the design to them there was legitimate concern around are we gonna break something we're growing so rapidly right now like is this really the right time and you know the way I framed it up was I actually think it was a bigger risk for us not to do it at this time rather than wait for when we felt we needed it cause yeah in my opinion if you wait till you feel you need it then it's probably too late you know you're trying to turn the ship around at that point and if anything the fact that we were doing so well without a strong brand just told me this is pouring gasoline on the fire like now's the time to go we have a lot of freedom and permission to go do this and we did we did some we did a lot of consumer testing to validate that this was the right move so the testing gave them comfort as well but getting the board on board was um you know it was a process but it was walking in through the journey and the rational and hearing their concerns hearing where you know they were highlighting some of the risks making sure they understood we had plans to mitigate those risks and really giving them comfort that this was the right path for it so yeah it took a little bit of work but that's their job it would be weird if they just passed this through given how significant of a change that it was yeah totally agree with that on that on that topic a bit talking about are we gonna break something here it seems like that's one of the can be one of the more delicate challenging things of doing this rebrand is is balancing that need for a fresh look obviously you're doing this rebrand for for a reason but you don't want you there's also that importance of keeping some aspects familiar some of those legacy brand elements for one so those existing customers feel like they still associate and resonate with the brand but also from just I guess a practical standpoint walking down the aisle wanna make sure they can find the brand again and not feel like they don't even know where to find it or what to look for anymore how do you think about that yeah so this is where the data was really really helpful for us our repeat rates were really low so that told me we didn't have a lot of people coming and looking for us again even if they love the product outside of places like Costco limited assortment big part of our business is there people are going back to bulk buy the things that they love so repeat rate was was great there but that environment particular actually made it a lower risk for us to make the change because you got these big billboards of the pallets it's easier for folks to find the thing and connect the dots so the risk was mitigated already by nature of that environment elsewhere the repeat rate was low and we looked at the panel data and we saw most of our growth was from new consumers all the time and actually if you if you follow Byron Sharpe's how brands grow that's how most brands grow is new consumers new penetration new trial all the time it's the whole idea of double jeopardy that he talks about the larger brands have loyalty not because people are loyal to a Coke or a Pepsi they're loyal to them because they're available everywhere and it's the brands that everybody knows and it's honestly the same in the meat snacks category Jack Link's and Slim Jim have the highest loyalty well they have the highest loyalty cause they're in every gas station every convenience store every other place you wanna find jerky they're there so of course people are gonna repeat on it so I actually saw it as not much of a risk for us because we didn't have like a big base of loyal consumers we were always attracting new consumers anyway so for me I felt as long as we're still clear on pack communicating the thing that people have picked us up for today which is grass fed beef and minis we basically ported that design over from the old design onto the new one slapped it right in the middle where it exists today but then it was about amplifying the brand on top of that so that's how we thought about mitigating those risks was why do people buy us today make sure we're still communicating that but layer on that nice branding so that they know to come back or they can find it or they can look for it and honestly accelerate even more new users finding the brand and trying us yep that makes total sense on a similar track I'd want back up in terms of that process around getting the board to sign off and getting some of the key stakeholders involved really valid that's just part of the process of working for a big company that's growing super fast but also it feels like in my experience especially in the design aesthetic side of things you you often hear "decision by committee" is considered like less than an ideal approach to these kind of things and I'm curious how much of that do you feel is true and I guess depending how much you feel it's true like what what does that decision what does that decision process look like especially for some of those contentious aspects taking that into account where it seems like it could have been wrong but it seems like the concerns where a decision by committee can lead to is more water down changes or updates I guess more dilution for sure yeah it's it's funny actually in a because it's so not only was I selling into you know the CEO and president and the board I had to sell into the sales team I had to sell into all our retail partners and the internal team as well just to let them know why we're doing it and I bring that up because one of the slides I included in some of these decks was a was a cartoon from a Tom Fishburne's brand camp and it was talking about the dangers of pack design and well we gotta follow category conventions and we gotta appeal to everyone and make sure it fits the space and all these things and then the end frame is a pack that looks like everything else on shelf and the same thing happens when you make decisions by committee I think we were fortunate in that we're still a pretty small and scrappy team and as much as we were trying to be inclusive and involved you know more the marketing team and other people in these key decisions it ultimately came down to Eugene and myself even our President and CFO, he had a lot of great input there were probably times where he wanted to zig where we wanted to zag and we ultimately we had to get him on board as well but it's a really honest and collaborative culture where no one takes things personally which is great I mean I feel very fortunate to work for someone like Eugene is very humble and he will say hey if you know I trust you if this is the way you wanna go then then we're gonna go that route and I think we have a little bit of a risk taking mentality as well so we we largely avoided that decision by committee problem which which I think actually shows in the pack design cause not only do you have the orange you've got what we lovingly call this Picasso bolt on the front you know having this kind of Art Deco esque steer on the front that was another thing that took a lot to sell it and took a lot of conversation to get to but I think it really is the culture of the organization and the trust that we have in each other that really enabled some of those I would say riskier decisions but maybe unprecedented decisions or atypical decisions to occur yeah fast forward a bit you got the rebrand done and everything you guys did the big unveil at ExpoWest this year it's the caveat I've I've not been on the the brand side of a big launch or a rebrand at ExpoWest specifically but seem like it's a great event for these kind of things cause every important stakeholder in CPG is there you can really get the message out but maybe on on the flip side and I could be thinking about it wrong but it seems like because every brand is there I imagine it's not as easy to really rise above the noise to a certain extent so I'm curious from your perspective looking back you did this big launch what what did you find was was key to launching a a successful rebrand or maybe just some sort of big launch or event at ExpoWest in general? it's it's funny you say that because I would say both things happened it was both successful for us and we got lost in the noise yeah by which I mean there's a million and one Expo West recaps after the fact and of course selfishly I'm combing through all of them to see if they mentioned us and for all the ones that didn't I was like whoa where were you you obviously didn't go to the basement you weren't looking for us hard enough but that just underscores how many people are there there are so many people there and so many brands so you know I on one hand that makes it hard to break through on the other hand we have a really really strong PR team a crafty communications they did a wonderful job seeding the press release right before Expo and making sure it was all tied to Expo so we got a lot of folks that came by the booth and visited the booth and stopped by to talk to me and Eugene because of that press release not only that the PR team also did a good job talking to uh different publications and say hey do you want to interview Eugene at the booth about the rebrand and we actually got a handful of media interviews out of it as well and then LinkedIn you know you gotta have a strong LinkedIn game these days for this sort of stuff so we pushed pushed heavy on that and I would say you know the the amount of foot traffic we had at the booth was dramatically higher than what we've ever seen before we got a lot of people just walking by randomly who gave us tons of compliments ton of my old colleagues and co workers from past jobs stopped by to congratulate us I mean there was I there was a couple days I didn't get to eat lunch and I actually almost lost my voice at the end of it because I was talking so much so we felt it was hugely successful for us because it hit the right notes and it got to the right people so even if it didn't get to everyone in the trade we really felt confident that it got to all the right folks and right stakeholders that we needed it to that's yeah sounds like it was is what you were guys hoping for which is great from a roll out standpoint you did that ExpoWest big relaunch then it's time to start actually rolling this out from that actual roll out standpoint from my experience in every rebrand or packaging update that I've been involved in one of the the biggest puzzles are part that always just feels frustrating and there's never feel like there's a perfect solution is how to best make that packaging switch in market to help minimize those instances where you've got the old look and the new look on the shelf at the same time which is like the ultimate thing you really don't want for how many doors archers in I think it's when I read it's 20k-30k+ doors like what's what's your approach to that that challenge look like and yeah especially at Archer's scale like I said? there's a there's a lot of consternation around that especially on the sales team side which which I can appreciate you know this might sound a little bit cheesy but the thing that I reminded everyone or that I told everyone as we were talking about this was a year from now no one's gonna remember a year from now it's all gonna be new vis ID shelf and we're all gonna have a whole host of new problems and new work tasks to tackle we're not gonna have to worry about it so that's that was a way to say like look I understand it's a little anxiety inducing now it's gonna be okay but in the meantime how do we make sure that from a customer and consumer perspective that we are smoothing that transition so the first thing was customer like how are we talking to the retailers how are we making sure you know whether it's putting labels on our master cases so that people are stocking it you know we actually print on there that new look you know same Archer new look something to that degree makes it easier for them to make sure they know what they're putting on shelf we're also gonna do a lot of in store marketing so things like floor talkers and shelf talkers to make sure people know that it's the same brand so some digital stuff that may aid with that as well on platforms like Instacart and what not but we are actually seeing some of the new Visid already in market here in Southern California and as much as you theoretically don't want the old vis ID and new vis ID on the shelf at the same time it actually is working because when you see the new stuff next to the old stuff it's helping connect the dots what it is that Archer to Archer and we are very intentional about making sure that Archer name still had the same kind of energy still in cursive and we made a lot of improvements and optimizations to it but I actually would argue that having them on the shelf next to each other for a period of time is is gonna benefit us more than it's gonna be any sort of negative so it's been an ongoing conversation and I think it's something for a lot of people to think about because depending on what you're doing from a rebrand perspective you may need to think about it differently totally but I think for us we had a good risk mitigation plan and at the end of the day I don't um I actually don't think it looks too bad when it's old and new sit next to each other right that makes a lot of sense I feel like that's a practical way to look at it. from a number's standpoint, what were or are the key metrics that you're focused on to gauge the success and impact of the rebrand and you know what are the numbers told you thus far yeah you know it's a it's funny cause the business is doing so well right now it's hard for us to measure a lot of this stuff a good example is Instacart so we've been really leaning in on Instacart and you know you get the return on ads spend metrics and all that and some of that is a little subsidized cause this purchase is people were gonna make anyway but they've been a great partner and we love using the platform I've had my supply chain team reach out to me like hey could we dial that down a little bit cause our velocities in certain places are too high you know we we need you know from a demand planning perspective we weren't anticipating this and I'm sitting there like I I don't know if I can even take credit I would like to but I don't know if it's the if it's the investment or if it's just organic growth in the category yeah that makes it hard for us to tease out what's working and what's not from a from a pure number standpoint now what I am gonna look for is going back to the reason why we did this in the first place brand health is my unaided and aided awareness and then consideration all the way down the funnel is that growing year over year and we actually signed up with a new platform just recently called Tracksuit that gives you basically always on brand health monitoring we're really excited to get up and running there because there's so much that's going on on our business there's the rebrand we're launching a national ad campaign in August we just signed a partnership with the Dodgers the LA Dodgers back in April a lot of news around that so we have so much going on we really need to have an always on way to measure that but that's how I'm gonna measure success is is the brand awareness and trial picking up and look down the road am I gonna want to measure velocity increases as well absolutely but those are increasing so organically on their own it's tough for us to know what that's attributed to but those are things we'll be we'll be reviewing feels like you can have worse problems your business is growing so fast you don't exactly know how to track it feels like it could be worse I don't it's a very good problem to have for some recommendations or or some other marketing leaders that maybe don't have as much experience for you that are in the process of going to this rebrand any metrics that come of mind that that come to mind that maybe are often focused on that are not actually as relevant and that could actually maybe end up creating a distorted view of the impact of a rebrand whether it's overemphasizes it or maybe doesn't actually show the impact that it's actually having yeah I would actually this might not be exactly the answer you're looking for but I would say be careful as you look at things like virtual shelf set like pack design testing not that you shouldn't use them you absolutely should but I I think I think what happens is uh people's expectations of rebrand are like oh well it better via this virtual shelf study generate all this incremental lift not realizing a few key parts of this one people are familiar with the existing design consciously or not so you're always gonna be at a disadvantage secondly you're asking people to shop on a computer screen well they didn't just come home from work they don't got their kids in the cart they're not hungry they're not tired they don't need caffeine they're not worried about their budget for at for their shopping trip that particular evening so as much as we try to replicate the real world environment for a lot of these you just you just aren't as much as you can pick up the bag by clicking on it and it zooms in you're not actually holding it you're not looking at what's inside you're not reading the label so in terms of you know your question on like what may distort those things for me the pack design testing whether it's virtual shelf set or some other means is a disaster check am I breaking this thing in a way that I shouldn't break it am I taking too great of a risk and if there's no major red flags and you perform at parity then I think you should feel good to go I think you can get way too focused on man I need you know those airplane lights I need someone doing this like go go go and I don't know that you're ever gonna have the data that's gonna tell you to do it and give you the confidence this is where if you've been in the industry for a while you gotta rely on your experience and your gut and your intuition and your strategic mindset and you gotta go and I've said this in other spots you're taking as much of a risk not doing the thing as the risk to do the thing yeah relying on data is great but I think sometimes we can get a little too caught up and well if the data doesn't tell me I have I need to go then maybe I shouldn't I don't know that that's the best way to look at it yeah that makes sense I think that's that's super helpful and this this rebrand stuff up kind of in a bit of a boat kind of a two part question just now looking back at this Archer rebrand maybe some other ones you've been involved with too what do you feel like are just some of the biggest learning lessons from the process and kind of a related question for you know marketing brand leaders that are embarking on a similar rebrand process maybe don't have as much experience for you what are a few things you'd recommend they they focus on or kind of use as their North Star? yeah um I think the first thing tied to to the to the last question is be bold don't be afraid to take some risks and make some make some big recommendations they might not ultimately see the light of day but I actually think it's the marketing head of marketing's role to push the organization if you're not again it's about distinctiveness and differentiation I if you're not pushing your brand in that direction I I I think you're doing the brand a disservice so that's the first thing is is be bold the second piece is when bringing people along on that journey whether it's internal executives or the board I think sometimes it can get really easy as if you've been in marketing for a while to quote the Byron Sharps of the world and to bring the marketing science and the marketing data what I've Learned is do not come across as like too professorial too condescending too educational you really gotta meet people where they are you gotta make sure you're understanding that what's really driving their hesitancy or their questions and almost have that conversation in a more informal way if that makes sense cause if you come in we're like well this book says and this data says and we gotta do this because these other brands did it you're almost saying your your fears are not valid don't you know better that is never gonna go over well so a much softer more human approach in in getting that buy in is gonna work far better than coming across as some sort of you know quote unquote marketing expert so those are the two key things that I really Learned throughout this process yeah and uh I I think you know that being bold and uh not being condescending are are the two points I'd make on that that's really helpful really helpful shifting gears a little bit away from the rebrand much more of kind of a tactical question just talking about marketing resources when you think about resourcing what frameworks or how do you think about what frameworks do you use and are you know variables that come into play as you're building out your plan with regards to just internal versus external resources in terms of which ones are you gonna you feel like you definitely want to hire internally versus you know leverage agencies or some sort of external partners and are there certain functions like uh influencer management or creative agencies or packaging design that you always tend to bring in house versus always contract out or is it pretty situational? yeah I'd say it's pretty situational although I think in terms of creative agencies my personal preference is to is to outsource the big ideas so as it comes to campaign development and what what's the you know what's the look and feel the campaign gonna be and the assets I think that's better done by bigger teams who have you know the strategy and insights folks more creative you know creative department members just to get more eyeballs and more brain power against it which is great but then after that having some sort of whether it's freelance or contract or internal creative director resource who can work with the designer to help you turn out all the little stuff you need after that so I think it's not a situation dependent but after you get that big stuff out of the way you probably don't need an AOR at least at the the size of business that we are yeah social and influencer is tricky I've done it both ways I've had both ways work and both ways not work we're currently outsourcing the influencer work we found that a lot of the platforms that are out there that you manage internally are great for getting reach but aren't necessarily great at establishing strong influencer relationships that drive greater credibility and for a brand like ours we really want to find those partners who can work with again and again and again and the platforms I don't think necessarily scratch that itch so that's something that we have an internal person managing an external resource there yep that makes sense so yeah it you know the the social media stuff is also a little tricky we have someone who does content calendar internally but they leverage a lot of outside resources to generate the content so it's a lot of the the doing and the creating of stuff I think sometimes is best done outside of the company while the strategy and planning and the thinking work is done internally yeah that makes sense from a for those ones that you do engage external agencies just curious in terms of that due diligence process what does your what does that process look like for you and I guess yeah how does some sort of external agency or contractor some sort of external partner win win your business? so we um whether it was the the research work that we did around the brand positioning the design agency or the creative agency we reached out to partners that either I had already worked with or someone else in the organization had already worked with there were a couple that we reached out to just because we knew people who knew them but we also had a consultant someone I've worked with in the past and his job is essentially to connect clients like myself to agencies to RFP the business app his name is Steve Schmeck and he helped land us our creative agency he helped land us our PR agency and he's also working on helping us find an experiential agency as well and that has been helpful because there's so many agencies out there it's really hard to know who can be good and who won't be so him finding the right fit for us based on our budget and our needs has been really helpful and then once we have that list of agencies I actually I like to basically have that RFP document essentially be the brief you know it's it's a very long and thorough document that I put together and provide but I find that I get much better clarity on who has the chops to do what we need to do and who's honestly going to be the best culture fit if I give them more to respond to if I give them a one pager hey need some creative work we need a new campaign here's generally idea they all can do good work but they're all gonna give me their capabilities and other brands that they've done and that'll all be fine I need them to show me that they get the insight and that's ultimately how we've decided our agency partners is not can you do good work not are you well resourced not have you done other really good things do you understand what it is that's driving our need do you understand what it is that's driving the consumer's need and how we're trying to square that circle and that's ultimately how we've decided what agencies to move forward with that makes total sense that's super interesting this guy he said Steve Schmidt he sounds like he's kind of like a recruiter but not for internal team members it's kind of like a recruiter for agencies super interesting never heard of that yeah it's funny cause as we were looking for a PR agency Eugene's like what do you think and I was like I got a guy he's like oh you got a guy I'm like I got a guy but that's what it feels like it's like you got a guy that's awesome that seems really helpful to be honest yeah shifting gears a bit again but this is one question I'd I wanted to ask you in terms of just these the founders that are fast growing up and coming brands thinking about Eugene you know way back when that are just starting to get on shelf with some of the big box players and let's just focus on Target, Walmart and Kroger as an example what should they expect are gonna be like the key differences between each of those big three ones in terms of how you you win with each cause I imagine you know founders are starting to think about some of these big box players they don't actually understand the nuances between between each of the some of the the key big players yeah you know Whole Foods is Whole Foods is interesting because I feel like they're always willing to take a flyer on new brands you know they like to be in an environment where consumers can discover something new you know if you're if your position are differentiated around a lot of the better for you attributes and your product taste good cause it's always gotta taste good people forget that a lot in the better for you space it's still better taste good then I think they'll give you a shot and then they'll partner with you on programs whether it's you know display or other promotions or their own marketing programs to help drive those velocities but of course ultimately they're gonna wanna see you support the brand and and turn on your own but I think you probably have a little more leash to hang yourself with when it comes to Whole Foods the big box guys you know Target's interesting because I think target really wants to see themselves as a business that does lean in on smaller brands as well yeah I think where they've been challenged is just the the assortment and the space available I do think the buyers really wanna say hey we wanna be a forward thinking innovative grocery destination but their assortment across the entirety of that store is so large between clothes and toys and electronics you know it's I think it's makes it challenging for them on how much space can they allocate and how much can they actually take some of those risks I would say target though they um you know they've been great partners of ours and they've been very trend forward and they've recognized what's going on in the better for you meat sticks category and they've really leaned in with us and a couple of other folks and so I give them kudos for that I would say they respond very very well to data they want to hear your story they want your brand to look good they want the product to be great but they also want to understand how are you doing where are you turning how are you meeting my customers needs sharing numerator panel data with them like leakage trees and shopper comparisons and all those things have really really worked for us so having a strong strong data story is always gonna work well for a place like target it'll work great at Whole Foods you probably don't need it initially at Whole Foods as you're getting started yeah and look Walmart's really interesting because they're such a behemoth as we all know I was at a a summit uh in in Bentonville a few months ago where they were telling uh vendors they're like we want everything you sell and what they mean by that is we don't have all the room in the store for everything but if you feel there's a customer need or consumer need on these things get them up on the website and so I think they're also trying to be more inclusive on their assortment as well there are things that are going to turn better in their stores than certain other products it's just it's their consumer base it's about all about the value but I think what they're attempting to do is say hey online is here to stay you know for emerging brands who wanna play at Walmart you can get on Walmart.com and get some proof of concept that your brand will turn it will sell and that there's a there there and they they really appreciate that having that online proof of concept I think can help get you into their stores but yeah look the the problem with all these guys it's limited shelf space so it's a tough it's tough to crack crack into that but strong data story online proof of concept and you know strong product I think are three things that will help you with all three of them very helpful similar question totally different channel that the C store channel which I know seems like this meat stick category has a lot of success in that channel what's the playbook for winning in in C stores? so we actually are very we have some penetration in C store but not a ton and one of the reasons is it's a very challenging route to market it's highly fragmented from both a you know C store customer retailer perspective but also the distribution network sometimes you you'll go through a couple just just before you get to the C store the price markups you experience when you're already a premium brand makes the price point a little more challenging for the consumer at the end of the day so the the route to market is a challenge what's also a challenge is and we recently got some some panel data from numerator on this a better for you consumer might be shopping in a convenience store but what the data says is they're not buying better for you in that convenience store there's almost an element of you go in there it's almost you're either on the go you're in a rush you're by yourself there's a little bit of waving the white flag on the better for you stuff and you're like you know what I'm gonna grab that bag of Cheetos because that sounds good for me right now so C stores a different beast given the route to market given the different consumer mindset you know I would say we're still figuring our way through how to win there but it's it's a very very different place to approach and to win than large format club or mass that's a great overview really helpful last question for you kind of a fun a fun one if you had to put your life savings on the line what's one prediction you'd make about the CPG space overall over the next I don't know months years whatever you whatever you want to take it oh man this is probably gonna be something you've heard from other people but I think AI is gonna be extremely disruptive specifically in the creative and content space uh you know we're already using an AI platform to essentially mimic photoshoots which is not perfect yet well actually that is the promise too perfect the bags don't look wrinkled they're too perfect so it doesn't look real but the tools will get there so I think as it relates to you know creative agencies and content creators and what not what that looks like for them I think it's gonna be I think it's gonna be a challenge my guess is the the agencies that are gonna win and come out of it you know to the extent that they can come out unscathed are ones who get back to what I said earlier insights I don't I think AI is so far away from really understanding those insights at a human level the agencies are strong at saying this is the kind of creative I need to go make because of the insight those guys will win because then you can just go use the a platforms down the road to make the videos to make the ads and what not I think there's big disruption coming in the creative space for CPG I think that's probably inevitable at some point Andrew this has been awesome really appreciate the time what's the best way to for people to follow along with you and also best place to follow along with Archer I'm sure there's many places but yeah yeah we uh as I mentioned earlier you know you gotta have a strong LinkedIn game these days so I'm doing my best so you can find me on LinkedIn posting or reposting what we're posting from the company perspective and then from a brand perspective Instagram is at Archer Jerky and then Archer jerky.com is our website and we will soon have a pretty active TikTok there you go there you go running well but yeah we we got a lot more news coming uh so for folks who are interested stay tuned there's gonna be some exciting stuff coming perfect well Anderson great appreciate the time it's been awesome that's the pod!