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.

Transcript

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today we're speaking with Courtney Shane founder and CEO of Challenger Brand Group after turning around big brands like Windex Toll House Nest Quick Corny decided to build Challenger Brand Group to bring kind of big brand rigor to challenger brands bring fractional leadership portfolio optimization retail planning fund raising support among other things I imagine lot of really great experience so really excited to get into it um 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 to launch the firm what a challenger brand is since that's the name of the firm and then um yeah maybe just highlight just kind of a few main areas where he helps help challenger brands 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 in CBG 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 um 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 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 um 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 PNL 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 a lot of the experience I kind of Learned from so some of those big brands I mentioned in the beginning like the Windex Tollhouse Nesquik etcetera which are seems like some pretty big ships to to move and and change course I know this would probably be a standalone episode on its own but maybe just at least kind of a high level what was the just 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 writing the ship 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 I 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 in the lake 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 and when it comes to Nesquik the brand had been in declines year over year for many many years when I joined the history of Nesquik is it was perceived really in as a kids 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 a lot of different moving pieces and a lot of changes we had to make across the brand 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 use education to really narrow in on that young adult male shopping in the convenience store who is looking for a post workout recovery beverage so chocolate milk actually um 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 kids brand in their workout bag so 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 skews 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 Siafo who are both like avid fans of Nesquik and really emphasizing that post workout uh usage occasion and and highlighting the key claims around protein and real milk that support that usage occasion all that together um kind of combined to make Nesquik go from a declining brand to actually one of the fastest growing brands within Nestle USA um at the time wow that's awesome man 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 Nest Week but in a totally different context 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 had 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 what not in order to regain that distribution along 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 depending on the retailer refocusing on what makes Windex special in terms of one of the core claims that we talk about focusing on core skews and cutting low performers and and really shoring up the 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 what on and meeting all those needs across channels can be complex but if you do it right it can unlock a lot of growth yeah this is great I feel like we just stopped here this is really valuable and say it's ready when you just kind of like look back at some of those pretty and I would say transformative years and I guess what I would call big CPG now that you've been working with these more challenger brands which I think are I know the best way to say it like unlearn yeah so I think the number one learning that I take from big CPG is this idea of jobs to be done or needs states or use occasions there's a lot of different terms out there depending on the company but big CBG 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 of really clarifying why you deserve to be there why you need to have shelf space and what not 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 layers and everything it 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 to be moved away from yeah totally and been working with some of these challenger brands what's in terms like a strategy or kind of initiative you you helped the brand implement or maybe that you didn't actually like but just as part of working with that brand you saw them implement that you felt like saw was the yeah I think the the best one that comes to mind and maybe it's just top of mind right now cause I'm working with them is I'm currently working with the brand Big Moths frozen mozzarella sticks 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 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 that's great yeah I know pricing is a thing that that 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 yeah absolutely 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 a large families typically want a 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 may want like a smaller serving size but they don't want it to be a high um 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 12 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 states so you also write about kind of a define overall brand price positioning what does this look like so let me just copy at all of this by saying this is not a comprehensive pricing strategy it's just kind of like five things I always think about at 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 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 somewhat linked to the next one which is like anchor by the everyday pack yeah so and if it's helpful I can kind of go through each of these yeah that's a perfect idea go for it yeah that'd be great starting with what tier do you wanna 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 wanna be you know 20% more expensive than the mainstream competitor are you looking at their multi serve or are you looking at their single serve well what's their top performing skew that's their everyday pack um look off of that and then compare 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 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 etcetera are gonna 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 is kind of a a benchmark for for how that should look the fourth piece I have on here is the idea of premiumizing convenience in all 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 it could be think about like hundred calorie packs you could typically come at a price premium cause 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 it's 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 wanna 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 that shelf is way way above what other competitors are doing and you won't sell anything because you're too expensive so you kind of have to balance the two um and make a best decision of that but those are some of the the ideas that I always keep in mind that's super valuable really helpful insights generally kind of always starts with a brief and I think like garbage in garbage out as I feel like some of it is like you have to give the agency and her designer have from your experience what is a kind of a well rounded brief look like and what's the most common thing you see that's missing from one 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 overprescribing what they should do'cause you wanna 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 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 within 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 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 the 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 yeah totally I've also seen you kind of write about what are when it comes to going through this packaging design process 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 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 let you kind of touch on all those one of those however you want to kind of highlight those 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 variations 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 regenerated 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 Josh Mo'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 cause it was an innovation and it failed so it happens in big brands too right 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 re iterate 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 yeah you were kind of touching on the importance of like 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 so yeah one solid color so important and and why do you think industry has at least to a certain extent gone the other way in the more recent years 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 I 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 1: 24:43

01 classes it's all about like branding and owning your color and and what not but that's not necessarily what you're seeing on shelves to me again it goes back to the fact that I am 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 is 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 as 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 it 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 skews 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 to find you and pick you out the other piece is it's really about also building memory structures that's the 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 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 shoes 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 shopability 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 as the brand for that first decision point yeah 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 a single kind of packaging change that you've seen in terms of boosting velocity for earlier stage 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 impact but in reality actually doesn't really have much of an impact at all that's kind of a waste of time 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 it's 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 um 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 on what you are um again make it really easy for the consumer this is a really in the weeds question how should a brand think about or take lighting into account in like like should a brand be planning around their packaging sitting under bright fluorescent lights or more dimly lit lights depending on like maybe the part of the store that the product sits in is this totally overthinking it 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 often times 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 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 yeah 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 yeah yep okay cool as I wasn't overthinking it good versus they need to go through a more comprehensive full rebrand 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 true brand new design 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 where is the founder if the founder 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 skews 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 often times it's like oh you're gonna be placed in a different set and the box needs to be smaller or bigger or shorter 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 yeah 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 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 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 in the CPG world kind of the idea that the brand really needs to take into account and like kind of tailor the narrative to four different 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 the four narrative track for those four stakeholders look like for for Big Moss 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 Motts 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 wanna 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 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 pellets 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 is a big positive for a retailer cause you're incremental to their category for investors it's totally different audience they care about why are you gonna make the money so it's more about talking about this is a big size of prize 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 what not 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 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 to speak to totally anything jump out in terms of common storytelling mistakes that you see early stage brands making across any of those stakeholder groups or just in general 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 retailer selling 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 I can totally see that that makes a lot of sense oh yeah Courtney it's been great last question for you you've been in the CPG space for so long tracking a lot of different things work a lot of different brands any specific brands maybe other ones that you're obviously working with or just trends in the space in general that has been piquing your interest lately or things you've started tracking pretty closely so some of the trends that kind of come to mind um I found interesting obviously like everybody's talking about how 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 Olly Pop and Poppy and people actually talking about fiber um more specifically as like this ingredient Fiber Max 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 think it 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 taste better not as much about like the health implications actually a space that you know we're talking about a lot with Big Motts 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 what not but actually like Real Food is better other brands in this space Jesse and Ben's I I sure you're familiar with girl is pickles is a great one like super simple and 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 it's 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 I love that brand 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 oh yeah Courtney this has been awesome again so many great insights in here best place to to follow along with with you and then if it's different what's the best place for people to follow along with the challenger brand group and some of the the work you guys are doing so LinkedIn is probably the best spot for following me and and our Challenger Brand group I have a Challenger Brand Group page and occasionally I put out content one of the time sure I also have a website challenger brand group dot com occasionally I put out blog posts on some of the topics we talked about here yep I'm hoping to continue to to do that and share learnings and observations in the industry as I can for sure really appreciate the time I'm looking forward to getting this one out the necessary info for actually be able to do the work of owning a color which kind of why is owning you know a retail setting so example the channel or how do you decide a brand just needs a packaging refresh yeah Courtney's been awesome I don't know most valuable lesson you kind of carried forward since you started Challenger Brand Group one thing that comes top of mind directly implement the most game changing in terms of let's dive in like the weeds a bit more a five step pricing framework that you follow generally you've probably gone through this process a fair amount you know you're working with the actual