UNSTUCK 003: When To Start Thinking About Marketing (Hint: It’s Not At Series C)

As foodtech companies wake up to the fact they’re more food than tech, the ones that succeed will learn how to operate on longer time horizons. Grounding themselves in consumer and marketing thinking from the outset will give them the focus and discipline to achieve their promise.

It has been just over a decade since Facebook acquired Instagram, effectively a two-year-old app with a dozen employees, for a billion dollars. Understandably, many founders and the investors backing them had dollar signs in their eyes and attached the word “tech” to many different ideas including those in food.

After a few heady years, the foodtech world is now waking up to the fact that Impossible is not Instagram. The work of figuring out the science, developing and launching meaningful propositions at scale, and changing consumer behavior could take “lifetimes” for some parts of the industry as that New York Times opinion piece that hit a nerve recently put it.

Let’s double click on ‘changing consumer behavior’ and what that means start-ups and founders need to be thinking and doing today to hit the home run in years to come. 

The approach so far: Mission first, consumer later

Many founders and leading voices in sustainable foods came into it motivated by animal welfare. From Pat Brown of Impossible launching and declaring their mission is “to completely replace animals in the food system by 2035” to Josh Tetrick of Eat Just who says he entered the industry to “save farm animals from short, brutal lives as flesh-and-blood cogs in a global supply chain.”

Don’t get us wrong, we also like animals. In time, the way they are treated in industrial farms will be viewed as one of the greatest crimes in history. But using these motivations as a starting point for product development is what has driven parity strategies across the industry “the same, but better for animals and the planet”, with people who don’t even meat themselves thinking that’s what meat eating consumers are looking for. As we’ve previously talked about, propositions will have to be more than “price, taste and convenience” to motivate the majority of consumers to switch their buying behavior.  

Champion the consumer from the start, or quickly hire someone who will

No doubt the visionary mindset of a better world and the possibility of science is hugely important in starting and leading the deeper food tech companies. But if the founder is not the consumer champion and voice, this demands a strong and experienced consumer marketer to pick up this crucial role as they build their early leadership team. 

In our experience of working with founders beyond sustainable foods, they are driven to create a better experience for the consumer. They have a sharp view in their mind of who their consumer is, that goes deeper and is much more empathetic than ‘flexitarians’. They may combine their product obsession with one of doing greater good in the world, but first and foremost they are all about the product and the consumer need it serves.

Take the success of UK’s Octopus energy in fixing a broken and inefficient market. Founder Greg Jackson’s mantra of “better, fairer and greener” has led to an experience that is converting fans across the country in a way that that would simply not be happening if the starting point was “greener and we’ll figure out the consumer later.” 

An overnight success a decade in the making

With the right leadership in place we still need to put in the time. A study of the soft drink’s industry in the UK, found that on average it takes 7 years for brands to become ‘an overnight success’.  Even more interestingly, those that were successful were not the ones that made a big splash and high revenues in year one, rather those that built slowly over time, often starting with a focused channel and therefore focused consumer, in mind.  Think Innocent smoothies in cafes. Or Fever Tree mixers in bars. 

This approach also allows for constant learning and iteration of both of the product and the positioning so that when you are ready to invest in scaling up you are confident in your consumer, brand and marketing strategy.

Marketing leadership needs to be at the table from the get-go to build your consumer expertise alongside your innovation and scale expertise.

Don’t let a good reset go to waste

Joe Fassler closes his New York Times opinion piece by saying that cultivated meat “sounded futuristic, but its appeal was all about nostalgia, a way to pretend that things will go on as they always have, that nothing really needs to change.” That misses the point – even if the fairytale did work, the industry would completely miss the mark.  If nothing actually changes, where is the consumer motivation to change? We need innovation that makes our lives better, and provides an upgrade on what came before. Not just in how it’s made, but  results in a better end product. That’s what will drive behavior change.

As the industry resets after the peak of the hype cycle, we have a huge opportunity to bring propositions to market that answer BOTH consumer needs and environmental needs. Let’s think about the consumer from the outset, rather than the last step in the sequence of finding money, putting an organization together, and developing prototypes.

Be the champion for your consumer. Go deep, figure out what makes them tick, and turn that into propositions that stick. If that’s not your skillset, bring in a co-founder or early senior hire for whom it is. The time for marketing leadership is day one.