Episode 117: What are the benefits of staying in your lane as a brand strategy?

We want to thank AFB International for sponsoring this podcast. AFB is the premier supplier of palatants to pet food companies worldwide, offering off-the-shelf and custom solutions and services that make pet food, treats and supplements taste great.

Your host is Lindsay Beaton, former editor of Petfood Industry magazine.

Lindsay Beaton, former editor, Petfood Industry magazine and host, Trending: Pet Food podcast: Hello, and welcome to Trending: Pet Food, the industry podcast where we cover all the latest hot topics and trends in pet food. I'm your host, Lindsay Beaton, and I'm here today with Amanda Welsh, director of brand communications at Vital Essentials. Hi, Amanda, and welcome.

Amanda Welsh, director of brand communications at Vital Essentials: Hi, Lindsay. It's good to see you.

Beaton: In case you're unfamiliar with Amanda or Vital Essentials, here's what you need to know. Amanda is a graduate of Indiana University Bloomington with more than 10 years of experience in brand marketing. She leads integrated communications across paid media, PR, social, events and digital channels to build awareness and deepen consumer connection.

Prior to joining Vital Essentials, Amanda held senior marketing roles at Kerrygold, where she led the development and launch of a national taste-focused campaign, and earlier positions with Potbelly Sandwich Works and Chicago Sport & Social Club. At Vital Essentials, she focuses on elevating the brand through clear storytelling and cohesive campaigns that support continued growth and visibility for its freeze-dried raw pet food products.

Vital Essentials is the flagship brand of Carnivore Meat Company, which provides dogs and cats the opportunity to lead long, vibrant, healthy lives by manufacturing premium-quality raw frozen and freeze-dried pet food and treats. Products are U.S.-made in a GFSI- and EU-certified facility in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Amanda's expertise in targeted marketing and storytelling for brand growth makes her the perfect person to answer this question: What are the benefits of staying in your lane as a brand strategy?

Amanda, I like to get origin stories before we launch into the present. I want to know how Vital Essentials has refined its brand strategy over the years, and whether it's always been so honed in on its particular messaging or if that's something that has evolved alongside it.

Welsh: That's a great question. As someone who has lived and breathed brands for my entire career, joining this particular brand has been super fun and very interesting for a range of reasons. It'll be two years in August, which is crazy. Time flies when you're having fun. We've definitely been on a journey.

I was fortunate enough to join the brand when it had some really strong structure and infrastructure. It had a really beautiful visual identity. The packaging was crafted, very consistent and really visually enticing. I came in with a really strong foundation from a look-and-feel perspective, but there was some tightening we wanted to do when it came to the brand identity and who we are.

It all really started with consumer research and category research. Part of it is figuring out, as an insights-led organization, how we make decisions that are thoughtful. But then also, as you mentioned, how do we stay in our lane? How do you adapt to a changing environment and changing consumer expectations, and then continue to evolve a brand? It's a challenging thing to do.

When we relaunched the brand a few years ago, we had positioned ourselves around a term called "butcher cut protein." I came from human food, not the pet category, so I asked, "What does that mean?" No one could give me a clear, exact definition of butcher cut protein. As someone who spends a lot of time researching how consumers make decisions and how they understand the messages brands put out there, that felt like a huge aha for us. If we know what it means, but consumers don't necessarily know what it means, that's a gap, and that's an opportunity for us to solve.

We realized we needed to be more explicit about what we are, who we are and what butcher cut protein meant to us, and that was exciting. We landed on our core claims, which you saw at Global Pet Expo: up to 99% meat, organs and bone; made with vitamin- and mineral-dense organ meat; and no fruits, vegetables or grain.

"Butcher cut protein" asks you to imagine going to a butcher. That's not necessarily how consumers shop. The things they look at on pack aren't "this is butcher-quality protein." They're looking at ingredients first. What are the ingredients? That's what matters most. Where is it made? Who makes it? What is it going to do for my pet? Those are the core questions. We leaned into keeping it really simple from a brand strategy standpoint and identifying who we really are in a way that's tangible.

Marketing jargon like "butcher cut protein" can help elicit a visual, but I don't think it helps consumers understand the value proposition your product is offering. We talked about this, and you saw it at Global Pet Expo: There are so many brands in the alternative feeding category. If you don't have a clear value proposition, you're lost. When I think about a value proposition, it's a bullet point. It's as simple as you can make it: What can we claim that's true, that's ownable, that's enticing and that gets someone to want to change their mind? Those three claims really helped us zoom in on who we wanted to be as a brand, rather than trying to be a butcher. That positioning wasn't as cohesive as it needed to be in order to be understood.

I do want to talk a little bit about the consumer insights and research that led us there, because it's rich territory. I didn't create this strategy from the ground up. I was given really strong foundations from a visual and brand identity standpoint. The area I wanted to focus on was the consumer.

Who is our consumer? Has she changed since the brand relaunch, and does our positioning still fit with who she is? The research showed our consumer had actually aged down, and she wasn't living in rural areas. She was living in the suburbs, or city-adjacent. She had a young family. She had a small or medium-sized dog. We learned a lot about who was actually buying our product.

When I first joined this team, our persona was Sarah Connor from "The Terminator."

It's extreme. I always joke that the components of Sarah Connor still hold true. She's a protector. She takes herself really seriously. She's independent. What we adjusted is that we created Megan Connor, Sarah's younger sister. Megan Connor is a little less intense. She's less interested in firearms, but a lot more interested in being a thought leader in her community, having friends and hosting people. She's an involved and very conscientious member of her community. That's who we're talking to.

How do we make it easier for her, rather than talking to someone for whom the message might not be relevant? And how do we have her see herself in our marketing materials?

Beaton: When you're going through all of that as a brand and marketing expert, where is the line between "This is who we want to be as a company, we're going to put that message out there and whoever shows up are our ride-or-dies" and "We want to appeal to this type of consumer, so what messaging do we need to attract these people"? At what point do you let your brand identity roll and let the chips fall where they may, versus going after somebody you want to be your customer?

Welsh: That's a great question. Consumers, especially in this category, aren't super loyal to brands. They're very focused on protein variety. If Vital Essentials doesn't have a specific protein, they might go to another brand. At the end of the day, you must be thoughtful about knowing who your actual audience is versus who your long-shot acquisition consumer might be. Your whole goal is to grow the core.

We need to grow the core to a point where they know us and know why they would choose us. A brand marketer's ultimate sign of success is when a consumer shows up at the point of sale and picks your product when it's right next to a brand that's on promotion, or next to a brand with very similar messaging.

You can't be everything to everyone. You and I had a similar conversation at Global Pet Expo, but we wrote something called the Nutrition Manifesto for Vital Essentials. It's basically an internal set of innovation guidelines: What are we OK with doing? What would we never do? What would we consider if it was an opportunity that made sense? We really drew a line in the sand and said, "We will not put grains, fruits and veggies in our products. We will not go below a certain percentage of meat. We will always make sure organ meat is included in our recipes." There were some things that were requirements.

The best part about being a brand that owns its own manufacturing facility is that you can set those expectations and then make sure they're actually being followed, which is a benefit not all brands have. We have the benefit of saying no to some things. We are Carnivore Meat Company. We produce private label and co-manufactured products, and those might include things we would never in a million years make ourselves for Vital Essentials, because they don't fit within who we are.

Gently cooked is a hot topic. At Global Pet Expo, it felt like every type of brand — kibble brands, canned food brands, treat brands, raw brands — had come out with a new gently cooked line. My team asked, "Could we do this?" We said no, and we said no for a reason. We are a raw pet food company. Raw is the foundation. If we're cooking our product, we're no longer Vital Essentials.

There was a big push: "There's a ton of volume. Consumers are looking for it." That might all be true, but the second we start saying, "Actually, raw doesn't matter. It's really about these other components," we've cut down our own messaging to the point where it's no longer truthful, of value or something we stand by. I think consumers really want to see brands that stand for something.

For us, we're never going to cook product, and if you're looking for a brand that does cook, absolutely go for it. When it comes to our brand, it's low and slow. We have our own freeze dryers. We literally created our own freeze dryers so we could keep the temperature low enough that we aren't cooking while we freeze-dry. When you have the infrastructure we do, you have the ability to bring in something custom so you can follow through on the commitments you've made — to each other, to the Nutrition Manifesto, to pet parents and to pets in general.

That's what's really unique about our brand. We're a challenger brand. Our new creative platform is jarring. It shows raw meat, organs and bones. It comes down to showing up authentically. Even people on my own team would ask, "Can I just show a raw steak and then show our product next to it?" We would never make our Beef Mini Nibs with a nice slab of New York strip. That's not what we use. These are the ingredients we're using, and this is the purpose they serve and the nutrition they deliver.

Pets need meat, organs and bone. We're not going to add a bunch of extra stuff. We're not going to cook anything and deviate from our identity. If consumers want that, they'll seek us out, and they have, and they will continue to.

It's not quite a race to the bottom, but everyone is trying to deliver all the things to consumers, and then everyone is like everyone else. There's a level of ownability, and also a reverence, that our brand brings to the table. We are unapologetically ourselves.

That doesn't mean brands that cook their food or add fruits and vegetables are wrong. That's just not our identity, and it's not the role we play in consumers' lives. Our job is to make nutrition and feeding your pet easier. How do we remove barriers to access? How do we educate?

This is my favorite stat about raw feeding: Only 20% of pet parents who feed raw feed 100% raw. That means 80% are mixing. They're mixing it with kibble. They're mixing it with things they cook at home, like chicken and rice. When I look at that, I think there's no wrong way to feed raw. There really isn't, if you're doing it with good intentions.

Consumers are getting pushed a million messages a day across 20,000 different social media channels, emails and podcasts. There's so much they're taking in. My job as a brand person representing Vital Essentials is to simplify it for them. How do we make it easier? How do we give them tools and resources to do better for their pets without asking them to be perfect or throw the baby out with the bathwater?

A lot of brands will say you need to feed 100%, or if you're mixing, you have to mix with their food. That's not how consumers are behaving. Meet them where they are. That's why we came out with a nutrition calculator. Consumers can scan whatever food they're currently serving their pet and figure out how to add more protein. We're not asking them to change anything. It's "Do you feed kibble? Cool. Does your pet like protein flavors? Are you trying to include more nutrients or improve their protein intake? Here's an easy, simple, free tool to do that, and we're not asking you to change everything you're already doing." We're just trying to minimize barriers.

There are a lot of expectations on consumers these days, and my goal is to make one thing a little less daunting for them. I hope that's what we're doing. "Hope" is the keyword.

Beaton: A lot of what you said transitions beautifully into the next segment, where I want to talk about the fact that you can't be everything to everyone. That's a pitfall that's easy to fall into in the pet space, because trends change all the time and they tend to come in hard and fast and explode. There could be a lot of potential profit in a segment a company isn't in. Especially if you're a newer company, you could enter the market with a certain intention, see something happening and, because you're so small, pivot quickly — and next thing you know, you're spread too thin.

What are some of the pitfalls a company can face if it tries to market to too many different customer types or be everything to everyone? Let's tell people why they don't need to be doing that.

Welsh: That's a great point. When you think about consumers and their relationship with brands, most of the time it's not a logical thing. It's an emotional thing. Consumers are also really sensitive. They're sensitive to what brands are doing, what they aren't doing, what they're saying and who they're supporting. Consumers are very adept. They're paying attention.

If you're a brand, you stand for something. We stand for raw pet food. Our entire platform is freeze-dried raw, and the whole goal is nutrient density. If I decide tomorrow that gently cooked is blowing up and jump on the bandwagon with all these other brands, all I've done is dilute my brand. I've diluted my message and my positioning in the market.

Consumers are given a million messages a day. You're lucky if you get them to remember one thing about you, even your name. You have to be really realistic about it. When you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing, because no one knows you. They don't know what you stand for. If you stand for everything and make every type of product, you could be swapped out for any other brand. Why would they choose you? They need to feel something and have an emotional connection to your brand to continue choosing you.

Think about promo wars. When your pack is next to another brand's packaging and they seem like pretty similar products, who's going to win in that moment? It's the brand that's been steadfast in its identity, because consumers are going to think, "They're just hopping on the bandwagon for this other thing." You lose a level of legitimacy when you spread yourself too thin, and then you can't be great at anything.

That's another piece. If I were trying to make gently cooked food while also being hyper-focused on offering more protein varieties in different freeze-dried and frozen raw formats, we'd take our eye off the ball. We'd fall behind. And if it turns out to be a trend that passes, I've wasted time I could have spent on our core purpose and who we are as a brand.

I don't know about you, but we have finite resources, so I'm going to be very specific about where we invest them, how and why. Some brands are focused on gently cooked. We're actually more focused on cat, because that's where we're seeing growth in multi-cat households. You can look at data, research and insights and decide whether it's appropriate for your brand to engage. There are going to be trends about everything, but it might not be appropriate for your brand or your business to hop on the bandwagon.

Beaton: Has this gotten more complex as consumers' relationship with consuming has changed? It used to be a very transactional thing: I give you product, you give me money, we're good to go. Now consumers — and I count myself among them, since most people in the industry have pets, so we're all consumers in addition to being industry experts — want some kind of relationship with the brand they're feeding their animal, even if it's just knowing what the brand stands for or what its specialty is. Has that bred all this complexity of trying to be everything to everybody, or needing to specialize for all these different consumer silos? Is this something that just didn't exist 25 years ago?

Welsh: That's a great question, and the answer is yes. This is me being nerdy, but I have a very interesting document I'll send you after this that shows the transition of the alternative feeding category over the last five to 10 years. It started off really niche. You had mom-and-pop neighborhood pet stores serving highly educated, very engaged pet parents.

Slowly, it started to proliferate, and consumers started searching for better-for-you pet options. Now there's a need in the market, and brands are saying, "OK, there's an opportunity for us. Let's get into neighborhood pet stores, Amazon or Chewy." The number of brands that have popped up in the past two years alone is unbelievable, because it's a booming category. Pets aren't going anywhere. People keep investing in them.

You see humanization trends, too. Pet trends actually mirror consumer trends. You'll see pets being fed a balanced diet or people focusing on their pet's macros. No one thought about macros five years ago. There's a level of curation, too. Think about pet enrichment. I have a reactive dog, so enrichment wasn't a choice for me, and now it's "Enrichment will give your pet an outlet for all their mental energy." With more education available, more brands out there, more people talking about it and more social media, it's just going to continue to grow.

We are starting to see a tipping point, though. Especially in this economy, consumers are pulling back on some things. One thing we were tracking, and making sure it wasn't just us, is that consumers are pulling back on spending on treats. They might swap to a cheaper treat but then say, "Maybe I'll do a topper instead, because I can make up for it with freeze-dried raw," and put that on their kibble.

There's so much out there. Consumers are bombarded by so many brands, so many messages and different formats, too. Air-dried wasn't a thing a couple of years ago. The proliferation of gently cooked over the past two years has been crazy, with absolute monsters like Mars saying, "We're going to roll that out," or Cesar coming out with gently cooked products for cats. It's really interesting to see how quickly these trends move.

I'd call us a heritage brand, or a legacy brand. We're never going to jump on a trend just because it's a trend if it doesn't make sense for our consumers. If it does make sense for our consumers, we'll usually have a conversation about whether it's something we'd be open to. But a lot of the time, with all these trends happening so quickly, we're not trying to jump on the bandwagon to be just another one of those products.

The very first products we came out with were our raw bar items, and they were different from every other product out there. The raw bar racks in neighborhood pet stores are an experiential moment for the brand, with all these weird-looking raw bar treats. Those were some of the stranger things you'd see five years ago. Now you're seeing way stranger things. I think I saw a beaver tail. It was so strange. Novel proteins have gotten to a point where I think, "This is getting a little crazy." Someone asked, "Could you guys get alligator?" and I said, "I could find out."

There's an expectation around both format and protein variety. You're constantly looking for innovation and inspiration, and consumers are looking for more variety in their proteins and formats. Again, meet them where they are.

Beaton: You mentioned all the consumer research you've done, which has allowed you to know who your customer is so you can make sure your products are very targeted. Let's say the version of you at another company is listening. What are some of the questions they should be asking themselves about who their customer base really is, what those customers want and what the company wants to be in relation to those customers?

Welsh: That's a great question, and digging into the research, data and insights is probably my favorite thing to do when I join a team, because that's where everything lives in terms of how you should strategically and appropriately grow your business and where you should take it.

The first thing you want to address is what pain points consumers are trying to solve, and whether you can be that solution. Sometimes you can't, and you have to be very honest about the role you play. My next question is: What role do you play in their lives, and what role do they actually want you to play? Brands should ask themselves whether they think they play a larger role in consumers' lives than they actually do. What role should they be playing, and what tools and resources would they need to create to be that brand for them?

How can you make their experience more seamless, with less friction at every step? From my days of building websites and loyalty programs, minimizing clicks or any other barrier to entry gives consumers as much information as they need to make those choices.

Probably the hardest question of all when you're looking at research as a business is: What is the business willing to listen to, and is it willing to accept the answers the research gives? I'm exceptionally fortunate to work for an organization that believes in data, research and insights, and wants to operate as an insights-led organization.

Our partial-bowl message about the 20% came directly from research. What raw brand wouldn't want 100% of the bowl? But when we looked at it, we said that's a completely unrealistic expectation to put on consumers if that's not how they're actually engaging. How, then, do we provide them tools and resources to meet their needs? They say they want better-for-you options, higher protein and better ingredients, but they also face barriers. There are price barriers. There's what their pet wants to eat. What do we do to serve them, make it easier and more seamless, and be the brand they can come to?

When I first started, I was constantly asking questions, and people would say, "You probably should already know this." Let's not assume consumers know all these answers. They're already dealing with a million crises in their minds. Let's find a way to position ourselves as the solution and not add layers of complexity.

Good research will tell you what you want to hear, and it'll tell you what you don't want to hear. It might tell you the products you're most proud of aren't the ones you should be selling. The teams that win are the ones that ask those questions honestly and then have the discipline to act on what they find, even if that means saying no to something that could make them money.

That's a really hard thing to do, and I'm really proud to work for an organization that will say no to an idea that could make us money if it doesn't fit within our strategic lens or doesn't meet our consumers' needs. That can be hard when you're trying to level-set expectations with stakeholders and saying, "I love your enthusiasm, but as a brand, I don't think it would be appropriate for us to do X, Y and Z."

Beaton: That's a great sentiment to end on, because sometimes the most difficult things are the most important things to do, especially when you're trying to carve out an identity in a market that's already insanely saturated. Thank you so much, Amanda, for coming on to talk about the realities of a more targeted brand strategy — the benefits, the difficulties and what it can look like — using Vital Essentials as a case study for what happens when you hone in and commit to all the things we talked about instead of trying to be everything to everyone.

Welsh: Of course. I'm excited to see what the next couple of months and years bring to this industry. It's constantly changing, so I'm looking forward to seeing what the next trend is.

Beaton: Before we go, I always do a little plug for my guests. Where can people find more information about you and Vital Essentials?

Welsh: You can check out the Vital Essentials website, vitalessentials.com, or our social channels: Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, all the good spots.

Beaton: Perfect.

 Thanks again to our sponsor, AFB International, the premier supplier of palatants to pet food companies worldwide, offering off-the-shelf and custom solutions and services that make pet food, treats and supplements taste great.

Your host was Lindsay Beaton, former editor of Petfood Industry magazine.

You can find more Trending: Pet Food podcasts at petfoodindustry.com, SoundCloud or your favorite podcast platform. If you want to chat or share feedback, please email [email protected].