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Breaking Through the Noise: Expert Strategies for CPG Brand Growth and Retail Success
Transcript
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Growth Challenges for Manufacturers and How to Overcome Them. I’m your host, Katherine Seymour. This episode is brought to you by MacRAE’S, trusted by North American businesses for over 100 years. As a leader in B2B digital marketing, we help industrial and manufacturing companies struggling with stagnant growth and lead generation. By leveraging advanced AI integration and automation in our SEO and lead generation programs,
We help you appear more prominently on search and AI results like chat GPT. This drives significantly more traffic to your website resulting in stronger lead flow and increased revenue, crucial in today’s highly competitive digital landscape. Learn more at macraes.com today. Today I’m joined by Christine Malaguti founder of Amalgamated CPG, a consulting firm that helps emerging midsize consumer packaging goods break out and scale
into convenience and travel retail channels. brings years of experience leading sales strategy and execution across large, mid-size and startup brands. She’s known for helping companies align distribution, broker partnerships and retail executions to drive sustainable growth. In addition to her consulting work, she’s currently pursuing her doctorate in leadership and innovation.
blending in academic research with real world industry practice to better support founders and teams navigating in today’s ever evolving CPG landscape. Christine, it’s so great to have you on the show today. Thank you so much and welcome.
Thank you, Katherine. It’s great to be here.
Thank you so much. So Christine, let’s get started with your journey. What led you to the world at consumer packaged goods and ultimately founding your company?
Yeah, so I started in CPG as my first job just about right out of college, feet on the street with a very large beverage brand, really learning the ins and outs of retail. From there, I scaled into other large CPG brands, other Fortune 500 companies, but really found my home in mid-size emerging brand companies.
Right.
Right.
I’ve worked with some startups, I’ve worked with mid-size, but mid-size is really where I fit in my home today.
Amazing, amazing. As a strategist working with many brands, what do you find most rewarding about the work that you do with founders and teams?
The most rewarding I find is the passion that the founders bring to a brand. So working with them, understanding their vision and working together and communicating that clear strategy and building it together and creating and developing a partnership with them and seeing the excitement when they win at retail is what drives me to succeed with them. That’s right.
Hmm.
for sure when they win you in and team effort, for sure,
for sure. For those who may not be familiar, how would best describe what your company does and what kind of clients do you primarily serve?
Yep. So I focus really on the emerging or the mid-size companies trying to break into the retail channel. I also work with large national brands. When it comes with the large national brands, it’s more working to either redefine or realign their focus in the channel, making sure that they’re spending smartly and they’re executing clearly. In small size, it’s normally them launching the brand initially into retail. So that’s a full hands-on go-to-market strategy.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
sure we have everything in line before we bring it to retail. So making sure your packaging is clear, your trade marketing plan, your digital marketing plan is all defined before we head to retail and get on the shelf.
Makes
sense for sure. The CPG market is highly competitive. What do you see as the biggest challenges that brands are facing when they break through and try to scale?
It’s very difficult to break through that noise. The shelf space is extremely limited. I think that is the biggest challenge is the limited amount of shelf space. So you have to get in, you have one chance to get in and make a splash. So communicating with retailers, aligning priorities is going to be key for a lot of those small and emerging brands. Talking to your partners, talking to your broker partners, your distributors about what they’re seeing out there and helping drive, sorry.
Hmm
Bye.
Mm-hmm.
and just helping to drive distribution and sustain your placements.
For sure, for sure. Supply chain and retail distribution hurdles remain a common struggle, and we’re seeing this across board. How do you help clients navigate these challenges?
you say that again?
Yeah,
no problem. So supply chain and retail distribution hurdles remain a common struggle. How do you help your clients navigate these challenges?
So you’re gonna wanna align with the right broker and distribution partners and set that clear communication strategy and align your goals with their goals. You wanna build the realistic timelines just because you decided to launch in May doesn’t mean the retailers category reviews are gonna be in May. So making sure that you’re aligning the priorities that you have with your brand but with retailers and distributors is going to be key to that success. Beyond that,
Right.
Yeah.
The most important thing to remember is yes, you can get on the shelf, but execution is what matters most. So sustaining the placement, making sure you have the promotional plans in place and in the backing that goes along with that to sustain and stay on shelf is key. So you can get there, doesn’t mean you’re gonna stay there. You have to do all of the hard work to stay on shelf.
consumer behaviors and retail expectations are constantly evolving. How do you stay ahead of these shifts and guide your clients accordingly?
Communication again is key. Talking to your retail partners, talking to your broker partners. I think that’s a miss on some sales folks and founders part is they don’t always understand how valuable the conversation is when you talk to your broker partners, when you talk to your retailers. What are their goals? What are your goals? How can you help?
Yeah.
close a void, close a gap that they might be seeing in their retail space. Staying open on your own trends and making sure that your packaging is hitting the mark, making sure that you’re following through on that execution is going to be key.
sense for sure. In addition to product innovation, digital marketing has become essential. What role do you see digital marketing playing in brand awareness, consumer loyalty, and sales growth in the CPG companies today?
Digital marketing is key today, as you mentioned. So digital will help you create that consumer pull once you get on shelves. So you want to align your goals of launch with your timing of your digital ad campaigns. So retailers are asking, what are you going to do when you launch this brand? Or what are you going to do when you launch this flavor? Making sure that you have the strategy on the digital side to get the impressions, to get the buzz and the excitement about your launch is going to be just as important as
Right.
getting on the shelf and then that will help drive that through sales, through the register as well. So aligning your goals with retailer goals, consumer goals and putting that in your ad campaign and making it a clear, clear, creating the buzz around your brand is going to be important in today as well.
sense for sure. Can you walk us through how you typically work with a brand from assessing their current sales strategy to building their plan for growth?
Yeah, so it starts with the initial conversation. When we have my initial client calls just for prospecting and seeing where you are, it’s where are you today? What are your goals? What are you doing? What do you want to do? But long term, not just getting one specific product on a shelf. What’s the overall plan for the company? Is it to sustain and maintain a convenience channel? Are you just trying to get in and out? What is that goal that you’re trying to do? And then working with them to define it, know, I’m not going to come in
brand.
Mm-hmm.
and say, do it my way, because it’s not always going to work for every single brand. So we have to work together and create a partnership to do so. So with a small emerging brand, I would go in and work with them in making sure that we have the pack sizing, the packaging, the distribution channel to the market all set and secure so we can execute and launch.
making sure that we.
⁓ the distribution channel to the market all set and secure.
clearly, simply and easily. And when you’re working with a large national brand, it’s what’s working, what’s not working, and shifting the strategy to make sure it aligns with what consumers are looking for today.
And when you’re working with a large national brand, it’s what’s working, what’s not working, shifting the strategy to make sure it aligns what we’re looking for today.
Amazing. You work across different segments within the CPG industry.
How do you adapt strategies on the early stage for brands versus the well-established brands? Is there a different strategy for both?
Yes and no. So with early stage brands, you don’t have necessarily the brand awareness that some of larger companies are going to have. So you’re going to have to do a little bit more work. Your pockets might not be as deep as some of the large national conglomerates that their ability to spend. So you need to get scrappy. You need to roll up your sleeves. You need to make it work and you need to negotiate. Retailers have a passion. Their growth is just as important as your growth. So partnering with them to make sure
Right.
you’re aligning a plan with them to get it on shelf and continue for the pull through is going to be key. Establish brands, as I mentioned before, it’s more about, normally it’s more about making sure that the current plan.
make shifting your current plan if needed and making sure that you’re following through. an example could be if you’re struggling in a certain part of the country, why is that you could be successful in the northeast, southeast and in the west, it’s not resonating with the consumer. What are you doing that’s different potentially? How can you shift your focus in your plan? Is it promotion? Is it strategy? Are you geo targeting your marketing in one area and you’re not focusing somewhere else and maybe leveraging those dollars in other parts of the country where you’re
Right.
for those large national brands can help too to create that buzz around your brand.
Very cool. If you can instantly change one aspect of the retail or distribution landscape to make it easier for brands to succeed, what would it be and why?
I would change.
reset timeline. So right now brands can wait months and months if not a year to get on shelf from the initial category review. That slows down innovation, it slows down the speed to shelf, it slows down the momentum of brands. So how can we partner with retailers and speed up their timeline? It’s going to be difficult but is it through a plug and pull if it’s not the perfect right time? How can we execute faster at retail and we need our retail partners to be a little bit more nimble?
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
But is it?
and work with us, the manufacturers, to help. We all want to win. We’re all excited about innovation. We don’t want to let it pass us by. So the timelines can be challenging when it comes to reset and category reviews.
Yeah
For sure,
that makes sense. Looking ahead, what trends in consumer packaged goods excite you the most?
That’s a good question. ⁓ I have a lot, but mostly right now, the personalization and customization. Now, as I drink my circle water, I can dial my flavor. As I go to a C-Store, I can decide how I want to develop my coffee. Do I want a flavor shot? Do I want more caffeine? Do I want a lot of sugar? It all depends on how I’m feeling for the day. And having the choices now in C-Store, it’s really fun and exciting. You’ll see it on the functional beverages, the functional brand, all of the protein and the
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah!
excitement.
It’s fun and going. The trends are, those are my favorite trends so far.
Yeah, I like those ones too.
Can you share a recent client success story, perhaps a brand that you’ve worked with that demonstrates the kind of results that your company focuses on?
Yeah, so most recently I worked with a brand and it’s a national brand, a well-known brand, midsize, but old. No, I don’t want to say old. It’s an older, well-known established brand.
established.
So they were doing very well at one point across the national landscape. then over the past few years, they’ve lost a lot of distribution and sitting down and trying to figure out, what happened? know, sitting back clear as they didn’t have a clear marketing strategy, they didn’t have a promotional calendar. They essentially stopped promoting and didn’t realize it. So you’re on the shelf and you’re not moving and you can’t understand why your stagnation. So developing a clear, hey, you have to have a strong promotional plan.
Right.
in place, working with the retailers and using their loyalty programs helps drive awareness as well. So making sure we have the distribution network established, growing beyond that regional market that they were doing well, and partnering to redevelop a go-to-market strategy that was national focused and not just, we’re doing really well in this one region, and focusing all their dollars and their trade marketing in that area and expanding it nationally. And we saw double-digit growth in about a year.
Hmm.
exciting.
That is really
exciting. Sometimes you just need a fresh set of eyes to help you see the bigger picture, for sure.
Yeah, stepping back and reassessing is not a bad thing. It’s going to make you stronger and better.
No, ⁓ clearly,
yeah, no, not at all. Finally, what advice would you give to CPG founders or leaders who are looking for growth and sustainability in today’s market?
Stay disciplined, stay true to yourself and stay focused. Remember at the end of the day, it’s not just about getting on the shelf, it’s about sustaining and maintaining on the shelf. So having your plan.
and executing that goes beyond just that initial, hey, we got on shelf, now what? Now what should already be defined? It should be, we’re going to do X, Y, and Z to maintain. We’re gonna promote four times a year at a two-for-price. We’re gonna cross-promote with a certain brand to gain more excitement around what’s going on and create that opportunity for customization with your product. And just really focus on long-term sustainable growth. Remember, it’s not about the quick hits. It’s not a race.
Yeah.
It’s a marathon.
Yeah,
makes sense. Thank you so much for being here, Christine. We truly appreciate it. Your insights have been incredibly valuable. And I know our listeners will definitely take a lot away from it as well. So thanks again for being here. And for everyone listening, see you on the next episode of Growth Challenges for Manufacturers. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Katherine.
