Taste First, Mission Second With Nicole Malcolm-Manyara

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara is the Founder and Principal at AG Brands, a boutique consultancy that helps growth-stage companies transform brand strategy into measurable business growth. With a career spanning senior marketing roles at Procter & Gamble, organicgirl, and Newman’s Own, where she served as CMO, Nicole has modernized legacy brands, led rebrands, and driven innovation across the food, beverage, and personal care sectors. She holds an MBA from Stanford and brings deep expertise in brand positioning, consumer insight, and building consumer-centered brands that shape culture and drive impact.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[01:59] Nicole Malcolm-Manyara explains why scaling a cult brand starts with what’s already working
[02:35] Why constant testing and learning powers breakthrough marketing
[05:14] How hunting for killer issues streamlines business strategy
[08:53] Why scalable systems are the hidden secret to rapid growth
[11:39] Nicole’s playbook for prioritizing the highest-impact business processes
[13:17] Why taste always beats mission in food marketing success
[15:14] The story-driven packaging that redefined Newman’s Own messaging
[35:32] Nicole’s insights on AI’s impact on brand discovery

In this episode…

Purpose can make a food brand more meaningful, but it cannot make a mediocre product worth buying twice. So when taste and mission are both central to the story, which one should lead?

For CPG growth strategist Nicole Malcolm-Manyara, the key lies in putting taste first and mission second. Mission can strengthen differentiation, she explains, but the product still has to justify the purchase and any premium, especially because consumers ultimately vote with their wallets. A compelling cause may earn attention, but a superior product experience is what gives a purpose-driven brand staying power.

In this episode of The Missing Ingredient, CJ Bruce is joined by Nicole Malcolm-Manyara, Founder and Principal at AG Brands, to discuss why taste must lead purpose-driven food brands. They explore how product superiority supports mission, how packaging can turn impact into tangible stories, and why repeat purchase matters more than promotional trial. Nicole also shares how brands can modernize without losing what loyal consumers already love.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments:

“At the end of the day, you have an opportunity to sell a brand, right?”
“It also denigrates the value of your product if you’re constantly selling it at a discount.”
“But sometimes you have to build a plane while you’re flying it as well.”
“You know, I always talk about testing and learning and always have something experimental going on.”
“So whether it’s new tools or new approaches to marketing your brand, always have something that you want to experiment with.”

Action Steps:

Lead with product quality before mission: A strong purpose can differentiate your brand, but superior taste and product experience are what justify the purchase and drive long-term loyalty.
Identify the “killer issues” before investing heavily: Pinpointing the challenges that could make or break an initiative helps teams focus resources, solve problems early, and make faster decisions.
Build scalable processes and systems: Creating repeatable ways of working makes it easier to handle increased demand, operate efficiently, and strengthen the overall value of the business.
Make trial campaigns time-bound and measure repeat purchase: Tracking whether customers return without a promotion reveals whether the product itself is strong enough to create sustainable growth.
Keep testing and learning new approaches: Consistently experimenting with emerging tools, platforms, and marketing ideas can uncover growth opportunities before they become widely adopted.

This episode is sponsored by The Missing Ingredient, a food and beverage marketing agency that believes a better future starts with food. They partner with purpose-driven brands to drive growth through smart, results-focused marketing — without the “set it and forget it” approach.

From brand awareness and paid media to content, influencer partnerships, and loyalty programs, they act as true strategic partners invested in your long-term success.

To learn more about how they help food and beverage brands grow with impact, visit themissingingredient.com today.

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Full Transcript

Introduction and Guest Background

Intro: 00:01

Welcome to The Missing Ingredient podcast with CJ Bruce, where food and beverage founders, operators and experts share the real strategies behind building successful brands. Let’s jump into today’s show.

CJ Bruce: 00:15

Hey, I’m CJ Bruce and welcome to the show. This is the podcast where founders and leaders of high impact food and beverage brands are serious about scaling. Each episode, I sit down with the people who power the food and beverage industry, brand operators, agencies, vendors, creators, and retailers to uncomplicate the strategies that take brands from early traction to serious scale.

This episode is sponsored by The Missing Ingredient, a food and beverage marketing agency with over a decade in the industry. We take a different approach, starting with your business goals, looking at the full picture and building a marketing strategy that actually ties back to growth. From content performance marketing to influencer partnerships and AI powered workflows where an extension of your team, not just another vendor. Learn more at themissingingredient.com.

Now for today’s guest. Nicole Malcolm is a former CMO and growth strategist who has built and scaled beloved consumer brands across food, beverage and personal care, including leadership roles at Newman’s Own, organicgirl and Procter & Gamble. She now leads AG Brands, where she partners with founders and executive teams to unlock growth through growth oriented business strategy, clear positioning, deep consumer insight, and commercially grounded marketing. Passionate about building purpose driven brands that shift culture and drive impact. Nicole brings a rare blend of big brand rigor and entrepreneurial agility to every engagement. Welcome to the show, Nicole.

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 01:33

I’m glad to be here. CJ thanks for having me.

CJ Bruce: 01:36

Yeah. All right. Let’s start with our common history. So organicgirl. We worked on that together.

And so I want to go back and start there. I’m curious if there’s any lessons, you know, in building demand for. It’s a fresh refrigerated brand for people who aren’t familiar with it that, you know, you still carry with you today. Any lessons learned from that that have stuck with you over the years?

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 01:59

For sure. So when I joined organicgirl, it was a very beloved brand. We always described it as having a strong cult following. So one thing I will say is really important is to always just, you know, if that is the case, figure out what’s working well, you know, for the consumers that you have that are buying your brand, what’s working well, understand why it’s working well, and then do your best to scale that, right? How do you replicate that?

How do you recreate those experiences for even more people? So that was something that I really continue to carry from my organicgirl days with me. I also, you know, picked up a really good experience there and something that I continue to carry as well is always investing in testing and learning new things. So whether it’s new tools or new approaches to marketing your brand, always have something that you want to experiment with. Or maybe there’s some up and coming person you may want to work with, or a platform you want to work with, but just always allocating a portion of your resources to that because you never know how, how that will turn out.

And when I was in an organic role at the time, that was influencers. So this whole concept of influencers was very new. And we saw that as an opportunity to create fresh, diverse content for the brand. And lo and behold, the whole idea and concept of influencers really took off. And it paid off very well for organicgirl.

CJ Bruce: 03:38

That’s awesome.

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 03:39

Yeah.

CJ Bruce: 03:40

Sorry. Would you have more to add there?

Breaking Category Conventions to Stand Out

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 03:42

The other one I would say is, you know, when you’re in categories, you know, organic growth was interesting because it was in a category that was kind of stodgy and, you know, perceived to be a certain way or in production everyone thinks produces, it’s all the same. Everything’s commoditized. And so a lot of categories have these conventions that come along with them that when you’re in the industry, you kind of know them and you try to respect them. But you know, one thing that I learned at organicgirl is just going against that is a good thing when you can write. And of course, if you’re going to go against it, make sure you have a tight story to justify why you’re going against it or have some, you know, a story that’s going to explain why that’s going to be a benefit, not just to you.

If you are in retail, also your retailer or ultimately your consumer. So that’s another thing that I would say I’ve taken with me and continue to really, you know, hold true to, to this day.

CJ Bruce: 04:45

Yeah, those are great, great takeaways. So shifting to the large, large organization in your background. So at Procter and Gamble, P&G. So, you know, some of the pre-show research I wrote about you learning to hunt for a serial killer issue worth solving for the brand. So you talk a little bit about what that means and maybe, you know, other examples of where you use that discipline to help kind of reframe a problem.

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 05:14

Yeah. So that concept of killer issue, I actually picked that up when I worked in the incubator at P&G. So even though P&G is a big company, I had multiple roles and one that I was very excited to have and really just taught me so much was being in their incubator at the time, it was called Future Works. I think the names evolved since then, but the whole idea there was, you know, P&G mostly produced products. They were getting into services.

And when you’re building businesses, you have to figure out, okay, well, how do I design this business? And you really want to design it and, but focus your energy and your effort on what matters most. And so one of the things we went through as a part of any, you know, business initiative that we were working on was, okay, you want to go build this thing? That’s great. What’s the business model and what are the killer issues?

And the killer issue is essentially the things that can make or break the success, like basically can make or break your success. So you’re upfront thinking about those things so you can get ahead of them. And so that then all the things that you’re doing are in service to figuring out, is this really a killer issue? Can I solve it upfront? Or do I find a way of solving it, can I find a way of solving it so that it no longer is a killer issue?

Or is it truly a killer issue to the point where I need to walk away? Right. And so it’s, it’s really just a way of, of design thinking that helps you, you know, upfront, just be very, very efficient with your time. So it’s a concept that I use. I feel like I use it quite a lot, it’s almost natural when I think about building strategy and things like that, but usually you use it when you’re trying to build something new.

And, you know, in the concept of a product of food, for example, a product, you may say, okay, I want to develop this new form of something, right? And so you have to think through all the different angles of what it may take to design and deliver this new form of a product. Yes, there’s the consumer angle, there’s the retailer angle, there’s the supply chain angle. There are all the things, right? There’s the finance angle.

But when you do, if you take the time up front to figure out where do I think I’m going to have the biggest, you know, issue or the biggest thing I’m going to hurdle, I’m going to have to overcome. It just makes the process so much more efficient and easier for you to learn efficiently and make a quick call on whether or not you should continue to pursue it and invest the resources.

CJ Bruce: 07:50

That’s great. I feel like that could apply. When you talk about launching new products like incubators and then even new brands and within a product launching, you know, another SKU or another product line or even an extension of the product. I feel like it could also apply for me. I’m thinking about it even from a campaign we talked about earlier, like different channels or things you might test and think about like, okay, well, what could go wrong here before you even get into it?

Yeah, it’s a really interesting framing and concept.

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 08:18

Absolutely, absolutely.

Bringing Big-Company Systems to Growing Brands

CJ Bruce: 08:20

Yeah. All right. So think about taking those, some of those learnings from P&G and curious about, you know, now you’ve also worked with very much smaller brands that don’t have those resources or don’t have all the, you know, all the people and financial resources of P&G. So are there any big practices or, you know, big company practices that you take from P&G? I mean, we just talked about one that could then translate to smaller brands or brands that are kind of, you know, scaling in the say under like say, 5 to $100 million range.

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 08:53

Yeah. I mean, I think one I mean, this is a blessing and a curse in a way. I mean, people sometimes refer to this as a negative with big companies, but in a lot of ways it’s a positive because when you go to small companies, oftentimes this is the capability that they want to bring because they realize this is what gets them to that skilled place. And that’s around processes and ultimately systems. And, because I’ve worked for smaller companies, like, I don’t mean that to say I’m going to take the P and G process and I’m going to plop it into this small company and turn it into that.

No, all it means is, you know, when you go into when I’ve walked into new, new companies or worked on new projects for clients, I first try to understand where they are and how have they shaped their organization? How are they? What are their marketing processes? How are they approaching them? What tools are they using?

And just getting a better sense of like overall where the company is even in its own life cycle to then say, okay, if we’re going to take it to the next level, what might that new shape of an organization look like and processes look like? What systems might we introduce? So it’s really more of a mindset knowing that having these processes and systems in place allow you to just move much more quickly, operate in a more turnkey fashion, and ultimately add value to your overall business. Right. Depending on what you know, if you’re an entrepreneur, you need to have an exit strategy depending on what your exit strategy is.

It’s always important that you’re not just thinking of creating this really excellent product, but the systems and the processes that help make that product that’s ultimately where there’s value in your business. And so you have to make sure that you’re investing and building that as well. Because that will then ultimately increase the value of your business. Whether you’re keeping it or you’re selling it. Whatever your plan is, it is ultimately going to add value and allow you to scale.

Right? Because once you have things moving in a more turnkey fashion, then as you grow, it’s easier for you to deal with that growth. Whereas if things are kind of more loosey goosey, haphazardly managed, it’s harder when you when the demand increases because you’re just not going to be able to produce as quickly. And at the scale that, you know, the demand is, is requiring.

Prioritizing Systems by Impact and Feasibility

CJ Bruce: 11:24

Interesting. And how, how do you prioritize those digging into the systems, thinking a little bit, you come in and like, you know, see a brand scaling and it’s like, okay, well, all these things start to break. And so then how do you, how do you decide, you know, where to start in terms of building out those systems?

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 11:39

That’s a great question. And so what the process I like to go through is you look at first is get, get it all down, right? Like look at all the different processes. And then you have to do an assessment to understand, okay, what will the impact be? I am one who likes to quantify things as much as you know, to the degree possible.

So if you can roughly quantify what you think the impact of each of those things would be, then that’ll help you prioritize, right? So there’s the quantification of the value. But then there’s also or, you know, it could be a savings, whatever, however you quantify it. But then there’s also the aspect of feasibility and timing, right? Because it’s like, okay, I like this.

I think it’ll add a lot of value, but if it’s going to take you three years to execute it, well, then that’s not going to be the top priority, right? So I think it’s a balance between those things for you to then ultimately figure out how do I prioritize from the list?

CJ Bruce: 12:35

Yeah. That’s great. Okay. I want to talk about Newman’s Own. So this is a, you know, a very well known brand and known for doing good.

And as we’ve had conversations on this podcast before, I know you and I have talked about it, right? You still have to win on taste, right? Taste is key and taste is what drives people to come back for more. And so when you’re working on a product like that, and there’s this, this pull between, you know, we focus purely on the food and the taste and what’s in there versus the, the giving back and the impact story. And I’m curious how, how do you decide which one leads or how do you balance that, that messaging between, you know, kind of traditional food messaging and more impact forward?

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara!: 13:14

Yeah, I think it’s more art than science. But 100% agree with you. We always say taste first, mission second. And it’s interesting because some brands do the reverse and then it’s hard to kind of get out of that because I mean, the way and the reason why I always say taste first is because ultimately that’s what matters most to your consumer, right? If I’m purchasing something I need to consume and put it in my mouth and go into my body, right? People care about all the qualities of all the qualities that are, you know, they deem to be important with that overall experience, right?

But even though a mission is also good and it can help you, help differentiate you, that can’t be the only thing that you differentiate yourself on. You have to differentiate the product itself or the service itself to make sure that it is ultimately going to be sustainable because two, you know, consumers, they, they vote with them with, with their wallets. And it depends sometimes those more mission forward brands tend to charge a premium and you need to be able to showcase, you know, beyond just the giving aspect of it, why that premium is justified. So I just can’t stress enough the importance of, you know, the product itself being differentiated and being, you know, ultimately hopefully superior to the alternatives that are out there.

CJ Bruce: 14:49

Yeah. Yeah. The product core product is a critical piece, as always. And then one specific thing with Newman’s Own, I know there was read about the cost of storytelling with putting children’s faces and stories on the pizza boxes as a way to kind of communicate that. Could you talk a little bit about that and how you know how that came to be?

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 15:11

Sure. So when I joined Newman’s Own. The packaging. So most people know, I think that Newman’s own, it is a company that is, you know, does a lot of good in the community charitable organization. But when I joined the company on all the packaging, it said 100% of profits go to 100% profits to charity. And so the language felt a bit dated. People didn’t quite know where the money was going.

And so there was an opportunity to refine that language and be clearer about where the money was going. But overall for the organization, there was an opportunity to also have a clear focus. So yes, the organization gave all of its profits away to various different types of organizations, but that’s very difficult to describe on packaging. It’s very difficult to communicate in many ways that you need to communicate. So we decided to double down in the area that Paul Newman had a lot of passion about, and that was around kids who had specific needs.

And so we ended up, you know, changing the language that was on the packaging as well as it was, you know, everywhere, all the communication for the brand. So 100% profits to help kids. But, you know, helping kids, you need to elaborate more about what type of kids, what’s going on in the lives of these kids. And so we made the strategic decision to leverage portions of the packaging and it depended on the product where you saw the biggest amount of real estate dedicated tours to it. It has been the pizza boxes because that is like the biggest format of packaging.

And so we made the strategic decision to have that portion of the real estate tell stories of these children, to just give a deeper understanding about the type of work the organization did. It’s referenced on every other product as well. It just goes the most, goes the deepest, on the pizza packaging. And there was a lot of discussion about that, right? Because you’re like, well, I could have used that real estate to promote another product that another product that we sell could have used it to do a lot of other things that are more in service to the brand.

But we just felt that connecting more with our consumers by being able to share these really heartfelt stories was really important. And we got a lot of positive feedback from people who would read the stories and, you know, talk about how they didn’t know we were doing this work. But there are just really beautiful stories. Very heartfelt.

Modernizing a Legacy Brand Without Losing Its Heritage

CJ Bruce: 17:58

Well that’s great. I want to talk a little bit more broadly about the Newman’s Own refresh and just modernizing that brand. You said it’s been around for a long time. I’d imagine there’s a lot of strong opinions about, you know, what to keep and what would maybe be good to, to change. Can you talk a little bit about just how that, how that process works?

And if there are any specific moments where there was, you know, pushback or tension in, in the overall rebrand for Newman’s Own?

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 18:26

Yeah. So I mean, I’ve done multiple rebrands. Newman’s own was one of them when I was there. Generally when you’re doing a rebranding, right? Naturally, they’re going to always say this packaging is one of those things. Even the non-marketers have an opinion, right? So it’s one of those things that it’s exciting to work on as a marketer.

But you have to realize that when you take on that undertaking, you have to prepare yourself to get a lot of feedback. Because you also need to bring the organization along, particularly when you’re touching probably the most important asset of the brand. And, and so what I would say is from a process standpoint, they’re usually a lot of people involved. So even as a CMO, you know, CEOs involved, like there, there are a lot of people involved. And then up front, you have to determine what degree of a packaging change do you want to make?

So we call it a restage. I also did this on Gillette when I worked on Gillette. But you, you upfront need to decide strategically how far do we want to go? And typically when you work with agencies and you, you brief them and they start, you know, initiate the work. That’s usually the part of the upfront deliverables as they also want to make sure that they’re hitting the mark and show a different, different degree of that evolution, because you can get more toward a revolution space.

And so strategically, you just want to align on how far we want to go? And then pushback. I mean, you know, I own Newman’s, for example, that was a legacy brand. Gillette was also a legacy brand. And on those brands, they’re always the and more so on Newman’s Own, just because private companies tend to have people on brands for much longer versus a bigger brand, you know, in a house of brands like P&G, where people are moving from different assignments quite often.

So, you know, Newman’s own being privately held, you have people who have been at the company for over a decade and had a lot more knowledge on some evolutions, right? So naturally, in the CPG space, packaging is a common thing. And at the time, the direction we wanted to go in, it was an evolution, but it was a pretty strong evolution. I know like the color palette and things like that were pushing the envelope in terms of, you know, going in a new direction. So it just took a lot of conversation to get people comfortable.

And part of the processes you do research, you get consumer feedback, you get even retailer feedback at one point. And so it’s important to bring the organization along in that journey, because if you wait until it’s all done and then you show people kind of what it is, some people, right? It’s a bit of a shock. Depending on how far you’ve taken it, it might be a bit of a shock, but you have to be choiceful too, in terms of who to let into that circle, you know, along the way, but ultimately, it’s something that you hope that you know, the organization can get behind and support and, you know, yeah, yeah. And ultimately, I mean, with both of them consumer wise, it was well received, you know, with Newman’s own part of it too, also reintroducing the brand to a younger generation.

So it was really important to hit the mark there. And we really needed to stand out on the shelf. So I think, you know, folks who may be more vested in the heritage and the history of the brand are more likely to probably have opinions and things like that. So you want to try to get some feedback, maybe early if you can, and get research and data to help support some of the decisions you make so that you can, you know, get the rest of the organization aligned or at least understand why you made the decisions you made. Everyone’s not going to love everything in the end as much as we would hope.

But you do your best to bring people along.

CJ Bruce: 22:46

Yeah. That’s great. Yeah, it’s a complicated process. A lot of stakeholders, I think the retailer involvement is interesting. I hadn’t I hadn’t heard that before and getting feedback from retailers as well on the packaging that’s.

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 22:59

Interesting will give you feedback whether you like it or not. So, you know, it depends like you sometimes you have to be you be choiceful. You’re not going to share with every retailer, but there are times where you have strategic retailers and a brand might decide, we want to show it to the retailer sooner rather than later. We’re not showing it. You know, you’re not going to show it to the retailer to have them redesign your work.

But it is helpful to hear some pieces of feedback because when you’re in that final stretch, sometimes you can tweak some things. If you feel like it’s really good feedback. And oftentimes retailers, they have good feedback.

Marketing Across the Grocery Store

CJ Bruce: 23:36

Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Okay, so we’ve talked about, you know, the freezer frozen pizza pantry also with Newman’s own and then, you know, fresh refrigerated with, with produce. I’m curious and, you know, other areas that you’ve worked in as well. Are there examples where you see commonalities or things from a marketing perspective that work across the different parts of the grocery store, or maybe some differences depending on the, you know, where you sit.

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 24:03

Yeah. I mean, commonality, the commonality is, at the end of the day, you, you have an opportunity to sell a brand, right? You’re selling products, but you have a brand. And I think I feel like organicgirl really pioneered, you know, turning at least the produce aisle into more of a branded experience than it is, than it was before, which has been amazing. But I would say, right.

So knowing that when you’re at least in, in those different aisles, that there’s an opportunity to you’re creating an experience to an extent, wherever you are sitting in that store. So I’d say that’s common. I think, you know, the foundational brand and marketing stuff, it’s all it all is true. But there are nuances, you know, from a supply chain standpoint, things are different, which impacts like, you know, your ability to get on the shelf, how you show up in the shelf. So for example, I’ll start with frozen.

So frozen, for example, one of the big things with frozen is your product is behind a door, right? Very different than if you’re a shelf stable product and you are, there’s nothing obstructing the view of your packaging unless it’s just not placed on the shelf properly or you’re out of stock, that kind of stuff. But you still have those issues in frozen plus that door. So that’s always something. If you’re in the frozen aisle, you really need to think about it, especially when it comes to designing your packaging.

And then there are sometimes these like, and also in produce, these shelf pushers things. So just think about how the product is merchandise, right? So in the produce aisle, when I worked on organic packaged salads, they sit there like pushers that have to sit the salad behind. And sometimes that can obstruct what’s on the packaging. Now these days, I think they’re almost all clear.

So it’s less of an issue. But you sometimes have those things that you just have to think through when you design your packaging, for example. And then I also say the shelf life of your product relative to the purchase frequency of the product. So at one point, organicgirl sold salad dressings. And, you know, that was really interesting because you had this really fresh, amazing product, but it was merchandise in the refrigerated section.

And oftentimes it was competing with shelf stable salad dressings. for example, in a completely different section of the store. But for a shelf stable product, your product isn’t as perishable versus a fresh refrigerated product. So just understanding where your product sits, what your competitive set looks like, and where they sit relative to you. Those are things that are just really important to keep in mind as you, you know, develop your strategy and plan for marketing your brand.

CJ Bruce: 27:03

Yes. So talk a lot about trials for brands or new products and getting people, you know, expanding to new audiences. And I think there’s a, you know, a lot of focus on that in marketing, just like, how do we get people to try the product, but obviously to have a sustainable business and to grow the business, you need the repeat purchase. So I’m curious from your perspective, what you’ve seen in, you know, helping drive that repeat purchase, obviously the quality of the product we’ve talked about, but anything else that helps really drive that repeat purchase and grow that loyalty.

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 27:36

I mean, ultimately it’s going to be driven by how good the product is at P&G. We used to call it the second moment of truth, which is, okay. After I make the decision, I take it home. I, I eat it, for example, if it tastes really good, I’m and I felt like the, you know, the, the value equation was good. I’ll go back and I’ll buy the product.

And so, you know, really with the trial piece, you always just have to make sure that you have a plan, right? You can’t spend a bunch of promotional dollars to indefinitely drive a trial. It also denigrates the value of your product if you’re constantly selling it at a discount. So I think upfront, if it’s something that’s completely new, have a plan. Be clear on what your goals are.

Have it been time bound as well so that you know, okay, when am I going to stop this period of time when I’m doing this promotion to drive trial? And if you are in retail, be clear with the retailer as well, because oftentimes once you promote, you spend money against promotions. Retailers think, oh, well, now that’s in my base. You’re going to invest that same amount next year. So you need to be really clear on what type of investment this is and manage expectations on that front as well, so that you aren’t caught off guard when you’re having, you know, conversations with the retailer about your promotional plans for the following year.

CJ Bruce: 29:05

Yeah. And I’m sorry, go ahead.

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 29:08

Oh, wait.

Measuring Promotions and Customer Repurchase

CJ Bruce: 29:09

I was going to ask about the kind of measurement of that. So you see, you know, there’s a velocity. The main thing that you’re looking at is okay, they bought. And then it’s like, are they continuing to buy coming off of that promo and knowing, you know, kind of when to start it, when to stop it?

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 29:23

Yeah. So it could be a couple of things. So one, are people even taking advantage of whatever trial offer you’re, you’re, you have, like, I don’t know how you could be delivered in, in multiple ways, whether it’s a coupon that you hand out or coupon at the shelf, something that you are sending over, email, whatever it is. Are you getting enough people to actually go and redeem or take advantage of that? A trial offer is one thing you want to look at. The other piece is, and this is where the time bound part comes into play, as well as what the purchase cycle is for your product. What you want to see is that person coming back again to buy without the promotion.

So depending on how you’re selling, you can measure this information to then see what that repurchase looks like. And so that’s really important as well. So I think it’s really just you map it out from a timing standpoint, and you make sure you have the right tools in place to be able to measure and track how you’re doing with the repeat. So it’s kind of like brand health, like a brand health tracker. You see like, okay, how many people have tried the product, then how many people are going to repeat the product?

But then you can dig deeper and understand that from, you know, from your promotional data to see how effective you have been with that type of a program.

CJ Bruce: 30:50

And then once you get into, say you crack that and you’ve got some repeat purchase happening, are there strategies you’ve seen to help, you know, I guess scale from that to introduce new people to the brand outside of promo. So I’m thinking like, you know, referrals or sharing or some other things that kind of like you said, you’ve proven it, people bought it or tried it, they liked it, they bought it again. Now, how do you expand your thoughts on that?

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 31:16

Yeah, I mean, it depends on the product. But yeah, word of mouth is always the best, right? It’s like, and sometimes it’s just the power of suggestion. It doesn’t have to be like a big expensive campaign. It’s simply when you’re conversing with your, with your, with your consumers.

Are you mentioning the shareability of the product? Are you mentioning or just suggesting that they bring it to and bring it to this party, bring it as a hostess gift, whatever. Right. Mentioning all the ways that the product can be shared so that you’re planting those seeds to help continue to spread that organic trial versus a promoted trial, you know, promoted trial instances. So yes, those are, those are the ways that you can potentially continue to drive that trial.

And honestly, I feel like trial pushing for trial depends. It depends, again, where you are in your product lifecycle. But if you’re still pretty young and your household penetration is low, especially relative to what your goals are, there’s likely always going to be some portion of your marketing that is dedicated to driving trials.

Diagnosing the Real Problem Behind Underperforming Marketing

CJ Bruce: 32:24

Yeah. Yeah. It’s good. I love the planting, the seeds of yeah, usage occasions or sharing occasions or things like that that help drive that organic, you know, organic growth is a great, great thought. So speaking of growth, I think, you know, you so today, you know, you’re working with various brands and when they come to ask you for better marketing, you know, I want marketing to work better.

I’m imagining that that’s not, you know, that’s often the presenting issue, right? There’s other things to dig into there. So how do you, how do you diagnose that or kind of dig into understand like, is there a deeper issue here? Maybe walk through how you approach that?

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 33:05

Yeah, typically. I ask, well, what are you doing today? Right. Show me what you’re doing today. How is it performing? What are the results you’ve seen?

Just to get a baseline, right, to understand what’s going on. And then, you know, sometimes when I am asked to engage with brands, it’s either, you know, maybe something happened, maybe something specifically happened, like, well, they had a goal. They did this campaign, they didn’t hit the number or, you know, or maybe sometimes someone left and they just need someone to help them kind of fill a gap and things. Things have changed because they’ve had the gap for a while. And it’s, they’re realizing this is this, this needs to be fixed.

So yeah, I first look at what they’ve been doing and then assess, okay, what might they be able to do differently? But how I get to that, it depends on a number of things like, okay, who is there? Are they clear on the fundamental brand elements? Right? So are they clear on who they’re targeting?

Are they clear on what their points of difference are and how they’re different from, you know, standing out versus competition? What are their advantages and are they clear on how they’re positioning themselves? How are they articulating the benefits of their products or. How to use the product? Because sometimes it’s not just the benefits, sometimes even how to use the product that might be different and may not necessarily be communicated very, very well.

So once I assess those things, then I work with them to build a plan. And almost always there’s like a more fundamental element that needs to be addressed before you get to the sexy part of, you know, of like, well, what is my marketing plan going to be? And what’s the campaign idea going to be? But sometimes you have to build a plane while you’re flying it as well. It just depends on where the client is, you know?

So, so yeah, that’s, that’s how broad strokes think about it and approach it.

CJ Bruce: 35:07

Yeah. That’s great. Awesome. Okay, so I want to look ahead a little bit. So I think, you know, one thing I again, in the research, I saw you were thinking about conversational AI and just how AI is kind of reshaping discovery and curious how you’re thinking about that and maybe more broadly, like your perspectives on AI and how it’s kind of shifting marketing.

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 35:28

And not think about AI.

CJ Bruce: 35:30

Yeah.

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 35:32

Yeah. So I consider myself an early adopter. I know you and I had conversations about AI like a couple of years ago at least. Yeah. And so, you know, I always talk about testing and learning and always have something experimental going on.

And it started, my journey started when I was at Newman’s Own, where we started, you know, signed up for ChatGPT and all the things and more and more started to see how AI was being also integrated into different marketing tools. And so especially on the influenza front, that became more and more interesting. And I felt at that time, there was a lot being done in that space. There still is today. So, you know, I think for brands being found driving awareness, AI plays a big role today.

I think brands need to think about how they design content a bit differently, especially even just for something as simple as their website, where you need to have content on your website that is ultimately going to have your brand be top of mind for the AI for AI searches, right? AI driven searches so that your, your, your brand is just showing up because, I mean, there’s not every search now I feel like it pretty much is AI enabled. So needing to understand how to have the proper content in the right place with the right topics so that your brand is bubbling to the top when when your category is top of mind for consumers, other spaces where AI is coming into play is, you know, as I mentioned in marketing tools, there are so many different, different ways that it can be leveraged. I know teams are using it internally, not just from an administrative standpoint, but also from an ideation standpoint, even from a creative standpoint. I know a lot of I would say agencies use it as well in terms of developing creative assets.

And now a space that I’m really excited about right now is processes. So now authentic workflows, being able to leverage AI to just work more faster and efficiently and doing some. So I’m experimenting, experimenting in that space these days. Yeah.

CJ Bruce: 38:04

I love it. Yeah. It’s been nerd out on that for a while. We’re definitely on the same page there, I think. Yeah, the processes, internal processes and it’s been interesting.

We’ve been, you know, because we have, we’re a small, you know, small team, but we have stuff that’s been, you know, established, right. And it’s like, how do we apply AI to that? And then we have new things where from the ground up, it’s like, okay, well, we could build this AI first from the beginning and seeing how those work differently, and you think about it differently is just such an interesting, interesting time.

Using AI Responsibly Without Losing Human Creativity

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 38:36

Absolutely, absolutely. And of course, you always have to be safe, and leverage it in a responsible way. And brands just need to be careful with that, especially if, you know, they’re when you have proprietary information and things like that, you just have to make sure that you have good partners on, I guess, on the IT front who are going to make sure that, you know, you’re able to take advantage of AI, but do it in a safe, controlled way.

CJ Bruce: 39:05

Yeah, absolutely. And to your point about testing and learning, also being clear about what you’re trying to get out of it, I think is another key piece, right? It’s very easy to play with these tools and get excited and have fun. And I could do all these things, but is it actually driving your business? You know, in some way?

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 39:21

Oh, totally. Totally. And I mean, I have kids, so I’m also very conscious of, you know, brain development and things like that and just really also not using it as a crutch, but using it to really help kind of enhance what you already have. And making sure that you’re always leading with your own ideas versus depending on AI to produce the ideas for you is something that I’m also very big on.

CJ Bruce: 39:52

Yeah, absolutely. All right. So looking at kind of a wider lens of just what’s happening in food and beverage overall, our consumer CPG, like, are there any shifts that you’re seeing or trends you’re seeing that you’re most excited about?

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 40:10

In general? Yeah, I think food right now, snacks had a big, big, you know, a big moment. I still see a lot of innovation happening in snacks. I’m also seeing some interesting things like on the protein front. So I like certain brands that I like.

CJ Bruce: 40:36

You can name the brands. It’s okay.

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 40:40

Like one that I’m kind of fascinated with right now is Fish Wife. So they’re an interesting brand. And it’s funny because I recently saw the episode of Shark Tank that they won. I didn’t know they wanted Shark Tank. I just happened to see an episode that they were on and I was like, oh, I didn’t even realize that’s how you want people to eat this.

So that was eye opening for me. And I thought, well, that’s interesting because even in our house, it’s been purchased but not eaten that way. So I don’t know it. It’ll be just, it’ll be interesting to see how they evolve. And, you know, I’m seeing from a distribution standpoint, seeing them like they pop up at like there’s a specific sushi place that we go to when we want to get something really, really fresh, like fish and they do sushi and they are being sold in their very small retail space.

And I thought, well, that’s an interesting distribution play. So yeah, that one is just one that I find interesting and follow. I also find the beverage space, like the alternative, like non-alcoholic beverage space, adult beverage space to be interesting. Ghia is a brand I’ve been following for a while that I find interesting. So yeah, I mean, I also think what I also see in the beverage space that excites me is just the flavor profiles.

I just feel like brand beverage brands are just doing a much better job at just going all out with the flavors. It’s so refreshing. Whether it’s a nostalgic flavor or something new and you’re like mashing things up. Like me, I love it all day. Just keep coming with that stuff.

CJ Bruce: 42:26

Good. Yeah. Okay. Before we wrap up, I want to make sure to point people to connect with you. So point people to your website, agbrands.co. Is there anywhere else you want to make sure we are?

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 42:40

Just updated that too, but it’s agbrands.co. Make it much shorter, easier. You know, I’m trying to get that easier, easier URL. So it became available and I snatched it right up. So yes agbrands.co. agbrands.co.

CJ Bruce: 42:57

Great. All right. We’ve been talking to Nicole Malcolm-Manyara, Founder and Principal of AG Brands. Be sure to check her out at agbrands.co. Nicole, thanks so much for being on the show.

Nicole Malcolm-Manyara: 43:07

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Outro: 43:11

Thanks for listening to The Missing Ingredient podcast. We’ll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.