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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#679: Growing a brand by focusing on the details that matter with Dominic Minogue, Dirty Water
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- [00:00]
Unknown Speaker
Your brand may be staying on top of current trends, but are you agile enough to stay relevant, resilient and successful as customers, competition and the world continues to change at a breakneck pace? I'm thrilled to share the newly revised version of my first book, the Agile Brand. I'm calling it the Agile Brand Revisited. It's been updated to reflect our continually changing world, and it provides seven principles that form the backbone of an agile brand, offering detailed insights and actionable steps for incorporating them into your business strategy. This is the book that started it all and I'm excited to share it with you. It's now available in print and digital formats and available everywhere. Learn more by going to the Agile Brand guide website at www.agilebrandguide.com.
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The Agile Brand.
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Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trend, trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and Martech platforms as we explore marketing technology, AI, e commerce, and whatever's next for the Omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand Podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. Now onto the show.
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Unknown Speaker
There are a lot of great ideas for products and brands out there, but sometimes the difference between success and failure lies in getting the details details right and understanding the customers and users of your product.
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Greg Kilstrom
Today we're going to talk about growing.
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Unknown Speaker
A brand by focusing on the details that matter.
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Greg Kilstrom
To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Dominic Minogue, CEO of Dirty Water, the world's first session Hard.
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Unknown Speaker
Seltzer and a brand that started in New York City and has quickly grown well beyond with some phenomenal awards to match.
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Greg Kilstrom
Dominic, welcome to the show.
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Dominic Minogue
Hey Greg, thanks for having me.
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Unknown Speaker
Yeah, looking forward to talking with you about this. Before we dive in though, why don't you give a little background on yourself and what led you to found Dirty Water?
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Dominic Minogue
Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Dominic. Not traditionally from the Hard Seltzer or CPG space is actually my first time doing anything CPG related Directly before this, I was in mobile gaming, actually mobile gaming in the tech space, ad tech space, doing a lot of performance marketing, product operations there. And then even before that, I was actually spending a number of years doing styling and merchandising in fashion. So a nice kind of like going around the block, trying different things. But I always knew I wanted to do something physical. I didn't know exactly what that was, but the reason why I started Dirty Water was because when I was working in tech, I was drinking a lot of like, you know, your light beers to unwind from long days of work. But I also wanted to become like a little bit more health conscious. And one of the things I really wanted was almost like a vodka soda that was in a can. Right. I love drinking out of cans. I love the dopamine effect of cracking open a cold one. But there wasn't this, I would say, like vodka soda equivalent to your classic light years. And hard seltzers came out. I thought they were great, but over time I realized everyone's doing the same thing, which is sweet. Tons of flavors, variety packs. I don't love variety packs because you don't love half the flavors in there. And so for me, I was like, I would love, you know, they. Something of a hard seltzer equivalent that I could just drink the same way that I enjoy your light beers. Right. Call it very sessionable, crushable, easy. And so I was like, you know what, I'll make it myself. This seems like a product that I really want in the space for me. And I know if I love it, then I think there will be other people that feel the same way. And so, yeah, I started Dirty Water that way, started working on it in 2022, and then finally launched it this past year in 2024.
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Unknown Speaker
Wow. Wonderful.
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Well, yeah, it's, you know, CPG is not, not an easy thing to, to get into. And you know, we'll certainly talk about your, your success so far. Great achievements there. So let's, let's maybe start with how the brand got started. And you launched in New York City, you know, not the smallest of markets to, to start out with, but you chose it for a reason. And can you talk a little bit about that?
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Dominic Minogue
For sure? Yeah. I think the main reason is because it is my backyard.
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Unknown Speaker
Right.
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Dominic Minogue
I live in Manhattan. And so, you know, for me, being a CPG founder, especially something in the alcohol space, you really do have to be boots on the ground, working very closely with your first accounts, whether that's on premise, off premise, grocery stores, whoever it is. And so you need to be in the thick of it. New York City, thankfully, you have a lot of reach to a lot of those accounts very easily, just by walking a couple of blocks. And so that was a logical step for me. I will say, though, that if I could start over, I probably would not choose New York City as that first target. And the way I describe it is this. New York City is the most competitive market in the country. Everyone's fighting for shelf space. And even though there are tons of locations, you really need to, like, fight tooth and nail for every single spot.
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Unknown Speaker
Right.
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Dominic Minogue
And to create, I think, a great beverage brand, great CPG brand, it does require penetration and canvassing. And when you think about canvassing, you know, you think about getting into every corner, every block, right. New York city, there's over 6,000 bars. And so to be able to canvas properly so people actually do see your product and resonate with it and say, oh, it's quote, unquote, everywhere. It's much harder than, say, if I was back in my local hometown with that one strip of bars that everybody goes to, that's like 10 or 12 bars will be so much easier to penetrate that and become the namesake, you know, beverage of that area. Much easier than it would be to become that beverage here. Right. And so I would say that is a something that I would have probably done a little bit differently. But again, it is about being in your backyard. And for me, you know, know, I could speak towards the culture and drinking culture of New York City better than I can anywhere else.
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Unknown Speaker
Right.
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Dominic Minogue
And so to start here.
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Unknown Speaker
Well, and that, you know, to. To that point, you know, a big part of the launch was about immersing yourselves, as you said, you know, the getting the penetration and immersing yourselves in the communities within New York City. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, how much of that was intentional from the start and how much kind of happened organically?
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Dominic Minogue
I would say it was mostly intentional. Like, I would say, like, it's intentional with hopes of inflection.
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Unknown Speaker
Right.
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Dominic Minogue
And, you know, I think the great thing about communities I'm in running communities, I'm tangential with arts, music, fashion communities, right. And I think the best thing is they do cross paths, intersect and create pockets of really cool people in way different areas.
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Unknown Speaker
Right.
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Dominic Minogue
And so for me, example, running communities, being part of a lot of different run clubs, sharing my product there, you know, these people aren't just runners. They are people who, with nine to fives, with, you know, unique day jobs and who do different things and see different people.
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Unknown Speaker
Right.
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Dominic Minogue
And I think, you know, that's the great thing about every sort of social circle in the city is they do have webs of people that do branch out to other things. Service industry, you know, again, arts, music, really anything above and beyond. And so being part of a New York City community means you have reach to so many other communities. So the intention of penetrating within specific communities was always the goal. But seeing how it's grown past into other different communities that have reached out for partnerships or wanted to do things, that is kind of beyond my wildest dreams.
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Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
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And so to kind of, to that point, beyond the consumer, you know, reaching those different consumer audiences, another key aspect of the brand's success is that this idea that dirty water is a bartender's bff. So can you talk a little bit about that and you know, just how.
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Important is this aspect of the product and the brand?
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Dominic Minogue
Yeah, I think, you know, there's a couple of ways to build a brand, especially in CPG and alcohol. One is, you know, building it with off premise and having that big visibility, a lot of physical marketing, digital marketing, and you know, being on every end cap of every grocery store.
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Unknown Speaker
Right.
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Dominic Minogue
That is, I would say that's the post Covid approach to a lot of beverage brands. But realistically, like the way you grew brands back in the 90s and before is becoming, you know, the beverage that you're seeing on premise at, on scene at every single bar, every location. But aside from just being at the bar, one of the things is you want to be able to have advocates at that point of sale.
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Unknown Speaker
Right?
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Dominic Minogue
And so for me, those advocates should be the bartenders, the people that will sell it, because you know, they're going to be giving suggestions, they're going to talk about, you know, what the product's good for, which products are, are best for like certain situations. And so creating a product that you know, can speak towards the way that a bartender likes to drink or kind of fits their menu. Right. And so dirty water itself, it is a very light, clean, easy beverage. Ways that it helps a bartender is it's a single flavor. So when you think about bringing in a competitor that may have like five or six different flavors, it's either you bring in all of the skus, right? In which case, just to suffice, someone who may want, you know, a mango or a black cherry. But the issue there is you may be left with certain flavors that are not selling, in which case those are taking up shelf space, or you bring in one or two skews and then the person doesn't like mango or they don't like black cherry, or they don't like lemon lime.
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Unknown Speaker
Right.
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Dominic Minogue
And so you know, you're fighting two different currants. But with a product like dirty water, that's so clean, so easy, it's a single flavor. So it doesn't take up a ton of shelf space. And it's great because you could modify it. So I love it with like over ice with bitters. And you could use grapefruit bitters, orange bitters, aromatic bitters to kind of change the flavor as much as you want. You could do a splash of cranberry. You could do so many different things to make it a different flavor profile if this person wants it and they want something light like a hard seltzer. Right. So I think that's a great thing. And you know, aside from that, the beverage by itself is a great, I would say after shift beverage. So you know, as soon as like you, you're done with a shift at like an industry bar, you get a dirty water and a shot, which is like sort of a ritual for, you know, post shift drinking for bartenders and service workers.
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Unknown Speaker
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So the versatility of the product for, you know, for lack of a better term is really, has really been key. Was that by design? Was that a happy, you know, a happy finding throughout the way or you know, how, how did that kind of come to be?
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Dominic Minogue
The versatility was a happy finding 100%. But I guess it is sort of by design because the one thing I wanted when creating the product was it to be something very sessionable.
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Unknown Speaker
Right.
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Dominic Minogue
The way you could describe other hard seltzers, for lack of a better term is, is a palate killer. Right. Because when you drink something like a black cherry or mango for example.
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Unknown Speaker
Yeah.
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Dominic Minogue
The flavor you can't have too much of like a black cherry flavored thing because that flavor Builds itself over time. There's so much artificial flavor there because they want you to taste. And it is black cherry. Right. So, you know, the flavor builds. It becomes tart over time, and it kind of becomes like filmy almost over your tongue. Where for me, I want it to be something where you could sip it. The flavor almost like goes away instantly. So you can keep drinking it and not get that sort of buildup that you would maybe with with other drinks. So by design, it was very light. And to get to that point, it had to be something that was very close to flavor neutral with notes of other things. And so because of that, it ended up being this thing that was so light and clean and you could add in, like, other flavors. And that was again with talking with bartenders and saying, and having them try. And they're like, oh, I tried it with this thing. It was amazing. Or I tried it this way. I tried it this way. And so getting all these findings by, you know, giving it to people who are a bit like experts in the space and then finding ways to modify it, which, you know, usually with another product, you can't because it is so flavor forward.
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Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, and to me, that speaks to really understanding all of your audience. You know, not just one part of the audience, but the full. You know, it's understanding what the bartenders are looking for and need, but also obviously looking for what the end consumers need. So how much of that went into the. The initial, like, marketing and rollout of that was kind of thinking about those two audiences?
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Dominic Minogue
Oh, absolutely. Yep. I would say I had like, sort of a triangulation of sort of the people that I wanted to target. One was definitely your service worker. The people that. The bartenders, the bar managers, you know, everyone within that hospitality space.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah.
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Dominic Minogue
The other demographic, I would say, is your postgrad. So the people that may be ex fraternity, ex sorority, people that are still ingrained in, like, say, I would say session drinking culture. So people that are going to these places, maybe it's like three hour happy hours or three hour all you can drinks. Right. And so they're the ones that are consuming large volumes of these products. And those are somewhat of tastemakers within their own. Right. Like you'll have those one or two people in every friend group that are bringing like the new things to the parties.
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Unknown Speaker
Right.
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Dominic Minogue
And then the third one is being those, I would say, more of the influencer, socialite tastemakers of New York City. So being in the New York City zeitgeist of like the cool restaurants, cool People, cool social circles. And even though that is a much smaller audience, I would say that they do have that trickle down effect where like, you know, over time the things that they drink, other people will be drinking too.
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Unknown Speaker
Yeah.
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So I want to talk a little bit more about building the brand itself. I mean, we've talked about the audience and some of the early successes here. Dirty Water is known as the dive bar Hard Seltzer. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, that, that part of the brand and you know, how it got to be defined that way?
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Dominic Minogue
Yeah. You know, I played around with a lot of terms in the beginning. The light beer of Hard Seltzer was like one that I. I tossed around a lot early and which I thought did align with people. But at the end of the day, I am not a beer. So I don't want to be kind of like, you know, especially if certain people don't love beer, then that kind of, you know, leaves people like with a certain connotation.
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Unknown Speaker
Right.
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Dominic Minogue
And so I think my product, it's nice because beer drinkers who hate hard seltzers like it and then hard seltzer drinkers who miss drinking a beer also like it as well. And so the dive bar Hard Seltzer sort of encapsulated the whole idea of like unpretentious, classic enjoyment.
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Unknown Speaker
Right.
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Dominic Minogue
And I think like that idea of like easy drinking really comes with that sort of dive bar feel of like no frills, super simple. When it comes to kind of like defining the brand itself for me, because it is a single flavored product and single sku. I really do want to build sort of this, like, I would say this heritage brand. Almost think about like the old guard of like light beer drinking. You have Miller, Coors, Bud Light, PBR and like, you know, all of these are brands that are built in late 1800s, early 1900s. And there hasn't been like a new brand to kind of sit along the shoulders of these giants in a very long time or ever actually. Especially nothing from the Hard Seltzer space. Everything that's piece is going in a different direction of like, you know, branding and visibility, but in terms of like being sort of this classic Americana drink. And that's what I wanted to be was like sort of, again, classic heritage Americana, kind of building the brand towards that direction. Eventually, you know, like a number of years, people saying, oh, let me get a dirty water or let me get a dirty. The same way that they would any other beverage.
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Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
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So I mean, it sounds like, you know, you definitely did a lot of homework to, to launch initially. You're, you know, did a lot of work to build that brand initially. How do you stay connected to, to customers to make sure you're continuing to deliver and you know, innovate where, where innovation is needed and all that.
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Dominic Minogue
Yeah, so I would say it's definitely, definitely manual. A lot of late nights. So I, I would break my day into like three different parts. I would say my mornings, my admin stuff. So whether it's emails, operation, new production, anything like that. And then early afternoon is sort of like cold outreach. Whether that's going around to bars when they're first opening, talking, trying to find a manager, beverage director, whoever it is. And then the evening I would say is my surveying. So going to existing bars, talking with bartenders, becoming bartenders friends, sharing the product, getting people's feedback. And I would say those are like the three different portions of my day, aside from managing a team in xyz. But yeah, I would say I'm always looking for product feedback, feedback from bartenders. What are they hearing? Because they get the feedback the most right out of anybody. Especially like if someone talks to me like they may be a little bit more biased because they're talking to the founder. It's like, oh, it may not be completely truthful or whatever it is, but talking with bartenders, they're getting the honest feedback all day and night.
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Unknown Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, that's great.
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So as we mentioned already, the brand's been very successful from a growth perspective.
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From industry rewards and recognition as well as media coverage.
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How do you measure the brand's success?
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Dominic Minogue
For me, I would say there's your traditional KPIs like case volume and new account opens and all of that. But then there's the soft wins, which is what I really love because I think even though my brand is growing, it's still very early, still so early where it's like there are days of doubts and you know, sometimes people like say, oh, I don't like this product. But then you get these things of like people saying, I love this product so much, it's helped me. I've been gluten free for so long. I miss this feeling of like, you know, drinking what feels like a light beer. But it's xyz, I'm putting all my friends on it. And like, I still find those wins way more meaningful than case volume because case volume, you know, that will change exponentially over time. Right? Even these early wins too. It's like, oh, you know, certain places are Doing X amount of volume, which is amazing. But for me, like the momentum and what keeps me going is these people finding love within the product and these like one on one conversations. That's I think right now still where I find the most enjoyment and most pleasure out of finding wins.
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Unknown Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, that's great.
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Well, Dominic, thanks so much for joining today. I've got one last question for you. Like to ask this to everybody. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you.
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Find a way to do it consistently?
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Dominic Minogue
Yeah, I think there's so many ways that you can continue to build a brand, whether it's, you know, doing content on social, reaching out to individuals, reaching out to customers, reaching out to, you know, B2B. And I think for me to stay agile, I'm not someone who second guesses themselves too often. So I always try and if I think about something, go out, do it, try it, MVP it, get feedback, maybe I did something wrong, learn for next time. I think, you know, just doing that over and over again and becoming eventually like comfortable with doing and trying new things has helped me a lot. And I'd say trying new things is always refreshing because, you know, you become so ingrained in like a daily routine that, you know, the new thing becomes something that's invigorating. Greg, thanks so much for having me.
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Unknown Speaker
Yeah, thank you. Well, again I'd like to thank Dominic Minogue, CEO of Dirty Water for joining the show. You can learn more about Dominic and Dirty Water by following the links in the show notes.
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Greg Kilstrom
Thanks again for listening to the Agile brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagilebrand.com that's the Agile Agile brand.com and contact me. If you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event, go to www.gregkilstrom.com. that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
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Unknown Speaker
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