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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#718: Building trust while building a brand with Meika Hollender, Nara Organics
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- [00:01]
Greg Kilstrom
The Agile Brand welcome to Season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the 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. And now onto the show When Consumer Trust Is More Fragile Than Ever how can brands, particularly in highly scrutinized categories like infant nutrition, utilize the latest approaches to not only build trust, but also deepen consumer relationships? Agility requires not only adapting to evolving consumer expectations and technological advancements, but also maintaining ethical and transparent practices, especially when dealing with sensitive topics such as infant health. It also demands a willingness to experiment, to learn, and to iterate quickly in response to market feedback and emerging trends. Today we're going to talk about building trust in a digital age, navigating the complexities of launching a purpose driven CPG brand, and redefining what healthy means for a new generation of parents. Tell me Discuss this topic I'd like Welcome to Mika Hollander, Chief Marketing Officer at NARA Organics. Mika, welcome to the show.
- [01:58]
Mika Hollander
Thanks for having me.
- [01:59]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you. Before we dive in though, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your role at NARA Organics.
- [02:07]
Mika Hollander
Sure. I've spent my entire career in the natural CPG space, so about God 15 almost years ago I started a natural sexual wellness brand called Sustainable. It was sort of a first of its kind clean sexual wellness products before sexual wellness was a term. I ran that business for about seven years and then sold it to a company called grove collaborative. In 2019. When we sold the business to them, I was asked to sort of lead brand and communications for Grove, which was really interesting. Grove was a $300 million plus business at the time, but they'd never done any brand strategy, brand building or pr. So it was a really interesting and different challenge. And then three and a half years ago I met my partner Esther, who's the founder and CEO of nara, and I was ready to get back into sort of pre launch launch company and she convinced me to join her to run marketing. And we've been preparing for this launch for. She's been working on it for over seven years, I've been here for over three, and we're launching next week. So it's very exciting time.
- [03:28]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. That is exciting. Well, yeah, let's dive in here and talk through some of these things. Want to start with building trust. And so NARA Organics is entering a market where consumer trust is paramount. How are you approaching building that trust from day one, especially given the scrutiny around things like infant nutrition?
- [03:49]
Mika Hollander
Yeah, so this is really interesting, this question for this category right now, because I think, you know, holistically, parents trusted the big brands in the infant formula category for many decades. In 2022, we were, when we were working on NARA, but obviously we hadn't launched yet. There was a huge infant formula shortage. There was a bacteria that had sort of gotten out in one of the main four manufacturing facilities of infant formula in the US and it was at a facility that's responsible for, you know, some of the big brands that you've seen on the shelf for a long time. And it's really crazy because the way that the formula, the company in question dealt with this issue, dealt with this recall, was not necessarily how I would have dealt with it. And, and from, from there, the trust within this category sort of unraveled. And you know, this isn't just my opinion. This is, this is like if you look at somewhere like Target and you look at the sales from 2022 till today and you look at the brands that dominated the category then and then now it's completely like flipped. The new brands, the clean brands, organic brands, dominate the category there and the old brands are like really struggling. So it's an interesting time to come into the space, but it's also kind of an amazing time because we don't need to sit here and point fingers at other brands and say, well, they did it this way, we're doing it this way. Parents are already looking for new options. They're looking for organic, they're looking for clean, they're looking for whole milk options. And building trust with consumers is, it's funny in some ways I just find it really simple. Like just be upfront, be transparent, be helpful, listen to what they're saying. Consumers are smart. If you try and like pull wool over their eyes or, you know, they're savvy, I think, you know, we now with social media and ChatGPT and all of these things, like, we have more information than ever. There's nowhere to hide. So being transparent and being really thoughtful and being really engaged and responsive with your consumers, I think is just how it's just sort of like the simple recipe for building trust.
- [06:20]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, so with this, this launch is imminent. So what are some of the biggest challenges that you have faced in launching NARA Organics in, you know, admittedly a competitive market? And, you know, how are you working to overcome?
- [06:37]
Mika Hollander
There have been so many challenges. Infant formula is the highest, most highly regulated food category in the US it's treated similar to, like a pharmaceutical product. So, you know, what we did was created a recipe from scratch. We built something that didn't exist before in terms of a formulation. And so what that means is you have to, you know, develop the product, you have to then produce the product. You have to run clinical trials on babies. You have to then sort of gather that the results of that trial, submit it to the fda, go through a very lengthy and involved process to get approval from the fda, and then you have to go commercialize your product. I think the process in terms of dealing with the government was longer than we anticipated. It was more involved than we anticipated. But at the same time, like, this isn't done every day. So there aren't a ton of recent examples of how this goes. Does it take three months to get an answer on this? Does it take six months? Is it a year? You know, there have only been a handful of brands who have gone through this process with the FDA, you know, building something from scratch in the last 40 years, and we're one of them. So that was a huge struggle, and it was a challenge. But at the end of the day, it's kind of the thing that is then becomes such an amazing thing about the category, especially as a marketer. There just aren't a lot of competitors. I mean, it's not. It's not shampoo. It's not makeup. You can't just spin up a brand overnight. So I think, you know, that challenge in terms of the regulatory process will ultimately be something that will work in our favor. Manufacturing has been a really interesting experience. Again, I think there's only four big facilities that have sort of dominated the category in the US There's a couple new ones. They're small. We didn't think any of them sort of met our standard, so we had to go overseas. So we literally went around the world. So many different countries looking at different facilities, running through our checklist on safety and quality and all the things. And so finding a partner that we, who's based in Germany, that we are so proud of and feel so comfortable with and feel like not only from a capacity perspective, but from a safety perspective will never have any issues. That was a huge undertaking. And yeah. And then everything in between, like, you know, it's just been, it's been a really interesting experience. It's been surprisingly easy to raise. Easy to easy ish to raise money because there's again, there's just not a lot of brands in the space and we've done so much work. So yeah, it's been kind of crazy.
- [09:25]
Greg Kilstrom
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- [12:12]
Mika Hollander
Yeah, this is, this is really, this is great. This is, this is something I'm super excited about. So when I met with Esther, the founder a couple years ago, she was telling me about the product. It sounded great. You know, the clinical trial was complete, all of the things you'd raised money and I was just like, oh, I just, I don't know if I can just, you know, it's so expensive to build a direct to consumer brand from scratch, right? You need an edge, you need some different way to access consumers. You need something. I was, it was, and this was 2022 ish. And I was just like, I don't know, I don't, you know, I don't, I don't have any like big tricks up my sleeve. I know all the channels, I know what to do. But at the end of the day it's going to be really expensive. And, and let me think about it. And she said, well, we have an app. And I was like, oh. She's like, yeah, it's, it's a baby tracking app. She pulls out her phone, she's showing me, I'm like, I just had my first kid. I was like, oh, this is really cool. It looks really good. I use something similar but at the end of the day still was like writing things down on a notepad. And she's like, yeah, we have like, you know, know a hundred thousand monthly active users. And I was like, oh yeah, that's something that sounds significant. And, and so how do you acquire these customers or these users? And, and she's like, nothing. Spent no money. It's all organic, it's a free app, so that helps. But at the end of the day we've just designed something that her background's in, in digital product. And she's like, I just designed the app that I wish that I had and we have an engineer who works on improving it daily, and people are using it 20, 30 times a day. And I was like, oh, okay, this is really interesting. This seems like that edge that I was talking about. This is that access to parents that other brands in this space don't have. So that was over three years ago. And so since then, the app has now become baby tracking postpartum pregnancy. We have over 200,000 monthly active users. As I said, some are logging in 20 to 30 times a day. You know, I hope and I assume, and I'm betting that it's kind of one of our superpowers, because I think we have the best product in the world and we have this organic community that we've built. And so when you talk about things like customer research, like, we have built this product with them, the formula, like, we have been talking to them. One of the first things I did when I joined was surveying this group. What are you using? What do you like? What do you not like? Where are you buying it? What features are you looking for in a new formula? And so we've continued to survey and do research with these app users along the way. So it's really interesting and exciting and I think we'll see next week how the conversion looks. But off the back of the app, we've built a wait list of over 30,000 people. I mean, it's just. It's really exciting and I think there's so much opportunity to expand the role of the app and in the business and how we build community over the next few years. So that's a huge. That app gives us emails, it gives us people we're texting, we're sending push notifications. You can shop in the app. That's a whole ecosystem for us. And that's kind of where we're focusing initially and then all the, you know, all the other things. Like, I think influencer is a major category for us. We're, you know, really investing there. Pr, social. Paid. Paid will flex up and down based on the conversion we're getting from the app. So we have sort of this sort of system set up where we'll. We'll know when we need to supplement with paid or not. But, yeah, so much to be revealed next week. But the app is definitely something that I'm super and have been super excited about.
- [16:13]
Greg Kilstrom
And that's an amazing. Yeah, because, I mean, that's with. With D2C, you know, as you're saying, like, that's the. The distribution channel is. It's difficult to Kind of cut through the noise with, you know, you're literally competing on Google against, you know, all the other competitors now. I mean, you have this, not only a window into consumer insights, but also a direct communication channel with them. And yeah, it's, it's also, you know, from what you're saying, it's also not a sell from the beginning either. You know, there's a benefit to the, to the consumer. Right. And I think that's, that's also part of that. Like the, the value exchange with consumers is they're not just signing up to your app to, to be sold stuff. They're getting something in return. And that's also, you know, part of the value exchange of, of you have data and you have valuable, you have valuable data, but, you know, as long as you're providing valuable, you know, things in return for that, you know, and obviously there's, there's, there's probably a lot of great information that, that the consumers are getting from that. How do you look at this, you know, with consumer data privacy and, and all those kinds of things? Like, how do you look at maintaining, like, not only transparency in how you're using the data, but also just, you know, building trust from, from the data perspective in addition to how you're building trust in other ways?
- [17:37]
Mika Hollander
Yeah, so it's, you know, I think there's a lot of ways to do that one. You know, we've had you name it, every brand in the space, in the baby space, parenting space, come to us over the last few years and say, can you please sell me your data? Can we, can we buy your email list? Can you advertise in the app? And we've said no. This is, you know, we are not, this is not the business. The business is the formula. The app is a tool to help parents feel more confident in the early days of parenthood. And if you buy the formula, great. But we're not, you know what I mean? Like, we're not here to sell your data. So I think by not integrating other brands into the app and, and, and selling the data over time like that, that's just continued to help us build trust with this audience. This is also not a surprise. Like, we talk to these people via email all the time. We keep them posted on where we are in the process of developing the formula. Do they want to participate in a survey? Do you want to sign up for the wait list? So it's not like we're coming out of nowhere and just blasting them with, purchase our product. Purchase our product. And Some of it's like, we'll see. I think it'll be interesting to see what that conversion looks like to get the feedback from the app users. Is it creating a negative experience for them or not? Hopefully it won't. But yeah, I think it is interesting because we are in a way like a tech company. And then on the other hand, we're also an infant formula company, but we're really an infant formula company, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. And the app is really a tool. It's not something to, you know, that we're like using to extract information from, to give to other, like to sell.
- [19:29]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. And part of this, I'm sure there's a lot of people using the app, but, you know, there's a lot of millennial Gen Z parents using this, you know, generations that are, you know, that prize things like transparency and want to work with brands that share their values. And how do you, you know, how do you go about telling the brand story? You know, is there, is there a storytelling component to this that kind of plays up that the, the brand values and building connections?
- [20:03]
Mika Hollander
So, like, as a marketer, I've, I think there's kind of two ways to build a brand. There's. And there's like these brand frameworks that I like to use. But it kind of goes back to like, who's the hero of your story? Is the brand the hero of the story? Is the brand saving the day? Are you talking about yourself all the time or is the consumer here the parent the hero of the story? And I've been, you know, in my work over the last 15 years or probably, oh God, it's probably more like he just starts saying 20. I've done it both ways. And in this category, this is a word of mouth play. This is, this is, everyone will tell you their number one referral in this category is their doctor. But it's actually, it's friends and family. So for us, yes, we will tell you everything you need to know about our product, how we're sourcing our ingredients, you know, our founder story, our team story. Like, you know, how to make a bottle, how to force formula feed, how to combo feed, how to breath. Like, well, we, we are here for you and we want to support you, but the parent is the hero here. And so when I think about telling our story, I actually want our consumers to tell their story. And that, I think is what's so powerful in this category, in any category dealing with new parents. We launched our sort of community and events vertical about two months ago. Two months ago, called the 2am Club. It's like, you know, just whatever parents are up. When you have a new baby, you're up at 2am It's a club that everyone's in that nobody wants to be in. And so it was, it was the, the point of launching that was just. We knew we were going to have a huge, you know, community and events vertical as part of our strategy, but also we wanted to sort of see like, how open are people, how willing are people to share. And so we launched this campaign and we launched it at just like the 2:00am Club.com and it was called Feeding Unfiltered. And it was just within a couple hours, we had over a hundred people who had shared their story. We had over 300 people who'd signed up for our digital event on sort of the mental load of becoming a mom. And people were sharing everything. I mean, people were saying they're breastfeeding because their husband's forcing them to. People were saying, I love breastfeeding. It's amazing. We're not there yet with formula feeding. People are saying, I'm literally going to the park and pretending my formula in my bottle is breast milk. You know, like dark stuff, light stuff, everything in between. But it just. Every new parent, and I think particularly new mom, wants to share their story. They want to be the one to tell their friend about this amazing infant formula brand that they discovered that is so much more powerful than us just talking about ourselves and how great we are. And that's not how I've discovered and loved new brands in this space. As a mom, it's been, I go to my friends, I post on my Instagram, like, which organic cotton towels are people using? You know, like it's, it's so word of mouth driven. So in terms of our story, of course we'll share our story. I think you have a great story, but I don't think that's the thing that's really powerful here.
- [23:34]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and that, that, and that is powerful as a, as a marketer, I would imagine is having a product and you know, a community like that that wants to share their story. I mean, you know, other, other categories, it's a lot harder to tell fascinating stories about, I don't know, dishwasher, detergent perhaps or things like that. But, you know, I know there's, there's lots of challenges, of course, with the, on the regulatory side and, you know, just bringing a product to market, but it sounds like, you know, definitely this, there's, there's a great community behind it. And so, yeah, definitely, I wish you all, all the best in the next week. I, I'm, I, I'm sure you have many, many busy days ahead of you here, but we're definitely wishing you the best.
- [24:18]
Mika Hollander
Thank you so much.
- [24:19]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. No, and it's, it's been great to have you on the show. One last question before we wrap up though. I like to ask this to everybody. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
- [24:33]
Mika Hollander
I mean, I'm sure everybody said like, one of the things for me is just listening to the customers, the community, going into the comments on social, hearing what people are saying, what are, what's resonating, what's not being really integrated with our customer experience team. And then honestly, for me, I mean, it's as a mom, as a marketer, like, I have always felt like I do my best work when I can tap into an experience that I've had. It's just, you know, I think and, and I've been in, like, even when I was at Grove, it wasn't as direct for me. And I, and it was great because it was a challenge and I figured out, you know, you really there have to then go into the minds of the customer and the data and see what people are, what's resonating or what people are interested in. But I personally find like the way that I sort of stay agile is continuing to like, dig into my own experiences or things that I'm seeing or front and talking to fr, like just constantly sort of like tapping into my journey and being really honest with myself about my journey and then feeling like, okay, if this is something I'm going through, this is probably something other moms and parents are going through. And so, you know, how do we, how do we tap into that?
- [25:52]
Greg Kilstrom
Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Well, again, I'd like to thank Mika Hollander, Chief Marketing officer at NARA Organics, for joining the show. You can learn more about Mika and NARA Organics by following the links in the show notes. 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 theagile 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 product 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. The Agile Brand before we continue, I wanted to share a key strategic resource that a majority of the Fortune 500 are already already aware of. Finding the best technology, business and talent solutions is not easy. With business demands and competitive pressures mounting, you need to be able to design, deploy and optimize your technology to provide leading customer experiences while driving business growth. Those of you that have been listening to this show for a while know that this podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, a global provider of technology, business and talent solutions for more than 80% of the Fortune 500. Tech Systems accelerates business transformation for their customers. Whether you're looking to maximize your technology ROI, drive business growth, or elevate customer experiences, TechSystems enables enterprises to capitalize on change. Learn more at techsystems.com that's T E K systems.com now let's get back to the show.