Spiceology

Building Strong Brands

My background is in cultural theory and behavioral economics. Through that lens, the key to brand-building is to understand what incentives drive customer behavior in a supersaturated attention economy.

For Spiceology, that has meant providing real value to chefs and home cooks that goes beyond our delicious spice blends. We’re also leading a passionate conversation every single day about flavor and flavor trends.

Maintaining a Consistent and Distinctive Brand Identity

Brand consistency requires absolute discipline in how you demand attention. Brand identity is built within behavioral guardrails, i.e., what consumers are willing to give attention to.

Every single touchpoint we put into the marketplace has to align with a set of brand through-lines that consumers intuitively grasp. If we color outside those through-lines to grab at an opportunity outside of our wheelhouse or chase a fleeting trend, we confuse the market, dilute our value and drive up our acquisition costs.

We maintain Spiceology’s uniqueness by telling a consistent story as well as we can, in a voice that customers can actually hear.

Balancing Creativity, Consumer Insights and Business Goals in Marketing Strategy

These categories are not in tension with each other. Consumer insights drive our creativity, and creativity drives us toward our business goals.

Brand identity is built within behavioral guardrails, i.e., what consumers are willing to give attention to.

In our space, which is the business of flavor, we see a kind of flywheel effect. Consumers drive flavor trends that get picked up by culinary publications, which in turn get picked up by chefs, who in turn influence consumers, and so on. In that context, consumer insight is everything. When we understand what ideas are making the wheel turn, we can inject our own ideas into the slipstream, from creative execution to recipes to new flavors.

Storytelling and Strategic Partnerships That Strengthen Consumer Connections

Partnerships are pure game theory. They work when we find the place where our interests align, and we amplify that intersection to the benefit of both parties.

An example is our collaboration with Disney/ Hulu’s King of the Hill on a beer-infused BBQ rub in our signature beer can vessel. The show’s affectionate portrayal of beer-loving BBQ enthusiasts hit home with that same slice of our audience, and the product was a big hit.

Brand storytelling works much the same way. The marketplace only gives us permission to tell stories that are authentic to who we are. Anything else is noise, and consumers and chefs will ignore it. That’s why we stay focused on our true expertise—flavor—and don’t get distracted by things that might give us reach but don’t anchor our story.

Marketing Trends with the Greatest Impact on Food and CPG Brands

The severe saturation of the attention economy is a massive reckoning for every brand, inside and outside our category. Consumer attention is a finite resource. Brands need incredible agility, grounded in good behavioral science, to compete for that resource. Traditional reach tactics won’t get the job done, and an influencer marketing playbook from even three years ago isn’t worth the bandwidth it takes to load.

The most important thing is to always be on a test-and-learn footing, never resting on assumptions, while staying grounded in who you are and what you mean to your audience.