Day 24'909 addendum

This was an April Fool's joke; I won't launch "DigDog" as an alternative to KitKat.

That said, I think the "Have No Break, Have A DigDog" brand concept has legs. In the last decades, there has been a movement towards more "work-life balance", but it feels like the counter-movement (hustler culture) is gaining some momentum.

If I launch another CPG brand from scratch, I want to have an unfair advantage with my push and/or pull distribution strategy. (And I still need to figure out how to achieve this advantage. Hence, I'm not ready to launch anything new.)

1. Distribution to retail (PUSH): A lot could be said about this. Nestlé has perfected it. Their hero products are available in hundreds of thousands of retail outlets worldwide. Retail management, sales, logistics, and the rest of the supply chain work seamlessly and at scale. They could launch "DigDog" and probably make a decent profit independent of the product's long-term success in the market.

2. Distribution of the brand message to end customers (PULL): If you have a large audience like Mr Beast, you can easily create initial demand (which will also convince retailers to take you on right away). Long-term success is still not guaranteed, as consumers nowadays are pretty smart. They will try something new from their favourite influencer but won't automatically become repeat buyers. And without strong repeat, any brand is toast sooner or later. Anyway, a large audience is a huge advantage.

Other kinds of "pull advantages" are amazing timing, product-market fit (product as in taste, texture, packaging design ...), exceptional marketing skills—or, better yet, all of the above. The most recent example of a brand like that is Liquid Death, which scaled to something like USD 300M in around six years.

However, in most cases, new CPG companies start with no such advantages in the marketplace. Their first product/brand usually sucks, and the successful entrepreneurs co-create the playbook with their early customers and fans (iterate or die!). This can easily take a decade or more. And success is not guaranteed (don't ask me how I know).

By the way, the most common mistake in the CPG world is people betting too much on specific technology and product attributes. But that's a subject for another post.
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