Scale-Up International Brand Approach

The Kombucha Market is growing fast. really fast.

The number one brand in Australia launched in the UK just as all startups do, using their learnings from their home market and trying out a series of marketing activities to see what works in a crowded, saturated FMCG Soft Drinks marketplace.

The brand’s stellar home market performance didn’t necessarily translate directly to the UK and so I worked closely with them to create a fit for purpose UK strategy to drive their performance to be the UK market leader*.

• Shopper Marketing Support

  • Supporting big name stockist launches, leveraging stockists’ broad reach to educate the consumer about the popularity of Kombucha for their audience. Ghostwritten blogs, bought media on grocery ecommerce sites, PR collaborations and a solid Social Media plan to educate, remind and encourage trial. Head office and in store sampling and in store magazine media support too, to excite buyers and head office teams, support the National Account Managers and drive overall awareness.

• International Brand Strategy

  • Working with cross-market teams to inform the UK strategy, interrogating the full mix of marketing channels and their appropriate content and communications in the context of the local market.

  • With Millennials as the core target group, it was important to consider the receptiveness to each marketing channel across the perceived-similar english speaking markets - Australia, UK & USA (source: Kantar Milward Brown).

  • Proposing several new channels to help the brand stand apart in a crowded space, including podcasts, outdoor media

• Digital Strategy

  Launching an Ecommerce store in the UK added many considerations on top of the brand’s core objectives. Should they prioritise ecom CTA’s over traditionally driving to stockists and/or other partners? What did this mean for their Amazon store? In order to drive trial, I implemented key tracking, KPIs, revised budgets and drove growth to profitability in the first 2 months of launch. The Australian Digital Agency needed localised support on relevant Google Display placements and Facebook target audiences, as well as recommendations away from Native Advertising. A CRM strategy was also created for the client, with an onboarding email flow for newsletter registrations to conversion.

• Branded Event Delivery & Production

  The brand had identified a selection of live events they had wanted to attend, but had not considered the brand activation, strategy or objectives for each event. Working directly with the founding team and taking cues from the Australian HQ, we created a budget appropriate, repeatable approach for the events, taking into account stock, logistics, event build, restrictions, while creating a fun vibe for the brand.

• Influencer Strategy Rebuild

  The brand needed a tidy up and new way to track & measure their in-flight influencer strategy and to drive further engagement. I created a CRM based process to measure recent contacts, those who have agreed to receive free product, those who went on to post and level of engagement. Creating a CRM approach meant that the process became much easier for others in the organisation to understand, process and build on the work done so far, and to hand off to junior team members, and build meaningful relationships and collaborations with key influencers and journalists