Why Legacy CPG Companies Often Struggle to Emulate Upstart Brands
Working with both large CPG food companies and emerging startups over the past 20-plus years has provided us with a rather unique perspective on the state of the healthy food marketplace.
Over the past several years, upstart food brands have captured the imagination and dollars of the American populace as they look for foods that meet not only their health & wellness needs but also their values. In fact, smaller companies have proven far more successful than larger CPGs over recent years in launching food brands that effectively address consumer preferences.
In response, legacy CPG companies have sought to compete with these upstart challengers by emulating, incubating, investing in, and even acquiring upstart brands.
But there's one approach that we don't see enough legacy CPG companies taking—leveraging their size, strength, and expertise to beat these smaller brands at their own game.
Here's one example from our work: A major multinational CPG spotted an emerging category dominated by a startup brand. The CPG, let's call it Legacy Corp, believed that not only was it well positioned to compete with the startup, hereby named Agile Startup, but to dominate the category in short order.
So, Legacy Corp launched a brand to compete with Agile Startup and just one year later, they are considering shuttering it. Why? Because instead of leveraging its strengths as a major multinational CPG, Legacy Corp ran their Agile Startup competitor like, well, a startup. They put one brand person on it, sought to skate by on a minimal marketing budget (half of what Agile Startup was spending), and waited for the traditional Legacy Corp "magic" to kick in. Needless to say, it didn't.
Where did Legacy Corp go wrong?
They failed to leverage their existing sales and distribution strength to place its new brand in retail locations. Instead, they followed Agile Startup's lead and focused on online sales exclusively. They figured that they would build some buzz online and then use that to dominate the retail landscape in a way that Agile Startup could not. Except, the buzz never came and, therefore, they never had the opportunity to deploy their retail advantage.
They failed to use their human and marketing resource advantage. Legacy Corp could have easily doubled Agile Startup's marketing spend and brand resources without skipping a beat. Instead, they failed to even match them. Why would Legacy Corp underinvest in a new brand and category they believed they could dominate? We don’t know for sure, but conversations with Legacy Corp employees suggests that senior management never truly believed in the new brand. While they wanted to emulate the success they saw Agile Startup achieving, they couldn’t quite convince themselves that these emerging startups and categories could be a real threat to their powerhouse business.
They failed to recognize that putting all the right health and values "keywords" on their product and their website isn't the same as actually delivering on those benefits and principles. Instead of developing and launching a brand that truly met consumer preferences, they took some shortcuts, gave the brand the sheen of aspirational wellness, and figured that their marketing prowess and size would cover up for any brand deficiencies. It would also keep costs down and profits up. What they didn’t account for is how savvy consumers have become and how well they can spot inauthentic and substandard products when it comes to their health & wellness.
Ultimately, Legacy Corp failed to realize that they needn't imitate small startups to win back consumers and deliver truly exceptional products and experiences. They simply needed to leverage their existing strengths and apply those in new, meaningful directions. Their R&D departments dwarf those of startups. Their institutional expertise and marketing prowess are significant advantages, if applied in earnest to a new brand. And their existing retail and trade relationships give their new products a leg up over small, less-well-funded startups.
While the example above is a rather dramatic one, we see larger CPGs making some combination of these mistakes all the time. At the end of the day, larger CPGs wouldn’t need to be worried about the upstarts nipping at their heels if they committed themselves—and their unique and dynamic capabilities—to developing high-quality, nutritious, sustainable products that can compete on their merits with the upstarts that have invigorated the health & wellness marketplace.