117 | The Spirits Apocalypse | How Steve Grasse's Brand Mysticism Principles Separate Survivors from Casualties in Market Correction
Hi, Steve. Welcome back to MAFFEO DRINKS. Glad to be here. It was one of the best performing episodes that number 27 that we recorded. I think it was, like, a couple of years back now.
Steven Grasse:Yes. When Brand Mysticism first came out. I relistened to it prior to getting on this call, and I could see why it was one of the best performing. It was a good session. You asked the right questions.
Chris Maffeo:So I want to start with we had a bit of a back and forth on LinkedIn and by email. And we said, okay. Let's talk about, I love how you called it, the Spirits Apocalypse.
Steven Grasse:Yeah. Yeah. The total meltdown, isn't it? For most, it's famine, but for a few few bright spots out there, it's some people are doing quite well.
Chris Maffeo:So let's dive into this. What's your take overall?
Steven Grasse:My take is, is it a structural shift? Is it cyclical? I think it's all the above. I mean, I think that what was it back in the seventies and eighties? It's kinda happened before.
Steven Grasse:This consolidation, what happens is overproduction. The interesting thing of what's going on now is there's a glut of liquid, but there's also a change in habits. And it's a perfect storm of of shit. At the same time, the novelty of craft distilling seems to be wearing off. I mean, it seems to be like everyone and their uncle could build a I used to joke that craft distilleries are like asshole.
Steven Grasse:Everyone's got one, and most of what comes out of it tastes like shit, which is a harsh thing to say, but I think what happened was it got pretty easy to open a craft distillery or craft brewery, and it was a local point of interest, and it would attract people for the novelty in, And I think that sustained people through quite a long cycle. And we've seen, I think, the apocalypse in beer is even worse than the one in spirits. I think you can't just open a distillery right now and have produced, you know, the same bourbon that everyone else does. Literally, some people are buying the liquid from MPG and slapping the name on it and expecting it to sell. I think those days are over.
Steven Grasse:But at the same time, a lot of the big distilleries produced a lot of liquid because COVID, you know, I think COVID built a lot of false perceptions. Not false perceptions, but they thought that was gonna go on forever. So the world's awash in in bourbon and whiskey right now, and there's not a lot of buyers. So what happens is you'll have a period of correction where a lot of smaller players or a lot of financially unstable players will unfortunately go away. And if you're a big like, we saw with Jim Beam last week or two weeks ago announcing that they're gonna stop production for the year, I mean, they're gonna do just fine.
Steven Grasse:Right? They'll sit there quietly. I think even tell them we're due to stop production. You just sit there for a while until the storm passes, and when there's less liquid out there, they can come back out. It's not like they're going away, but they can was in production later.
Steven Grasse:I think for a lot of smaller craft players, unfortunately, they're not gonna make it to it. So and I think it's time to also with the Delta nine THC products and other cannabis products and the no alcohol movement. So it's a perfect storm. That's why I called it the spirits apocalypse.
Chris Maffeo:There's many factors coming into play as you point out. Some of it has also been induced by the ease of making things happen, which at some point everybody thought, okay, I'm gonna build it and people will come and people will buy it.
Steven Grasse:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And for a while and for a while, that really worked. But what happens, though, is when if you build it and they will come for a while, but if you don't have the brand mysticism, if you don't have the branding or the core values of the brand really firmly in place, when the novelty wears off, the magic wears off as well.
Steven Grasse:So I think that's where the brand fundamentals I think the question is, in this market, do brand fundamentals still matter? They matter more than ever because if you don't have that, you had nothing at this point except liquid in bottle.
Chris Maffeo:There's many factors here. Some brands have just started to create something without really thinking it through. And maybe some brands are focusing too much on the liquids, too little on the brand mysticism. Some others are thinking that they can grow too fast in their business plan. They
Steven Grasse:have the
Chris Maffeo:wrong assumptions. And the perfect storm, the way I see it is also that in the last years, if we talk about the COVID years and so on, there was this zero interest rates. People didn't know where to put money.
Steven Grasse:Yeah. Uh-huh.
Chris Maffeo:So it was quite easy to raise funds for brands. Yeah. So that has created this kind of perfect storm that you mentioned. And now all of a sudden, it's just like, okay. Let's hang on a minute, and let's wait that the dust settles before we take any action.
Steven Grasse:Yeah. I mean, I I think I even said this on our last podcast that I did with you. The best advice I ever got was from Artist Gallo when we opened our distillery, which is ten years ago now. And this was back in '27, 2015, 2016 when we opened. He said most craft distillers make the mistake of expanding too quickly, going to too many states before they really build demand.
Steven Grasse:You sign up with all these distributors and your product just sits there. And you said, own the state you're in and own it thoroughly before you expand. And that's what we did with Tamworth. We've literally spent the last ten years owning the state of New Hampshire. We finally have expanded into Massachusetts, but very gingerly have we done.
Steven Grasse:So I think a lot of craft distillers absolutely expanded too quickly, and then when the demand gets soft, you're kinda really stuck because you're in all these states, and it's in some states, it's hard to pull out. I think a lot of them expand too quickly. And I think what happens too is when the big guys, you know, when their demand gets soft, it's harder to justify the expense of your craft product when I can get a bottle of Jim Beam or Bulleit for a much lower price, and in many cases, it's better quality. So it reads the craft movement in a strange place unless, of course, you've got incredible liquid, an incredible story, and great brands that you've built. It all goes back to great branding.
Steven Grasse:It all goes back to core principles, core philosophies, and firm foundations that you build on.
Chris Maffeo:Let's talk about this because this was a very interesting part of what we discussed last time. You call it the core truth. No? I remember the onion.
Steven Grasse:Yeah. The center of the onion. What is the core thing that makes your brand resonate? It's like quantum physics. It's a vibration.
Steven Grasse:If you get all the factors correct, the brand vibrates, and it makes it attractive. And that magic or that mojo is what keeps a brand going strong even when demand is softer. Of course, the the the best example I have of that, one of most famous examples, is what we did for Hendrix. So but but it needs the brand needs to have its core atomic structure working, and that vibration is what attracts it. It's what attracts a man to a woman, and it's what attracts us to whatever.
Steven Grasse:That all the elements of a brand come together, and that's what creates the atomic fusion that makes it attractive.
Chris Maffeo:And do you think that you know, many brands kinda, like, lack that moment? Do they rush to the second, third, fourth layer of the onion?
Steven Grasse:I think most people don't understand how it works or how important it is. And over the past ten years, there's been such a gold rush in the spirits industry that it didn't matter as much because everything was selling. So when not everything is selling or when it's not selling as fast, guess what? It matters even more. The brands that will survive the apocalypse are the brands that have their atomic fusion in place, and their core is resonating.
Steven Grasse:That's what will keep it going because it's still attractive. People are always gonna drink, but they've been drinking since the dawn of time. They'll be drinking forever. The numbers change, and you have to learn to pivot. You have to also be nimble enough to be able to pivot in the marketplace.
Steven Grasse:I'm gonna use a great example of local brand in Philadelphia called Stateside. K? A vodka brand. Great guys, know them well, Clement and and Nat. And they created vodka called Stateside, and then they created iced tea called Surfside.
Steven Grasse:And Surfside is the fastest growing spirits company in the world. And guess what? It's new to world. It's an RTD, and they're not in Bev's. They're not Diageo.
Steven Grasse:They're they're two guys from Philadelphia. And what did they what they did with that brand, it's really smart because for some reason, for some weird reason, Philadelphia is the epicenter for alcoholic iced tea. And these guys said and Twisted Tea by Boston Beers is the the number one brand. And these guys said, you know what? Let's make iced tea with vodka instead of malt, and let's not make it carbonated.
Steven Grasse:And let's call it Surfside, which is a play on their name Stateside, obviously, and it's all about the Jersey Shore. Man, that shit exploded. They did 9,000,000 places last year. They sponsor all these sports stadiums and teams all over the country now, but it's a new to world brand. New to world stuff is what's working in the RTD category, by the way.
Steven Grasse:Ketel One, Botanicals, even Jart, all these brands, Crown Royal, they're not working. What's working is new to world stuff. You know, Hai Noon, another great case study, was Hai Noon just said, wow, what if we did White Claw, but we did it with vodka instead of malt? And Hai Noon became the nabla. What did they do?
Steven Grasse:Twenty four million cases last year. So I think what's interesting is in the spirits industry, the ability to pivot and to do new to world stuff, that's what's gotta change. I mean, all the big spirits companies don't do new to world stuff. What they do is they grow through acquisition. And I think that's gotta change because the big ideas are coming from the big sellers are these new to world brands, these startup brands.
Steven Grasse:Another great example, and it's not spirits, but Liquid Death. I I know Mike Cicero well as well. Another Philly guy. Right? And Liquid Death had this simple insight, let's put sparkling water in a beer can.
Steven Grasse:It's real simple, but I think that's what the spirits industry needs to get excited about, is creating new ideas quickly, putting them out there and trying shit, and I and I I don't know if if you're gonna sit around stuck and fixated on, it must be the way it was. It will eventually be the way it was, but it's gonna be a longer cycle. It's a long cycle. That's why I was talking about that going back to the I think the last time we went through this was in the seventies and eighties when there was a total shakeout of all the old distilleries, and that opened the door eventually to craft to start, And that will eventually get back to that, but it's gonna be a longer cycle. So are you gonna just sit around waiting for us to so I can sell my, you know, expensive bottles of bourbon and scotch, or are you gonna be a spirits company that has lots of new to world ideas, and you're pivoting, you're trying new stuff, and you're in the marketplace being done at it.
Steven Grasse:So my view is create new stuff and hire me to do it.
Chris Maffeo:Do you think that there's too much incestuous relationships between the spirits industry? No.
Steven Grasse:No. No. No. I don't think I don't know if it's that. I think it's more that I think for the last fifteen, twenty years, it was just really a good business, and people were making a lot of money.
Steven Grasse:And I think if you want to survive, you've got to say, hey, oh, wow, things have changed. What do I have to do to I mean, it's funny. My daughter's 24 years old, and she works for the company. She said, dad, Gen Z drinks. They just don't drink expensive cocktails.
Steven Grasse:They can't afford them. So they're not going to a cocktail bar buying expensive cocktails. They're drinking canned cocktails or they're drinking other things. And you've got to just look at the world and say, oh, okay. So maybe I think there's a place for expensive cocktails.
Steven Grasse:And like my distillery in New Hampshire, we make really expensive, exquisite, luxury whiskeys and gins and things, but I also make Pathfinder, which is my non alk spirit, which is doing very well. And we're also doing, we have several THC projects, and we're getting back into tobacco, so we have a very diversified portfolio that we're working on. My point is, I think the old playbook is changing rapidly. And if you're not going to be dynamic, if you're gonna sit around waiting for it to go back
Chris Maffeo:Yeah. And that's what I meant earlier. Like, am maybe I said it wrong. Like, you know, in chess to some I meant it in a way that there's too many ideas that are kinda like revolving to this, you know, echo chamber of people working in the industry. And they've been working there for so many years, and then they're just like trying to, you know, get back
Steven Grasse:to their To do the same thing. Yes. Get back to where you were. I also think the days of being able to slap your your premium whiskey brand name on an RTD and thinking it's gonna work, that that that's not gonna work either. I mean, it's you might get some incremental sales handling, but the big ideas are the shared world ideas, which I think is really exciting.
Steven Grasse:Because I'm like, it used to be going into a big experience company and trying to get them to do anything new was impossible because they didn't wanna hear it. They just wanna buy. They just wanna buy stuff. And now I just don't I think by the time you buy something the other thing with RTDs is is the life cycle is much, much shorter. Right?
Steven Grasse:Like, if I if I'm creating a whiskey brand, it might it might be around for a hundred and fifty years. If I create an RTD brand, I mean, at least from what I've seen, I mean, the cycle still it's much more about trying new ideas and getting them to market. And I thought the exciting thing about Surfside was they're not a big player. They are now, but they work, and they're a small craft distiller that struck gold. So if you're a small craft distiller, don't be disheartened, be creative, be excited by what's going on.
Steven Grasse:Hopefully, you haven't borrowed too much money to expand because that's a different situation. But I'm saying if you're financially sound, get creative at this point because the the rules are so mixed up. You don't have to be Diageo to be a winner right now. I could be stateside. You know?
Steven Grasse:I could be liquid death. I could be the pathfinder.
Chris Maffeo:And we'll talk more about pathfinder later, but let's dive into this because one of the things I'm thinking when you're talking is the fact that the craft guys, when they think they've cracked it, then they start to default into the big brand playbook. So instead of continuing Yeah. Their own path, which was what brought them there, they just think, when I get old, I wanna be like the big guys. And that's where the clash Mhmm. Kind of happens.
Steven Grasse:I think it's more that there's a certain dogma or strict religious adherence to bourbon must be like this. Rye must be like this, And there's whiskey snobs. I got a lot of shit when I started doing my weird House of Tamworth products with the beaver and the venison whiskey. And I've had quite a few craft distillers who like, that's not real whiskey. And I'm like, yeah, but man, it got me Food and Wines Innovator of the Year, and it got me all this brass.
Steven Grasse:And guess what? It gets peeked through the door, and I make really great rye whiskey and really great bourbon, but that shit gets all the talk. And it's like at the end of the day, if you're gonna be a rigid person and say, I only make whatever, good luck, man, because there's a billion other guys making the same damn thing. And how are you gonna break through? I think it's an opportunity to be more creative because opening a craft distillery and expecting it to be this novelty, those days are over because they're everywhere, and they're not that interesting anymore.
Steven Grasse:The the novelty of the still and the guy with the beard and all that shit, it's like, yeah. Okay. I've seen that. That's also what happened with the craft beer stuff too. It's just like, okay, enough already.
Steven Grasse:I just want a lager. I just want a pilsner. I don't wanna drink some triple hopped bitter bitter IPA that's just fucking boring to me. It's not boring. It's just undrinkable.
Chris Maffeo:Also, I mean, there is that point that you raised earlier that, you know, if you haven't if you're not owning your state and your surrounding and your local, you're rushing into
Steven Grasse:Yeah.
Chris Maffeo:Fast scale, then you basically haven't cracked the nucleus of what you were saying before, you know, like all of a sudden sales start to pick up because it's, you know, you've got some tailwind and then you rush it, but you haven't secured the fundamentals of the brand.
Steven Grasse:Well, it's also how are you gonna when you go into a new market, how are you supporting it? Like, are you do got feet on the ground? Do you got like like, can go into a new market, but if you don't have support behind it, it's not really gonna achieve anything. You might get initial rush of incremental sales, but you're not really gonna conquer that market. So that's I think it's, obviously you need to expand or you wanna expand, but I just feel like this has to be just have a strategy for expansion.
Chris Maffeo:And tell me about the Townworth Distillery. Do you have a a flagship product that you are standing behind, or is it more like a portfolio kind of play?
Steven Grasse:I have a portfolio. So we make amazing gins. Okay? It's called Tamworth Garden. There's a flagship gin called Way Mountain Gin, which does extremely well.
Steven Grasse:We got a a great squirrel wine enthusiast with that, 91. I think we have five different gins. Some of them are seasonal. And then we have a line of liqueurs called Tamworth Garden liqueurs. We make a fig, a mountain berry, and those are really for the distillery, the tasting room business.
Steven Grasse:And then we make our House of Tamworth line is the weird stuff. It's all the the stuff we make with meat that sells for $65 a bottle. And then our core our flagship whiskey is called Chocoroa, it's named after the mountain, you can see from the distillery, and it's a rye. It's a 100% rye whiskey. It's made of Haslet rye, which only grows in Maine and Quebec.
Steven Grasse:It's very unique, and it also gets great reviews. And we make an amazing brandy, apple brandy, which just got 95 on wine enthusiasts and was top 100 beers of the year globally by wine enthusiasts. So we make a variety of products, each one of them are best in class. But again, what we're doing in Tamworth, scale and intention Like, I'm not we don't have any investors. I'm the investor, and we're really growing.
Steven Grasse:The point is to be best in class in everything we do. We have a robust direct to consumer program that sells I I think, 45 states, but it's very specialized. Like, if you need to be looking for a $95 bottle of brandy to want to buy this, and we're not making tons of it. Tamworth is not we didn't set it up to be I don't I don't wanna be the next and I'm trying to think of a brand that broke out. I mean, I I want it to be small in scale and deliberately exclusive and deliberately luxurious.
Steven Grasse:But that's the point. And it's profitable. I mean, we make a profit each year.
Chris Maffeo:And this is what I want to get to the the fact that do you think that too many people are starting companies like with this dream of, you know, universe.
Steven Grasse:Yes. They wanna be the next George Clooney. Yeah. They wanna they wanna be the next you know, they they they saw dollar signs. And I think for a while, I worked out for a few people, but I I really doubt there's gonna be any big brands, spirits brands that are gonna be I don't think any because I think I don't think there's a market for them.
Steven Grasse:Buyouts, acquisition. I don't I don't think there's a market.
Chris Maffeo:We have a tendency, you know, we as an industry, let's say, to build cases out of outliers rather than norm. You know? So the Clooneys, the aviation gin, the, you know, the casamigos of the world, you know, like, I'm gonna make this distillery and I'm gonna sell to whatever Diageo Perneau or whatever, You know? For a pill so there's a rush to that back of the nucleus of the onion and say, I don't need to overthink this because I've got, like, five, ten years time, and then I'm gonna sell out. Anyway, I need to put as many states, as many countries under my belt to make it appealing, to make it a flash news, and then I will win kind of thing.
Chris Maffeo:But we forget on the fact that, you know, companies were born like it was like to make a living for a family. You know, that's how brands historically were born. They were not dreaming of world domination. Probably none of them.
Steven Grasse:Well, I go back to Stateside. I mean, they started as a craft distillery, but they have a hit product. Very different through innovation, they have a hit product. So if you look at craft distillery, I would actually say our model is an interesting model because we make a variety of things. I have and I have three products that I make that if I scale them, they could potentially be brands that I sell off if I chose to do that.
Steven Grasse:But if you have a craft distillery, I think creating a variety of products to see what's gonna work is a smart way to go and then putting all your chips on one product. I know it's a very different way of looking at it, but
Chris Maffeo:It's also connected to the fact that many brands, they don't actually own a distillery.
Steven Grasse:True. And that's a very different way of yeah. So we own a distillery, and we use it. So the other thing too, and I actually clarify, I'm in a slightly different position here, because I own a marketing company called Clicker City, Mercantile, we use our distillery as a test kitchen just to see what's possible and have fun. So for me, it's like my I don't know.
Steven Grasse:I'm just having a lot of fun up there creating weird shit, and my only rule is that it has to make enough money to pay for itself. Right? Because the main focus of my business is Quaker City and the work we do for all these other companies and brands. So it's maybe it's not right for me to say, yeah. Should do what I'm doing in New Hampshire because I'm not building it to sell it off.
Steven Grasse:I'm building it to have passion and love, and that's a different my main business is quicker. I'm saying
Chris Maffeo:Many brand owners do that that, you know, they don't want to sell it off.
Steven Grasse:Yeah. I think if more people had passion and experimentation and innovation at their heart, I think they'd be making better decision because I think you're then creating things that you love, and chances are other people will love it too, as opposed to, I'm gonna make this product and be the next George Clooney. Because I think when you do that, that rarely works because people kinda see through it.
Chris Maffeo:I agree.
Steven Grasse:You know? And I think you're not George Clooney. Sorry. I don't even think it happened to celebrities. They think they're gonna do this or George Clooney.
Chris Maffeo:And you were saying something earlier that is about the experimentation part, you know, that it's connected to what you were saying in the previous episode when we were talking about Sid or Jerry when you were saying about never spending too much on anything, you know, trying things and then doing more of what works.
Steven Grasse:Does that work in this age of apocalypse? Yeah. I think it works more so because but I would argue, do shit that gets sales. Do shit that's directly connected to sales. I always laugh that some of the bigger companies we work with, what they call a brand ambassador is very different than what I call a brand ambassador.
Steven Grasse:Their brand ambassadors are out there just talking They're talking about the brand and just having a good time. I'm like, no, I need a brand ambassador who does that but also gets me new accounts and gets me sales. And I need a brand ambassador who's not afraid to do a tasting in a retail store. It's like you need to get more pragmatic. So try everything, but also try it through the lens of being pragmatic and tie it to actual sales.
Chris Maffeo:Yeah, absolutely agree. It reminds me of a big fight I had many years ago when I was still in S. B. Miller in one of the markets, and I was developing the operating principles for on trade. And then one of the country managers started shouting at me and said, no.
Chris Maffeo:Our guys are not selling. They're building brand. And I was like, what?
Steven Grasse:Like, what does that mean?
Chris Maffeo:And I was just like, what what are you talking about? You know? Like, it's it's it's a sales role, you know, and a brand ambassador should be measured on what they bring anyway.
Steven Grasse:Absolutely. And they need to understand sales and not feel like they're above it. I also feel like there's a great reset with it's funny. I I'm not gonna give names or or companies, but we did a project not too long ago for a whiskey brand, and we had to shoot a commercial. And we had one of the best directors in the world willing to do this commercial for, like, almost no money.
Steven Grasse:And we weren't allowed to use it because we had to go through this whole procurement thing where we ended up having to go It ended up being about race, gender, and all these things, and I'm like, but you got the guy who's willing to do it for a never before seen price. Now we can't use him. I'm like and then we did this spot, and it's okay, but it wasn't that. And I'm like, so maybe there's a chance now to get over all that stuff and just get back to selling some damn boobs. You know?
Steven Grasse:Like, maybe these bigger companies won't feel like they have to lead the world in morality and just get back to say, we gotta sell some barrels here. You know?
Chris Maffeo:I agree. And there's also this thing that, you know, let's say in the new wave of building brands with beverages in general, There's been a lot of recruitment from outside the industry, you know. Before I was saying like it's on the one hand it's incestuous because it's always the same people working in the industry just switching company. But then on the other end, there's a lot of people that don't understand the industry coming in and bringing the FMCG values in. So the big off trade, big retailers, you know, kinda like a stack it high.
Chris Maffeo:Let them fly. This is the kinda like, again, the perfect storm because there's never a proper conversation. Everybody's kinda like judging the other. The new guys coming in are judging the old school guys, which are the ones that made the spirits industry what it is. The intuition type of people are the ones that actually made the industry successful.
Chris Maffeo:You know? So now you want to make it all data driven and then all of a sudden it's kind of like short circuit because you cannot really add data everywhere in everything we do.
Steven Grasse:Yeah. It's it's really it's interesting. I think it depends case by case because I think a lot of the old school guys are part of the problem too. True. You know?
Steven Grasse:They could they wanna see the world through a very rigid lens and the on premise offer. All those things are changing rapidly. But I also think when you bring a CPG guy in from somewhere else and that they've never experienced spirits, I think that gets crazy too. So I think, again, it's a perfect storm because I think companies are trying different tactics and ways to go. And and
Chris Maffeo:Yeah. There's a kind of polarization.
Steven Grasse:Let's see. I I think that's all those conversations are completely changing and irrelevant. Think that what even is the It's trade anymore. I think you've got to go through the mindset of removing those barriers of on trade is preferable to off trade, all those things. It's like, how do I sell more?
Steven Grasse:Where I think there's going be a certain fluidity too, because I go back to my daughter being 24 and just saying, like, know, Gen Z is not going into a bar and ordering $24 cocktail. If I'm gonna talk about the entree the way I have for the last fifteen years, I'm gonna lose out. It's a different beast than it was. Building a brand on the on trade is very different, and is it even possible anymore? That's I think I would I wouldn't work on a new brand and assume it's going to be the way I it always think you'd have to go in and say, Okay, I'm going to launch something.
Steven Grasse:I need to look at the world to a whole different way. It's the same in advertising. People talk about above the line, below the line. There's no above the line anymore. Nobody watches advertisements at all.
Steven Grasse:No one cares. So if you're going to think about your brand through a traditional lens of, well, our agency only does above the line work, it's like, you're gonna be out of business.
Chris Maffeo:I agree.
Steven Grasse:So every industry, every industry is going through this in a different Spirits are not unique. It's happening in every industry. We're in movies, everything. Everything's a total fucking.
Chris Maffeo:The interesting thing is that, for example, I stopped calling it on and off when I'm doing projects, and I call it bottom up and top down trade. Bottom up trade is where you can actually build the brand while driving sales, and top down trade is where you scale it, but it doesn't really matter if it's on or off.
Steven Grasse:Well, you know, it's funny because we're gonna I know we're gonna get into this when we talk about Pathfinder, but we built Pathfinder very traditionally on trade, off trade because we wanted to mimic spirit purposely. So we'll get into that because it's it's like everything I just told you when I did Pathfinder, was like, no. I'm gonna do it the old school way because that fucks with your mind.
Chris Maffeo:And this is let let's let before we dive into that, like, I want to ask you a last question on this one is the you know, what happens like, we talk about the foundations, not the core of the onion. What happens when there is board pressure?
Steven Grasse:Well, I mean okay. So if your brand has a strong foundation, and we talked about if your brand has all of its core ideas and it's resonated, then this discussion is irrelevant because if I need to do a big retail display at Tesco or something, it's not going to affect the brand because the brand is so solid to begin with. It just is appearing on a retail shelf. I'm not going to think differently about the brand. So I actually think if I was the CEO of a large multinational conglomerate, I would be taking a look at every one of our brands to make sure they have a very strong brand core that resonates with consumers because that is gonna give me the freedom to be able to go out and do what I need to do in different channels to sell, sell, sell.
Steven Grasse:And if you don't have those things, you don't abandon those things at all, I think you do them even so. And again, the way to do that is to hire me to do that for all of your brands. I'm a salesman.
Chris Maffeo:I love that. No. But honestly, I love what you were saying because that cuts through a lot of the fights in the boardroom and in the meeting room about is this premium enough? You know? Are we going to jeopardize our brand with this promotion, with this thing, and blah blah blah?
Chris Maffeo:Because, you know, many very often, those brands are built on not solid foundations. And that's where you actually mess up the positioning of the brand because you haven't spent enough time in building that foundation. Yeah. And then all of a sudden when you have all these promotions or these kind of things, then this happens.
Steven Grasse:Absolutely. Yeah. So it's like, I don't know, world's going through. We ask about peoples, adapt or die.
Chris Maffeo:So a solid core, basically, it's almost like an extra life for your brand.
Steven Grasse:Well, think about this, the word core. Right? I'm a physical fitness freak. If you have a solid core of yourself, it insulates you with every other pain, every other thing that's going on in your life. It's no different with your brand.
Steven Grasse:The more your brand knows who it is, the more your brand is clearly articulating that to your consumers, the more the super fans will stay with the brand, and the more the brand will be attractive to those who were up and coming or exploring and doing whatever. It's just absolutely fundamental.
Chris Maffeo:Very interesting. Let's wrap up this episode. What are your final thoughts on the apocalypse?
Steven Grasse:My final thoughts on the apocalypse are the key to getting out of it is innovation and new to world ideas and being bold. And stop trying to acquire your way out of a problem and start creating your way out of the problem. Also, that things are cyclical, and so your legacy brands, the stronger they are, the stronger the core of those brands is, the more insulated they'll be when things come back either sooner or later. It it ain't that hard, yet it's impossible. So good luck.
Steven Grasse:And hire me.
Chris Maffeo:Love that. Thanks, Steve.
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