Thinking with AND: Insights from KIND’s story

“I’m a confused Mexican Jew.” So says Daniel Lubetzky, Founder and CEO of KIND Snack, in his very personal interview with Columbia faculty member David Rogers at BRITE ’16. Their discussion touched on the many ideas behind KIND Snacks, from the beginnings of the company, to the strategic thinking that forces Lubetzky to stay away from false compromises, to his thoughts on brands and purpose.

After studying law at Stanford, Lubetzky had planned to become a Mid-East Peace negotiator, “That was my path and that was my dream and I ended up feeling that the power of business to drive change may potentially be more impactful in bringing neighbors to work together than diplomacy.” As the son of a Holocaust survivor, the common threat in everything he does is, “building bridges between people because that’s my commitment: to prevent what happened to my dad from happening again.”

It was precisely his intention to create business opportunities for neighbors in conflict regions what brought him into the natural food industry. Ten years after his first attempts, he identified the need for a healthy and tasty snack, and KIND was born.

Lubetzky went on to share some insights on how to maintain creativity when bringing ideas to life: “To challenge conventional wisdom, which says you have to choose between this or that, think creatively and try to do this and that, and make a business that’s both socially impactful and economically sustainable or a product that’s both healthy and tasty. In any such venture there is a tension and you need to use creativity to generate that extra value.”

When asked about KIND’s purpose, Lubetzky explained that he was looking “to have a company that was going to have a social impact and that was going to be economically impactful and successful, combining the social and the business objectives. The social impact [being] inspiring kindness, celebrating kindness, finding a way to increase kindness in society, while also selling healthy snack foods.”

He also warned entrepreneurs that having a social mission doesn’t guarantee success, the product has to shine through for the social mission to be relevant, Lubetzky said. “We need to be careful about assuming that because you have a social mission suddenly things work. Ninety-nine percent of the people [who] have tried KIND bars -or maybe 90%- don’t even know about our social mission. […] It is by design that we lead with our product and our taste. The social mission adds loyalty and meaning to [me] and to [my] team, and hopefully passion to [the] consumers. But the fundamentals have to be there, they’re really what drive the business.”

Watch the full interview with Daniel Lubetzky.

BY GABRIELA TORRES PATIÑO

Reflections on Business, Leadership, and Branding: Shelly Lazarus ’70

Much has changed in the world of advertising from the picture painted by Mad Men. Shelly Lazarus ’70, Chairman Emeritus, Ogilvy & Mather, was one of the women helping pioneer these changes. Making the journey from ‘the only woman in the room’ to CEO and Chairman of Ogilvy gives Lazarus a lot to reflect on in the world of business, branding, and leadership.

“Being the only woman in the room in an industry where most of what was being sold at the time was to women was remarkably powerful,” Lazarus notes. This was a dual power, driving value both in the workplace and for the client by providing more accurate perceptions about a target audience at a time when decision-makers didn’t have the breadth of data in front of them that exists today.

At the time that Lazarus entered the advertising world, typing was in many ways the only skill that was expected of women. Having been inspired by the women’s movement of the time, this expectation was disheartening to her. “I must have looked so crestfallen at some interview, when some recruiter was telling me this, that she said, ‘You know, I bet if you got an MBA, they couldn’t make you type.’ Frankly, I didn’t even know what an MBA was. But I found out.” After enrolling at Columbia Business School in 1968, as one of the very few women in the School at the time, she took great pleasure in her marketing classes, and that kicked off her future career.

A lack of women in the business side of the ad world also impacted Lazarus’s leadership style, as she recalls, “I really didn’t have any [women] role models… that turned into something wonderful for me, actually, because I just was myself from the beginning.” She says this focus on authenticity has always been crucial to being a strong leader, and it will be increasingly important as the Internet and social media further drive people to expect and demand transparency from their leaders and corporations.

Authenticity, Lazarus remarks, is also key to becoming a leading brand. “If people ask me what’s important when you think about branding,” Lazarus told AdAge, “it’s understand your essence, figure out who you are, and then consistency — maniacal consistency — is really what makes for strong brands.” Sadly, despite growing attention to exactly this point, companies still don’t always fully value the strength of a brand and its associations. “[I’m] flummoxed when a company buys another company because they believe in the brands, and then, within the space of six months, they fire all the people who have been there forever.”

Oglivy & Mather is renowned for building long-term relationships with both its clients and its employees. Lazarus believes developing these types of relationships can help agencies play the role of brand steward at times when changes within a company may drive it to lose focus on the perceptions of its brands.

As for where the future of brand building is heading, during her recent Marketing Hall of Fame speech, Lazarus highlighted a huge contrast from her early years in the ad world, “[Back then] you could run two campaigns per year, and the only choice was which magazines would get to run the campaigns—Ladies Home Journal, Better Homes and Gardens,or Cosmopolitan … I used to start presentations with, ‘Imagine if you could engage a customer as an individual.’ And now you actually can.” The marketing world is abuzz with the concept of personalization, but most would admit that there is still a long way to go before consumers experience such a relationship with a majority of their favorite brands.

We are delighted to be hosting Shelly Lazarus ’70, at a special panel at the BRITE ’16 Conference honoring Columbia Business School’s Centennial. She will be joined by Lew Frankfort ’69, Chairman Emeritus of Coach; Russell Dubner ’00, CEO of Edelman US; and Nt Etuk ’02, Founder of YourGuru to examine “Is Past Prologue? The History and Future of Brand Building.”

Register now for BRITE and join us on March 7–8, 2016, at Columbia University.

BY MATTHEW QUINT

Can a Company be pro-regulation and pro-commerce? Gregg Renfrew from Beautycounter thinks so

It’s the middle of an election year and, according to the Pew Research Center, the country hasn’t been this polarized since the Civil War. In such a climate, it would seem to be an oxymoron for a company to push for both financial growth and tighter regulations. Gregg Renfrew, CEO & Founder of Beautycounter, wouldn’t agree, however, and she is on a quest to “put safe cosmetics into the hands of everyone.”

In 2012, a federal analysis showed that 400 popular lipsticks contained trace amounts of lead. As reported in The Washington Post, “in 2007, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics tested 33 red lipsticks and found that two-thirds of them contained lead — and that one-third exceeded the FDA’s limit for lead in candy.” Since 1938, when the FDA was given authority to oversee the safety of cosmetics, the agency has enacted almost no regulations on the use of ingredients in cosmetics. In fact, cosmetic labels list known toxins linked to cancer, reproductive issues, and hormone disruption without warning their customers. (The Environmental Working Group has built an extensive database to compare ingredients listed on cosmetic labels with databases on chemical toxicity.)

Before launching Beautycounter, Renfrew had already established herself as a retail leader. Regarded as a serial entrepreneur, she is known for turning concepts into thriving businesses. Prior to founding Beautycounter, she sold her successful bridal registry company, The Wedding List, to Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Renfrew also served as CEO for the legendary children’s retail group Best & Co., which she reinvigorated through design, traditional retail, and hundreds of national trunk shows. Renfrew has led new-concept, brand, marketing, merchandising, and operational consulting engagements with Bergdorf Goodman, Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson, Intermix, Sugar Paper, Lela Rose, and Jessica Alba, among other high-profile corporate and entertainment clients.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, Renfrew explained the reason behind her company: “I started Beautycounter because I wanted to create a safer and healthier place for my children, family, and ultimately everyone in the world. My decision to start a company was initially rooted in emotion, but being the serial entrepreneur that I am, it translated into an incredible vision for a business that is filling an existing void in the marketplace.”

Because Renfrew knew that Beautycounter had a story to tell, she decided against creating beauty counter displays in department stores. Instead she committed to an ecommerce platform and selling via independent consultants, thus allowing the company’s mission to be shared online and friend to friend. In addition, Beautycounter strategically partnered with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop.com and J Crew.

In the fall of 2015, Renfrew joined a group of industry experts on a trip to Capitol Hill. “At Beautycounter, we are leading a movement for better beauty. We are a company who is pro-commerce and pro-regulation. While we have shipped close to two million products, we know it’s only the beginning – there is a lot of work to be done. We are radically transforming the beauty industry by introducing safer, high-performance products into the marketplace,” said Renfrew.

Join us on March 7-8 for BRITE ’16 and see Gregg Renfrew talk about how Beautycounter is aiming to transform the beauty industry. REGISTER NOW.

BY GABRIELA TORRES PATIÑO

KIND Snacks: Starting a healthy conversation

Daniel Lubetzky had the lofty goal of starting a company both economically sustainable and socially impactful. In 2004, after ten years as a social entrepreneur, he started KIND Snacks. Now valued at more than 700M USD, the company still follows his vision to build a community, a movement, and ultimately a company with the goal of doing the right thing.

It was early in his career, however, when Daniel Lubetzky learned the hard way that a mission does not sell a product, the product sells the product. Back in the early Nineties when he was starting PeaceWorks, Lubetzky methodically walked the streets of Manhattan selling dried tomato spreads. Peaceworks produced Mediterranean spreads and other goods, but Lubetzky’s pitch focused on the company’s model to try to promote peace in the Middle East by sourcing and partnering with companies from regions in conflict — Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesian, and Sri Lanka. He wouldn’t leave a store until they either bought his product or told him what he should do to improve it. Through these interactions with store buyers he realized Middle East peace wasn’t selling the spreads, the spreads were selling the spreads. So, he soon put quality first, even when it was more time consuming and expensive.

As Lubetzky himself notes in his book Do the KIND Thing, “Yes, increasingly consumers are focused on ensuring that the companies they buy products or services from are genuine members of their communities, doing their part to make this a better world. But that is not a substitute for delivering on the functional merits. First and foremost, the product must stand on its own.”

After a decade of positive press with KIND snacks, it came as a surprise to Lubetzky when the FDA sent KIND a letter this year indicating that four of its bars were in violation of marketing labeling guidelines for the use of the word healthy and the plus sign.

Like many others would do, KIND responded immediately and adjusted its labels. Unlike others, they took the slap on the wrist as a way to start a conversation on what it means to eat healthy and how the FDA guidelines may be misleading. On December 1, 2015, KIND submitted a citizen petition to the FDA, asking the agency to update their requirements related to food labeling in order to reflect a shift in dietary guidelines that focus on whole foods that help achieve and maintain wellness, rather than on specific nutrient levels.

This move, which if made by a different snack company could look like just another lobbying effort, has been embraced by KIND’s stakeholders as a way of doing something good for the community: aiming to help people recognize and understand distinctions between whole foods and processed, low-fat “healthy” foods. This permission is given because the snack company has built its brand with the hope of spreading kindness. One example of this is the #kindawesome initiative –part of the company’s KIND movement- that is“a little program we cooked up to celebrate kind acts everywhere, spot a kind act, give a KIND snack. On us!” Anyone can send KIND snacks to recognize an act of kindness via twitter, Facebook, or email to people they’ve spotted doing everyday kind things.

See Daniel Lubetzky at BRITE ’16 (March 7-8, NYC) to learn more about his story and KIND.

BY GABRIELA TORRES PATIÑO

COULD STREAMING MUSIC PREVENT AN INDUSTRY SWAN SONG?

This post first appeared on the AIMIA Institute blog.

Back in 2005, I discovered Rhapsody, a first-of-a-kind subscription-based music streaming service, and my jaw dropped. What? For the same money I spent buying just one album every month, I can listen to every new album that came out that month, as well as a catalog of almost every album ever released.

So, for the past decade, I have easily perused music of all kinds, checking out knowns and unknowns.

Right now, for example, I am taking a quick listen to some of the latest album releases, from Tame Impala’s Currents — I appreciate that the song craft is not predictable, but it is too produced for me — to Future’s DS2 — good grooves, but I am turned off by misogynistic lyrics — to Wilco’s Star Wars — a favorite band of mine and a nice new album.

With the launch of Apple Music in July, this kind of offering fully hit the mainstream, but the evolution of streaming music to this point provides a fascinating look at the psychology of consumers, brand building, and how this business model is affecting music industry.

I am Not Buying It

I am a big fan of music and established many friendships, both offline and online, through this shared passion. Once I discovered Rhapsody in 2005, I was thrilled to spread the word to all of these friends. To my surprise, however, they did not buy into my excitement.

“So, do you own the albums?” my friends would ask.

“Well, no,” I would reply. “But as long as you pay your monthly fee, you continue to have access to everything, and there is rarely an album I can’t find on Rhapsody.”

Their typical response: “Hmmm. Sounds interesting, but I am not sure I need it.”

Mind you, this was coming from people that likely spent over $100 a year purchasing music, whether CDs or mp3s. There was psychological resistance to paying for access to an album without getting ownership. People were comfortable relinquishing ownership for other types of long-form media, whether borrowing books from a library or renting movies from Blockbuster, but they could not buy into this idea for music.

Unlike most books and movies, songs and albums are listened to over and over again, so the value of ownership is driven by both emotional and functional benefits. I believe people also were skeptical that a service like Rhapsody would even last. So, they preferred the idea of buying one new album each month that they could listen to forever (if they liked it), rather than paying each month for unlimited access to millions of albums because of the perceived potential of losing that access at any time.

In 2006, though, one brand changed the model for streaming music, Pandora. Because it mimicked the radio model, Pandora fit an existing expectation of “temporary” music access. Pandora took the radio listening experience to a new level with personalization. Once you picked a single song, album, or artist, Pandora produced a stream of music matching that style. Like radio, all you had to do was suffer through a few ads.

Pandora is not designed for users to select and immediately listen to any particular song or album, but without any fee (and no DJ chatter), people were happy to have a cool, new passive listening experience using the web.

Brand Building Changes the Game

Is it better to be a first mover or a fast follower? The streaming music model offers an interesting case study on this oft-debated question.

Rhapsody was developed and launched independently in 2001, but it was acquired in 2003 by RealNetworks, a pioneer in developing the capability to steam audio and video content over the internet. Despite creating an innovative model for listening to music, with licenses from all the major record labels, Rhapsody could not escape the shadow of iTunes, which launched that same year.

By October 2003, Apple’s iTunes, originally developed for the iPod, was also compatible with the Windows operating system and everyone with a computer could own digital music with a few clicks. By combining an easy way to purchase music “by the drink” through iTunes with the iPod, the portable music device of choice, Apple usurped any earned attention that might have come to Rhapsody, even though Rhapsody offered users the ability to purchase and own most of its licensed songs and albums, as well its subscription model. Without an investment in marketing and PR dollars to truly compete with iTunes, Rhapsody continued to trudge along in relative obscurity, gradually growing a small user base.

Other entrepreneurs were spurred by the possibilities of streaming music. Spotify, launched in Sweden in October 2008, smartly combined the ad-based and subscription models. This allowed it to grow large numbers of casual users who were willing to submit to ads and some service limitations, while also gaining more dedicated music fans willing to pay for full capabilities and no ads.

By 2011, Spotify was available throughout most of Europe and the United States. It not only surpassed Rhapsody in its number of subscription users, but also boasted another three to four times as many registered users who picked a free option.

Rhapsody was run by an older Web 1.0 team, who had likely become risk averse after the dotcom bubble burst. Rhapsody management focused on a stable, buyer-only business model with modest growth expectations. Spotify was developed by experienced entrepreneurs whose business model and growth plan were driven by VC funding and the goal of a high valuation based on rapid user growth and buzz. The Spotify team employed Web 2.0 principles: a freemium model, active social media integration, an open programming interface (API), and a budget for marketing, PR, and advertising.

Rhapsody was a first-mover, but it did not do much to build a brand, while Spotify—although it came later—proudly waved its flag as a disruptive agent that would transform the way music was consumed. That message got the tech startup community and its growing user base to spread the word along with Spotify. Today, Rhapsody has around 2.5 million paid users while Spotify has around 20 million paid subscribers and an additional 55 million active users of its ad-supported service.

Score one for the fast follower.

And in part two of this two-part series, I will discuss whether or not all of this will last.

BY MATTHEW QUINT