Building the Brands of Tomorrow

"The story you're telling from an innovation standpoint needs to be the same story you're telling from sales, from operations, and from brand and marketing - or you're going to end up with siloed work."What connects a Wall Street trading floor, the UFC's first ever sponsorship deal, and an almost 100-year-old newspaper in a town of 1,700 people in the Texas desert? For Max Kabat, co-founder of brand consultancy goodDog, it's all the same skill: finding the story that makes a business make sense, then getting everyone inside it to tell the same one.A decade after spinning goodDog out of a larger New York agency with his business partner Lisa, Max has built a practice around what he calls "the good idea"- the three-to-five-word story that has to hold true whether you're pitching innovation, sales, ops or marketing, or the whole thing falls apart into siloed work. Along the way he's helped Krave Jerky turn a cast-out Michael Phelps into an Olympic sponsorship story, weighed in on why Tom Holland's backing of Bero (a recent guest on this podcast) actually works, and what he learnt about brand building when he bought a small-town Texas newspaper with his wifeIn this episode, we cover:The good idea, not the elevator pitch - why the story behind a brand has to be identical whether you're briefing innovation, pitching a category manager, or writing marketing copy, and why "siloed work" is what happens the moment it isn'tThe shiny object test - Max's gut-check for any tempting opportunity, a celebrity, a partnership, a new SKU, before you say yes to itBuy low, sell high on talent - the inside story of pairing a cast-out Michael Phelps with Krave Jerky’'s first Olympic sponsorship, and why chasing the "safest" famous name is usually the wrong callWhen celebrity backing works his read on authentic celebrity backing versus the disingenuous kind, The unsexy brands worth watching - why heritage and commodity businesses are some of the most rewarding clients in FMCG, and the real reason most of them have never told their own storyBuying a newspaper- how a "shiny object" decision to buy an almost 100-year-old Texas newspaper taught him more about running a P&L, and empathy for founders, than a decade of client workIf you're trying to get your innovation, sales and marketing teams working off the same story, weighing up a celebrity partnership, or just want a look at brand strategy from the agency side of the table, press play.

"How can we bring emotion back to a category that's become entirely functional? Less about guilt, more about making it irresistible."Not all berries are equal. That's the starting point for this episode with Isla Haslam from Driscoll's, the world's largest berry company, a household name across the US, and until recently, almost unknown to UK shoppers.Isla took an unusual route into FMCG, via PR agencies, industry bodies for eggs, tea and red meat, and a stint working across British berry growers, before landing at Driscoll's UK during its 2024 brand launch. In this conversation, she explains what actually goes into "Driscoll's genetics" (spoiler: it involves people with paintbrushes acting like bees), why fresh produce is one of the last truly unbranded categories in the supermarket, and why that's a huge opportunity rather than a problem.We also get into:Why Driscoll's spent 100 years building a business on product alone - and what it takes to build the story nowThe difference between building a brand and building a category, and why Isla thinks about the whole supply chain, not just Driscoll's shareBerries as a cultural moment & status symbol, "berry girl summer", and how brands should (and shouldn't) try to ride itWhy Driscoll's is deliberately staying out of the GLP-1 and UPF health-claims arms raceWhat FMCG marketers get wrong about fresh produce, and what fresh produce people could learn from FMCGAs always, we close with the question we ask every guest: what makes a brand of tomorrow?

"It's not about growing faster, it's about growing stronger."What do you do when a surgeon tells a teenage professional footballer he'll simply have to learn to live with chronic pain? If you're Thomas Hal Robson-Kanu, you ignore him - and watch your dad turn whole turmeric roots, pineapple cores and watermelon rind into a kitchen blend that becomes your secret weapon for the next decade of a Premier League career.Ten years after that first golden shot fixed his knee, Robson-Kanu and his father decided to bring it to market as The Turmeric Co. and found that no beverage manufacturer in the UK or Europe would touch the process they needed, so they built their own manufacturing unit behind his dad's house instead.That manufacturing capability became the foundation for a second brand, Raw Hydrate, and eventually for a deal that turned heads across FMCG: in 2025, AG Barr, the FTSE-listed group behind Irn-Bru, bought a stake in the business for £15m.In this episode, we cover:From the operating table to the pitch- the recovery, the "just live with it," and the decade-long dive into functional ingredients that followedThe kitchen blend nobody was meant to sell - why it took ten years and a shift in the market before "dad's remedy" became a companyWhat "fresh" juice actually means - the supply chain conversation that revealed how old most bottled juice really isBuilding the manufacturer before the brand - why every UK co-packer rejected the process, and the bespoke unit they built insteadRetail as a fight for survival - what it actually took to displace category giants for shelf spaceRaw Hydrate and the hydration gap - spotting the space between synthetic sachets and sugar-loaded sports drinksThe AG Barr deal - how the conversation started, and what he needed to know about a partner before giving up majority controlFootball, McDonald's and the sponsorship problem

‘It's very foolhardy to just want more distribution without making sure every place you're in is successful.. If ROS is good, distribution will follow’It started with a burrito bar in Dublin, and a nagging feeling that nobody was making a corn tortilla good enough. So Phil Martin got on a plane to Mexico with no plan, called a tour company, and asked if they knew any corn farmers who'd teach him what they knew. They introduced him to a family in Puebla, and that's where Blanco Niño really began.Eleven years on, Blanco Niño is in restaurants and hotels across 19 European markets and the Middle East, and on shelves in Whole Foods, Co-op, Sainsbury's and Waitrose. But it didn't start in retail- it started in food service, because that's what the capital and the learning curve allowed. In this episode, Phil walks through the entire build: crowdfunding a tortilla factory, the brutal pivot forced by a 95% sales drop in 2020, and how food service selling ("solving a problem") is a completely different game to retail selling ("selling features").We also get into:Why Phil turned down faster retail distribution to protect rate of saleHis hiring process - including why a candidate being rude to a waiter is an instant noThe flat "tree" mental model he uses instead of a traditional org chartWhat he wishes he'd known about burnout and hustle culture earlierFair warning: this one's got a fair bit of colourful language - don't play it in front of the kids.

"I keep telling the team, every day is our most complex day we've ever had and our simplest day ever we're gonna have again." What do you do after growing a company from 100 to 650 people, building the number four energy drink in America, and landing an investment from Keurig Dr Pepper? If you're John Herman, you call your wife and tell her you want to quit.A random unmarked phone call later, John was building a business plan over a weekend with a newly sober Tom Holland (yes, that Tom Holland)- and Bero was born. Two and a half years on, the premium non-alcoholic beer brand is brewing on two continents, sold nationally in Target, partnered with Aston Martin, and projecting to more than double sales this year.In this episode, we cover:From C4 to starting again - John's path from apparel merchant to President of Nutrabolt, and why walking away from a 650-person company was the easy partCelebrity as topspin, not foundation - how Bero uses Tom Holland's involvement authentically, and why the brand has to stand on its ownDesigning a brand that feels like it's always existed - "I never wanna see blue," gold cans, and building for the pub rather than the wellness aisleLaunching in the UK early - shipping beer from Colorado across the Atlantic on a P&L that made no sense, and why the UK's on-trade momentum made it worth itThe shandy gamble - a new can, new formula and new marketing that looked like a horrible idea on paper, and became unbelievably incremental (70% net-new customers)What US brands get wrong about the UK - flavour palettes, competitive sets, and why "your brand is your brand, but your playbook definitely needs to evolve"Saying no - deciding what's a distraction versus what's the brand's next stagePlus John's answer to the question we ask every guest: what makes a brand of tomorrow?If you're building in beverage, eyeing a transatlantic launch, or just want a masterclass in knowing what to say yes to, press play.