ZICO as a brand may be the first food or beverage brand of its kind to successfully grow from grassroots, witness a purchase by the likes of Coca Cola, see it all get spun off and restart back at zero, and scale back up.

Joining the team on the heels of a brand strategy that stretched innovation prior to establishing a core reason to believe, I have worked with our amazing team to establish the premium positioning our natural brand should occupy, as well as doubling down on the fitness space, and a “sense of place” centered around the South Pacific and our thoughtfully crafted beverages.

Coconut water as a category is on fire—growing at 11% through Q2 2024, we have seen many upstart brands enter the space. Despite the ever more crowded room, we have stayed true to our identity while building our top and bottom line with:

1. Increased distribution in natural, club, and broad retail channels leveraging effective trade marketing

2. Velocity increases from thoughtful promotions and shopper programs, as well as culturally relevant partnerships.

3. Optimized package assortment via multipacks that are right for consumers, and refined visual identification system that stands out from the sea of sameness in the space.

As a result, our 17% growth currently leads the category, and that is before we go fully into the expansion accounts recently secured for 2024 resets.

The future looks like a bright Thailand sunset.

Mtn Dew Baja Blast was conceived in a Valhalla, NY lab. Designed to replicate the teal blue waters of Baja California and to pair perfectly with the flavor profiles of Taco Bell menu items, the drink launched to enormous success and set the example for how to grow a proprietary sub-brand.

Fast forward to the 2010s, and the brand still continued to roll along. The cult following of the flavor was a flame, sitting beneath the surface of broad foody culture. The mid-portion of the decade was a time when we strategized how to fan this flame with some lighter fluid. Here’s what i strategized and led during this era:

1. Expanded the product offerings and availability across forms

2. Licensed it out to non-food/bev platforms

3. Wove it into the fabric of activations to expand relevance, while maintaining the scarcity dynamic

As Baja’s evolution continues to steadily grow; some of the moments that brought it from a successful single-sku proprietary item, to iconic brand status, include but are not limited to:

-expansion of Baja Freeze in the frozen platform

-Launching Mtn Dew Baja Blast Zero Sugar (retail and FS)

-Summer of Baja activations and retail partnership

-Taco Bell Las Vegas Cantina, limited edition Champagne Baja Bottle

-Baja Duos Program

-The Bell- Taco Bell Resort + Baja 15th Birthday Freeze

-Baja Apparel, towels, chap stick, sauce, and even Costumes

-And more..

The efforts to grow the Cult of Baja has set the tone for how to best leverage proprietary product development, and market it in a way that brings not only trial, but repeated news circulating through the brand.

With Nekter Juice, I laid out a brand calendar and overhaul in terms of how they conveyed this natural brand to consumers, and how they integrated their core value proposition into marketing plans. This included refining how they work with product team, innovation, supply chain, distributors, and up to key partners such as Amazon where they expanded a footprint in Whole Foods stores. In addition to B&M work, the digital app component needed tweaking in terms of how rewards were gamified. Together with their digital team, the cadence of messaging and brand creative were tweaked to encourage more repeat orders, and generate higher brand affinity.

Pepsi Zero Sugar and its ensuing full-scale rollout nationwide, was our namesake brand’s most important launch in years. Starting with the brand and innovation teams, through sell-in and then vetting creative strategy with our agency, working to establish a go-to-market strategy for 7,000 locations nationwide was my number one priority for the better part of the year. The integration of this product was vital to ensure the brand’s relevance at the point of purchase for countless new and existing consumers, whether they aspire to reduce sugar count or just want to try out the additional offering. App and digital deals abound, as well as local marketing efforts.

Our work with the agencies on record led us to a strong positioning that set up the brand for the success it has seen since going live. Year over year this core brand priority saw success out of the gate from 2018-2019, and again in 2020. It continues to help lead the “better for you” movement as part of the broader category’s commitment to healthier alternatives.

The end of Summer, the culmination of 15 years, and the launch of multiple new products. No, “The Bell” resort didn’t deliver on expectations of an experiential, one time only weekend. It blew those expectations out of the pool water.

Working with partners from Taco Bell and Yum!, we effectively were able to craft a storyline and procure the resources needed to help pull off the moment of the Summer in 2019. Leveraging PR, influencers, fantastic brand integrations, and 100% organic social, the story and ensuing events for the weekend helped drive over Four BILLION earned impressions—for not a single penny in paid media cost. Turning 15 years old, the iconic Baja Blast had a core anchoring role to the “why” for this activation, as we created a “Freeze Room,” to cool off guests in +100 degree temperatures. In this room, we embedded the pending new “Birthday Freeze” scheduled to launch nationally later that year.

Poolside, custom Baja cocktails and a party day through night brought the spirit of the brand to a tangible feeling. Other product trial, all for free, such as the Naked Chicken Chalupa, drove buzz around future LTO/innovation.

Not only a food moment, collaboration with lifestyle and apparel brands at the resort’s shop and online via the app drove further engagement that echoed beyond the 3 day hotel lifespan.

Tickets for this event sold out in seconds as fans lobbied online for a spot in one of each of the resort’s custom branded rooms, all complete with merchandise available to purchase or take home. Exclusivity and cultural relevance remained not only the main drivers for this moment, but created a surplus of FOMO for those scrolling through their news feeds from afar.

Marie’s placement in chilled produce section of grocery limited our ability to expand, given the trade-off that our premium brand would lose a bit of its luster if it went into the ambient space. Given this fact, we were able to expand Marie’s and gain 3% category share in premium dressing in a few ways:

1. Expanding assortment to include plant-based dedicated visual system (much of portfolio already had this, but we needed to refresh branding and really claim this portion of our portfolio)

2. Drive packaging optimization that enabled consumers to squeeze/dip their favorite pairings with Marie’s, rather than the longheld stance to maintain equity on a premium jar that uses a spoon or a pour.

3. Drive highly targeted digital shopper campaigns on account based platforms to pulse offers that complement sales cycles. We did not want to lower our brand perception by reducing SRP, and this tactic enabled a bit more flexibility on driving purchase.

You’ve been doing it for years. It’s the worst-kept secret love affair there ever was. Might as well bring it into the light.

Of course, we are talking about pizza and ranch. This pairing is such a ubiquitous flavor trend but it had not been truly claimed as a moment that a brand truly hung its hat on…That changed when we(Ventura Foods) worked with friends at Clorox (retail brand owner of Hidden Valley Ranch) to devise the best ways to marry Hidden Valley retail dominance with foodservice messaging. Using cult-like ranch fandom and partnerships with large scaled orgs, we were able to really put an exclamation point on this food dynamic that has continued to rise in prevalence. Far beyond just pizza, ranch is the go-to flavor profile of choice for countless items. In fact, ranch as a category surpassed the size of ketchup as a side, with well over a billion dollars sold in the category.

You either like it or you love it.

As the account executive and later serving as the main brand strategist for digital, working agency-side for various retail, lifestyle, automobile, and food/bev clients allowed me to learn and expand my capabilities, as well as drive key performance on behalf of clients.

We:

- Devised awareness & shopper campaigns for Visionworks as they expanded and consolidated and rebranded under one core brand name.

-Drove exponential ecom catering growth for Einstein Noah Restaurant Group via unique B2B and B2C product messaging

-Scaled up Wingstop’s franchisee push and boneless wing product launch

-Generated high engagement and conversion with interactive content for BMW, Visionworks, Universal Sport, and more

An endorsement from the loudest microphone in the world? We’ll take it. That is exactly what happened in November 2016 with President Barrack Obama.

“I’m aware that because Francisco Lindor stole second base in Game 1, everyone in America gets a free taco at Taco Bell tomorrow.”

When you are crafting a program to drive incremental SKU trial and app downloads, you don’t often assume that it will culminate with POTUS prompting the nation as a call to action. But there we were.

Sitting on a couple years of steady growth for the Doritos program, not only were we looking to inject life back into this Frito-Lay product offering, but do so via incremental product trial and app downloads. Additional products, such as the Fiery, Nacho Cheese, and recently the Flamin’ Hot, have joined the original Cool Ranch Dorito Loco Taco over the years in this semi annual activation(The NBA version in June has been included as well).

The Doritos model of borrowed equity for food innovation continues to be replicated and imitated.

I proposed and gained alignment on additional org funding + resource allocation to expedite GTM timing on strategic launches, as well as strengthen the relationship with key account.

Departed with YOY brand and portfolio growth that surpassed yearly goals, each year, for four consecutive years. Added incremental revenue with added product lines, seeded core Big Bets across digital + 7,000 brick & mortar points of sale, and led cross-functional campaign rollouts.

Food is best eaten when and where you want it. And who doesn’t wholeheartedly believe that no food is better than America’s #1 choice of protein: Chicken.

Launched in nearly 1,000 restaurants in 2023, TenderFix had the largest single day number of restaurant storefronts opened, digital or brick & mortar... Ever.

That's a lot of Tenders.

Launching this brand was no easy task, and doing so in a way that mattered to our consumers, and stood out as distinct and relevant, was a tricky bit of business. Sorting through industry news clutter and elevating the brand to stand out in different areas of culture was a priority. Doing so required identifying clear equities to play in or borrow, and resonating with a message that could be leveraged through earned impressions across various channels. The specific value proposition for TenderFix is all about convenience and flexitarian(plant-based) options. Owning this positioning and delivering it with a key personality in “Stranger Things” star Noah Schnapp and multiple large stakeholders (Kellogg, King’s Hawaiian, Uber, DoorDash, etc), meant getting creative with a messaging that calls out how chicken is the ultimate unifier—an arguably divine food category.

The only thing better than this (chicken) tender love, is receiving it delivered when you want it. So in addition to serving all-white meat or plant-based options, TenderFix delivers seven days a week, late night, and even on the holiest of days when we know the biggest chicken purveyor is closed…..Sundays. Thus, “Tender Blessings, at Your Door” was born. Leaning heavily on cult-followings that yield user generated content across Tik Tok and social platforms, the launch has seen unparalleled success in the virtual space, combined with real-world scale from national product availability.