Focus on Your Fans with Dr. James Richardson of Premium Growth Solutions

Written By Modern Species

Do you want to maximize the odds of scaling your brand to $100 million and beyond? Then, you need to learn the rules of exponential growth for consumer brands! 

In today’s episode, we speak with Dr. James Richardson, Founder of Premium Growth Solutions and author of Ramping Your Brand: How to Ride the Killer CPG Growth Curve, about the actual data behind how brands grow and the importance of retaining customers. Based on years of anthropological research into how and why people pay for premium-priced consumer packaged goods, Dr. Richardson outlines his approach to thinking smarter about growth as a CPG entrepreneur and explains why he believes that your fans will get you through any recession. 

We also touch on the importance of consumer insights, growing your brand quickly enough to survive copycats, and creating a direct owned media relationship with your fans, plus so much more! To learn more about the value of doing your research and focusing on strategy over sales volume, make sure to tune in for this insightful conversation with cultural anthropologist, strategy consultant, and CPG expert, Dr. James Richardson!

Key Points From This Episode:

  • The importance of collecting comprehensive data about your consumers.

  • Insight into the different growth models Dr. Richardson outlines in his book.

  • A major challenge facing brands in today’s market: growing too slowly to survive copycats.

  • The key role of what Dr. Richardson calls “the new modern way of doing X.”

  • Why Dr. Richardson cautions against ‘over-innovating’.

  • Advice for retaining consumers: create a direct owned media relationship with them.

  • What drew Dr. Richardson to cultural anthropology and then to market research.

  • Why he says most of his clients are people who designed something clever, saw success, and are now having an ‘oh, shit’ moment.

  • How Dr. Richardson engages with companies, starting with strategic planning work.

Tweetables:

“Even the general manager of Oreo does no strategic planning without fresh insights about their consumers.” — Dr. James Richardson [0:08:37]

“The biggest actual problem is that [brands] are growing too slowly in today’s market to survive the copycats.” — Dr. James Richardson [0:17:02]

“This is the time, right now, economically, where you want to work even harder to keep your fans around.” — Dr. James Richardson [0:27:42]

“If you’re really innovating in the food and beverage space, you are actually altering the culture.” — Dr. James Richardson [0:31:32]

Episodes Archive

Modern Species

A sustainable brand design agency helping better-for-the-world brand launch, evolve, and grow to scale their impact.

https://modernspecies.com/
Previous

When Everything Goes Wrong with Sadrah Schadel of No Evil Foods
Next

Get Creative with Your Giving at the 1% for the Planet Global Summit