Last weekend a buddy of mine who works at one of the big FMCG companies was telling me about a potential venture they were thinking about launching on a budget of $6MM. And he laughed. Which reminded me of a business started by a guy I know back in the US.
“Dude, a seasoning that makes anything taste like bacon!”
I laughed at that too. This was about the third idea I’d heard from my roommate’s house guest who, upon realizing that I helped companies develop new products for a living, wanted my reaction to all of them. Given some of the ideas, I couldn’t tell if he was fucking with me or genuinely interested in what I had to say. Bacon Salt (who would have thunk) has not only hit the shelves, but turned into a massive food business with some impressive line extensions like Baconaise (mayo that tastes like bacon), mmvelopes (envelopes that taste like bacon), and of course Bacon Lube (sexual lubricant that… you get the picture). Last I heard (from an unofficial source who’s bad with numbers), his food business (J&D’s) should be valued somewhere between the GDP of Montserrat and the Anguilla. They don’t hire expensive agencies (they send guys to run around cities dressed like bacon). They don’t have a massive media budget (everything’s done through social media). They make the most of every bit of press they get – from John Stewart saying that Baconaise tastes like “my tongue took a shit in my mouth”, to Oprah giving Baconaise sandwiches to everyone in her audience and interviewing Justin and Dave on the show. And in here lies a big lesson to the FMCG giants of the world and their agencies.
This guy isn’t your typical food marketer. He hasn’t done a stint at P&G or Unilever. But while I respect both of those organizations tremendously, I struggle to believe many of their people would know where to start if handed a budget of $5K and asked to build a food business without any support.
The point I want to make is that they should. We’ve all gotten used to what are actually very extravagant ways of doing business without realizing it. Are our massive budgets helping or hurting? Is your harem of agencies with their layers of account handlers and creatives really something you couldn’t do without?
I’m sure they are. But here’s an idea: What if multinationals put their high potential marketers on internal startups constrained by limited seed capital for a period of six months each? Just enough time to build some street smarts into the next generation of well heeled marketeers. Just enough time to possibly turn one of these lemonade stand ideas into an opportunity worth investing in, but more importantly, just the reality check brand owners need to realize that there are smarter ways of building a business.
It could yield a generation of smarter marketers, leaner businesses, and more interesting brands that consumers actually get excited about.
