Blog: Brand Strategy & Growth Insights

Most consumer brands spend their energy perfecting the wrong pitch.

The decks get sharper. The story gets more emotional. The mission gets more polished. All of it aimed at the shopper who is the person standing in the aisle, scrolling the feed, deciding what to put in the cart. That work matters. However, there's a second audience that decides whether the shopper ever gets the chance to choose you at all, and most brands speak to that audience as if they were the same person.

They're not. In CPG, you have two buyers, and they're listening for completely different things.

There's the consumer, who is buying a feeling, an identity, a solution to a small daily problem. Then there's the retail buyer; the gatekeeper who decides whether your product earns a place on a finite shelf. Win the consumer and lose the buyer, and your beautiful brand never makes it to market. The buyer hears your pitch first, and what they hear is often very different from what you think you're saying.

The Buye...