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Mon
01
Jan 2024
Our Brand Partnerships Manager, Matthew Delooze had the pleasure of speaking to Thom Nowell, Marketing Director at Hunter & Gather on their innovative marketing approach within the FMCG sector.
Hunter & Gather is British lifestyle brand, founded in 2017 by couple Amy and Jeff. Their mission is providing a range of real food and supplements, all free from refined sugar, grains, and inflammatory seed oils, but also champion the highest quality and taste.
This conversation delves into the brand's unique cross-category approach that connects products to market trends whilst challenging misleading claims from larger brands.
From the dominance of big food companies within the FMCG space to the importance of bold marketing strategies to enhance brand awareness - join us as Thom uncovers the components of impactful marketing, and the success of their recently launched 'Faked Up Food' campaign.
Thom: With an unconventional start in marketing, my career began at AXA as a Junior Marketer. In my four year venture at the business, I moved around in various marketing roles, supporting the International, B2B, and Direct to Consumer teams.
I then met Charlotte Dennis, who gave me the opportunity to work for with her at Nike, covering someone's maternity leave initially, which turned into nine years of experience in various roles. Nike provided me exposure across different teams, working on high-profile events, and working abroad in Sweden.
I then moved to Science In Sport, which was a great experience to see another side of business focused on daily sales and key metrics. I wasn’t looking to leave the sports industry before I met Amy and Jeff, but their plan to take Hunter & Gather on this amazing journey over the coming years, making impactful changes to individual’s health, was a mission I was brought into and I haven’t looked back since.
Thom: As the company is on an amazing growth trajectory, priorities within the business are ever evolving with attention steered to various focus areas.
However, in terms of day-to-day, my role involves finding new ways to connect the brand and product to market. As the consumer evolves over time, Hunter & Gather has developed from more of a niche lifestyle-led brand to capitalising on that mainstream opportunity of health awareness.
From a strategic or executional perspective, my role involves supporting the team across all areas of content design, product creation, and communication.
Thom: We have a unique cross-category approach via our supplements and hydration range, which enables us to position ourselves from a total lifestyle perspective.
Hunter & Gather are exceptionally true to their principles, this is grounded in the consumer and what we truly believe to be best for their health.
We’re not okay with misleading consumers through false advertising or fake claims on our products. Hence, overtime the quality of our product and commitment to educate builds consumer loyalty, thus setting us apart from other brands.
To cut through the noise of bigger brands within the space, we’ve demonstrated a bolder approach in our recent campaign, which is backed by research we have available on our site to build credibility.
It’s safe to say, this bold activation will not be the last we will make, but combining this with our true product principles, hopefully sets us up in great stead to stand out from the crowd.
Thom: The trend of health as a niche lifestyle has shifted significantly in becoming the lifestyle, so we’ve evolved our brand proposition and adapted our external articulation to meet audiences on their terms.
It’s not about targeting someone who lives an optimally healthy life, it’s about connecting with those who are making consciously healthier choices and finding that middle ground to become a trusted partner for them.
Hunter & Gather has adapted with a bolder content style, a broader brand positioning, and more of an emotive connection with consumers.
That emotional brand entry point has been a unique feature, whilst bringing products to market that sit in the intersection between consumer demand and market opportunities but align with our ethos and right to play within those spaces.
Thom: Puma had an amazing piece of disruptive marketing at the Olympics, where Christie sported Puma contact lenses that beamed out to the world as an unofficial sponsor of the events. This viral piece of content, which happened almost 30 years ago, is now getting a resurgence.
Other examples include Brewdog, which forged its path with a disruptive approach. They wanted to change an industry that was stale and led by a few big brands.
From a product and marketing perspective, it is crucial to make a significant change in people's lives, and Brewdog's approach changed the way people go to bars with their friends.
However, without a product to support it, disruptive marketing may be short-lived and pointless.
Thom: Undoubtedly the broken systems that are set up to allow major food companies put their profits before people’s health is by far the biggest issue and challenge to overcome.
Smaller brands within the FMCG space with genuine intentions will always find it difficult to cut through and win, when the systems are set up, funded, and controlled by big food – where health is certainly not the primary intention in any sort of product development or ad campaign.
Take a look at our calendar of free virtual strategy workshops, designed to tackle the key challenges facing in-house marketing leaders.
Thom: Primarily it was about establishing a platform in ‘Now We Rise’, which represents the external articulation of who we are and what we stand for.
This was established as a platform that is going to live on for us, and a spin-off to this was our ‘Faked Up Food’ out-of-home campaign, which was essentially step one in activating that platform consistently.
This played a huge role in our shift from a niche lifestyle-led approach to something bigger, but also simplified our approach to health for people whilst calling out a few issues that we’ve got with the industry.
We understand that elusive mainstream brand awareness isn’t built overnight but consistency is key going forward, and it’s great to see Hunter & Gather joining the party.
Thom: There are several elements to it, firstly recommendation of agencies in the scale up world is key, there are other brands that have been on a similar journey to your business, so recommendations is a good place to start.
Positive signals and an understanding of your brand as early as possible are also essential from a potential agency partner. You want someone to carry you into a new space and test your levels of comfort by pushing boundaries and taking a bolder creative approach.
Finally, I feel the best agency success I’ve had in the past is when it develops into something greater than just a transactional relationship, but rather a long term, strategic creative partner.
Thom: Honestly, I don’t like the old school pitch process, but I understand it’s something required when there is hugely budgeted agency contract on the line.
I think from my perspective, a lot of it can be done in more of an exploratory, conversational way as opposed to a formalised pitch process.
I think a more conversional approach to pitching starts a relationship off on a good footing, as it's more respectful of the agencies time rather than spending hours on work for the pitch that doesn’t result in a partnership.
Thom: Back to my earlier point it would undoubtedly be the level of control and ability to mislead people that big food has. It’s bigger than the marketing industry, it’s the food system, and applies to other systems too.
This is massively impacting people’s health in a negative way, and it’s time to bring the truth of who we are, as with Hunter & Gather.
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