“The Case For Creativity” with Carly Osman-Holme from Sprowt 

• Think outside the box – Carly Osman-Holme at Sprowt emphasized the significance of creativity and its ability to evoke an emotional response in consumers. Quoting Bill Bernbach, she described creativity as the last unfair advantage that businesses can legally leverage over competitors. 

“Bringing planet organic back to earth: What’s next for this iconic health store?” With Renée Elliott from Planet Organic 

• What happened to Planet Organic? – We enjoyed an incredibly inspiring talk from Renee Elliot from Planet Organic. It was hard to hear her story with Planet Organic. She set it up due to her passion for great tasting organic food. However, we learned how she was pushed out of the business in 2009, when on maternity leave. But she’s very glad to be back now. 
• Take Care of yourself as a Founder: She told us to take care, keep balance, trust yourself and trust your gut. When things don’t go your way, you have to find a way to heal and move on. She ended on a quote: “You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” AA Milne. 

“From Pioneering A New Category To Become The Uk’s Fastest Growing Soft Drinks Brand” with Olivia Ferdi and Daniel Khoury Founders of TRIP 

• Adaptability is key – The CBD infused brand TRIP faced plenty of initial challenges, including restrictions on paid advertising and Shopify use for their CBD-infused products. By adapting to the market and finding new routes enabled their expansion and success. 
• Focus on those customer pain points – Be  the solution to a customer pain point. TRIP’s positioning as a mental wellbeing brand resonates with consumers seeking calm amid the chaos of everyday life. And by providing a solution at various points throughout the day, for example a calming drink before a big presentation, or a non-alcoholic option on a weeknight, enabled TRIP to grow to what it is today. 

“Revenue is Vanity and Cash is Sanity” with Eddie Stableford of Brand Clock. 

• Secure investment – Loans are great but if you can’t service your debt you’re going to go bust very quickly. Cash is everything. Do not run your operation using debt unless there’s a clean plan and way out.   

• Be the solution – When talking to buyers remember to ask, what can you do for their business? White labelling only works for manufacturers, don’t do it as a brand. 

WEDNESDAY 19th JULY 

AJ also chaired an interview with Christopher Kong, Co-Founder of Better Nature Tempeh on the Wednesday which was called “Introducing Tempeh to the Mainstream, how we launched into Tesco”; the highlights were; 

• Raise Investment – they raised investment from the Good Food Fund, back by Guys and St Thomases which meant they were able to work with Mission Ventures who gave them an awesome grounding into what the Blue Chip companies are doing.  
• Brand is key – the Better Nature team worked really hard on a rebrand in 2021, which really honed their messaging and brand positioning and the company has really rocketed since this point. 
• Hone your Messaging – Before the rebrand they were a “Meat Alternative” brand, which they discovered through focus groups was really confusing, so they switched to own the space; “We are a Tempeh Brand”. The clarity has really helped to build confidence around Tempeh.