Brandless No More

Not going to lie. Pretty disappointed to hear that Brandless is closing down.

For those of you who don't know what Brandless was, it was a direct-to-consumer personal care and packaged goods company that sold one product in every category e.g. one toothpaste. One dishwasher liquid. 

Most notably it sold each item for a consistent/flat price of $3. How? Because it eliminated the "brand tax" - the costs related to the traditional consumer packaged goods distribution model and this includes marketing, branding and advertising!

That was then. And after several key events, including the departure of co-founder Tina Sharkey, the decision (pivot?) to heavy up on CBD products and yes, ultimately abandoning the $3 price point, the Built to Suck coroner pronounced TOD (Time of Death) for this bold startup.

Let's backtrack a bit and address a few key points about this closure:

1. Who were the backers behind Brandless? Softbank. The same Softbank behind WeWork! Oy! Perhaps now might be a good time to introduce Softbank to Roman....I heard from a friend they do wonders with soft conditions. Sorry, had to go there...but seriously, we've all heard things about smart v dumb money and in many cases, how investors drive corporate agendas (into the ground!) This is another strike against the Softbank record...
2. Ooh the irony. As Brandless as Brandless was, there was very clear and overt branding on the packaging. This is no different to the image- and brand logo-free homepage of Google, except for one teensy-weensy point: there is in fact one image/logo and that is Google's (plus just think of all those free impressions). Zero Paid Media called...they want their book back! So branding kind of does work...and perhaps not enough consumers were ready to give up their Grandmother's brand just yet...
3. At the end of the day (and we've seen this with the likes of WeWork and Uber to name two), this, was and always will be about human beings and specifically, talent. Bad management is bad management and there aren't many ways to put lipstick on this pig. As much as we might like to blame Softbank, the buck stops at the leadership of the company.
4. Another persistent and consistent factor is going to be business model. Why the $3? I don't know. Was this the key selling point? It shouldn't have been. If consumers were attracted to the offering because they knew they were getting insane deals from ticket items that clearly were in excess of $3, then that runs counter to the original vision of the company.
5. Which brings us back to culture and mission and why it is so important to keep this undiluted, untainted and uncompromised for as long as possible...lest inevitable suckage sink in.  

What attracted me to this company and why I wrote about it was because of how they pushed off a very clear enemy, marketing. Or rather, the "worst of the old" side of marketing. Relegating image advertising and traditional branding to nothing more than an unnecessary cost (remember Seth Godin once said advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable) spoke to an inconvenient truth amongst a dynamic, ever changing and constantly evolving consumer base: we should not and never should pay a premium because of marketing. This cost should not be passed on to the consumer. (Unless of course, it's carbonated sugar water!)

Brandless' attempts of focusing on CBD, abandoning their pricing policy and other Hail Mary's ended up being too little, too late....BUT I do believe they fired the first shot across the bow of business as usual in terms of how we build brand and ultimately business. As if CPG and retail didn't have enough to worry about already!

As Mad Man, Nick Brien once told me, "there are two types of people - pioneers and settlers. The pioneers get shot and the settlers take the land." He then proceeded to tell me that I was a pioneer. Thanks very much, Nick! Turns out, Brandless was one too.

At the end of the day, all they did was (effectively at the time) brand a range of white label products and if you don't think this approach is coming to destroy your business, I'll just offer you one word: AMAZON.

Perhaps the timing was wrong. Perhaps any - or a combination - of the above factors created their perfect storm. Or perhaps they just needed better marketing.

Brandless R.I.P.