Launch Fast: Avoid Analysis Paralysis and Achieve Market Success
Launch Fast: Key Points Outline
Launch at 85%:The Growth Brand Mindset
What Makes a Product Viable?
The $5 Innovation That Beat a $75,000 Machine
Modern GTM: It’s Not Just Retail Anymore
Expect Chaos. Plan For It Anyway.
How To Spot A Brand Champion
Launch at 85%: The Growth Brand Mindset
There are some brands in the marketplace right now that are successful, and some that are not.
Specifically, we see a lot of growing brands being very successful in the marketplace, whereas existing brands seem to be stagnated in their ability to grow any further.
We could talk about market caps and everything like that, but there's also something to be said about the differences in leadership and decision-making priorities within those growing brands.
Those growing brands often don't get stuck trying to analyze over and over again until something fails.
Our largest brands in the industry continue to analyze and analyze and analyze until they get one red flag. Then sometimes they’ll go back and fix it, and other times they’ll just kill the project. I have lived some of that.
Instead, these growing brands will get to 80–85% likelihood of success and say:
“Just launch it. Get it out in the marketplace. We've done all we need to do in order to prepare for the future. From here on out, it becomes a firefighting exercise to keep it on point where it needs to be. But in the meantime, we’ll validate the consumer acceptance and adjust on the fly.”
While this can be a costly road to market, it does eventually lead to greater market success than excessive spending on analysis and getting stuck in that analysis paralysis.
“There’s the first purchase, and then there’s the repeat purchase.
Only by nailing both will you be successful.”
What Makes a Product Viable?
One thing that I commonly get a question about is whether or not a product is going to be viable out in the market.
Food brands are looking at what the go-to-market strategy is going to be and looking into the future so that they can predict not only what their volume requirements are going to be, but also what their cash flow is going to be.
There are a couple of key things that you want to look at in order to make sure that you have a viable product.
One is that you have that target consumer in mind. You are not only building your product, but your brand as well—your packaging and your narrative around what the engagement scenario will be for that particular product.
There's a whole area of science about simply understanding what the user experience is with the product—not just what you intend it to be—and optimizing around what their desired and intended user experience is meant to be.
What's it going to taste like? Is it salty? Is it sweet? What flavor notes should they be calling out?
Doing that kind of romanticizing language around the different notes of flavors and things like that can manage the expectation of the consumer so that you are delivering on an expectation that you promised.
That is one of the key things that will drive that repeat purchase. Aligning your packaging so that it will drive initial purchase, and then aligning it so that your product drives a repeat purchase…there are two elements there. There's the first purchase, and then there's the repeat purchase.
Only by nailing both will you be successful.
The $5 Innovation That Beat a $75K Machine
True innovation doesn’t have to cost a lot of money or be revolutionary. Sometimes, the simplest approach can work wonders.
Here’s a story to explain what I mean.
One of the things that I've always found interesting out in the field is the ways in which people solve problems—specifically production problems.
I know that there are a handful of companies here in the US that will solve a problem around taking a container and flipping it over on a conveyor belt.
There's a whole host of ways to do this mechanically. There's a way to do it passively, where you push things through a chute and it turns over and all the stuff. They're all custom built.
And then one time I went to a plant in Mexico, and all they had was—at the end of their conveyor belt, as it rolled off the end—they had a little bar. And as it hit that bar, it actually caused it to trip.
And as the container tripped, they had the next conveyor underneath it, just a certain distance away, so that it would land square and it would be completely upside down.
So rather than buy these long, intricate systems that might be six feet long and cost anywhere from $10 to $75k a piece, they put in a $5 piece of bar stock and just caused it to flip off the end.
And sure enough, it worked perfectly 100% of the time, because it was based on physics; it wasn't based on costly mechanics.
“True innovation doesn’t have to cost a lot of money or be revolutionary. Sometimes, the simplest approach can work wonders.”
“An effective project manager builds this inevitable chaos into their flow and planning.”
Modern GTM: It’s Not Just Retail Anymore
A lot of things have changed in the last decade around how people have to bring their products to market.
In the old days, there were the standard channels. You’d go through retail, and if anything, your direct-to-consumer market was more of a marketing play—where people would only really spend what they could get back out of the channel to begin with.
Nowadays, direct-to-consumer is part of a multi-platform approach, including not only retail, but C-store, food service, and many other channels, including airport retail.
There are so many different ways to get to market now—almost to the point that some people’s competitive advantage in their own business is their go-to-market strategy, and the people that they know, in order to pull the product into the marketplace.
Expect Chaos. Plan for It Anyway.
One problem that a lot of food brands face when launching a new product?
They try to plan out the entire project all at once, scheduling everything down to the last day. Those who have done these types of projects know that chaos happens.
The state of Texas might freeze over.
There might be a small dust-up on the other side of the world that cuts back on the supply of a particular ingredient.
Or… there might be a small outbreak of a virus that shuts down the world.
Those who have been in this space know that there are always delays, and an effective project manager builds this chaos into their flow and planning.
How to Spot a Brand Champion
When you're first getting started, and you're looking at whether or not this product is going to be successful in the marketplace, obviously you've got your product-market fit.
Obviously, you've got an identification of your target consumer, and you're starting to get feedback from them long before you actually go to commercialize, as you're building your gold standard product that you're going to take into production.
One of the things that you want to look for is whether or not you're generating brand champions.
The brand champions are the ones that will take your product and ask:
“Okay, I've tried it. When is it coming out? Where can I get it? How much is it going to cost? Can I get this now?”
Those are the ones that you want to look for because they're indicators that you've triggered your target consumer in such a way that they can see how this product already fits in their life.
If you can trigger those and get a couple of those, and get really good feedback from them, you'll know that your product's set up for success: that you've really struck gold.
“The brand champions are the indicators that you’ve triggered your target consumer in such a way that they can see how this product already fits in their life.”
Why Catapult? Because Speed Without Strategy Still Fails.
At Catapult, we help brands avoid analysis paralysis—but we also make sure you’re not flying blind.
We bring deep experience in commercialization, GTM planning, and product operations to help fast-moving food brands launch smarter, not just faster.
Whether you're pressure-testing a concept, building your production plan, or just need seasoned experts to keep things moving—we plug in where you need us, and get you to market with fewer surprises.
Author: Jamie Valenti-Jordan
20+ years in food & beverage commercialization. If you’re tackling a tricky project, odds are I’ve seen it before. I’ll be sharing the things that worked here—so you can skip the 'learning experiences'.
