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Magic Spoon, a cereal company that launched entirely online in 2019, has since expanded to more than 16,000 retail stores nationwide, serving shoppers wherever they are, whether online or in-store. .
Historically, the cereal company, along with other direct-to-consumer brands, has built a fan base among Millennials and Gen Z through short-form social media videos and podcasts. However, as retail stores expand in size, so do advertising strategies such as in-store aisle displays. In this episode of the Digiday Podcast, we interview Gabi Lewis, co-founder of Magic Spoon, about the brand's retail store expansion, standing out in a crowded category, and, of course, what's bothering marketers. We talked about measurement issues.
Below are highlights from the conversation, lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
How DTC strategies translate to IRL
It's definitely the same philosophy. We are still a relatively young brand. You still don't have the budget to spend on large brand campaigns with questionable or difficult to measure ROI. In the early days, we focused on very direct responses. We invested very heavily in things like podcasts and terrestrial TV, and he measured those investments in terms of CAC, views, conversions, things like that. We apply the same idea to adding channels. Now that we're in the retail business, we have a lot of levers at our disposal that weren't available to us before. Everything from the floor talk clerk in Kroger's protein bar aisle telling you to “turn around the corner and find Magic Spoon High Protein Cereal” to how to use things like Instacart. Additionally, we leverage our DTC expertise to pull these online levers to drive offline speed. So it's similar tactics, similar thinking, but with a slightly broader menu of tactics and can be used offline as well as online.
measurement problems
If you're currently 100% DTC, it's difficult to carefully measure everything that matters. For omnichannel brands, that becomes infinitely more difficult. Even simple questions like “What is the halo effect of our paid social spend on our retail footprint” are easy to measure in theory. However, the results are very difficult to interpret, especially when retail stores are growing rapidly and spread across different geographies. It's not that easy to measure. We're getting smarter about it…there's no great answer yet. We have directional answers that allow us to continue investing with confidence in the strategies we've invested in to date, but not as definitive as I'd like, or as marketers would like. .
stand out on social media
Organic definitely doesn't get the attention it deserves. But that will become increasingly difficult as it becomes increasingly difficult to get paid. We strive to post content that is educational, fun, and entertaining. In some cases, your content may just be a photo of a cute box. This might stop someone from scrolling. We take advantage of the fact that the packaging looks beautiful. It's hard for us to take any credit for ourselves, because there's a huge history of classic cereal companies being really great at marketing and creating iconic characters that we all still know today. What we've done is really just tried to upgrade it a little bit for the modern consumer.
