How Chomps is building out its full-funnel marketing mix
Better-for-you meat stick brand Chomps began as a DTC brand in 2012 and, for the last few years, has been riding a wave of hockey stick growth
Last year, the company experienced more than 200% growth, thanks to new distribution channels like grocery and convenience stores. With this growth, Chomps’s marketing mix has also had to evolve.
At the Modern Retail Marketing Summit in New Orleans this week, Chomps’s svp of marketing, Stacey Hartnett, spoke about the brand’s evolution from an online-only startup to an omnichannel brand now found nationally in chains like Walmart, Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. She also spoke about topics like how Chomps considers when to outsource or bring certain marketing tasks in-house.
As a brand grows, Hartnett said it’s important to assess “when it’s valuable to own something internally versus when there are advantages of having infrastructure and depth through outside experts.” For Chomps, media buying was one area that eventually needed outsourcing. “We were doing a lot of hands-on buying on our own,” Hartnett said. “But we know that our expertise can go in other places,” and that outsourcing media buying would allow Chomps’s internal resources to go to other things.
Hartnett joined Chomps six years ago as employee number 10. “I started just managing media — we built out e-commerce and performance marketing first,” Hartnett recalled. In the early days, “every dollar mattered, at that point, and we really needed to focus on getting products in hand.”
Today, the Chomps marketing team now consists of about 30 people. There is an e-commerce team with an e-commerce lead who oversees things like customer service, e-commerce operations and buying on marketplaces on Instacart. There is also a brand team that handles more of the traditional retail marketing, as well as consumer insights. And there’s an in-house creative team and innovation team. Overall, “everyone needs to be really comfortable with the P&L and where to invest,” Hartnett said.
Closer communication is paramount as the team has grown, so everybody knows who is responsible for what. “We had to talk about how we talk to each other, how we plan together, and who’s making the right decisions at the right levels while not removing autonomy or ownership,” Hartnett said. And the reality is that, at a fast-growing brand like Chomps, many teams work hand-in-hand. For example, Hartnett said the e-commerce team is in close communication with the omnichannel shopping team about “which terms and tactics” are working across channels.
Amazon remains a big growth channel for Chomps, Hartnett said, “just with the volume and the scale and access there.”
As Chomps has launched into more retail doors, there is greater importance being placed on upper-funnel marketing tactics, Hartnett said. Last January, Chomps ran its first brand campaign with the tagline of “taking bigger bites.” The whole campaign centered around the idea that, by providing shoppers with a quick, easy and healthy snack, they could focus more on other things and taking a “bigger bite” out of life.
Understanding what is important to its retail partners also helps fuel Chomps’s approach to upper-funnel marketing tactics. “Target, for example, is really interested in storytelling moments,” Hartnett said.
These include moments like the Super Bowl, when Chomps products can be seamlessly featured in, say, a display promoting ingredients for Bloody Mary mixes. New Year’s is also a big storytelling moment for Chomps, Hartnett said, given that it’s a time when more people are looking for better-for-you snacks. Hartnett noted that “meat sticks are not on the top of everyone’s grocery list, so we have to bring a lot of people into the category.”
But overall, Hartnett said that for a CPG brand that’s growing at a high rate, “The biggest challenge for us is speed and scale. It’s an exciting and unfortunate challenge that we get to have.”