EP 36 – Secrets to Build your Brand, Defend your Turf and Stay Ahead of the Competition in 2025

The Seller’s Edge podcast is excited to welcome Shannon Roddy, a recognized expert in Amazon brand strategy and protection. Shannon serves as the VP of Sales & Marketing at Avenue7Media, a top agency focused on helping brands succeed and grow on competitive marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart. With almost two decades of experience, Shannon has worked with more than 250 companies, guiding them through product launches, brand growth, and sustained success. Shannon’s insights in this episode will help sellers navigate the realities of “dupe culture,” protect their intellectual property, and build brands that stand out and stand strong. Read the full transcript below.

Episode 36 of The Seller’s Edge – Shannon and Jonathan talk about:

• [00:00] Build An Unbeatable Amazon Brand
• [01:04] The Rise of the Dupe Culture
• [04:39] Brand Protection Vs Brand Identity
• [06:44] Brand Trademarks
• [10:45] What Prospective Sellers Should Consider
• [15:28] Defending Against Knockoffs
• [17:51] A Moat of Defensibility
• [21:38] New-To-Brand Customers
• [22:51] Amazon Brand-Tailored Promotion
• [24:01] Converting Bad Customer Experiences
• [29:00] The Right Way to Engage Customers
• [30:45] Product Assortment
• [35:15] Customer Preferences Are Always Changing
• [37:07] How Can Legacy Brands Compete with Knockoffs?
• [41:06] Customer Loyalty Is At An All-Time Low
• [46:44] Recap and Closing Remarks

Key Takeaways:

1. Prioritize Brand Building: Invest in developing a clear brand identity, equity, and awareness before focusing solely on protecting individual products.
2. Secure Trademarks and Patents: Obtain both word and design trademarks for your brand, and pursue patents where possible to delay copycats and mount legal defenses.
3. Don’t Be Generic: A brand name and logo should be memorable and easy to spell, but remember that a brand’s meaning is shaped by your actions and customer experience.
4. Tell Your Brand Story: Define and communicate a compelling “why” for your brand, as emotional connection and storytelling drive customer loyalty and differentiation.
5. Go Premium and Add Value: Compete with knockoffs by offering additional value and positioning your products at a premium, rather than racing to the bottom on price.
6. Leverage Exclusive Opportunities: Seek exclusive sourcing or distribution deals to create barriers for copycats and further differentiate your brand in the marketplace.

Full Transcript of Episode:

JONATHAN: So this is a really interesting conversation because I feel like no matter what conversations I’ve been having lately, whether it’s with the product designers or people about social media or attorneys, it always comes back to this topic about the dupe culture and knockoffs. And it’s so interesting, especially in the day and age of, like, social media, because, you know, somebody posts a video of you using your product in the US and they’re in wherever Timbuktu, and you have somebody be like, oh, that’s a good idea, and then they create that product there. It’s so crazy because at some point in time, you would just be able to create that product back in like the 80s, and you wouldn’t have to worry about it. You could roll it out in a town and then a state, and then nationally and do it one by one. But now it feels like you have to protect your product everywhere before it even goes to market. So I was really glad that we’re talking about this. I’m just curious, like, as a seller, like, what are some of the ways that you can protect your creative ideas? 

SHANNON RODDY: It’s a great question, Jonathan. I think, you know, starting at the highest level, before you even protect your product, you have to protect your brand. And in order to protect your brand, you have to have a brand identity. You have to have something that establishes who you are, what you do, why you do it. Because the why is important. It’s the value and, and how that’s different from everybody else. Without that, trying to protect somebody from knocking off a single product, it’s very, very hard. And it’s very minutiae in detail. You want to look at protecting Apple, not the iPhone. You want to look at protecting McDonald’s, not, not the Big Mac, right? And so there’s an aspect where the first thing a brand has to consider is, have I fully established my brand identity, what I do, why I do it, how I do it, what makes it unique and different. And then once you’ve established that brand identity, have I invested in the brand equity, customers perceived value of my brand, the quality of the products, the quality of the customer service, the quality of the customer experience, all of those things. And it’s all backed by the social proof of product reviews. That’s the brand equity. And then the third part is brand over awareness, right? Because I can have really good brand identity, really great brand equity, and if I have zero brand awareness, guess what? I got nothing. And, and you look at those three factors and you, when they’re out of proportion, it creates a gap that makes the brand vulnerable. So maybe I have great brand awareness but horrible brand equity. I’m not protecting it, right? Or great, you know, brand awareness but no brand identity. Or even if you have a good brand equity, but, but lack the brand identity, meaning what is the look and feel of how your experience is different? You know, I bought an Apple product the other day and you’re just the wired headsets. I’ve had earbuds, but my wife was like, well, you should use the wired ones. And so I grabbed that. The unboxing experience of an Apple product is the same for every single Apple product. There’s a brand identity that is so strong that I know it’s Apple. Right. And so those I think are the three fundamental things that brands have to consider. They’ve gotta be aware of what they’re doing, how well they’re doing it, and what you can do on Amazon right now in particular online is unparalleled to any other time in history. 

JONATHAN: Yeah, for sure. The things that you just called out, I think in my experience are the last thing that brands seem to think about. Like when I talk to e-commerce brands, it seems like they’re not like what you just called out with the app product in the on boxing. That’s absolutely true. And it feels like so many brands don’t have a brand identity. They have a product that they put a brand trademark on, but it doesn’t feel like a brand to me. 

SHANNON RODDY: That’s great, it’s a great comment and it’s something that makes me think about a comment I heard recently from Brandon. They said, oh no, we’re, we’re generic. We’re a generic brand. We’re generic. Well, why, why not? Look, there are companies that have made history taking a generic product and making it cool. You know our founder Jason, Jason, Boyce, our founder and CEO, he used to do that. He used to upset entire categories by taking a commodity product that just looked the same for everything and found a way to make it badass. Right? You just found a way to like make it cool, make it sexy, as you like, say. And you know, it was like home wreck, you know, equipment. And I love the quote from the Method co founder, he said, there are no boring categories. There are only boring brands. And when people have a mindset and adopt an identity that say we’re just a commodity product, why, why not be a cool. Look, a water bottle, you know, 10 years ago was a commodity product. Now there are water bottles that sell for $70 that are like, match with your purse. Right. Like, it’s crazy to think how far we’ve come. No category is exempt from being uprooted and in some cases from being completely dismantled by an innovator that’s willing to challenge the concept that, this is just a. It’s just a commodity product category. It doesn’t matter what the brand is. It does. It does. If you’re willing to invest. And the brand identity, the brand equity and the brand awareness. 

JONATHAN: Yeah. So, I mean, let’s get into the brand identity and brand equity piece. So, like, I have a brand, I’m a seller, I brand and a product, and I want to protect that. Like, what’s the best in practice? What’s the best way to go about that? Trademark? What are your thoughts on that? 

SHANNON RODDY: Yeah. So I think you have to lay the foundation with the fundamentals. Right. And the fundamentals is trademark and patent. Trademark protects the brand name. So the actual word mark, the trademark can also protect the logo or the design mark. Typically, you need to have both. Some people are like, oh, you know, we got one. But the word mark is very important. You want to make sure that the way that you, you know, just the word itself, the brand name, not just the logo, is what you’re protecting. Right. So there’s IP lawyers who can advise on this. I’m not an attorney. But you want to make sure that you’ve got the fundamentals buttoned up. So. So you need a trademark for your brand name, and then you do want intellectual property to cover the product itself. That could be anything from a design patent or in some cases, a utility patent. Right. So how the product looks and how the product functions. Again, not an IP attorney, but these are things that are, you know, it requires investment, it’s significant time, it’s significant, financial investment. And it’s not just getting them patented. It’s designing something that can be patented. Right. It’s designing something that’s unique enough, and that’s different, and that doesn’t violate anybody else’s patent. So you have to do the fundamentals. But to your point, going back to the copycat culture, which we live in now, which happens faster than everybody, you get a cool product that blows up. On TikTok, we’re not talking a matter of years or months, we’re talking a matter of weeks before somebody comes and knocks you off. And it’s usually not just one. We’re talking about a whole handful of copycats that look exactly the same that mimic your product images, mimic the SEO, use the same lifestyle. I mean, I’ve seen these comparisons. In fact, I was looking at one this morning. Here’s the name, band, brand, product, the original, you know, as seen on Shark Tank. Here’s the Copycat. And they sell almost the same number of units per month. Why? Because it looks about the same and the knockoff is a little cheaper, but also gets good reviews. Right. How do you protect that? So you do want to have, you know, patent protection, you know, for the product, and trademark protection for the name. But understand that that is a delay tactic. It’s not a complete. I’m going to have and own this space forever. All people have to do is make enough changes to get around it. And what we’ve seen is an innovative brand has their product, they’ve got their patent, they launch on Amazon. And there’s some great tools like Apex that allow you to register your patent file infringements against copycats, or knockoffs that violate the patent itself. And those tools can be useful for kind of getting down that first round. Well, they all figure it out pretty quick. Okay, this is what the patent says, and they basically figure out what are the few changes that I can make to get around that patent just to skirt that patent and do something similar. And that’s essentially the day and age that we’re playing in now. You still have to have it. If you don’t get it, you have nothing. And you’re not able to slow people down. But it’s really just about buying yourself some time. So I would say, like, it’s sort of level one is get the trademark and get the patents that you can, because it gives you a runway to build and grow the pro, the brand awareness and product awareness as you launch before you have initial copycats come after you. 

JONATHAN: Yeah. I’m curious just, to hang on the brand identity piece for a second, because another thing I noticed, we talked about how some brands don’t have, like, a real brand identity. 

SHANNON RODDY: Yeah. 

JONATHAN: And then the ones that do, I feel like a fundamental piece that’s sort of missing is, I don’t know, there’s something generic about their brand name or their logo. Like, I mean, it’s you. You talked about the need to be different, but it’s like you don’t want to be too different because then it’s just not memorable. And I’m curious, like, in your experiences, is there something for those listeners who are, you know, might just be dabbling or thinking about the idea of starting A brand. Like, what are the sort of things you think they should be thinking about as far as, like what the name should be or logos or anything in that respect? 

SHANNON RODDY: Well, I’ll give you an example. You know, my, my old company, the first company I created was marketplace seller courses because the domain was available and I was creating courses for marketplaces. But it is the most bland, generic brand name ever in history. And if I could go back, I would have changed it. Something really cool like viral launch. Right, Right. So there’s this aspect of, you know, it’s about wanting to be different and unique enough to be memorable. And sometimes I think it’s just, it requires playing around with things until you, you get the right feel for it. We have a chicken salad chick opening up around the corner and I love the how I built this podcast that talks about how they come up with that name. It’s like, oh yeah, chicken salad, Chicken. We can, and we can name the chicken salads after different women that have inspired this. Like, okay, so there’s this sort of brand identity and it comes out of the evolution of the creator, right? On one hand, yes, it is the brand name and the logo, but it’s really what you make of it. Apple is also the most generic brand name and the most generic logo. You remember that original Apple logo. Very, very basic, very generic. You didn’t even know they made computers. It’s what they did with it that created that brand identity. It was the attitude, it was the perception, it was the customer experience, commitment that they had that created what we now think about when we hear the word Apple or when we pick up our Apple TV remote or pick up an iPhone. And so I think that you do want something that is unique and distinct enough to be memorable. And so look, here’s some high level tips on picking a brand name, right? If you, if you don’t have one yet, let’s just go through the basics. Number one, make sure it’s memorable. And make sure that if I tell you what the brand name is, you can go search it and not have to try to figure out how to spell the thing because you want a brand to grow by word of mouth. And if I say, oh, I have this really cool brand name and flip a tracks and you’re like, okay, go try to figure out how to spell that online. Right? Make it simple to pronounce and simple to spell. But you know, again, you want to make something that’s again, simple, right? Spanx is a great example. She took the K, she threw it off and added an X. Sarah Blakely created this amazing brand based on a largely made up word. So, you know, and just make sure that you can get the trademark for it. There are, there are trademark attorneys who can go through, do the initial analysis to make sure that it’s unique and different enough. For that, I just created a new brand name for one of the products that I’m launching. And I took two completely random words and put them together. Right. You can spell them, you know exactly what they are. But I wanted it to be unique and I didn’t want it to get rejected because of previous identity. So sort of two random words that felt like they made sense together. So I think it’s really about what you make of it once you have the brand. But it’s about the look and feel. Right. It’s about the emotional connection that customers have with your brand. Ultimately, at the end of the day. 

JONATHAN: Yeah. What Simon Sinek talks about with ‘Start With Why”. 

SHANNON RODDY: Yeah, yeah, for sure. People are like, well, we don’t have a real why. Well, go figure it out. Because it’s going to make a difference in your brand and your sales if you do. And if you don’t have that yet, you know, take time. People are like, well, I don’t know what the brand is about. Well, what are you about? Because if you’re the creator, the brand is an extension of you. What do you, what do you care about? Right. Herb Kelleher, who, you know, is a co founder of Southwest Airlines, they cared about everybody being equal, not having this crazy hierarchy and everything, which is why it’s open seating now. They’re changing that this year after decades, which I’m a little right. Where you could buy business class and regular. But, but for years it was based on, and just customer service and having fun, having a sense of humor. They didn’t make that up. It was part of who they were, you know, and they, the brand was an extension of, of the creators themselves. And I think that’s the best kind of brand, you know, that you can develop. 

JONATHAN: Absolutely. 100% great points. So we, have a brand identity. I put trademarks and patents in place. Now let’s say I go to market. What can I actually do now to combat knockoffs? 

SHANNON RODDY: Yeah. So you can’t compete on price. Right. Unless, look, unless you own your own factory and have some government subsidies backing you, you can’t do it. It’s never going to happen. The recommendation is to go premium. Right. I’m not. It doesn’t have to be super premium, it doesn’t have to be elite pricing. But if the average market price is $10, be 15, if the average market price is 50, be 65 or 70. Right. And the reason is find ways to add additional value. Because copycats don’t like adding additional value. They like trying to find ways to cut it out, cost, make it as cheap as possible, as fast as possible, sort of down and dirty as possible. So it’s about finding a value proposition that can differentiate the product. And a couple of the things beyond the IP piece, which, like I said, is only a delay. Find things that are hard to duplicate or replicate. So for example, exclusive sourcing or exclusive distribution. Right. If there’s already an existing brand, they’re not in the US and you are able to get exclusive rights to distribute this product. Well, they’ve already done the brand identity work and the brand equity work and the brand awareness work. All you’ve got to do is commit to building and growing that. Right. And because of the exclusivity, you’re able to help. You know, it gives you a little bit of a moat. Regulatory compliance. Not something that I recommend jumping into a category that’s highly regulated. But let’s be honest, it’s easy. It’s easier for somebody to knock off a product that’s just made of a cloth material or even sort of a basic electronic device than something that has a lot more regulatory compliance, that requires FDA compliance, for example. Right. And again, not recommending that, you know, complexity for complexity sake, but you’re going to have fewer people trying to compete against you. And then the last one is prohibitive cost of manufacturing. So one of our brands that we work with, he’s like, look, the next product I come out with $50,000 molds to make this thing. We’re not going to have a lot of copycats right off the bat. Eventually somebody’s going to figure out a different way to manufacture. But you’ve got to have a, moat of defensibility. And a moat is not made of just one thing. But if you think of this idea of a castle and a moat, the castle is the brand, the brand equity, the brand identity, the brand awareness, all those things sort of inherit. Well, what is the moat around it? Well, it’s, we talking, it’s the ip, it’s the exclusivity, it’s the differentiation. Even, even brands that offer some level of customer service or customer experience beyond the product, where you just know, for this product, if I have an issue and I call Look, Amazon is great at that. I know I have a customer service issue. If I’m not happy with the product, I can call, I can return it, I can get my money back. Offer something that other brands and sellers aren’t willing to. Is there an add on? Is there something else that they can get access to? Right. That you can differentiate that makes it harder for other sellers. And that’s just going to be completely dependent on the category. It’s going to be completely dependent on, you know, the product that you’re selling. But invest the time to figure out what those cool little neat add ons are or tweaks that you can make that help build on that moat. And, and at the end of the day there’s an aspect where brand awareness is important because if customers are faced with two products and they’re more, they’re aware of your brand and you’re the one that comes up in search results when they search for the product, they’re more likely to buy you. There’s just trust there. I don’t know about this other guy, I haven’t heard of him before. I saw you on Shark Tank. I think there’s a good chance that you’re the real deal. So there’s an aspect of once you build all that you have to protect it. And ironically, not only is it protecting the customer experience and everything else and keeping off counterfeits and copycats as much as possible, but it’s also about being present when customers search. So defensive advertising is like a taboo topic that people absolutely get completely excitable about and oftentimes frustrated and upset going there’s no way I’m paying to defend my brand name. People can just search my brand name, and I’m show up organically and they’re going to just go past all of these pages of ads and get to my product because why should I have to pay for it? Well, because it’s part of protecting your brand equity. It’s part of protecting your brand awareness. And your brand, brand name is taking a full funnel approach. Right? So building brand awareness, whether it’s through social media, TV appearances, Good Morning America, they have sort of their daily deals like anything that you can do to get the brand out there, you then have to protect it by making sure when a customer goes online that your products show up first. Because if you don’t, you did all that work for nothing and you’re just feeding your competitors. The willingness to invest in a full funnel strategy is absolutely critical to building, growing and protecting that brand over long term. 

JONATHAN: 100%. I have a mother who is much older and I feel like there have been a couple of scenarios where she will go searching for a product and, and she will use the brand name, see that first product, think that it’s the product, buy that product, then have a bad customer experience and be convinced that that was the product that she had the experience with when it wasn’t. So a, hundred percent to your point. And also, I mean lowering your price is never going to be sustainable because someone is always going to undercut you. There’s no way around that. Somebody who’s always going to throw a 25 cent product on a page of like $5 products or something. And building that brand loyalty and that brand identity is absolutely sustainable. I mean it’s the one thing again going back to Apple, like that’s the reason they rule the world of that in the way that they do. 

SHANNON RODDY: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so you talked about like customer loyalty. I think that’s kind of the, the next part of it, which is how do you build new to brand customers, engage them longer. So when you look at how to build new to brand customers and engage them longer, the first key piece that you have to be willing to do is launch more than one product. Right. This is where it comes to building a brand versus creating a product. You create a product, you sell it once and then you’re done. Unless it’s a consumable product. And then yeah, maybe you’re able to sell that product, repeat. But ultimately you want to create a brand where once customers love you and like your product and go, and they like and trust your brand. Oh, oh. What else can you do for me? Oh, you got soap. Cool. Do you have a shampoo? How about a conditioner? Oh, how about, how about an after, you know, body lotion? Okay, cool. Right. It’s, it’s building out that product line to continue to serve customers for longer periods of time. So it doesn’t, you know, everything doesn’t have to be obviously a consumable product, but you do have to be willing to expand the line where it makes sense. Right. And, and there are ways using everything from, I mean Amazon in particular has dozens of tools like a brand tailored promotion where you can send an email to past customers to offer them a discount or deal on a new product that you’re launching. It can be advertising using retargeting. So people who have purchased this product after, you know, three months now are retargeting them to get them to buy you know, a second time it can be doing things like adding subscribe and save for the truly consumable products where you’re just getting that discount, putting your shopping cart and reordering every, every month or every couple months. So all of those are part of the commitment to the long term customer experience. And people who go, well, this customer’s upset about this thing, I’m not going to give them a refund, I’m not going to give them a discount because of how much it’s going to cost me. Are not factoring in the big picture of how much harder am I going to have to work to get a new customer to replace them and how much harder am I going to have to fight because of the negative review that that one customer is going to leave me? Right. And so it’s just all of these different aspects of it. You’ve got to pay attention to it. And like I said, building and maintaining, protecting brand equity, it’s tough. It’s really, really hard. Especially in today’s age. 

JONATHAN: It’s so funny that you bring this up. I mean, you brought up a couple of things that I want to talk about. But the, the bad customer experience piece, people underestimate the value of handling those customers who have bad experiences. Because in, in my own personal experiences as a consumer, if I have a bad experience with a product or a brand and, and they respond or don’t respond, they just kind of let it Happen. Not only am I not going back, I’m absolutely going to badmouth that brand to everybody. 

SHANNON RODDY: Yeah. 

JONATHAN: But if they fix that problem, whatever it is, if they kind of go above and beyond, I will become the fiercest advocate for that brand. It will almost be like I will be a more rabid fan of your product than I was if I just had a good experience to begin with. 

SHANNON RODDY: Yeah, it’s, it’s almost like you sort of have this median where most brands fall, providing average customer service. Right. And you have an issue. You have, you have a good experience, you have a bad experience, you know, you have to reach out or whatever and most of it falls in there where you just have your experience and it is what it is. But then you have these outliers and on the outliers you have an amazing customer experience and you tell everybody about it or you have a terrible experience and you tell everybody about it. And in the middle, you don’t tell anybody about it, you just experience it. And you really want to be on the extreme now. You want to be on the positive extreme. But I think brands in some cases, you know, on the extreme side, when it’s negative, they’ve just completely neglected the true customer value, right? They’ve just completely neglected it. I have a bank that I use. I’m not going to tell you the name of the bank because I don’t want to. I don’t want to get a letter from them. But their phone tree is a disaster. I call the phone tree and they’re like, how can we help you today? Press, one, you know, and. And you’ll start to. You’ll start to say something and it’ll go, what did you say? You’re like, well, I haven’t, I haven’t finished yet. And then it’ll interrupt you, and then you’ll press the number five or six or seven that you want, and it won’t take you there. And then it asks you to enter your account number, and you enter it 15 times and it doesn’t work. And then you go, I just want to talk to a representative. They’re like, well, we’d like to get you to the right representative, but we need to know what you want first. And at that point, you’re sort of like, banging your head against all. This is just neglect, right? This is just customer neglect. And so the ability to humanize the brand, I think, is very, very important. Where if people believe that there’s a human being on the other side of the email, of the website, of the social media that actually cares about them, and the response actually looks like it was formulated by a human, and in fact, was formulated by a human that cares about them as a customer. The experience is different. And customers know when they’re being treated like a, commodity again versus a valued customer. And I think you got to be willing to make that commitment. Great. Customer service is a value proposition, and it differentiates the way that customers engage with your brand, because most brands aren’t willing to do it. So being able to provide superior customer service is a way to separate yourself. 

JONATHAN: 100% and the absolute proof of that is Chewy, because anybody can sell pet products, but Chewy’s customer service is just outrageously good. And they always, they just always handle it on a human level. And I don’t know if people know this about Chewy, but, like, if somebody has a pet that dies Chewy as a response to it, when somebody calls to cancel their subscription to a service they might have with Chewy, Chewy sends them flowers, and that’s just like they’ve just lost a customer. But man, like, if that person ever buys a pet again, which most pet owners are more likely to do, they’re going to go back to chewy, but. 

SHANNON RODDY: But even more so, they’re going to fall on that extremity and go tell all their friends about it. 

JONATHAN: And put it on social media. 

SHANNON RODDY: Exactly. And, I had that same experience actually with online pet, medicine company. Same thing happened. You know, it was set to auto reorder and I was like, guys, I’m so sorry. You know, my pet died. You guys just sent us this. Oh, no worries. We’re so sorry that happened. Sort of really nice condolence email and then refund us the money and cancel the subscription. It’s like, that’s just good value. Right. For somebody who’s no longer a customer. It just showed real value. And I just, I think it’s what’s missing in the world. 

JONATHAN: Yeah. Especially in the day and age of artificial intelligence. Because if anything has really just degraded at, just a rapid acceleration, it’s customer experience because you can’t talk to anybody. Like, no company publishes a customer service line to actually talk to a human agent. And you have to break chat bots on every single possible. Because it just gives you, runs you through the generic things. I’m like, I know, I know that, I know what I need and I know that you can’t answer it, but there’s no way for me to break you to get to somebody who can help me. And it’s just become a very frustrating, I don’t know, something I’m doing wrong in life because I’m interacting with more chatbots for customer service than I have been at any other point. 

SHANNON RODDY: And it probably depends on the inputs and how good it’s set up. I mean, I think, I think some of the customer experiences I’ve had, I’m like, AI would be 10 times better answering this than whatever you guys just did. Because that was awful. Right. You know, so it’s, it’s looking at it from a standpoint of how can we get the value that I need every time a customer takes their time to reach out to the brand, and as a sort of a brand, you know, a former brand consultant, and as, as somebody who works with, you know, dozens of brands today, I’m always amazed if a brand doesn’t want to take the opportunity when a customer wants to talk to them. How often do you get to talk to customers? It’s not all, you’re not standing in the aisle at Target to say, oh, you’re interested in buying this product? Well, tell me about yourself. You know, what do you like getting to know the customer? Like, yes, there’s an aspect of getting to know your customer profile, but I’m not talking about that as much as getting to understand what your customer actually likes and values having. And this is where we sort of get from, you know, quantitative to qualitative. Having 10 in person conversations with customers who really love your product is probably a thousand times more. And I make an extreme statement, but it’s probably a thousand times more valuable than an email survey that gets sent out and answered by a hundred people that ask 10 questions. For you to rate on a scale of 1 to 10, you’re just not going to get the same data, you’re not going to get the same insight. And understanding what customers really love about your product is imperative because it helps you understand what that value proposition ensures that you’re highlighting that value proposition and making sure that customers are able to immediately identify and associate that with your brand. 

JONATHAN: Right, Absolutely. You brought that. I mean there’s a couple things I’m going to try to hit them in one fell swoop here because I think that a substantial mistake I see sellers making is they are product, they go to market and they have a strong brand. They go and they’re successful. They like stick, the landing and then they’re off to the races for some reason. Adding obviously you want to add enhancements, but then expanding their product line, they will just race to expand their product line with really just inferior products that really aren’t complementing their initial product. So just like overcomplicating their business, especially on something like Amazon where the back end is complicated enough for one product and then also not focusing on that authenticity piece, it’s just like, stop doing all of this work and focus on this. 

SHANNON RODDY: Yeah, we call those strategic growth recommendations because to your point, there’s two aspects of being able to continue a brand journey. One is iterating existing products, making constant improvements. I look at the ipod as a great example. I mean there’s every single year they rolled out a new version with new improvements and it was smaller and it added video and you know, on and on. And the other one is actually the willingness and ability to launch new products in the category. To your point, if you launch a really cool pool float, the next thing that you want to launch isn’t going to be a toilet plunger. There’s no overlap there. You’re not getting any Synergy. But if you’ve got a line of pet products and you introduce. If you’ve got pet. Let’s call it pet supplements, for example, and now you have pet toys. Well, there’s a. There’s a lot more overlap there. There’s a lot more synergy. But it’s not just a matter of going and finding a cheap private label product that you can just slap your brand name on and throw it out there. Because I think brands have really been caught and hurt by that when that was their M.O. where they basically, you know, found something to go, oh, well, let’s expand quickly, but not take into consideration how does this impact the brand equity that I’m trying to build. Does this. Does this product by itself represent that? Does it support it? If not, probably not a good fit. You’ve always got to just come back to those three key things. Like I said, brand identity, the brand equity, and then the brand awareness and how they all work together. 

JONATHAN: Absolutely. I’m curious because, like, you know, the. The product variation piece. It’s funny because I think everyone thinks they can solve their problem by just coming up with, like, 10 different color variations. And I’m like, don’t do that. Like, that’s another mistake. Focus, like, do like, 3 col. If it really matters. Because there’s a lot of products. Like, listen, everyone will buy a blue plunger. Like, you don’t need to have a red and black one, too, whatever it is. 

SHANNON RODDY: That’s. That’s a great point. And I think that, again, there’s a, there’s extremes. Right? On one, on one hand, you have a brand who launches their one product in black, and two or three years later, they still only have black. Meanwhile, all the competitors and copycats have multiple color variations that are crushing it. Right. The flip side of that is a brand that comes out with a hundred different color variations and patterns. Patterns is another. Right. Once you get into fashion apparel, okay, there’s an overkill point where what you do isn’t actually helping your roi. And it’s a generic statement, and it probably doesn’t apply to apparel. Right. Because there’s certain. There’s so many variations with apparel that people actually do like. But 5 to 7 is probably a decent range if you’re going to offer variations. You know, in terms of what customers can actually go to a product detail page and actually click through to see what they like the best. You know, one option, maybe not enough. You know, three options. Great. That’s a good foundational start. And it’s always great to test and iterate. This is part of the iteration. Part of that is an assortment analysis where you go and say, look at the end of the year, out of the five colors that we sold, these three sold the best. These two were just barely doing anything. Well, let’s, let’s take those off. But we have been seeing from a customer search, volume from some of our competitors this other color. And so let’s try adding that one. So let’s pull two and add one, or maybe add two back in to test those and see how maybe one of those performs better than the other four. You don’t know. So customer preferences are always changing. You’ve always got to be willing to adapt. So the, this is what we do, this is how we, how we’ve done it and this is how it always works is a terrible way to ensure that your brand is successful for the future. Right. Because of the fact that you have challenger brands who are willing to come in and gain market share by playing the game better than you are. And I’ll give you a great example. Hydrox. Very few people have ever heard of Hydrox. They were the original cookie. Guess who was the knockoff? Oreo. Oreo was the copycat. They played the game better. First of all, they had a better, better brand name because nobody wants to put anything in their mouth called Hydrox. It’s just bad mistake there. On the, on the branding side, Oreo did a better job building the brand identity. Right. The fun, the playful nature of it, the color, all that stuff, the brand equity, the quality product. Yes. They’ve come out with tons of variations. They’ve got the extra double stuff, they’ve got the thin. But you can always still go to the store and buy regular plain Oreos. Right. So it’s all about sort of that expansion and everyone. There are certain things that you can’t mess with. Right. Original Coke. Right. There’s certain things when it comes to you, like you want to iterate everything else. But there are certain things when it comes to customer preference and taste is one of them. Smell is another one. Don’t mess with the original flavor, don’t mess with the original taste. Because, because it’s so sensory and it goes into an emotional part of our brains that even minor tweaks, it’s not going to be the same thing. It doesn’t taste the same. It doesn’t. And it, doesn’t, it doesn’t smell the same. So there are certain things that are foundational. Don’t, don’t if you’re a food company, keep your legacy flavors the same. 

JONATHAN: These are all really great points and things that we’ve discussed. I’m curious, like when it comes to brands competing with Challenger knockoffs or legacy brands, like, what’s really the thing that they can do to compete? 

SHANNON RODDY: Yeah. So like I said, you know, once you’ve built the foundation, brand identity and brand equity, now it just comes to brand awareness. And we have seen brands that just dominate a category overnight when they get huge influxes and surges of brand awareness. Right. On the social media, this can look like going viral on, you know, on television. Can it look like being featured on Good Morning America Or Shark Tank? Right. Those are like these huge influxes of brand awareness. The problem is those are spikes. It’s not consistent. It doesn’t stay at that level. Right. Because the Shark Tank isn’t airing every single day. And that social media viral post doesn’t engage in the algorithms at that level ongoing. You’ve got to find a way to be able to adjust the traffic dial in a way that is predictable and consistent where you have some level of control. And honestly, right now one of the best ways that brands can do that is by leveraging DSP and Connected tv and those are Amazon offerings. On the advertising side of things, what’s exciting about it is the ability to identify your customer and target them with specific creative that speaks to that customer Persona and do it in a way where you’re targeting that customer using Connected tv top of funnel, but you’re actually able to get analytics that allow you insight in terms of where they first saw you, how many times they saw you. The ability to retarget them and be able to track that customer all the way to the cart is an experience that has never before been possible before last year. It’s just, it’s incredible. And that’s where Challenger brands are going to figure this out very quickly. And if legacy brands, sort of the household brand names who run linear TV ads, if they don’t figure this out quickly, they’re going to be usurped. Right. That sort of comfortable seat of we’ve been in this brand position because we’ve been a legacy brand for so many decades, it’s up for grabs now because that brand awareness, even though that trust has built, been built over longer periods of time, we live in a day and age where we’re adopting things so quickly. It’s sort of like, you know, we go back to, you know, like our, a lot of our parents held one Job for most of their life or our parents. Parents held one job. We’re open to new things all the time. Oh, hey, have you checked out this new app? No. Hey, have you checked out this new restaurant? No, I got to try it out. Oh, you got to try this new product. You got to try this new brand. New experiences are coming about all the time. The adoption rate can be so much faster now than it was two, three, four decades ago. And a lot of that comes down to awareness. And when you have a tool that you can adjust the dial on in terms of how many people see your brand control, the messaging and the light in which they see your brand and the ability to drive them to the most efficient e-commerce storefront in the world is a game changer. 

JONATHAN: It’s interesting because like I think about all those old brands, like the legacy brands, and it’s funny how like I absolutely feel like they’ve gone stale and like not only like their brand connotations, like whatever that is, it, it feels, it’s nostalgic. Right. So it’s reminding me of like the old regime or whatever. And it’s like I want something new in my life. I want to like have my own identity and my own lifestyle and I don’t want to be living like with the products that my grandparents used or something like that. And it’s funny because I think that I just looked at a study that said, like brand loyalty is at an all time low because people will like jump ship and go to something else immediately. 

SHANNON RODDY: Yeah, that’s a great insight. Yeah, yeah. We’re not tied to things in the way that we used to be. Right. We can make changes a lot faster than we can. Technology has allowed us to do that and sort of the global economy has allowed us to do that where we’re not confined or constrained to things that are just local anymore. We can buy things and purchase things and use things that were developed in other countries and in other cities and other states, around the country. And so I think the adoption rate is a lot faster. That’s an interesting stat that brand loyalty is at an all time low. And I think that that’s largely based on the changing landscape of our culture. At the same time, there are certain brands that have immersed themselves and are taking advantage of that. Right. And creating their own version of brand loyalty. I just bought a Tesla. I love Tesla. I don’t have any. Like the idea of buying a different non Tesla electric car has not even entered my mind. Right. So the ability Is like, how do you get meat hooks in customers? That’s sort of a, negative connotation. But the idea is, you know, with love. It’s like, how do you embrace them in a warm hug that they never want to leave you? And you make yourself and your product and your service so invaluable that they have no choice but to continue using it because. Because of how wonderful it is and how How it impacts their life. We’ve tried a lot of these subscription, you know, meal delivery and grocery delivery or, you know, meal prep delivery services. And a lot of them, didn’t offer great value. You get past the first three or four meals, and it winds up just sort of being the same thing over and over and over again. You know, and then you also get the situation where you can’t kind of make selections if your family has specific dietary needs. And honestly, I was playing a solitaire game and I saw an ad pop up for a subscription to box that allows you to select very personal, you know, meal selections. And they’re really focusing on a lot of things from environmental consciousness, the products. And I was always concerned, like, that crap they put in the ice thing to sort of keep it cold. Like, is this even healthy? Is it toxic? This one, it’s basically plant food. So they freeze plant food and you melt it and then you pour it in your plants and feed your plants, like, and then you recycle the bag. Like, it’s brilliant. You know, you have this sort of sustainability aspect and the meal variety of the offers incredibly diverse. And, you know, there’s sort of no end to what you can do. And they make it very simple and it’s all convenient on the app. And I, I think, again, brands are figuring this out that there’s a way to add customer value by figuring out what customers really need. And they have sort of a whole meal selection plan that uses AI that, as you say, well, I like this kind of food, but I don’t like this one and I prefer this. And I can swap out the individual ingredients I want to Alfredo sauce over marinara sauce, and I can just remove one and add the substitute in there. It learns my preferences and makes meal recommendations over time. That’s brilliant. Do you know how much time, you know, my wife and I waste doing meal planning? It’s mostly her, I’m not going to lie. But try, to take it off her plate. Well, I don’t have the time to do it. Well, the app can do it great. It Takes me five minutes. Get on there and pick the meals that I want. They’re delivered to our house on Sunday. So things are changing. We’ve got to be willing to adapt. We got to be willing to stick to the fundamentals of what we know, work and then adapt on the tactical side where the strategic opportunities are different and new doors are opened. We can’t just do things the same old way. We’ve done them before. We got to be willing to break new ground and break new territory because if we don’t, we’re going to be usurped by somebody else who is. 

JONATHAN: I can’t think of a better note to, ask, end on. I think you just summed it up in a surgical way. So I’m not even going to try. But, I do want to like ask you about Avenue 7, how people can kind of get in touch with you. 

SHANNON RODDY: Avenue 7 Media. We’re a e e-commerce solutions provider. We focus primarily on Amazon and Walmart and we provide everything from ad hoc services like Asin reinstatement to creative to retainer services like Amazon Advertising or dsp. But we can also do full service and then for our largest legacy brands, we’ll do a customized service based on what they need as an extension of their team. So what I love about working with our team, we’ve got Best in Class leadership. We’ve got a great team that I absolutely love working with. We have a very strong culture and we’re just committed to excellence and what we deliver for our clients. And it’s all about our team, our technology and our playbooks. And we have our own strategic framework that we use to analyze every single one of our clients. Holistic e-commerce opportunity. Right? We call it our seven avenues. And that’s what allows us to focus on profitable growth for every single client across multiple channels. So it’s very exciting. And of course they can just go to avenue7media.com. It’s Avenue, the number 7, media.com. Or reach out to me on LinkedIn. Just search Shannon Roddy. Also a great way to get in touch with me or our team. 

JONATHAN: That’s great. I mean you alone are a value prop enough for this for Avenue 7. So, I feel like I’m sold. This has been a really great conversation. Your passion is very palpable. I love your energy, but also just all of the knowledge. So thank you for coming and sharing. 

SHANNON RODDY: Well, thank you for having me, Jonathan. It’s absolutely been my pleasure. We look forward to listening and sharing once the episode goes live.