On today’s episode, I sit down with Kelly Bennett, brand strategist and host of the Emerging Brands Podcast.

Kelly has spent the last 16 years working alongside founders in the food and beverage space, helping them turn early product ideas into shelf-ready brands. Her focus is pre-launch brand strategy, which means she’s often involved before a founder has finalized a name, filed a trademark, or chosen a manufacturer. Her job is to build the underlying framework that everything else sits on top of.

In this conversation, we talk about what brand strategy actually is beyond logos and packaging, how to think about retail positioning and sales channels before you ever approach a buyer, and why clarity around target customer and use case should really come before design. We also get into pre-launch demand creation, building in public without looking too DIY, and the specific signals she watches once a product hits the market to evaluate the efficacy of the strategies she’s helping implement.

We also explore the value the media arm of her business is driving, how her podcast functions as both a network engine and a client acquisition funnel, and how she’s thinking about evolving from just advising to investing in emerging CPG brands as well.

I learned so much during my conversation with Kelly and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.