Lunch Society by Willow & Blake

A couple of weeks ago, we hosted The Lunch Society, our first Willow & Blake event.

The premise was simple. We wanted to get a group of brand builders and marketers in a room and talk about our favourite topic; the role of brand in marketing today. 

We invited three brilliant women to be on our panel; Zhoe Low, the Global General Manager of luggage brand July, Chloe De Winter, the Founder of disruptive underwear brand Nala, and Bree Johnson, Co-Founder of frank body and Willow & Blake.

The goal was to get our heads out of our computers and spend time learning, sharing and connecting. We did that and then some.

Here are our key takeouts from the event.

Be agile, be quick. 

“Challenger brands have one thing that incumbent brands don't, and that's pace,” says Zhoe. When you look at the success of all three brands on the panel; July, Nala and frank body, they’ve all utilised their smaller size to turn things around quicker than large brands could. From products to campaigns—Zhoe even spoke to July pumping out a retail door in two weeks (not recommended, but impressive). Being nimble and jumping on opportunities is a key lever challenger brands should pull when it makes sense to do so.

Distribution isn’t one size fits all. 

"E-Commerce is shrinking and retail is growing," says Zhoe, “Consider what distribution channel honours your brand and move on it, quickly.”

July now owns eight retail doors in Australia and is planning to open more. Their stores are a beautiful extension of their brand and an experience as much as a place to home product. They also sell through premium retailers like Lane Crawford stores in Hong Kong and Selfridges in London.  

frank body has a similar omni-channel approach, "frank body started as an e-commerce brand but now retail makes up 80% of our sales. We know our customer is an omni-channel shopper so our motto is 'go to her'". frank body is now stocked in over 1,000 doors including MECCA in Australia and Ulta in the USA. For now, Nala is exclusively sold through their .com as this allows them better control over pricing and stock management as well as a more direct relationship with the community. 

Think about what distribution model suits your business.

Community first.  

Knowing your customer isn’t a new theme but an important one to return to. One of the most important roles of brand is to understand the customer on a personal level and to foster conversations with those customers. Remember, conversations go two ways.

“You need to prioritise creating a community for sustainable growth and listening to consumers” said Chloe.  “For example, our Better Than Cotton range came from consumers wanting cotton, but then we did it in our own Nala way.” 

Selling in brand marketing. 

“You can’t convert demand that doesn’t exist,” says Bree, “If you only invest in bottom-funnel marketing and neglect top of funnel, you’ll start to see returns diminish.” Tracking your brand awareness and understanding the impact it has on conversion rates is important when convincing the CFO/CEO to invest their money. “As a founder and marketer I’ve had to learn to understand numbers and improve my financial literacy. And a result of that is that selling in brand marketing has become much easier.”  

The Lunch Society will be an ongoing event with new speakers, topics and attendees. If you’re a founder, marketer or brand builder interested in attending, subscribe to our email list below or send us an email to register your interest.

Thank you to our suppliers who made this event possible; Lucas Restaurants, Flat Pack, X Flos and Little Print.