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small, consistent habits to build your brand bottom-up
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What If The Drinks Industry Crisis Is About Obsolete Playbooks? (and why I use bottom-up empiricism instead)
When most drinks leaders hear "bottom-up brand building," they think grassroots marketing. Influencer seeding. Community building. Word-of-mouth tactics.
Wrong.
Bottom-up is empirical strategy development. It's how you know what's actually true about your markets when everything keeps changing.
Why Playbooks Don't Work
You Can't Build a Brand Without Owning a Category. But You Can't Create a Category Before Recognizing One Bottom-up.
Categories form bottom-up at the bar level before brands recognize them. From MAFFEO DRINKS Podcast: How Aperol became the Spritz, Seedlip captured non-alcoholic sophistication, and why your liquid's natural characteristics determine which micro-category you belong in, not boardroom strategy.
The Brand's Storytelling Big Bang Cheat Sheet: 6 Bottom-Up Steps to Build Brands That Last (Before You Waste Your Budget on a Logo, Bottle, and Story That Don't Connect)
What My Conversation with Steven Grasse Revealed About Building Hendrick's and Sailor Jerry (That Will Save You $100K in Useless Brand Assets)