SprintToSuccess S1E1: Meet Superfrau

Fred Hart [00:07] Hey, hey, hey, everyone. Welcome to season one, episode one of Sprint to Success, a video series focused on demystifying the branding and design process for entrepreneurs in the food and beverage industry. I'm Fred Hart, and I'll be your hostess with the mostes through this branding journey. Now, aside from telling lame dad jokes, I'm the creative director and partner at Interact Boulder, a branding and design agency obsessed with the food and beverage industry. And over the last 5 years, we've had some incredible opportunities working with some amazing founders to build amazing brands. And what we wanna do is take those learnings and share them all with you. So we developed the Sprint to Success program to take advantage of those learnings and accelerate the process. In just 7 weeks, we'll run from streamlined strategy all the way to a ready for world brand. And along the way, we wanna work with an entrepreneur in need. So we opened up the process and received 106 applicants in one week. We were blown away. But unfortunately, like the Lord of the Rings, there can only be one. So we want to share with you guys that lucky participant. And let them tell you a little bit about their story. We have um some news to share with you.

Melissa Martinelli [01:27] OK.

Fred Hart [01:29] So we talked with, I mean, we had 106 applicants and um you were one of our finalists. And we kind of have one outstanding question that we needed to ask. Which is, do you have any running shoes? Because you're gonna sprint to success with us, so we are very excited to announce that um we have selected you as our entrepreneurial partner in this really cool branding and design journey to help demystify uh the practice with other entrepreneurs.

Melissa Martinelli [02:05] Wow, thank you guys so much. I am so excited. I've been following you for a couple of years now and this is just, it's a huge opportunity for us. So we are pumped. I'm, I'm lacing up my shoes right now.

Fred Hart [02:21] Nice, love it. Let's meet Melissa and Superfrau.

Melissa Martinelli [02:26] Hi, my name's Melissa Martinelli. I am the co-founder of Super Frau. Super Frau is an alpine inspired electrolyte drink derived from upcycled fresh whey. At Super Frau, we're on a mission to make dairy more sustainable by bringing this refreshing taste of the Alps to the American consumer. Fresh Way in its natural liquid form has so many benefits beyond protein. It's naturally packed with full spectrum electrolytes, B vitamins, calcium, and lactic acid, which supports a healthy microbiome. We don't add any sugar or artificial ingredients, so it brings you sustained hydration throughout the day, naturally. We're really looking forward to working with Interact to bring our brand to life through design.

Fred Hart [03:12] Let's see how super Superfrau is.

Melissa Martinelli [03:15] Our brand was founded on the top of a mountain 2 years ago. Uh, we've done a ton of product development in that time. We did a, a pilot last summer on the Boston Market and received, uh, a lot of great feedback from that. We were highlighted at the summer fancy food show as the, um, number one trend for our upcycled ingredients. From there that uh led to relationships uh with potential waste suppliers and other collaborators, uh, we've become official members of the Upcycled Food Association and we're currently taking part in, um, the both the Dairy Farmers of America accelerator as well as the, um, PepsiCo greenhouse accelerator programs, and each program is. Helping us reach our goals in different ways, the Dairy Farmers of America more from a supply chain perspective and Pepsi from um a marketing and branding and and understanding the industry much better. We, we come at this a little green and so we're just trying to learn as much as possible and. Um, prepare for an official launch later this fall.

Fred Hart [04:30] What's the biggest misconception about your product?

Melissa Martinelli [04:33] Many of you probably associate fresh whey or whey with protein, but what Super Fro is all about is showing all the benefits beyond protein. Um, we have a mission to make dairy more sustainable, um, so we capture fresh liquid whey at the source, which is the liquid co-product of yogurt and cheese making. It's naturally packed with full spectrum electrolytes, so that's sodium, potassium, calcium. Magnesium, zinc, which all work together to replenish our bodies's naturally occurring electrolytes throughout the day, uh, also has a ton of B vitamins and lactic acid which supports a healthy microbiome. So all of these things beyond protein are often considered waste in the dairy supply chain. So our mission is to capture that uh fresh way at the source or rescue it and upcycle it by infusing just the fresh liquid whey with unique flavors like cucumber lime, lemon elderflower, and peach mango. What's your biggest challenge? So one of our biggest challenges is that everyone associates fresh whey with protein. And our bottles contain about 2 g of protein. It's great protein, but it's, it's not the main feature, um, so how do we communicate best what all of these other great benefits beyond protein are and, um, how do we get this in the hands of people who are dehydrated and are looking for an all natural way. For um to refresh and hydrate without any added sugar or artificial ingredients.

Fred Hart [06:15] What are you hoping to get out of sprint to success?

Melissa Martinelli [06:17] I'm really looking forward to taking part in sprint to success. I, I'm confident that we're going to get the most iconic branding out of this and that our packaging is going to. Uh, stick out on the shelf and we're going to be able to convey the message that we want to share with everybody, not just about, um, the sustainability of this product, but also all of the functional benefits, um, and I, I know that Interact Boulder will, will be able to do that.

Fred Hart [06:49] Let's meet the Interact team.

Speaker 3 [06:51] Hi, I'm Whitney Siegel. I'm the lead strategist at Interact. Um, Katia and I will be representing the SRT team, um, and we are super excited to be working with Melissa on Super Fraud, and I'm excited to find her core audience and help position her brand.

Speaker 4 [07:08] Hi everyone, my name is Alexis Berg, and I'll be the account manager for the Sprint to Success project. As the main point of contact, I'll be in charge of connecting all of the different spokes of the project, whether it be from the client to the strategy or the design team.

Speaker 5 [07:22] OK. Hi, I'm Katiline, and I'm an account and strategy coordinator at Interact, and I will be supporting Whitney and Alexis across both strategy and account. I'm really excited to work with Super Fra because the weirder the product, the more interesting the strategy.

Speaker 6 [07:37] Hi, I am Leah Cawthorn, and I am a designer here at Interact, and I will be the lead designer for Sprint to Success. I'm very excited to help bring this badass brand to life with an even more badass group of people.

Fred Hart [07:50] Now that you've met the super team working on Super Frau, I'd love to walk you guys through a little bit of a top line of what the seven-week sprint to success process looks like. So here's an overview of the seven-week sprint to success program. Buckle up. Phase one, we do a deep dive into strategy. We're looking at the consumer, the category, the culture, and the brand to understand what reigns true for all of them and put it into a singular piece of positioning. We present this to the client in the form of a deck with 3 options in, and then align on a singular territory moving forward. Once we finish phase one, we jump into phase two. Here, we're building a bridge from the verbal and written strategy into the visual narrative and language. We're establishing the logo, color palettes, fonts, look and feel, really making sure that we're exuding the right personality and visual language for the consumer. Phase 3 is packaging. This is where we're now culminating all of the brand touchpoints into a singular moment. That simultaneously has to compete with a multitude of other brands, be it online or off. As we go through those rounds of revisions, and walk you guys through what it takes to get them to production, we'll start phase 4. Phase 4 is where we look at the brand world, how the brand expresses itself off of the packaging. And we do this by looking at the digital touchpoints of the social starter kit. We also develop a brand book, giving a roadmap to the founder and the company of how to extend the brand seamlessly, as well as look at new innovation. Wow. Did anyone else hear me slur my words when I said social starter kit there? I sure did. Anyways, we got our work cut out for us. Episode 2, you'll get to meet and see our amazing strategy team at work, working on Super Fro branding and positioning. Stay tuned.