You Might Also Like: Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

You're listening to Math & Magic, a production of iHeart Podcasts.

Bob Pittman (0:11)

Welcome to Math & Magic. I'm Bob Pittman. Over the years, we've talked with dozens of guests ranging from CMOs, to media executives, musicians, and company founders. They've shared their own career journeys and accomplishments, the best strategies that they forged along the way, and the advice they wish they could have heard earlier. In today's bonus episode, we're highlighting some more of my favorite marketing stories. These aren't just stories of where success came easily. They include the times when mistakes were made, risks were taken, and when it would have been simple to just step into a pitfall. Often, these are the moments when the most valuable lessons are learned. These are the opportunities to make a game-changing pivot, to set a new standard for the company's culture, or to raise the bar for the bottom line.

Our first story comes from Shazi Visram, the founder of Happy Baby. As CEO, she turned her idea into the number one organic baby food company in the world. She sold the company for $250 million in 2013 and stayed on as CEO until 2017

Since then, she's founded Healthy Baby, the mission first baby and maternal care company. But when Shazi launched her first baby food product, she hit an unexpected roadblock that threatened to derail the whole company before it ever took off.

You start out as frozen baby food. You get going, you get distribution, you get in whole food, you get in babies or us, and then you realize it's not going to get you there. How did you come to that conclusion? How did you realize it? How did you admit to yourself that you weren't hitting the goal?

Shazi Visram (1:51)

Two and a half years in against this business plan, we're making frozen baby food in this little ice cube trays.

Bob Pittman (1:58)

I'll remember.

Shazi Visram (1:59)

And they're beautiful. The food tasted amazing. It was like this palette of all these beautiful colors. The peas were so green and the carrots were just like neon orange, and it was just so fresh and alive. It was like literally art, you know?

To stand in a store at a Whole Foods and do a demo in the freezer aisle and to have people walk right past you and not even want to stop and try it, and you're standing there so eager with your cute little t-shirt on and you're like smile, pictures on the back of the box. For two and a half years, you've been working on that and they don't want to try it. And then you realize, OK, wait a second, am I talking to the wrong people? You're just standing there waiting for a mom to come in with a baby. And she would be like, but where would I find, you know, I never come down this aisle. I only stopped because you were here. And so I'm realizing, wow, we have to create a whole new category of grocery called frozen baby food. That's an uphill battle. All the moms who are walking in the store with a baby right now are going straight to the baby food aisle.

I mean, it took me two or three demos. I mean, really, literally after two and a half years, there's like two weeks of a few data points.

Just real experiences that I didn't want to admit to myself. Because you're kind of in denial. You're thinking, oh, this is just a one-off.

Bob Pittman (3:18)

You're so committed.

Shazi Visram (3:19)

So committed. This is everything. I've risked everything for this.

And then you realize, I got to change it all. We got to change it all.

But you can't change it all, drop the happy baby frozen line. It's what everyone's invested in. It's what you invested in. Meanwhile, I'm thinking we got to get in the baby food aisle stat. We've got to create something enlightened and differentiated and meaningful that still matches the mission.

Bob Pittman (3:47)

And that was?

Shazi Visram (3:48)

To create sustainable organic options for everybody. And to have babies start from day one of eating with the healthiest start in life.

That very first product that met those high standards was our Happy Bellies baby cereal with probiotics.

Bob Pittman (4:04)

It got you what, two or three times the sales of the two years of the frozen?

Shazi Visram (4:08)

Yeah, so we went from 116 to 520, and then 520 to 2.1. And between 520 and 2.1 was the cereal.

Bob Pittman (4:17)

So then you jumped to the one that I think people really go, wow, this was genius. Your plastic squeeze pouch is a pureed baby food. That was really the game changer, wasn't it?