The word “authentic” gets thrown around a lot in marketing. For former marketer Christina Dorr Drake, co-founder and CEO of Willa’s Oat Milk, that concept seemed just as important when it came to the product itself.
Dorr Drake, who previously worked at agencies like Havas and Anomaly, was inspired to start her own brand after doing some client work with Panera on its campaign to remove artificial preservatives from its menu.
“I was looking at these plant-based milks in my fridge and realized that they had ingredients that were so harmful that fast-food restaurants were taking them out of their menu items,” she told Marketing Brew. Willa’s Unsweetened Original Oat Milk consists of just four ingredients: oats, vanilla, water, and salt.
While Dorr Drake left the agency world in 2018 to co-found Willa’s with her sister, she said her past work experience still informs the brand’s marketing, which has meant getting “really, really scrappy with a tiny marketing budget” in order to compete with much larger oat-milk competitors.
Big Oat, meet little oat
At the beginning of 2020, Dorr Drake said her plan was to introduce Willa’s by selling the product to coffee shops, coworking spaces, and offices to create brand awareness. After Covid hit, those plans had to be scrapped, and the team shifted its focus to leveraging search terms on Amazon to help differentiate Willa’s from competitors. In lieu of retail sampling, the brand had to “make sure our packaging worked really hard for us” with bright, stand-out colors, Dorr Drake said.
“In store, on shelf, on Amazon: if somebody’s looking for something different in the category, if they’re wondering what the ingredients are, we are immediately creating curiosity,” Dorr Drake said.
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Today, the brand is currently investing 15% or less of sales into advertising on Amazon, Dorr Drake told us. Willa’s has been placing signs in coffee shops and shelf talkers—which are placed below products on store shelves—in retail locations, in addition to earned media to tell the story of Willa’s and its founders. To drive brand awareness further, Willa’s has collaborated with other food brands, like Raaka Chocolate, and with influencers.
“I’m happy to essentially give products to anybody who wants to create recipes and content for us, even if they don’t have a huge following,” Dorr Drake said.
Currently, Dorr Drake said Willa’s is not in a position to pay influencers, so in an effort to compete with brands with larger budgets, Dorr Drake said she’s offered influencers other perks, like the opportunity to be part of panels at SXSW.
“We’re just never going to be able to compete dollar-for-dollar with Big Oat,” she said, adding that it’s about “finding other ways that we can add value and help support [influencers].”
As the brand grows, Dorr Drake said she’d like to be able to test more paid marketing efforts. In the meantime, she said, “the sky’s the limit” in terms of what’s next from an earned perspective, whether it’s partnerships, events, or giveaways. That’s largely due to the support of and collaboration with other CPG brands, she said, adding that community and authenticity are just some of the advantages she thinks small brands have over larger ones.
“The little brands are the ones that are pushing these categories; they’re the ones innovating,” she said. “That gives us so much power to use our voice as true challengers.”