Welcome to Adspeak, AdWeek's podcast about the business of marketing, media, and creativity. In this episode, we're sharing a conversation recorded live at Brand Week, featuring leaders from across the industry discussing the ideas shaping brands right now. Let's get into it.
I'm excited to have this conversation with you. It's such a moment for the AG1 brand. I think what's cool is we had Pauly Deiri, your CMO, on stage here this week as well.
And now to hear from you directly, Kat, is going to be such an interesting opportunity for everybody here.
One of the things that we try to do at AdWeek is make sure we're bringing forward the voices of many in the suite because it's the collaboration that happens that really truly brings brands to life.
To drive business forward. Kat, you really don't need any introduction, but you yourself are such an iconic leader. Full stop in business. Your personal story, starting as a Hooters waitress, building up through so many incredible roles, and we're going to have you get into that in a minute, to now achieving the role of CEO at AG1, which is such an incredible category. You are defining the category, you have been defining the category. And sort of against the backdrop of that, before we get started, you actually all just dropped some incredible new creative work just last week.
Saturday. And we're going to share it with you all here. So, let's cue that video.
Good morning, Moon. Good morning, Dune. Good morning, Oceans Tune. Good morning, Light and the Red Balloon. Good morning, Pace. And good morning, Ace. Good morning, little house. Good morning, mouse. Good morning, Putts. Good morning, Flush. Good morning, Crush. Good morning, Rush. Rush, rush. And good morning to the mother whispering, hush. Good morning, No. Good morning, stars. Good morning, air. Good morning, people everywhere.
So good. You said you weren't going to get through that without crying every time I watch it. I'm like, oh my god, it's amazing. So, what did I just see?
You know, this moment, this truly global campaign, the first of our global campaigns, where our business is all over the world, but often we've had to have our bigger tentpole campaigns be very regional focused, North America, Europe, APAC, and this translates. And so with Pauly coming on board, former CMO of Yeti, been our CMO for a year, really digging into the brand, this represents a moment where we are moving from this single product, single channel, DTC business, which we have been, right, grew to well over 500 million in revenue with just one product and one channel, which is a very unusual business, which is just a testament to the product quality. Over the last year, we've transitioned to multi-product, multi-channel, national, in Costco, multiple products now, a night product with AGZ, but famous for this daily health drink that combines a multivitamin, pro and prebiotics, and greens to help people power their days, to start their days, their quiet early morning moment just for themselves that helps them show up for the people and pursuits they care about. And you do see athletes featured there. You also see parents, you see student athletes. We've evolved beyond our roots of we used to be called Athletic Greens. We also committed what some people in branding might consider a kamikaze move. We got to 160 million in revenue and changed our name from Athletic Greens to AG1. And that was in part to move beyond something very narrow, a category we created, a beautiful one, greens, super greens, powder, to move to this one daily health drink. Start your one day for your one spectacular life. And this creative embodies the 16 years of our community and actually what AG1 fuels for them. And there's 30s and cuts of this just for the parents, just for the adventurers, just for the endurance athletes, just for the professionals. And we're so incredibly proud. It's going to run through our high season with some other, you know, tentpoles that really bring it back down to the product level, but this moment, this emotion, this connective tissue celebrating our community is a very special shift in our approach to creative. And every person in this campaign, everyone behind the camera, everyone editing, including Rick Rubin, the incredible creative and voiceover here, have been AG1 drinkers for years. He's a diehard. He doesn't do things like this for brands, but because he loves AG1, he's been drinking it for so long, it's fueled his days and many who come into his studios, he was like, 'Hell yeah, I'd love to do this. I'm in.'
So, first global campaign, I caught it during the World Series game. So, that was super exciting. It's obviously a nod to Goodnight Moon, something that people, it's universal, right? I mean, and to your point, whether your parents read it to you as a child or not, everybody knows the, there's something so iconic about Goodnight Moon.
The rhythm, the, yeah. You know, it's song-like, which I think was part of the appeal to Rick obviously as well. This nostalgia, this connection of, you know, Goodnight Moon, many people thought, well, you just launched AGZ. Why didn't you just do Goodnight Moon for AGZ? You launched a sleep product. I love that we flipped this on its head and launched on daylight savings weekend, where you have an extra hour and the moon is in the sky, and this week with the super moon, all of our community were recording good morning moon videos, UGC, this morning with the super moon in the sky and sharing it on social. And our entire company, we have a good morning moon Slack channel, and it just allows our team members within a fully remote company to live our culture. And some people are with their kids earlier, they're in a quiet moment, or it's so cool to see this idea of we wake up sometimes before the sun is up, but when the moon is still visible in the sky, to get in front of the day, to do the things we care about. And Goodnight Moon had this nostalgia to tap into this rhythm that would stand out in an otherwise super crowded universe of wellness marketing.
Yeah, totally crowded. And by the way, a quick point, Margaret Wise Brown is the, who was the original author.
It starts with an M. I'm forgetting.
She's the original author. You've actually got one of the few brands to get the license rights to this asset and this IP. They're very protective, as you can imagine, of the story and the tone and even the approach, and allowing us, you can see little winks, the red balloon, the mother whispering hush, if you know the story, there's literal connection to it, and then there's our own creative interpretation that makes it make sense for our brand.
So Good Morning Moon is about starting your day. It's celebrating our community, and I love that it does give us the runway as we lean into AGZ, our nighttime sleep support, wind down. There's something there too, if we wanted to go a little deeper, it could make sense for both products.
And created all in house.
No outside agencies of any kind. So when Pauly came to you and said this, what did you think? Where are you, because you are the CEO, what was your reaction?
I remember we were in New York, we were doing customer deep dives, and Pauly had his creative team there and our in-house creative team, and they just showed some slides of this vision and voiced it over. And I got teary in like phrase three, verse three. And I waited. I was like, 'F yes, we're doing this.' But I waited so we could finish. And then I said like, 'F yes, we're doing this. Commit to it. Make it beautiful. I'm going to care deeply about the VO and the music.' Because of this world we're trying to straddle. We're showing high performers, but we're showing it even in life, right? Parents, but it's a quiet moment. So, this is not Red Bull. This is not like intense morning that we're trying to bring the quiet and the solitude and the take care of yourself first part of being an active person and a high performer. So, we just contracted as CMO, CEO, I'm going to care deeply about some of the creative elements more than I normally would.
So, just keep, you know, bring me along the journey instead of good idea and then when it gets done, here's the big reveal.
