Building any brand takes continuous effort and time. However, strong leadership, thinking outside the box and finding areas to improve on may be equally as important and Amy Fuller is a testament to that. As a current mentor for Food Future Co, Amy Fuller brings a unique and necessary approach to helping and guiding each cohort and beyond being a mentor, Amy has spent the greater part of her professional career in vital development and building roles for brands such as: Accenture, Kraft, AT&T, Verizon, Siemens, IBM, Deloitte, and MasterCard Worldwide. Throughout her career, she has continued to thrive as a leader and has created immense success for countless large and successful brands, naming her one of Forbes World’s 50 Most Influential CMOs. Recently, we discussed with Amy how her expertise in brand building has prepared her for her role as an FFC mentor, how advice early in her career shaped her way of thinking and what components are vital for a brands to keep in mind when looking to build and develop.
"Food brands and companies are the bridge from excellent ideas to consumers’ kitchens and stomachs and, as such, have tremendous power to disrupt the status quo. New brands can raise the bar and create entirely new categories and expectations.”
What makes you most hopeful about the future of food?
"For me, the future of food is contingent on the state of cooking. Which is not always a cheerful state. One of the saddest findings in my advertising career was the market research finding that people in the USA were increasingly defining cooking as, “I made it hot at home.” Yet positive change is underway: a silver lining of the pandemic was the rediscovery of home cooking, even if not by choice. Home cooking allows us to focus on what we are eating, and that attention can span the entire food system, including labor and raw ingredients. One sign of the future is recently seeing “ancient grains” on pasta packaging in a mainstream supermarket. That gives me hope."
What do you feel is your most important role as a mentor?
"Helping capture the storyline of a new venture, with just enough lack of knowledge to serve as a surrogate for a new venture’s target audiences."
How have your past career experiences prepared you for being a mentor?
"My decades in advertising, communications, and marketing have exposed me to pretty much every aspect of storytelling and brand building. My experience running large, global, diverse teams has also been an education in how to persuade and influence."
What is your best piece of advice for those looking to create a unique brand?
"Enduring differentiation is the foundation of a successful brand. This is not easy to achieve, as building a business first requires finding relevance to enough consumers--a large enough base--to allow for growth and scale. But building a brand takes more than identifying a large enough target: the relevant point of difference can not be something that others can readily copy. You don’t want to build your brand only to see a larger competitor run with the idea."
What advice would you give someone looking to start a food based brand/company?
"Make sure that you are speaking to a large enough segment of the population to build scale, And do test assumptions among your target regarding how meaningful and differentiated your idea is. Unfamiliar ideas can be gold, but you need to understand how to make “the new” relevant to consumers. The more challenging the story line, the more time and money are needed to connect with your target."
What was the most valuable advice you received in your career?
"A savvy boss told me early in my career everything I needed to know about leading teams, which was indispensable as mobilizing large teams was how I succeeded. She said, “Your team’s successes are your successes, and their failures are your failures.”
To you, what role do food based brands/companies play in the future of food?
"Food brands and companies are the bridge from excellent ideas to consumers’ kitchens and stomachs and, as such, have tremendous power to disrupt the status quo. New brands can raise the bar and create entirely new categories and expectations. Just think back to the days when Greek yogurt was known by very, very few, and never seen in mainstream distribution. One brand, one company got an entire category started."
