12.6
I spoke to my neighbor about olive oil. Then I remembered that marketing is hugely overrated.

­­It happened about a year and a half ago.

It was a warm summer evening. I was sitting on the stoop of my Brooklyn apartment drinking beer and talking with my neighbor.

He had started an olive oil brand that was set to launch in the winter. I’m a marketer, so I asked him how he was going to position his brand. The olive oil section at my grocery store is an overwhelming yellow-green haze. What could he possibly do to get shoppers to put his bottle in their carts?

When I asked him, he said he bought olives from one farm in Spain – as opposed to multiple sources and blending them together — and packaged the olive oil in plastic bottles that you squeeze.

I had my doubts. But I kept them to myself.

Graza launched in January, 2022. From what I can tell, they are doing quite well. It’s available in over 1,000 retailers around the United States including Whole Foods, Wegmans, and Meijer—and online. There are nice reviews in New York Magazine, Business Insight, and Food & Wine.

When the shipment I bought arrived, I realized I underestimated the “squeeze” factor. Each bottle has a small nozzle, like the top of an Elmer’s glue bottle. When you squeeze one, the oil shoots out like water from a miniature firehose. I naturally extend my arm away from the pan each time I squeeze (to test my accuracy at distance) and then rotate my wrist to cover the surface of the pan.

You gotta try it.

There is something inexplicably awesome about shooting a stream of olive oil out of that bottle. Plus, you never “over gluggle.” New York Magazine calls it “Brilliantly utilitarian.”

The conversation on the stoop is one of the last times we spoke. That fall, he moved. When I think back to it I feel grateful because I learned a simple yet easy-to-forget marketing lesson.

In the marketing world, there’s a widely held belief that a brand’s value proposition is the sine qua non of growth. Without one, shoppers won’t consider or even remember the brand. Yet Graza’s growth depends not on a punchy sentence but the bottle.

I almost feel guilty for admitting this but I remember my neighbor emphasizing how crucial the bottles were and – while he explained the complicated logistics required to ship them from Asia to the farm in Spain – thinking it wouldn’t matter if he couldn’t get his value prop down straight.

In my defense, just about everyone who hangs around the marketing world long enough starts to treat marketing like a panacea. Nobody comes to this conclusion consciously. It soaks in gradually. (Ironically, downgrading marketing on a brand’s priority list has helped me provide more value to my clients.)

Another lesson I learned: don’t underestimate things that seem unimportant at first – because they might turn out to be consequential later on.

When I sat down on my stoop on that warm summer day, I didn’t anticipate writing about the subsequent conversation nearly a year and a half later. Yet here I am, sitting at my kitchen counter, writing the last paragraph of this newsletter. I look up and see a nearly-empty bottle of Graza.

I hope the next shipment is delivered before it runs out.