Know your brand
When taking your company through a major change, you need to
understand not just how it will affect your company internally but
how it will affect your customers.
Pizzi says the effects of major change will be felt by the people your company serves, so you need to have a thorough
understanding of your brand and how it is perceived by your
customers.
Pizzi’s plan to overhaul the Tasty Baking Co. didn’t start and
end with the internal workings of the company. It was also an
opportunity to refresh the Tastykake brand, which has existed
for nearly a century.
“You really have to have an understanding of the depth and
breadth of your brand and how far that brand can be lever-
aged,” he says. “That leads you into two different decision-making processes. One is through product innovation and the
other is through new geographic distribution.”
As with the company’s technology platform, Pizzi and his
management modernized Tastykake’s array of products.
Following the recent low-calorie trend in snacks, Tastykake
introduced sugar-free and 100-calorie snack lines.
“Every company has a brand,” Pizzi says. “It’s about, what is
the strength of your brand to move the business? We are blessed
with one of the best brands — a brand that has lots of emotional ties to it.
“We always send products over to the troops in Afghanistan
and Iraq, and I once had a mother write me and tell me that her
son is over there [and] had received some of our products. She
sent an e-mail and asked me to look at the attached photograph.
She said, ‘This is the first time I’ve seen my son smile since he’s
been in Iraq.’ That’s what the depth and breadth of your brand is
about.”
Developing a new understanding of the depth and breadth of
your brand doesn’t necessarily mean you have to redefine
what your brand stands for; it might mean you need to find
new ways to leverage your brand while staying built around
the core pillars of your business.
“You have to remain very cognizant of your core products
and core users,” Pizzi says. “You have to analyze the depths of
your brand and business to help keep your core consumers
happy while meeting the lifestyles of today.”
In contrast with the relatively sudden and radical shift of
launching the Tasty Baking Co.’s technology platform, Pizzi’s
brand and market analysis spurred a far slower, steadier transition.
“You do it through a lot of analytics and a lot of consumer testing of your products, and develop a database on which to draw
from,” he says. “A big part of our brand is our sales distributors. We have approximately 500 sales distributors with roots
in our core market area. With my past experience of working
with small businesses, we try to create an environment of
trust, partnership and listening. In that vein, we created a sales
distributor council where they come in twice a year to meet
with management.
“We get almost 8 to 10 percent of our folks in to meet with us.
They give us a firsthand view of what is going on in the marketplace. The latest thing is, with our technology platform, we have
been able to provide them with lots of information so that the
ordering process becomes much more mundane, as opposed to
having any mystery.”