Just two weeks ago, we attended the annual Super Bowl of trade shows for organic, natural & specialty foods, lifestyle, and supplements brands,
Natural Products Expo West. Our
Moxie Sozo strategy and creative teams worked closely with industry leaders
Mattson and
SPINS to provide a holistic overview of the trends they spotted at the show and guided multiple tours of the trade show floor to meet the brand founders, sample the products, and discuss emerging category trends. If you missed it, be sure to check out
this video of the post-show webinar. While there’s a lot of great thought leadership there, this isn’t another digest of that. Instead, it’s a celebration of something more intangible.
The 65,000+ show attendees represented all the people who influence a brand’s trajectory, including brand founders, retailers, distributors, suppliers, investors, and agency partners. The common thread throughout the entire event was connection.
My colleague Brie Schaezler has written about this before, and the sentiment still holds true. The relationships we build through our work lives are instrumental in our success, and the Naturally Network community is special, helping to incubate new brands, foster mentorship opportunities, and provide a space where people can meet like-minded individuals at a local and national level.
Early in the week,
Derek Springston ran a business school workshop for emerging brands, sharing the collective Moxie Sozo knowledge gained over decades of working in the branding and CPG space. That opportunity was thanks to
Jeff Klineman, with whom I’d spoken for most of the evening at a BevNET conference years prior. We hardly discussed work, instead finding our common thread around life events and health. He’s been in the industry for nearly 20 years – talk about someone who knows all about connecting people in this space.
Our crew walked the floors of every hall – my phone app tells me I logged over 40 miles that week! We sampled everything and met the brand teams running booths, somehow showing up with energy and enthusiasm after the huge ramp-up just to get to the show.
Leslie Salonen “milked” a cow at
Organic Valley’s booth, celebrating the continued rollout of our multi-year rebrand partnership. When we stopped by to visit the
Mauna Loa team to cheer on the latest product launch of their non-dairy Paradise Pops, they welcomed us with the Aloha spirit, placing beautiful real leis over our heads and spent easily a half-hour chatting about the show and current initiatives before graciously inviting us to attend their exclusive tiki bar gathering later that evening.
All week, texts flew back and forth: I’m in Hall A, are you nearby so we can meet-up and walk the floor together? Surprise encounters while hurrying from one exhibit hall to the next led to impromptu happy hours and meeting new business connections through old ones. Marketing Directors and Brand Managers were busy accomplishing their own objectives for the show, but even they still carved out time for a quick hello and a hug. The dinners with longtime clients gave our feet a reprieve and allowed us to have deeper conversations about brand challenges and market opportunities. Happily exhausted at the end of every long day, the Moxie team would reconvene back at our Airbnb and sit around the dining room table with our laptops as we all caught up on work late into the night. Even that was another way to feel connected as a team.
There was a palpable buzz of excitement throughout the week, an energy that hummed like it does when you get close to power lines. I came away feeling renewed appreciation for how much passion and grit it takes for brands to succeed, gratitude for the strong relationships forged over the years, and a sense of awe of the power of connection.
