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Are you building your brand to flip or to last? It would be hard to guess what proportion of entrepreneurs attending BevNet Live this week fall into either camp. For those who do care about the longevity of their brand after their exit, Apothic Wine, Coke Zero and Evian vet Courtney O'Brien offered pragmatic lessons that diverge quite a bit from those followed by the built-to-flip crowd. "The difference is whether the brand survives the hype cycle," she said at outset. Maybe because she was last speaker in rapidly emptying conference yesterday afternoon, she promised that she wouldn't hesitate to name names of those who've mis-stepped (tho in truth, the named brands, such as Zico and Bai, have been named often enough in the past). For audience with lotta bev newbies, O'Brien, who operates as The Outlier Initiative, offered scary view of the dangers out there like the "circle of death" that can spring from brand's building distribution ahead of the consumer loyalty that ensures it will turn in all those retail doors. You end up with "a leak" that's expensive to fit. Promos get more aggressive and "your team works harder and harder under increasing pressure to prop it up rather than build momentum." Hence the first of her key lessons: "Without repeat, distribution can actually become a liability."Among principles she urged founders to follow, one is to "choose your non-negotiables." You will have to compromise but what will you fall on your sword for and why?" She also urged founders to "turn your story into systems," not treating it as decorative touch but embedding it into everything from channel selection to pricing strategy. And, sequence your activities to prioritize staying power. "The best brands get acquired because they don't need to be," she cautioned.Along the path of building a lasting brand there will be several "forks in the road" that can derail effort. One key tell is brands willing to dilute their product quality in quest of greater expansion. She cited Zico in early days, when it offered PET-bottle from-concentrate entry that undermined category's premise of pure uncut liquid. It happened because of COGS pressures and pressure for mass reach and a desire to pull in more mass channels, at the cost of losing meaning with core consumers. By contrast, Vita Coco, now the clear category leader, didn't make such compromises. (Well, we recall it wavered once with PET-bottle entry in Target that was quickly withdrawn.)She contrasted that with Spindrift that was willing to alienate some consumers by sticking to its guns on using real juice only with no essences or "natural" flavors. That's one of the reasons brand is still sold at Starbucks, she posited. The lesson here: "Don't erode the reason your earliest fans believed in you."Another fork in road is trend chasing, she said. Take Bai, which got off to a strong start on basis of its antioxidant content and exotic fruit flavors, but then started throwing in lots of extensions, new segments, even an "Anti Water," that blurred its identity. Contrast that with Celsius, which resolutely drilled deep into fitness energy. The lesson here: "Don't let trends drive you. Own and exaggerate one space."A third area she highlighted is blurrier: whether to build velocity on push or pull. That's an "evolving case study" where she's not made up her mind. Still, she pointed to the intense pull effort behind Poppi brand spanning vending machines sent to influencers to Super Bowl ads. Her reservation: "Will that work for the indefinite future?" Her lesson on this one: "Don't outsource building real pull. Velocity build on spend doesn't last." As one gauge, consider how many shoppers might continue to buy your brand if you dropped your promo spend by half.

BEVNET LIVE: Former Coke Zero, Apothic Wines Marketer O'Brien Offers Tough Love to Bev Newbies Who're Building Brands to Last, Not to Flip

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