Building TRIP: How a Challenger Brand Conquered the Wellness Drinks Market

Be very easy to produce a brand that looks legitimate. How are we then going to stand out if everyone's going to be looking in the same polished format? In this episode, I'm joined by Alice Ratcliffe, head of brand at Tripp. Building a brand in wellness isn't easy. You're navigating regulation and a ton of competitors all claiming to do the same thing. But Tripp has taken a different approach. That became the secret to Tripp's success. Am I right? Tripp is one of the biggest selling drinks on TikTok. How can you take something you've done and 10x the amount of people who know about it? We also have a mission that everyone can talk about and you've got quite a big celebrity backing. Just because someone's got a large following doesn't mean they're going to be the best ambassador for your brand. To be a social media manager is one of the hardest jobs right now. Is there any other platforms that are going to be on your radar next? I mean, I've just said it, but I think. Watch this space. Watch this space. If you're new here, this is the podcast where we interview the greatest brand builders in the world to find out what that says, special sources that allowed them to grow to do what they're going to do. Please hit subscribe. And hopefully this is something that the next time you're puzzled and you're staring into a dashboard of analytics, you have no idea what to do. You actually have a wealth of content from the best people in the industry telling you exactly what they did. And hopefully you can learn something that can help you in what you're doing. Welcome, Alice, to building brand advocacy. It's so good to have you. Thank you for having me. We've been trying to get you on the podcast for a while now. We finally made it happen. That's only a year later. Before we get stuck into it, do you want to just give our listeners a little bit of an intro about you? Yes. So I'm Alice, I'm head of brand at Tripp, which is one of the UK's leading drinks brand on a mission to help millions of people find their calm. And I know so many people that are obsessed with Tripp, so this is going to be a great conversation I'm going to get stuck in. So I just want to start off in terms of Tripp in sort of like the wellness space. And I suppose when you guys launched in 2019. Yes, yes. And I think looking back on the wellness drink shelf, it probably felt Quite saturated. And there was a lot of drinks that felt really loud, like the biohacking, the kind of like this really shouting about the benefits. And I think from you, like, even just looking at your can, like, it feels a lot more calm and I suppose the kind of complete opposite to what was out there at the time. So I just wanted to ask, was there any kind of like explicit decisions when you first launched that kind of the deliberate tactics in terms of being the complete opposite to what was already out there? Yeah, it's one of those things that seems quite obvious now, but back then, you know, really credit to Dan and Liv, you know, the inception of Tripp is that they really focused on finding this white space that they could play in. Yeah. And, you know, normally when you start a brand, you tend to look at what's happening there and you kind of mimic the category, you mimic the competition. Whereas I think Dan and Liv came at it from a real kind of personal experience and felt that they didn't see a brand that reflected their lifestyle. They didn't see a brand that really spoke to them in a way that resonated. And that was sort of the starting ethos for Trip was, you know, the. If you look at the soft drinks aisle at the time, it was this period of the kind of the peak of this challenger brand narrative. These David versus Goliaths. You had the Oatleys, the brew dogs. You know, everyone's sort of attacking someone and it's. It's very shouty, very aggressive, quite, you know, masculine. Yeah. And then on the wellness space, it was quite dogmatic and, you know, a lot of sort of very medical and using a bit of fear mongering to kind of get people to buy into the products. You know, you need this because you're suffering from burnout. This is, you know, your hormones are out about all of that stuff. And I think, again, you know, living down, we're looking at that and saying, well, that's not really speaking to us. It's not making us feel better. We want to create a product that embodies how we want to make people feel. So they made a very deliberate choice to create a product that sort of sat in opposition to that, that really embodied the feeling of calm. And again, you know, we're lucky in a way that the brands had a lot of restrictions on it from the start, but that's helped kind of focus us into our mission, which is to help people find their calm. Yeah. You know, that we weren't able to, you know, you can't when you're sort of. When it comes sort of making medical and health claims, you know, you can't sort of put a lot of that on your front pack. So it's meant that we had to think about, okay, well, what can we do on our can that makes people feel calm? And that's by creating these wonderfully, like, clean, blank spaces that, you know, if you read any sort of marketing manual, they'd talk about, you know, the hierarchy of the messaging and where to put, you know, all these big statements. And Tripp has just done the opposite, and it's really worked. Yeah, I mean, that completely kind of shows, like I said, like, back in the day, like I said, it felt really loud, and there was, like, you said a lot of shouting in terms of that space. So. Yeah, I mean, it is, though, so aesthetically pleasing to the eye as well. But it's great to kind of hear the story that, you know, the founders just wanted to do something completely different, rather kind of compete against what was already out there. And I suppose in some of those early other brand behaviors, what else kind of stood out to you that's really helped Trip grow over the last few years? As I mentioned, the fact that we did have restrictions around what we could and couldn't say. So Tripp started off as a CBD drinks brand, and CBD was a novel food, so it's even more regulated, and there's a lot more restriction in terms of what you can and can't claim the product does. And for a lot of people, they see that as a negative and a restraining factor to growth. But actually, that became the secret to Tripp's success because we had to lean into a much more emotive framing of what Tripp was offering, which was find your calm. You know, we weren't able to say, drink this and get rid of stress. It's not true, and that's not how. Not how it's going to work. And, you know, that would have. If we had been able to say that, we might have gone down, that it would take us in a very different territory. But because we had those restrictions, it made us think more about, okay, you know, how can we communicate calm to people? Firstly, through the design, secondly, through the vocabulary we choose. You know, we have messages like, be kind to your mind, happy days, calm in the everyday chaos. It's. It created a much more personal framing of the conversation, and it allowed people to interact with us in a much more emotional way as well. And. And that, you know, that really helped us in the early days sort of stand out and, you know, find our own brand position in that market. Yeah. During your time at Tripp, has there been a moment or even like a campaign where you've gone, oh, this is working. This is exactly what we set out to do? It's funny because I don't. In the early days of Tripp, you obviously as a small brand, you don't have as many opportunities to do big campaigns. You know, you think you're doing them. You sort of, you put up one flight post, you're like, yes, it's a summer campaign. And again, going back to like turning negatives into positives. What that often does for a lot of small early stage brands, it really puts their brand purpose into practice because you can't afford to spend lots on big sort of advertising pushes. So you've got to look for these small, everyday opportunities where you can do smart, clever things to really live, breathe and sell your mission to people. And that's something that Tripp has consistently done. We've only just started kind of investing in our, you know, had the budget and the resource to do our big campaigns, but because we've always been thinking about our mission in the everyday and the sort of always on activity, it's. It's been this really nice sort of consistent momentum build behind the business that, you know, Trip is kind of in everything it does think about how it can be synonymous with calm. And we're not relying just on campaigns to communicate that. Yeah, we've been talking about this a lot actually and like, you know, obviously there is still a massive place for campaigns, especially in our world, but I think with campaigns it kind of feels a little bit stop and start now. Like you don't. It kind of resets every time that campaign stops or the budget stops within that campaign. And I suppose in the world of, in where we live, especially with advocacy and you know, the way consumers are kind of just so transparent to everything now, you kind of need that always on messaging. You need that always on sort of like line of communication that really kind of carries the brand throughout, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think, you know, it's something that Tripp has always balanced quite well is this sort of mix of both. You need to have these big key pushes that you're, you know, peak periods, but you also, as you say, need to have that always on element. And Tripp's quite unique in that it's a D2C brand and a retail brand. And it, you know, that's been its sort of secret Source of how it's managed to sort of activate across the full funnel and manage both those quite differing objectives, but feeding them into each other. Yeah. Just going back to what I said in terms of, like, consumer behavior, like, there is a huge element of trust now needed from, I suppose from consumers, they. What they need from brands. Now, in your opinion, in your kind of world of brand, what do you think it takes for consumers to really start to trust a brand these days? I think it's got to be consistency. You know, it's being consistent with, you know, like any person, if someone's consistently themselves, you trust them more. Whether they're right or wrong, you trust them. Yeah. And I think as a brand, you've got to be really aware of that. It's, you know, it's the same emotion that you're going to be driving. If you look, feel and behave in a way that always feels true to your brand, you'll start to build that trust. And people know and they know what to expect of you. They know how you're going to react, they know how you're going to behave. And that's not to say you can't do new and innovative things, but it still needs to be authentic to, you know, the brand position you occupy in people's minds. So I think consistency is. Is key and then the other thing is alignment. And, you know, at Tripp, it's something we've. We thought about a lot because we operate in a space where we're often working with ingredients that are new, often on the fringes before they've come into the mainstream. And when you're doing that, you need people to trust in you, that you are offering them, you know, the best possible product. Yeah. And so, you know, for us, you trust looks like being consistent in how we show up, being credible in how we talk about what we do. Not over promising, not over overstating what, you know, we should or shouldn't say. But it also means in aligning with things like trustworthy channels. So one of our. We went on TV relatively early in our brand journey, but we knew that TV was a trusted channel. And so it was really important for us to show up there and kind of, you know, reassure people via being on TV that, yes, Tripp is, you know, here, it's this, it's a drink that's here to stay. Yeah. I mean, obviously you've built a lot of trust. You're a very successful brand now. But I suppose back in those early days, like, how was the initial kind of reaction to Everything. And you've just talked about some of the ways you built trust. But I suppose especially with, like you said, the ingredients in cbd, particularly in the early days, was people were very spectacle of it. So, yeah, first of all, what kind of was the initial reaction and then how did you kind of bring customers in to kind of get over that? Yeah. So, again, I think it goes right back to the inception of not leaning into the category tropes of CBD at the time, which was, you know, very much going down this. Medicinal brown tincture bottles, green leaf everywhere. Very much kind of playing into the stereotype that people thought of when they bought cbd. And so by making that deliberate choice to move out of that world and into this uniquely Tripp sort of pastel world of uplifting colors and sort of positive brand messaging, sort of placed Tripp outside of where people were traditionally a bit more skeptical of it. And, you know, we created a product that you were proud to be seen with. Yeah. So, I mean, Liv often tells a story of wanting to take CBD at work, but feeling really embarrassed that she had this, like, you know, CBD dropper in her handbag. And she was thinking, well, why can't I have it on my desk? It's. It should be something I'm proud to display. And again, that was a premise of how the initial brand design came about, was that, you know, we want people to feel, you know, excited to be holding a trip. Can they want to display it on their coffee table or, you know, have it seen in their hand when they're walking out and about, or be seen ordering it at a bar? You know, we often talk about. We also massively, you know, tap into this growing movement of people not drinking. And again, for a lot of people choosing not to drink alcohol, there's a slight shame of being seen out with a soft drink. It's so funny that, you know, it's just ridiculous. But then, you know, again, we wanted Tripp to be something that people look at and go, oh, that looks cool. What are you having versus why aren't you drinking? Yeah, no, that's super interesting. I always wonder about that stigma of, like, not drinking. It's such a funny play, especially here in the uk. Yes, it's. It's amazing, though, when you look at how quickly this movement has come about, and, you know, I saw a stat the other day which is like, 50% of Gen Zs have never even had an alcoholic drink. It's. We've gone through this massive shift, and, you know, what's exciting about Tripp is that it kind of sits at this intersection of the, this movement of, towards, you know, I'd say it's not people going sober, but people being more sober, curious, you know, they, they don't want to be drinking as much. They want to cut back. They want to have products that are enjoyable to have in those social scenarios. And then on the other side we've got this real rise in mental well being that people want to prioritize having products that make them feel good and actually nurture them from the inside. And you know, Tripp's uniquely got a product that helps people do that and packaged it up in a way that feels sort of like having a positive lifestyle accessory with you versus something that you need to kind of explain on a night out. Yeah. I suppose from your perspective then how do you balance that consistency with the brand, the messaging, the fun side of the brand and you know, we'll talk about influencers and UGC and everything, but how do you balance that with the education of what is involved in the trip drinks? It's always a fine balance. And I think one thing going back to like looking at what the wellness industry was doing at the time is we didn't want to be a dogmatic brand. We didn't want to be telling people exactly how they should find their mental well being, how they should be relaxing. That that's not what we're here to do. We're, and we're quite clear on that. So we don't, you know, we don't sort of prescribe people certain lifestyle behaviors they should be doing. When we try and educate people, it's through communicating a feeling. So it's by showing, you know, what a morning looks like after you've had a good night's sleep or it's showing what a fun day out at the park look like. But you know, drinking trip instead of drinking, it's showing the feeling that we want people to have versus sort of listing out why they shouldn't be doing something and why they should be doing something else. I suppose creating the feeling feeling is a lot harder though, right? Through content particularly? It is, yes. Especially calm. It's very easy to show like strong emotions. But you know, getting that essence of calm for in a photo shoot is always a challenge. Yeah, I suppose. What does that strategy look like for you in terms of your creator kind of strategy, influencer strategy? What does that look like for Tripp? So I mean, the first thing that we're quite careful on is that calm looks like different things to different people. And so we don't. What we've never prescribed or sort of set out to create is a version of calm that, you know, we enforce on creators and that we enforce on our community. How we work with our creators is for them to show us what calm. And, you know, how, you know, Tripp takes them to their happy place. And you know what I love seeing is you. We had someone the other day who's kind of shooting themselves, rollerblading out in the sunshine. It was such, like a lovely moment of, you know, they're in their flow, they're in their best, they're living their best selves. That would not be my version of calm. I was going to say, how do you portray just lying in the dark, ice pack on forehead. But that's, you know, we. We look for people. And I think whenever you're working with creators, it's really important that you're not just looking at, okay, how can we, you know, achieve our reach goal? How can we up our engagement rate that you're looking at people who already get your brand world and where you can see, like, we would be a great collaboration here. Visually, aesthetically, mission aligned. There's a rich territory for us to play in. And so that's our starting point always. Because if you don't have that, you're not going to hit all those other metrics because it's just not going to perform in a way that feels right for your brand or right for their brand. How do you kind of find the creators then? Are they coming to you or is it just through, you know, obviously the natural kind of organic of people are in your DMs. They're tagging you, they're already buying from you. How does that play out for you? Yeah, I mean, Tripp's. Tripp's very lucky in that we have a brand that naturally lends itself to UGC and is a very easy brand to work with because, you know, again, going back to product, we've got a beautiful sort of pastel hue range of cans that look lovely as a flat lay. They also look great styled in different locations. Very easy to work with. You know, it's a physical product, so you can do all sorts of exciting drinks and showcase it in multiple settings. But we also have a mission that everyone can talk about. There is no one in this world who doesn't feel the need to find their calm and who doesn't have an authentic story to tell there. So we're very lucky that we exist in this Quite rich, emotive territory. And actually we don't want to do too much to sort of curate that or yeah, of course, you know, put guardrails around it because it's something that organically exists in a really beautiful way. How does a trip influence look different to potentially like a trip advocate? So we use, we use our influencers more around our campaign moments and that's sort of where, you know, we, we want to guarantee certain timings, we want to line up certain channels. We probably have a specific drink that we, they want, we want them to talk about. So that's where we're kind of, we are sort of putting in, okay, there's a moment happening. We want you to be part of this moment and this is how, you know, we're showing up. And you've got quite a big celebrity backing, right? Yes, that was a relatively recent strategy that we've, you know, again, sort of organically grown from seeing celebrities. We've always had, you know, been very excited to see lots of celebrities, you know, using TRIP popping up in their feeds be like, oh my gosh, you know, so and so has got us in their fridge. So as the brand grew, it became a natural progression. Again, talking about looking at how you build trust. Yeah, you know, you've got trust from how you show up as a brand in a consistent way. You've got trust from the channels you show up on and you've got trust from the people you surround yourself with. And so we really wanted to look at, okay, well, who are these sort of celebrities that everyone knows in an instant and also trust their opinion that we can start working with. Especially as we started looking at expansion to places like the US where we're a relatively unknown brand. You have to very quickly build trust. And so working with more celebrities became a way for us to do that, I suppose from a real true advocacy point of view, like obviously, you know, the mega influencers and I think over the last few years there's been a lot of conversation like mega influencers one off campaigns. Obviously that doesn't build the trust, but I know quite a lot of brands that have long term partnerships with the mega influencers and the celebrity. The celebrities. And that, that does have a massive impact. It still creates so many successes for them. Yeah, again, it comes back to sort of how you manage that relationship. And you know, one our initial celebrities we worked with were also investors in Tripp. You know, we didn't want it to be just a paid partnership. It was okay. They really believe in us. They've got a stake in Tripp. You know, they are putting their sort of belief in the brand and trust in the brand as well. So it became more of a two way partnership and you know, looking at how we work with them over longer periods of time so that, you know, you develop a much stronger relationship with that person. And you know, it isn't just a flash in a pan like they popped us on their feed. It's like, oh no. We show up in their lifestyles as they go about their day to day routines. And it's lovely because you can show up in more authentic ways over a longer period of time. Yeah. And I suppose you talked about growing in the US and it's a conversation that we have a lot on the podcast. We have a lot of sort of UK brands that obviously want to break the US Is that a strategy that you'd say, because you mentioned like working with sort of like the mega influencers and the celebrities over there is how you kind of jump start that. Would you say that's been one of the tactics in terms of breaking that market? Yeah, I think if you look at the difference in the US to the UK, it's a much more celebrity driven culture. Okay. So you know there, and you've. One of the big learnings of the US is got to be, is very different to the uk. We sort of assume we're very similar but we're actually very culturally distinct. I'm still like discovering all these words from like we speak the same language but you don't understand what I'm saying. And so lots of little nuances that you think are quite obvious but actually aren't. So it is really important one that when you look at, you know, who you're working with that you've got to have your brand ambassadors, your influence. Everyone needs to reflect the market and so you kind of need to start a bit from scratch there. And just because someone's got a large following and it's a global following doesn't mean they're going to be the best ambassador for your brand. As you enter into a new market, you've almost, you've got to build a new, a new strategy there. Yeah. How's it going in the U.S. it's, it's, it's really exciting. It is, it's, it's moved much faster than we were anticipating. Which is, which is amazing. But also, you know, you're sort of catching your tail a bit. We're like, wow, this is, this is going okay. What do you think some of the Other tactics that you've done in the US has sort of led to some of that. That success that you were just talking about. I think it's a lot of being very tactical about who you align yourself with and where you're seen. So, you know, Coachella is obviously a massive moment now for all brands in the U.S. and again, we're not at the stage where we can do huge brand takeovers, but you can be very tactical about, okay, where are we showing up and how are we seeding that content everywhere. So it looks like we're everywhere, not that we've actually done a big takeover at somewhere like Coachella. So a lot of what we've kind of thought about is, you know, how can we take something that looks super trip, super impactful, that's at the right moment, but thought really hard about our seeding strategy. So how can we make sure then it's distributed everywhere? It needs to be. Whether that's through our own channels, whether that's through our employees, LinkedIn accounts, whether that's, you know, immediately into our selling decks and sort of creating as much noise as we can around these sort of smaller, more kind of tactical brand moments. Yeah. I just want to ask, as you've mentioned it, we've talked a lot about employee advocacy on the show over the last few weeks. So do you kind of class the employee side on LinkedIn as part of that kind of creative strategy? Yes, it's a massively. It's a massively impactful channel for any brand. I'm actually awful at it, so I feel really bad sort of talking about it. How did we find you? Oh, I know, I know. I don't think I posted on LinkedIn for a year, but I really should. I will post after this, but it's something that we, we do invest a lot of time in and, you know, one from explaining the benefit to our employees, because it's not just about the brand, it's a massively beneficial channel for them and not just linked. Sort of being an advocate of their role, of their career and the brand they work for is only ever going to benefit them. So that it's like, it's like a real life CV now, isn't it? Like everyone's talking about what they're doing in the role, how they're doing it, what they've learned, how they're progressing, celebrating their wins and, you know, when you've got a team of almost 100 people, that's a huge channel to be activating, all of whom are passionate and Know your brand inside out. So I think for that it's like, one, you've got to be clear on the benefit to them and, you know, if they understand the benefit to them, they'll be much more happy to do it and, you know, it's. And understand why it's important. And then two, what we've been looking at is like, how then do you give them the tools to succeed? Whether that's, you know, great imagery, great assets, showcasing how to write good stories, incentivizing them with, you know, one of our team values is amplification. Not just to post stuff on LinkedIn, but, like, how can you take something you've done and make, you know, 10x the amount of people who know about it? Yeah. And it's built into our company culture for everyone to be thinking, okay, I've done this amazing thing. It might be quite small in my little bubble, but how do I tell loads of people about it and how do I get loads of people excited about it? And you triple. The founders are incredibly good at that and they sort of really set the bar from day one. And so, you know, a lot of our early success, a lot of our retail wins have all come through LinkedIn. Yeah. And it's something that, you know, we, we see a lot of value in. Yeah. How do you manage it at scale? Is it something that sits with you as sort of brand? Do you still need some of that brand guardianship over what is going out there without obviously making it feel like you're not empowering them to go out and tell it in their own way? Yeah. So I'm actually, I don't love have that sitting within brands. I think the moment you put that in brand, it feels like it needs to be created. Yeah. It needs to sit with each of the teams. It needs to feel organic to their team and what they're doing. Not that they've got to sort of add a brand filter over it. If we're doing a good job as a brand, they should know how to do that. Anyway, if we've sort of educated the team, if, you know, we've created a really clear picture of the Tripp brand world, they should understand, like, ah, this is, you know, this is how we show up and this is how we talk about it and, you know, this is why we've done something. And so I think it's more on us to make sure that we're always educating the team at a, like, high, broad level of this is how Tripp shows up in the real world. But we're not, we're not the guardians of their own amplification. Yeah, okay, super interesting. I love that. And I want to just kind of go back to what we were just talking about. And I have to ask, like, obviously there's, you know, half the brands out there are sort of slapping community on so many things and it's just an email list to some or it's just, you know, replying to comments. How for you, what is the difference between, let's say your trip email list versus what your trip community looks like? Yeah, you know, I think it is very easy to knock the email list. Yeah, but they are there, they're real people. They're just choosing to interact via email. And so, you know, I think in terms of like how you show up for your community, it's, you've always got to meet them in multiple different ways on multiple different channels. There isn't sort of a one size fits all. And you know, you've got, you'll have to do some irl, you'll have to do, you know, some meet them on their social chats, meet them on email, whatever their preferred channel of communication is. So I think that's super important and making sure you've got that healthy balance, that you're not only doing it via one channel, that you're not just seeing your social channels as your only community measurement and metric that you're looking at. Okay, how are people engaging across all these different platforms and nurturing that? And I think it's a lot, we're thinking about it a lot at the moment in sort of the age of AI, where it's going to be incredibly easy. It already is, and even more so in sort of over the next year to become a brand that looks good with image generation and sort of all the asset creation and how the AI tools are working, it's going to be very easy to produce a brand that looks legitimate, that looks, feels and sounds like a multimillion pound brand already. How are we then going to stand out and feel credible and exciting to our community if everyone's going to be looking in the same polished format? And I think there will be a big push towards IRL and, you know, showing up in real places and doing more things in person that are slightly more unexpected and, you know, not easy to replicate and imitate online? So, you know, I think that will be one area that we'll be investing more in and we'll be sort of doubling down on as we look at. Okay, it's becoming a very crowded Space in this, you know, beautifully polished brand world territory that before you know it take you. It took so long to get to that point and you go through multiple mood boards, concepting, photo shoot, editing, retouching, all of that and suddenly you're looking at it, you're like, like you can do that in minutes online. Yeah. So what's the bit now that's going to give us that real gravitas to our brand? Where are we going to sort of spend our time finessing and really thinking about. And I think a lot of that will be how we show up in the real world with our real community. Yeah. And will that be something that you. These in real life events, are you thinking that you'll use those for amplifying what you can then put. Yes, exactly. You see it like it becomes our new photo shoot. So, you know, whereas currently you might create your brand world in a studio environment and think about how all of that sort of can be amplified across and cut out into all the different channels. What we'll be looking at more is, okay, we showed up at this event or we're here in this real place. How can that be turned into all the different pieces of content that we're going to amplify now across all the different channels? Yeah. Without, I suppose, as well, like alienating the people that couldn't be at those events. Because that's something that really bugs me is that, you know, and I don't think you're talking about this as an example. Like, you know, what gets me is when brands do flashy dinners and events for people with the biggest number of reach behind them. And, you know, there's these fancy drinks and goodie bags when I'm sat at home and I'm like, that looks nice. Yeah. What do I get from this? And I think for me, I agree with you. I think those in real life, spacing and creating those spaces for people and it doesn't even have to be anything lavish, you know, it's just about bringing the right people in the right space at the right time. But then if that is going online, what does the online consumer get from that? Like, what do I get to take away from it? What feeling do I get? What insight or takeaway? And that's what I would love to see more of rather than these branded. Yeah. You know, I think it again comes back to like the essence of what you're trying to communicate. And you know, often with those big fancy dinners, it's. They're sort of, they're showcasing. Here's our high end community and here's our beautiful place setting and why doesn't it look great? Where we saw our most success, our biggest success last year was during I think the pop. It was a pop up for the launch of our new wild strawberry drink. It was planned in a couple of weeks. We did it in partnership with a matcha bar. It was. We were just giving out free co branded drinks on a sunny morning in Covent Garden and there was a massive queue, loads of people came. We hadn't even promoted really that we were going to be there. And it felt so organic and the content looked beautiful and it perfectly captured that essence of what we wanted people to feel when they look at Trip. Yeah, I suppose word of mouth started to play a part in that as well. Exactly. But you know, again, you've got to think about it in a way of, of what you're amplifying. Like what, as you say, what is that doing? And are you putting out imagery that makes people feel like they've missed out or that they look at it and they're like, ah, that looks great. I can't wait for the next one. I can be part of that. Yeah. So true. And I just. You. You mentioned some of the how that works across the different platforms and am I right? Tripp is one of the biggest selling drinks on TikTok? Yes. And that is a completely native, unique platform in itself and that doesn't happen by accident either. And I suppose how TikTok works very different to Instagram and you know, especially LinkedIn. How do you kind of, I suppose you have to engineer some of that organic activity on TikTok. But then how do you engineer it? So it is still. I don't want to use the word authentic, but this is the only word that's coming true to the brand. I know. Gosh, you always end up with the same set of words. I know, they really work. Yeah, TikTok. I feel like every brand is constantly learning how to do TikTok and one thing we always try and do as a business is be an early mover on some of these new platforms. The sooner you can learn something, the quicker you'll be able to reap the success of it. And you know, we were same with Instagram. You know, we started experimenting with ads right from the inception Trip and that's obviously really benefited over time. Same with TikTok shop. I remember when it first kind of got put on the table. Like what? Like who's going to buy that? What is this? It's like qvc. But for now, look at it honestly blew our minds and I think, you know, our founders got involved with doing the tick shop, the TikTok shop lives and that was great content for the team, but it is, it's a different energy and I think you, you do need to, as a brand, you know, you've got your fixed sort of core tenants of what you're about and you know, your personality and that shouldn't change. But just like if I was to go into a library versus a bar, I'm going to behave in a different way. And you're tone and how you act and behave on those two platforms has to shift. Yeah. So, you know, we, we hide, we're, we're much more fast paced, we're much more energetic brand on Tick tock that, that's the nature of a platform. We're still trip, you know, we're still using our same language, our same creating our same brand world, but we're behaving in a different way than how we would do on Instagram. Yeah. Do you kind of have dedicated like TikTok team members that are purely native to TikTok and like say the same for other social channels? So we are building that out and that's something we've learned that it's, it's a whole different beast. And you know, you need people. I think, you know, to be a social media manager is one of the hardest jobs right now. You are constantly having to relearn your skill set. You know, you're not necessarily building experience on experience. You're having new platforms thrown at you with completely different algorithms. You're having algorithm updates which prioritize completely different ways of working. Yeah. The job title doesn't do it justice. It really doesn't. Yeah. I have a lot of respect for social media managers so we are looking at bringing in someone and building a team around that because as I said, it does behave in a very different way and you want people who can go really deep into that and understand it and sort of, you become absolute geeks on how to make that work at the same time as growing our other social channels. Yeah, that's very exciting. Is there any other platforms that are going to be on your radar next? I mean, I've just said it, but I think it's not a platform, but I think IRL is going to be one of the most important metrics or platforms. However you position it for brands moving forward, it's going to be the way that they become distinct to what I think will inevitably Become a sea of sort of quite samey looking brands. Yeah, Watch this space. Watch this space and then trip as a brand. I mean, you've moved away from sort of being this challenger brand to obviously being something much bigger. Now, I suppose for you as head of brand, how does that differ for you? Particularly as it scales or what are the challenges that come as it scales? Yeah, I think the sort of, the challenges you always feel like you're smaller than you should be because as you scale, you know, your targets get bigger and your sort of sights get set higher. So don't think you ever really lose that challenger brand mentality. That's something that you kind of make your peace with and you know that you'll always be doing more with less. You'll always be slightly behind the curve and where you want to be because your ambitions keep getting pushed and stretched. It's interesting being a first mover in the UK versus a second mover in the us. You know, we're not, we're not the first to market in the us. We were sort of the first to market and the category leader in the uk. And so when it comes to like looking at a global brand, you, you've again got to be behaving in two different ways because, you know, in the uk you're really sort of, how do you lead the category, how do you innovate, how are you kind of defending against the position you've built? Our move into the US from building a category and sort of, you know, one of the biggest drinks, soft drinks brands in the UK gives us a lot more confidence in what we know to be true to Tripp and how we want to behave and act as a brand, which, you know, we didn't have, you don't have at the start of building a brand. But now it's really nice to enter a new market and really excited about what we've learned from the UK and the confidence of what's worked, what hasn't to help us really double down on that in the us? Yeah. This is a bit of a random side note, but as you kind of grow as more of a global brand and obviously with the us, do you feel that you would need to, from a social perspective, kind of have these separate accounts so you're kind of taught like even from a language point of view and obviously if you kind of grow these in real life events and that's happening in the UK or you've got one in the us, do you feel they need to be separate from the two different audiences? Or can you kind of see it at a global level working? So on a functional level for something like TikTok, where you're running TikTok shops, you need to have separate, we need to build separate accounts. So and that's why we're investing more in building a team there because we've had to build separate accounts where, you know, know, looking at the US and UK quite distinctly, as I said, we, they are distinct. You know, culturally we are more distinct than we think we are. But we do see that there's enough global truth in our brand position that we can, the majority of our social platforms, we can do that as a global account. And it just means you're kind of looking at what we're putting out with both lenses and seeing. Okay, how is that going to resonate? Aside from language, culturally there are, you know, some general truths that you can play into that sunshine makes people feel happy. It's, you know, around the world that will always. A blue sky, no matter where you are is always going to make you feel happy. So, you know, we bring more of that into our content and try and avoid sort of doing too much. That it's, it's rooted in, you know, London landmarks or something that's you know, really obviously city based, et cetera. Yeah, no, it's an interesting one. I mean I've talked a lot around sort of sub niche accounts and you know, there's different kind of category obviously to you guys, but just some accounts that kind of have their main account and then they kind of create like a content series that kind of lives on a sub niche account. So people can just consume that and may not never be interested in the product. And I think it's, it's, it's just a super interesting space as to how brands kind of take that going forward. So yeah, I just wanted to dig into that now. I think, you know, you see, and it's really exciting to see as brands being much more creative in how they approach a social channel and you know, the freedom that you can build these extra accounts to do better storytelling and that I'm totally on board with and I think is, you know, if you've got the right story to tell and it sits better outside of your kind of core brand account, then that's exactly the right thing to do. Yeah, and you've mentioned the founders obviously a couple of times. Obviously very instrumental. And again, as the kind of brand grows and scales, do you feel, I suppose again the challenges of having that founder led human approach to the brand or do you feel as it scales, that founder kind of community piece kind of has to not disappear, but it kind of shifts in a way. Having, you know, a founder led brand is always an advantage to you because you'll always have one. It's, it's again, it's a big trust building piece, you know, to have founders who are visible and you know, happy to put their face to the brand, talk about the mission, why they started it is always going to bring people closer into your business. And I think that's true. No matter what size you are, what happens is that you get less, less time with founders, less time to do things. But we're lucky in that, you know, Dan, Liv see a lot of power in the brand and invest a lot of time in it. And especially Liv works very closely with the brand, is involved in a lot of the decision making we do. We'll always use any, any opportunity to get her in the content because she is ultimately the best salesperson for the brand. She knows it better than anyone else. She's, she is the customer. She's lived through all the customer pain points. Yeah, she's, she's, you know, thinking about it probably 100% of her time. And so that's an incredibly valuable asset for us to have and you know, work with. So we're very lucky in that sense. Sense. But it is just, it becomes a case of how much you can use. Yeah, exactly. As they, you know, get pulled in all sorts of different directions. Yeah. Because I, I always think, you know, there's some, there's some amazing founder led brands at the moment. I mean I. Inkey list always comes up for me. I mean I love the Inkey list and I think Colette is just doing a phenomenal job as a founder led brand. And you know, I'm seeing her do these tick tock lives. She's flying across the world, she's at all these events, she's doing this and you kind of think does this break at some point as you scale and you're scaling fast? Like, I mean, is Liv still on Lives? Because I imagine if she is, she'd be selling a lot. Because that's the other thing. As soon as you do get the founder in front of the camera, they are the best sales person. You know, we do, we work with her a lot of our growth assets and I think when you, when you launch a business, it's sort of like your baby, you know, it's something that you've created and put out into the world. So there's Always quite a strong emotion for every founder, founder led business I've worked at. There's always been a really strong emotional connection to the brand and you know, generally I found that they want to be as involved and possible as possible in kind of putting that out there. And I just want to quickly touch on partnerships because obviously we're seeing some really cool partnerships happening at the moment. Then obviously Trip and Calm. And you mentioned you partnered with another Matcha brand for the launch of the Strawberry drink. I suppose for you, like how does partnerships, how do you think about partnerships in terms of like really deepening the advocacy side of things rather than just kind of creating more reach? Yeah. So I mean, the Calm partnership was a very strategic move. Like obviously when you look at the two brands you're like, yeah, it's so obvious, guys, it's got to happen. But you know, it was, it was a big decision for us. You're putting another brand on your product and. But it really excited us because obviously we were moving into the US Calm in is like the number one mental wellbeing app in the US So it was such a ripe territory for us to work together. And when we look at partnerships, it's always from a mission based perspective. So we're not looking at it from just like, oh, how can we reach more people? It's. Does this genuinely offer someone a new way to help them find their calm? How does it help support their mental well being in a way that didn't exist before? And so, you know, what we were offering with our Calm partnership was you obviously get a drink of Trip, but also three months free membership of Calm. So that is first and foremost the sort of most important thing when we think about any partnership that we do. You know, we look at them across the range though, from like, you know, working with fitness studios or yoga spaces where we're kind of, you know, more luxury, light touch, you know, we're gifting, we're sort of making sure our products there and then right up until, up until product collaborations and I suppose what's next for Tripp? What's next for Tripp? So got some really exciting new drinks coming, coming through soon. I'm really looking at how we can bring them to life in much more exciting ways. The people we're partnering with for it, obviously a bigger focus on the US as well, which I think will be a very interesting next couple of months for us. Awesome. I can't wait. Again, watch this space. Yeah, watch this space. Alice, this has been amazing. Thank you so much. We finally got you on the show. I know. Only 12 months later. 12 months. One baby. But thank you so much. Well, thank you for having me.