Selling Cocktails to the TikTok Generation with Kahrissa Bell, Mr. Consistent

Commission Factory. I hope it's afternoon where you are, because this ep might get you in the mood for a cheeky cocktail. Hey, I'm Michelle Lomas and in this episode of Flex Your Hustle, I'm talking to Carissa Bell Chief Brand Officer of the cool cocktail company, Mr. Consistent. We all know what it's like if you're at a bar and a person in the line in front of you orders a bunch of cocktails, bet you wish you double parked earlier! Well, Mr. Consistent wanted to solve that problem and cut down the time it takes to make a great tasting flash cocktail. Founded by Jarrad Bell, Jeremy Davidson, and Michael Sebire right at the start of 2020. The idea was to create quality pre-prep cocktails in order to be able to serve customers at venues faster. Things were looking promising, but then we all know what happened in 2020. With people locked down and certainly not ordering cocktails in bars, a pivot was required and that is where our guest, Kahrissa Bell, comes in. Kahrissa started in April, 2020 as the General Manager of Mr. Consistent and is now the Chief Brand Officer. Kahrissa has worked with Showpo, Princess Polly, Billabong, The Iconic, and more, and she wasn't going to let a little global pandemic get in the way of growing a fun cocktail brand. Join me as I chat to Kahrissa about the Mr. Consistent story and how they are creating an iconic brand for the Gen Z cocktail- loving audience. I do feel like we need a a bit of a cocktail. I know it's 10:00 AM.

Yeah, I know. We could have done it.

We should have done it. Bit of mimosas never hurt anybody.

Absolutely.

But yeah, thank you so much for joining. I think this is gonna be a really interesting chat particularly because we've had a lot of brands on here selling lots of different categories, talking about lots of different tactics, but we actually haven't had one on the show that talks to the audience that you guys market to, you know, the ever elusive Gen Z that we're all trying to figure out. But let's start off first and foremost with the brand. Tell us how it came about.

So, Mr. Consistent was born out of the idea of wanting to be able to bring quicker and great standard quality cocktails to more people, and the three founders had worked together previously on a large venue on the Gold Coast and had batch cocktails in the venue. That part of it is not really a new process, but getting it to a point where its shelf stable and it tastes great every time, and that somebody else could come in and use that bottle if they wanted to, or go down the route where we've gone at the start, give it direct to the consumer. It was built out of, I guess, a bit of a need for them and turned it into more of a want for the rest of the population because I didn't know prior to Mr. Consistent that I could have a cocktail at home. So, I think it was just a really great timing in terms of the three of the directors, Jeremy, Jarrad, and Mikey all aligning and having that space to get together and really create something. The planets aligned in terms of timing and then literally combusted because as we know, that time of year led into COVID.

Hello, COVID?

Um, yeah. Thanks for popping your head up there. But it was still a great idea that like I remember sitting there when my husband, Jarrad is one of the founders, and when he had talked to me about the idea and I was like, Oh my goodness. That's amazing. Like we definitely need to be a part of that, and friends in the hospitality industry were like, absolutely I would use that at all of the events that were, that was still a thing. So we were like, all right, even though the world is kind of slowing down, we are not sure what's going to happen. We think it's still time to push ahead and go for it. We launched the website on the 2nd of April in 2020, which we were ready to go on the 1st but didn't want people to think it was an April Fools prank so we held off until the next day. We saw support right away, obviously from friends and family, but a lot of people were already at home at that stage, so rather than going the original route of selling into other venues that, from the experience that the guys already had, we chose to change a little bit and go direct to consumer, which is, I guess, where Jarrad and my background was a little bit more. We were hand delivering at that stage and trying to then work out how we can ship these glass bottles and things to everyone. That was, I guess the launch and the start of, of something that we thought was going to be real. And then the two years, two and a half years following that has just been like, we've been like little hamsters on treadmills trying to keep it going and figure out what the next move is and make the brand stable.

So you created the idea of this brand and product off the back of building something for B2B.

Yep.

And thanks to COVID, you had to pivot to B2C

Yes.

Was that a hard pivot? Did you guys just go for it? How'd that pan out?

Jarrad and I, probably not a hard pivot at all because it's what we knew, and I guess even for Mikey and Jeremy, like they're used to being around the customer directly rather than through the business side of things. So I guess the B2B at the start probably would've been a harder slog for us that we were not aware now knowing what we know. So I think it was a good move, but it was definitely a pretty sudden kind of turn of events. Everything shut so quickly. It was, it was sudden, but I, I'm glad that we did it that way, we really built that loyal customer following that way rather than selling to someone to then sell to someone else.

Mm. Well, it was obviously such a good time to launch a product such as yours because so many people were at home and we were nostalgic for the things that we were missing.

Absolutely,

No doubt a product that would've been really popular. So let's talk about your consumer. For me, I'm really excited to talk about Gen Z. They're a little hard to reach.

Yes, they are.

I've never felt so old in my life. So tell me, who's your audience?

So we've just gone through a profiling and strategy for our, our marketing team, and we've really broken it down, I guess, into two kind of core audiences with a third as well. But it's the 18 to 25 year old girl. She's the one that is usually the most social, out drinking with her friends. Usually still lives at home, has that disposable income, and I guess it's the person that everyone is vying for their money share from. Usually they're, I guess, the trendsetters that are, if we are getting them to adopt, then everybody else is going to follow. That's who we target first and foremost, but we also don't want our messaging to just being like cocktails of the girls. So our secondary customer is pretty much a similar age bracket. It probably stretches a little bit higher to about 30, and then that's typically the guys like, we want to make sure that we're covering that cocktails are for everybody. Like we don't want to only market cocktails to girls because we already know that girls are going to be a sucker for a pink cocktail but we want the guys to be drinking the cocktails as well, and everybody in between. If we've got them, they're the ones that are taking their cocktails home for mum and dad, grandparents, all of that kind of thing, and enjoying them together. We like to target the people that are probably making the most decisions in terms of what they're buying constantly, and then hopefully they're the ones spreading the word of this is actually a really great product and sharing it to people that aren't as easy to market to. So Gen Z are definitely hard to do it right, but I think like if we were targeting the older generations, it's really hard to kind of get their focus because they're not as active on socials, which is where we spend a lot of our time and effort. Hopefully the young ones keep us relevant and tell us when we're doing a good or a bad job and then reshape things around that.

I love that. When we spoke the other day and I said, well, you're a millennial, how are you finding targeting to Gen Z? And you were like, I have a young team.

Yeah, I'm now like, I have to be the person that's like, will you guys make the call? Because I'm now the old person. I'm the next generation. The joke is, it's a running joke in here that none of them know any of the music or anything like that these days of like what I know, and I don't feel like I'm old either. I think because it's cocktails we typically do draw in younger people in terms of who wants to work here and we have a pretty useful fun brand as well, so we're fortunate that our team is definitely within our target market, so we lean on them a lot. And our old customer happiness manager, she's just moved on, but she used to be like our sounding board and we would go through a whole strategy day and think that we'd come out with these amazing ideas, and then we'd walk out and be like, Brookey, what do you think about this? And if Brooke cuts it down, we're like, oh my goodness, we, I'm so glad we didn't want that to market because we would've got grilled. So, um, we definitely lean on the internal team to help us talk to the right people.

That's the key, isn't it? If we just acknowledge we're not there anymore, let's find people within the right generation who can help with the ideas. Definitely I love that there's a sounding board. There's like quality control that has to happen, isn't there?

Yeah.

It's so sad when you jump on TikTok and you realise how much our generation is completely destroyed by the younger generations, so, you know, we're not as cool as we thought we were.

The older generation on TikTok and we're like, anyone over 25 you saying he's old? And I was like, oh my goodness. Okay.

Oh, it's so sad, but, so true. So I love boys and cocktails.

Yeah.

How did that insight come about?

I think we're, at our core, a company for everyone. So even internally, like, we wanna make sure that everyone feels accepted and acknowledged and that we're not leaving people out like we say, we have a target market because we know we wanna get those people to spend and influence everybody else. We make sure that, internally, we're accepting of everyone and we have a lot of guys that in the business that really, really love cocktails and we're like, we need to make sure that they're represented in everything that we do as well. We definitely, were trying to, I guess, break a bit of the stigma around drinking cocktails and just that bit of toxic masculinity that we wanted to shake down a few of those walls. We try and include messaging that would be relevant for everyone. But we've done some things, I guess, to make sure that cocktails are thought about by the guys as well and not just a female drink. So, we did a collaboration with three of the NRL players and they came in and like designed a cocktail and exactly how they wanted it to taste and what reminded them of childhood, and it turned out to be a pink cocktail, which was even more fantastic.

What was the flavour?

That's a watermelon and strawberry margarita and my absolute favorite cocktail ever. Add a bit of chilli to it and oh my goodness. It's just great that at the launch party there's a room full of guys and footy players at that, and they're all standing there drinking pink cocktails. It's just like, it's nice. We're not saving lives, we're not doing anything serious, but it's just nice to see that a few of those barriers breaking down.

It's fabulous that you're breaking down those barriers because I think more often than not, it's, it's older marketers like us, or maybe, you know, I don't wanna call us old, but it is older marketers like us who've grown up with those stereotypes. Who would assume that young men don't drink cocktails.

Yeah.

But you know, I go out on the occasion that I do when I've got a babysitter and all the men, all the young boys are drinking cocktails. They love it.

Absolutely.

And there's something that they really enjoy about it too. So, you know, that's a generation that they're not driven by stereotypes that we were as millennials, and so why, why should we continue to reinforce it? I love that you guys have just taken that away.

Yeah.

And given that sort of permission and excitement for men to discover something new in cocktails as well.

Yeah, we love beer, but we also love a pink cocktail. Like, let's, let's be able to have that whoever we are.

Yeah. Exactly.

It's a bit of fun.

I loved seeing the campaign on your site too, and here's some gorgeous NRL players drinking some pink cocktails all dressed up. It's got such a lovely feel to it and it's, it fills me with a bit of joy to see men being free to be whatever they wanna be.

Yeah.

If they wanna drink a cocktail, they gonna drink a cocktail.

Yeah. And they, they loved it. You can see it, I guess, in the shoot. Like everyone was so happy, and it was a really good vibe and everyone's drinking exactly what they wanna drink and having a good time while we do it.

Let's talk a little bit about TikTok because I know it's your main channel, I believe, from a marketing perspective. What are you doing in the space?

We've just had a, um, a new social media specialist start to really kind of focus on TikTok and it's really hard knowing when to talk about what your product is and knowing when to just pretend like you're not selling a product at all. We've all grown up knowing Facebook and Instagram, and being able to kind of talk about what you're doing, and it's heavily curated and everything's polished. Looks perfect, even if you're trying to not look perfect, and we know how to do that, like that's in our DNA now, but going to TikTok and trying to understand how to make it well, how our customer wants to respond to us on that platform, it's just completely different and we had mixed a few things in terms of what the product is and showing it in like a video format, I guess, of like, of what an Instagram post would be. It just falls flat every time, but if we show behind the scenes of the product being made, or maybe we'll have Mikey, our product director, on there talking about how to like bougie up your cocktail and do it at home and do it yourself, that kind of thing goes off. It's good because that's what our brand is anyway. Like we wanna just be about having fun and good vibes and it's cocktails and a fun lifestyle. It's just the, the shift of like, if you put so much effort into a channel and you've got a wage to pay, we can't advertise on it because we we're an alcohol product so it's just all direct. If you're focusing that much on it, you wanna make sure that you're getting some kind of return from putting that much effort into a platform, and that's the really tricky part because you can't sell to them. They'll come after you and, and bash you out of TikTok and they're like, we don't wanna ever see your page again. Yeah, it's a tricky balance at the moment, but I'm definitely an advocate for TikTok and it being the way that everything's going in the future. We're just figuring it out as we go I think.

So there's no special secret sauce then.

There seems to be when there's guys without shirts on, that does help, which is the exact opposite of Instagram. But um, no, we're trying not to use that formula. We just wanna show them behind the scenes and what they keep engaging with and, um, a bit of business advice seems to work well for us as well, of how we kind of did grow things quickly. That's worked well, but we don't have a secret sauce yet, if anyone's got it let us know.

That's really interesting though, that your hustle story seems to be something that people are engaging with on TikTok.

Yeah, I, it kind of falls into that, like the behind the scenes, you see the, the polish, the output on Instagram, but then to see how difficult it can be and not so polished on the other platform, that definitely resonates with people and they can apply that to whatever they're working on to kind of figure out the next steps as well. So like we are, beverage manufacturing, but we are still direct to consumer and, uh, eCom presence and things like that and working out how to get wholesale brands on board. I think there's definitely similarities to a lot of other industries when we show that side of things.

That's really great advice, I think, for any of the marketers or founders listening, because I suppose that is an audience that, particularly that generation, they wanna own something, they wanna do something, they wanna create something.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

They're not a generation that's very happy to just sit in a 9-5 job.

Yeah, absolutely.

Be paid a salary and walk out the door. They wanna be their own boss and create, and so that inspiration from brands must be really important to them.

Yeah. Yep. We definitely get a ton of great feedback and people asking questions and things when we do open it up. It's a tricky balance because you don't wanna open everything up like there's competitors coming out now, I guess over the last year or so. The first year and a half we really didn't have any competitors to go against and there's a fine line between sharing your secrets of how you do everything and do it well and not having people copy you and latch onto your coattails but also, at the same time, we're confident in what we're doing. We're able to share that with, most of it, with our customer.

And what are some of the other things that you've learned in TikTok specifically?

That there is absolutely no rhyme or reason. So something that I might think looks fantastic and follows the TikTok rules of what's typically worked in the past? No, it won't work. Forget about it. If you think it's gonna work, it's not gonna work. But I would say consistency has been key. Like we've been working on trying to grow our followers and just make sure that we've got that engaged audience we really had and have a engaged audience on Instagram. There's nothing worse than following a brand that doesn't care about who they're talking to, so we wanna make sure that we are building that audience and engaging with them.

It's a conversation I've actually been having with brands for a long time, even before TikTok came about, but same with Instagram, same with Facebook. It's not about how perfect that one post is, you just need to be consistent and keep trying. If something flops, it's fine. So don't spend four weeks storyboarding and doing three rounds of copy and everything else because it's gonna be one second in and out, and if they don't like it, they'll just move on. And then you've wasted thousands of dollars in creative fees, coming up with one

Absolutely.

Piece of content that just doesn't land.

Yeah.

Consistency more and obviously just try, try, try many different things, different tacks.

And try not to analyse everything because sometimes you just can't explain it.

Don't be too serious about yourself. That's not what social's about. Right?

Absolutely.

So TikTok, strong channel there for you and love what you guys are doing, obviously really making a concerted effort to see how you can grow this and, and testament to you for bringing an expert on board, who is really gonna take ownership of that. Well, I guess it, what it does say for anyone listening is that there is huge opportunity here and it's clearly reaping rewards for you if you're ready to put a full-time team on it. So what else are you doing? I know collabs are a big thing.

Yeah.

What sort of collaborations have you done and how, how have they performed for you? Aside from beautiful NRL boys.

We had definitely pinpointed collaborations as a thing from the start. How we did that, we weren't sure at the start, it was just a lot of influencer marketing type relationships and getting them to kind of share their piece. But then as we did grow and get a bit of business behind us and people realising that we were legitimate and not just making cocktails in a garage or whatever it might have looked like at the start, we really honed in on what we could do. One of the first collaborations we did was actually, that was the first one, was with SurfStitch. So they wanted to bring out a, a gift with purchase in terms of a custom mixer over summer, which was fantastic. That was our first summer and they really wanted to shake the mould of what was a gift with purchase at that time. Like there's your typical key ring or hat or towel or whatever it was that has probably been rinse and repeated. They definitely saw something new in terms of giving their customer a taste of summer. So we worked with them to build, uh, that's the pineapple and mandarin flavored cocktail. We worked with them on tasting and gave them exactly what they wanted, the taste of summer, and that was our first proper collaboration in terms of a, a co-branded label. The next one that we did was with Ellie Watson from Elsa's Wholesome Life. We wanted to bring something out for International Women's Day and that was March last year we brought that out. Asked her if she'd like to come and create a cocktail, and that's the first one where we had it, somebody in and creating it themselves. So for SurfStitch, we were giving it to them, then we'd come back with a revision and a revision and they would try it like that. Ellie was literally in there with all of the different syrups and tinctures and flavours and that, that Mikey had created based on her flavour profile that she wanted to do and what reminded her of her childhood and fun times in summer and things. She created a Peach Sour essentially. It's a really beautiful cocktail, El Peachy, and we every year we're like, oh my goodness, can we bring that back? Because it was received so well, but it also is such a beautiful cocktail because she put so much energy and effort into making sure it was really beautifully balanced and everybody would enjoy it. It's just great that we've got a few different ways that we can collaborate and yeah, share each other's audiences, but also do something really fun.

And it's a tactic. Collaborations and true collaborations as in collaborating on the creation of a product, um, that a lot of the brands that we have on the show talk about has being really successful for them. From your perspective, how is it different from say, you know, an influencer partnership where maybe you sign them up for 12 months and they talk about the cocktail once a month. Like how, how does it create that much more impact for you?

I just feel like people can see when things are authentic these days. Like maybe five years ago, we wouldn't know if an influencer was just talking about something because they were paid to or they weren't. Like, now you can tell, you know when somebody actually cares, like people that you wanna work with at, at that, um, level of influence I guess, have an audience that really understands them. They're really bought into their lifestyle and what they do and what they talk about. So if you're somebody that doesn't drink and then all of a sudden you're bringing out your own cocktail, like people just see straight through it. Whenever we talk about it, we wanna make sure it's with people that believe in, I guess, our product as well, but it also makes sense to them. Otherwise we're just going to get cancelled. Like there's no point even doing it. Authenticity, absolutely, always.

Other than those sort of tactics, what else are you doing from a marketing perspective?

This is our year of growing up. Essentially we're still a startup, like we are still figuring things out as we go. But I guess from the outside we look a bit further on than a startup like we have ranging with the big players in Australia and we've worked really hard to get our product in as many venues and doors as we can, so it's a little bit of, I guess, fake it till you make it.

When we spoke, you mentioned all of the tactics as well that you are using to scale. Um, particularly in the affiliate marketing space.

Definitely been an area that we've always wanted work with other people to share growth. So we had started with Influencer Marketing from the get go and had built that, um, program out and as soon as we were kind of big enough to work on an affiliate program as well, we went there straight away. We wanna make sure that yeah, we're as present as we can be without it looking inauthentic. We have slowed down our influencer marketing a little bit recently, um, with like direct partnerships because we wanna make sure that we're not just shoving our product down the same people's throat all the time. We want people to discover it themselves that we've worked more now on showing the product on other platforms and using it through other sites as well to just get that exposure but not have it look like if, If it's an ad, it's an ad and that's okay. But if it's somebody constantly spruiking something that doesn't feel authentic anymore, then that's where we draw the line. We've worked pretty hard, I guess on growing that to a point where it's now performing really well, and we're really happy with that consistent type of revenue that we get from it.

It's, it's interesting that you mentioned that about influencer marketing and sort of that balance that you need to find. Are you finding particularly even with that younger audience, that it can be a little tricky at this point because of that kind of lack of trust?

Yeah, absolutely. Like I can tell and I dunno if it's because we're more exposed and thinking about it all the time, but I can tell absolutely when somebody is just being paid again to, to talk about something and we're definitely veering away from all of that. If people come to us and they say that they wanna use our product for an event or, or a party, or they've got a dinner or something, like, absolutely, we're gonna gift you that product for sure. But paying people to say good things about our brand, I don't think we need to do anymore. Like we wanna work with people that want to create and have fun and enjoy the product as well. It's been a bit of a shift, I guess, but now that we've got a bit more brand foundation, that's been something that we've been okay to do.

Mm. That authenticity is so key. I, I mean, I agree with you. There's some influencers out there that, that content looks really nice and then you go on their channel and every single post is a different product.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's just they're there for business and that's not what the, really what the channel was, was founded on.

No.

And so if you wanna build that trust, it has to be authentic to your point, and relevant in a, in a relevant environment with somebody who really loves the product.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. They're gonna use it already, then let's, let's work with them in that aspect and say, okay, well, can we tack on and pay you to create a bit more content or something at that thing that you're already doing. Rather than just making everything look staged and perfect we're past that now. We're, we're TikTok. We're real and raw.

That's right, we are. We are real and raw and that's kind of how you have to communicate. Wonderful. So thank you. I wanna end with one question, which is, for the people interested to trial your product or, you know, what's coming out next, what are you working on?

There is something launching at the start of November, which people will be very happy to hear. We've been asked about this cocktail for so long, so we're bringing out a French Martini at the start of November. We also have been known to do a surprise for Black Friday each year, and I have confirmed that we have a surprise for Black Friday this year. So I can't tell you that one, but that's not too far away as well.

Cheeky. Love it.

There's lots of things in the works.

Well, thank you so much for joining us. Congratulations on the success of the business so far and where, where you are heading and where you're going, and look forward to watching your journey as you progress.

Fantastic. Thanks so much for having me.

That was really helpful and informative, especially if you've been wondering how to reach Gen Z. Speaking of consistent, I think we've been bringing you some pretty consistently good guests here on this podcast. If you agree, please leave us a little Apple review saying so. Also, if you know a hustler out there that hasn't heard of this pod yet, let them know. I'm Michelle Lomas. Thanks for listening and keep hustling. Commission Factory.