Raphaely: I live in Newlands/Mordor, I work next to an airport and I play with dolphins, waves and big, conspicuous chunks of sandstone.
Raphaely: I have been known to sell some above-average hot chocolate, and I have a solid repertoire of bawdy Mexican and Scottish jokes…
Raphaely: Muddled. A largely accidental degree in international relations and political philosophy that sort of fell into my first job in advertising, which involved a conspicuous amount of liquor brands. This then mutated into brand management of many of those same liquor brands, which then morphed into a jumped-up, upstart food brand.
Raphaely: Terry Pratchett, Ian Banks, happy children, happy wife, sea view, Guinness and any Irish Rugby victory. Not complicated.
Raphaely: If you don’t mind bandits and rustlers from time to time, the best part might be that the local food industry has a sort of 'frontier town', wide, open prairie feel to it. It’s the Wild West and almost every day is likely to produce something new. It’s never dull.
Raphaely: I’m not sure that it does. Ideally, before anything else happens, I indulge myself with a nice, long, quiet run and a huge cup of coffee. From then, my day can range from checking store shelves all across the country, to dealing with our various export markets, to personally handling consumer queries and contact mails, to being asked for an opinion about a new product design. I spend a lot more time focusing on actual physical distribution and sales now, though. NOMU is pretty all-encompassing; messy, and delightful.
Raphaely: Reliable internet connection, social media, radio and an army of well trained in-store promoters. And running shoes. They help.
Raphaely: Tough one. We love what’s happening in the artisanal and craft space but there will always be concerns about the scalability of these smaller brand outfits. It’s hard enough to meaningfully succeed in this space in most international markets, but for all the genius and innovation we see in this space here in SA, I do often wonder if there is really a big enough market for all the cleverness that’s on offer. It’s a very small pond and not a lot to go around.
For credit where it’s due, all the major retailers have been doing some great work in developing really very clever and innovative answers to drawing in more customers, depending on their specific customer set. I think some very astute stuff is being done here but it’s often overshadowed by other more practical issues like food prices.
That said, I am always very proud of what we have achieved on NOMU, which has mostly been on a shoestring and without any external investment.
Raphaely: Legislatively, there is still a lot that needs to be done to free up smaller, emerging businesses at the SME stage. Over-regulation serves a purpose but I believe it could be discouraging a lot of smart people from pursuing new ideas. Aside from that, I think everyone could afford to spend some time really interrogating what it means to provide real ‘customer care’ in a connected world where customers, very definitely, simply want to be heard.
Raphaely: In terms of new products that would be telling, but I can promise you it’s delicious. On our marketing side, we are focusing very heavily already on creating a whole thread of festive and Christmas 2017 material, which we are very excited about. We are also spending a lot of time trying to identify and place the brand into more direct but unusual places, away from traditional or conventional media. This is a fun and loose space to play, where we are often going to unsuspecting people and presenting ideas about how we can work with them to help them, while they help us get the word out. We call this sort of guerrilla-style, alliance brand-building work ‘elevation by association.’
Raphaely:’Organic,’ ‘free-from’, ‘sugar is the new cancer’, ‘vertical integration.’ That sort of thing…
Raphaely: Running or paddling. Always in the same stretch of road or sea, oddly.
Raphaely: My Mexican accent is bullet-proof.
Raphaely: Too many pictures of my family, and a few of my dogs, and far, far too many of bad shelf merchandising.
Raphaely: Specifically? I’d say ‘Don’t go into food – you have been duly warned.’ Generally, I would then add ‘Are you really sure about this?’ And if those two failed, I would say; ‘Never mind manoeuvres! Go straight at them!’… but that comes from Lord Nelson, and so technically I’d be plagiarising, even if it’s good advice.
Simple as that. Be sure to follow both Raphaely himself and NOMU on Twitter.
*Interviewed by Leigh Andrews.
