I think it’s quite likely that the Paul Newman’s endorsement had a large effect. It’s impossible to say how well the brand would have done without his endorsement. My best guess is that it would have made it with just the charitable destination of profits, because it didn’t have a funding bottleneck. I do think it would have grown slower without Paul Newman actively endorsing it.
Celebrities are very often willing to put their face on anything for money. There’s literally millions of examples of that. I’m at least 99% sure you could get a celebrity to put their name on a sauce for the right amount of money, I haven’t googled but I’m sure there are examples of celebrity people on food packaging. How well it would work is hard to answer though.
Some people are cynical towards PFG’s. We were endorsed by one of the most famous authors in The Netherlands (Rutger Bregman) and there was some cynicism in the comments (I believe there were around 300 comments), but the vast majority of people seemed positive. The difference I think is really between giving away all your profits or just donating a small part to charity, which can be seen as charity washing. I have talked to a bunch of PFGs and they really do seem to enjoy great reputations. I specifically asked if they ever had to deal with bad PR and none had. For the major PFGs like Patagonia and Bosch, I’m aware that Patagonia had some negative PR about PFGs being a way to evade taxes, but the reporting on that was much smaller than the positive new (and you could say that any press is good press, which I’ve usually found to be true for the sales of brands after press, even negative press).
Celebrities are very often willing to put their face on anything for money. There’s literally millions of examples of that.
Yes, but it’d still be difficult for a for-profit salad dressing company to fully clone the Newman endorsement. I think the Newman endorsement is synergistic with Newman Own’s PFG status—the consumer understands that Newman is endorsing because he really stands behind Newman’s Own and its mission, not because someone is lining his pockets. It’s like the difference between repeated favorable press coverage in the New York Times and buying advertisements in the New York Times—they aren’t really the same thing. Moreover, I think whoever is hawking Kraft would face some unfavorable comparisons to Newman, and would thus demand a higher fee than in the counterfactual where Newman doesn’t exist.
I have talked to a bunch of PFGs and they really do seem to enjoy great reputations. I specifically asked if they ever had to deal with bad PR and none had.
I don’t think my main concern is “bad PR” per se. It’s my view that companies with characteristics similar to BOAS often run at a loss and/or need to re-invest almost all their profits into the business for an extended period of time. I think that is particularly likely where established market players will try to muscle it out, and a competitor could arise with easy access to VC money (both analyzed upthread). The PFG value proposition is much less legible if the company has been around several years and little has been donated to charity. So the crux here is how much time consumers will allow BOAS to start actually delivering meaningful sums to AMF, and how quickly BOAS can do that. My priors are skeptical, but I don’t claim expertise in evaluating specific business plans.
Companies like Bosch were—i assume—already profitable when they transitioned to PFG, so they could immediately show (rather than tell) their charitable plans. Part of my point about Newman was that his involvement may have provided reassurance to early-stage consumers that this was eventually going to work out and monies would eventually flow to charities. So neither would give me a strong sense of how long consumers would give BOAS a “PFG boost” without big donations flowing to AMF.
Incidentally, I own a Bosch dishwasher, which is not a minor purchase (~$1000), and had zero idea that they were predominately PFG (92%). They don’t seem to be advertising on that.
Celebrities are very often willing to put their face on anything for money. There’s literally millions of examples of that.
Yes, but it’d still be difficult for a for-profit salad dressing company to fully clone the Newman endorsement. I think the Newman endorsement is synergistic with Newman Own’s PFG status—the consumer understands that Newman is endorsing because he really stands behind Newman’s Own and its mission, not because someone is lining his pockets. It’s like the difference between repeated favorable press coverage in the New York Times and buying advertisements in the New York Times—they aren’t really the same thing. Moreover, I think whoever is hawking Kraft would face some unfavorable comparisons to Newman, and would thus demand a higher fee than in the counterfactual where Newman doesn’t exist. I agree with all of this.
I don’t think my main concern is “bad PR” per se. It’s my view that companies with characteristics similar to BOAS often run at a loss and/or need to re-invest almost all their profits into the business for an extended period of time. I think that is particularly likely where established market players will try to muscle it out, and a competitor could arise with easy access to VC money (both analyzed upthread). The PFG value proposition is much less legible if the company has been around several years and little has been donated to charity. So the crux here is how much time consumers will allow BOAS to start actually delivering meaningful sums to AMF, and how quickly BOAS can do that. My priors are skeptical, but I don’t claim expertise in evaluating specific business plans. We thought about this a lot. We allow voluntary checkout donations (no cost to us) which is already generating donations. We can also work with donation matching from a philanthropist. Suppose you’re a philanthropist that donates to AMF already, it would be interesting to do that partly through BOAS (e.g. for every purchase we match a €5 donation), where it wouldn’t be riskier or costlier, but you have the benefit of helping BOAS grow, with the potential to make large sums for AMF. We’re also transparent about needing money to grow so our donations will be relatively low. Transparency, donation matching and voluntary donations add up to amounts that seem significant to customers (e.g. a €10.000 total charity donation might seem substantial when you’ve only had €1 million in sales). Many PFGs, in my opinion, donate too much too early and hurt their future profit/donation potential. It might be because their customers demand it, but I don’t have data or knowledge on that. If customers demand earlier/higher donations that hurt growth, that might be an argument against PFG. On the whole we’ll have to see what the value of better employees and more loyal customers is as opposed to the negative value lower odds of raising funding and the potential necessity to donate.
Companies like Bosch were—i assume—already profitable when they transitioned to PFG, so they could immediately show (rather than tell) their charitable plans. Part of my point about Newman was that his involvement may have provided reassurance to early-stage consumers that this was eventually going to work out and monies would eventually flow to charities. So neither would give me a strong sense of how long consumers would give BOAS a “PFG boost” without big donations flowing to AMF. The successful large PFG’s, with the exception of Newman’s Own indeed pivoted to PFG when they had the cashflow/profits to do so. Based on what I’ve learnt from BOAS and talking to other smaller PFG’s I haven’t seen issues where customers would stop believing in PFGs. They either do well and donate some money to charities (in our case, voluntary donations and hopefully donation matching) or they die for various reasons (possibly sometimes because they’re not funded because of their PFG model).
Incidentally, I own a Bosch dishwasher, which is not a minor purchase (~$1000), and had zero idea that they were predominately PFG (92%). They don’t seem to be advertising on that. AFAIK no one I talked to knew about Bosch and they don’t seem to advertise with it. Employees of Bosch sometimes know but not always, and the region where they spend their profits does seem aware. I’m interested to know why Bosch decided to not actively promote their PFG status, where usually PFGs do. The same goes for Carl Zeiss. I believe it’s because they either don’t know the value and/or want to be modest families who rather give in silence. In Europe it’s not common to be vocal for philanthropists about their giving.
I think it’s quite likely that the Paul Newman’s endorsement had a large effect. It’s impossible to say how well the brand would have done without his endorsement. My best guess is that it would have made it with just the charitable destination of profits, because it didn’t have a funding bottleneck. I do think it would have grown slower without Paul Newman actively endorsing it.
Celebrities are very often willing to put their face on anything for money. There’s literally millions of examples of that. I’m at least 99% sure you could get a celebrity to put their name on a sauce for the right amount of money, I haven’t googled but I’m sure there are examples of celebrity people on food packaging. How well it would work is hard to answer though.
Some people are cynical towards PFG’s. We were endorsed by one of the most famous authors in The Netherlands (Rutger Bregman) and there was some cynicism in the comments (I believe there were around 300 comments), but the vast majority of people seemed positive. The difference I think is really between giving away all your profits or just donating a small part to charity, which can be seen as charity washing. I have talked to a bunch of PFGs and they really do seem to enjoy great reputations. I specifically asked if they ever had to deal with bad PR and none had. For the major PFGs like Patagonia and Bosch, I’m aware that Patagonia had some negative PR about PFGs being a way to evade taxes, but the reporting on that was much smaller than the positive new (and you could say that any press is good press, which I’ve usually found to be true for the sales of brands after press, even negative press).
Yes, but it’d still be difficult for a for-profit salad dressing company to fully clone the Newman endorsement. I think the Newman endorsement is synergistic with Newman Own’s PFG status—the consumer understands that Newman is endorsing because he really stands behind Newman’s Own and its mission, not because someone is lining his pockets. It’s like the difference between repeated favorable press coverage in the New York Times and buying advertisements in the New York Times—they aren’t really the same thing. Moreover, I think whoever is hawking Kraft would face some unfavorable comparisons to Newman, and would thus demand a higher fee than in the counterfactual where Newman doesn’t exist.
I don’t think my main concern is “bad PR” per se. It’s my view that companies with characteristics similar to BOAS often run at a loss and/or need to re-invest almost all their profits into the business for an extended period of time. I think that is particularly likely where established market players will try to muscle it out, and a competitor could arise with easy access to VC money (both analyzed upthread). The PFG value proposition is much less legible if the company has been around several years and little has been donated to charity. So the crux here is how much time consumers will allow BOAS to start actually delivering meaningful sums to AMF, and how quickly BOAS can do that. My priors are skeptical, but I don’t claim expertise in evaluating specific business plans.
Companies like Bosch were—i assume—already profitable when they transitioned to PFG, so they could immediately show (rather than tell) their charitable plans. Part of my point about Newman was that his involvement may have provided reassurance to early-stage consumers that this was eventually going to work out and monies would eventually flow to charities. So neither would give me a strong sense of how long consumers would give BOAS a “PFG boost” without big donations flowing to AMF.
Incidentally, I own a Bosch dishwasher, which is not a minor purchase (~$1000), and had zero idea that they were predominately PFG (92%). They don’t seem to be advertising on that.
Replies in bold.
Yes, but it’d still be difficult for a for-profit salad dressing company to fully clone the Newman endorsement. I think the Newman endorsement is synergistic with Newman Own’s PFG status—the consumer understands that Newman is endorsing because he really stands behind Newman’s Own and its mission, not because someone is lining his pockets. It’s like the difference between repeated favorable press coverage in the New York Times and buying advertisements in the New York Times—they aren’t really the same thing. Moreover, I think whoever is hawking Kraft would face some unfavorable comparisons to Newman, and would thus demand a higher fee than in the counterfactual where Newman doesn’t exist. I agree with all of this.
I don’t think my main concern is “bad PR” per se. It’s my view that companies with characteristics similar to BOAS often run at a loss and/or need to re-invest almost all their profits into the business for an extended period of time. I think that is particularly likely where established market players will try to muscle it out, and a competitor could arise with easy access to VC money (both analyzed upthread). The PFG value proposition is much less legible if the company has been around several years and little has been donated to charity. So the crux here is how much time consumers will allow BOAS to start actually delivering meaningful sums to AMF, and how quickly BOAS can do that. My priors are skeptical, but I don’t claim expertise in evaluating specific business plans. We thought about this a lot. We allow voluntary checkout donations (no cost to us) which is already generating donations. We can also work with donation matching from a philanthropist. Suppose you’re a philanthropist that donates to AMF already, it would be interesting to do that partly through BOAS (e.g. for every purchase we match a €5 donation), where it wouldn’t be riskier or costlier, but you have the benefit of helping BOAS grow, with the potential to make large sums for AMF. We’re also transparent about needing money to grow so our donations will be relatively low. Transparency, donation matching and voluntary donations add up to amounts that seem significant to customers (e.g. a €10.000 total charity donation might seem substantial when you’ve only had €1 million in sales). Many PFGs, in my opinion, donate too much too early and hurt their future profit/donation potential. It might be because their customers demand it, but I don’t have data or knowledge on that. If customers demand earlier/higher donations that hurt growth, that might be an argument against PFG. On the whole we’ll have to see what the value of better employees and more loyal customers is as opposed to the negative value lower odds of raising funding and the potential necessity to donate.
Companies like Bosch were—i assume—already profitable when they transitioned to PFG, so they could immediately show (rather than tell) their charitable plans. Part of my point about Newman was that his involvement may have provided reassurance to early-stage consumers that this was eventually going to work out and monies would eventually flow to charities. So neither would give me a strong sense of how long consumers would give BOAS a “PFG boost” without big donations flowing to AMF. The successful large PFG’s, with the exception of Newman’s Own indeed pivoted to PFG when they had the cashflow/profits to do so. Based on what I’ve learnt from BOAS and talking to other smaller PFG’s I haven’t seen issues where customers would stop believing in PFGs. They either do well and donate some money to charities (in our case, voluntary donations and hopefully donation matching) or they die for various reasons (possibly sometimes because they’re not funded because of their PFG model).
Incidentally, I own a Bosch dishwasher, which is not a minor purchase (~$1000), and had zero idea that they were predominately PFG (92%). They don’t seem to be advertising on that. AFAIK no one I talked to knew about Bosch and they don’t seem to advertise with it. Employees of Bosch sometimes know but not always, and the region where they spend their profits does seem aware. I’m interested to know why Bosch decided to not actively promote their PFG status, where usually PFGs do. The same goes for Carl Zeiss. I believe it’s because they either don’t know the value and/or want to be modest families who rather give in silence. In Europe it’s not common to be vocal for philanthropists about their giving.