Ninety percent of CPG brands fail. In beverage, Coca-Cola’s own research found that only 3% ever reach $10 million in revenue. Walk any trade show floor and you’ll see exactly why — gorgeous packaging, real passion, booths full of energy, and almost nobody who can clearly answer why their product needs to exist.
Sydney Tomasello, Director of Strategy at Fortnight Collective has spent years watching this play out across beverage and CPG. Her read on it is direct: marketing isn’t the problem. Strategy is. And when fundamentals are broken, the kindest thing an agency can do is say so — before taking a single dollar.
A lot of trade shows feel like museums
Probiotic soda is the case study Tomasello keeps coming back to. One brand was hot, then 100 others followed — not because founders identified a gap, but because they saw something trending and reacted. “We’re putting a million products out without solving a problem,” she says. “And that is always going to lead to endless problems that marketing cannot fix.”
The real issues show up before any campaign is built: product formulation is off, distribution is a mess, unit economics don’t pencil. Generating demand when supply can’t meet it isn’t a marketing strategy — it’s expensive chaos.
Executing a broken brief should be illegal
Tomasello doesn’t soften this one. When supply chain is broken, when product formulation is wrong, when distribution doesn’t exist — the answer is pause, not push. Taking the brief and running wastes the client’s budget, destroys the agency’s credibility and creates founders who no longer trust creative work.
“It’s expensive for everybody,” she says. And when the stakes are someone’s life savings — a house leveraged, a retirement account emptied — just executing isn’t service. It’s harm.
Demand before distribution
One of the more persistent mistakes Tomasello sees: founders chasing distribution before anyone’s asking for the product. She worked with one client who sidestepped traditional retail entirely — slotting fees, brokers, the whole machinery — and went deep into fitness studios instead. Soul Cycle. Barry’s. Equinox. Authentic demand built in real context, with people who cared.
The alternative — heavy paid media in markets where the product can’t be found — is a failure mode that’s both expensive and entirely avoidable.
Earning the right to say it
Tough love doesn’t start with honesty. It starts with listening.
Tomasello’s framework is built on earning the right to deliver hard truths before swinging opinions. That means understanding not just the brand reality, but the business one — margins, distribution, internal dynamics, who the founder ultimately answers to. When a brief arrives that contradicts everything discovery surfaced, the relationship has to be strong enough to handle an honest response.
“The goal for us isn’t to be right,” she says. “The goal is to build something that benefits everybody.”
And sometimes the answer is walking away. If a founder wants a pair of hands to execute and not a strategic partner, Fortnight Collective isn’t the right fit. Knowing when to cut it off is its own form of respect.
Discovery starts with business, not brand
The questions most agencies skip are the ones Tomasello starts with. What has gone wrong in past agency relationships? Who buys twice — and why? Is the long-term goal an acquisition or an enduring brand? Where is demand coming from versus where the founder assumes it is?
“If you don’t understand the business model, you’re kind of just decorating.” The creative might look great. It won’t perform. And it leaves behind a founder who’s now out of money and more skeptical of agencies than before.
Pick your hard. Tomasello’s version of it: take the difficult conversation early, build something that works, and save everyone from the longer, more expensive road waiting on the other side.
Learn more
Fortnight Collective
Sydney Tomasello LinkedIn
Fortnight Collective LinkedIn
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
