Going Beyond Convention with Julia Straschil, Capri-Sun AG

“Going beyond convention” is Space's regular interview feature where we shine a spotlight on those marketers who are championing creativity that stands out and gets talked about.

In each interview, we pose three simple questions to uncover what it means to challenge the status quo and why it’s so important for brands, which brands do the marketing community admire for taking this approach and what advice our guest interviewee would give to fellow marketers ambitious to go beyond convention.

Our fourth guest is Julia Straschil, Global Brand Director at Capri-Sun AG.

A passionate brand leader, Julia has extensive national and international FMCG and infant nutrition experience. Currently Global Brand Director of Marketing at Capri-Sun AG, she is responsible for the No.1 kids drink brand worldwide with over 6 billion packs sold annually in over 120 countries. Julia has previously held senior marketing roles at Hero Group, PepsiCo, and Intersnack Group and, for the past four years, has been an Executive Leadership Coach.

Q> What does “going beyond convention” mean to you and is it important to Capri-Sun?

Julia> Going beyond convention, means challenging what people perceive as standards. Being daring to try something new, unseen, and unheard of.

At Capri-Sun, we are constantly aiming to grow our company, our brands, and our people. We are acting responsible in a world where health and sustainability are increasingly in demand and needed for our future. We offer our consumers great tasting juice drinks from a portfolio of choice, that offers different pack formats, pack sizes and various recipe with and without added sugar in popular flavours.

If going beyond conventions supports our objectives and is in line with our strategy, we are open to try and learn. We are currently in the initial stages for testing new digital media channel opportunities, where we spot a chance to increase reach and awareness in a still low advertised space. We have been the first advertisers on TikTok (@caprisun) in several markets, as we believed in the platform early, with the results proving to be positive. But, since we are a global family brand, we always need to make sure that we stay in line with different social frameworks for our fans from all age groups and cover various regional needs.

Q> What other brand(s) and their work do you admire for “going beyond convention”?

Julia> Rihanna and her team did an amazing job in bringing diversity and inclusion alive with her beauty and lingerie brands.

From the start, the foundations of her beauty line “Fenty Beauty” covered very pale to very dark skin colours for all genders, something you would expect to be “normal”. Many other competitors either focussed mostly on women with paler skin colours or didn’t focus their advertising on the full skin colour palette.

With launching her lingerie line “Savage x Fenty”, she went a step further by presenting the products with models of different sizes in a real and authentic style. She stated, “We don’t believe in division, we do not believe in excluding anyone”. From my point of view every brand should live by that, but while D&I is increasing, there is still a long way to go.

When it comes to design developments and going beyond convention, I admire what Mauro Porcini does at PepsiCo. He and his team manage to create beautiful and attention-grabbing designs that often stretch the brand, but still keep the brand’s spirit and its core DNA alive. Some of the bottle and can designs are more art orientated rather than just standard beverage designs. As a result, I assume that the design might end up on consumers’ shelves, instead of being thrown away, proving a strong brand impact that goes beyond typical Design developments or PR news.

Q> What advice would you give fellow marketers ambitious to “go beyond convention”?

Julia> With today’s sector bursting with limitless possibilities in market spend, innovations and complexity in media planning – maintaining consistent business, comms and strategies are absolutely key for success. When you throw in decreasing consumers attention spans and general consumer overload of messaging – the clarity of messaging becomes even more essential.

That said, going beyond convention should always take place with a clear objective in mind and be routed in (consumer) insights.

Disruption just for the sake of it doesn’t make sense. With real disruption I would, if possible, always focus to test upfront, otherwise it just becomes a marketeer’s playground that can lead to high spending’s without a desired and/or sustainable impact. Then enjoy the ride and have fun… there’s a very rewarding element in being daring if it pays off.