Brand Growth Strategies: Insights from Stu Macdonald's Journey with ManiLife
In a conversation with Stu Macdonald, founder of ManiLife, we explore effective ways for brand building and growth. Stu's journey from accidental peanut butter maker to creating one of the UK's most loved craft peanut butter brands offers valuable insights into what makes challenger brands succeed in today's marketplace.
From Argentine Adventure to Craft Peanut Butter Pioneer
Stu's journey began with a decision to postpone a corporate career in accounting: "I basically started when I was offered a job at a company called PWC, which is big accountancy firm, and I knew that I didn't really want to be one, so I decided that I'd put it off and move to Argentina." What started as a gap year turned into a formative business experience when he encountered a peanut butter social enterprise: "We used to go around soup kitchens basically teaching kids and families how to use this stuff. And it was like magic."
This sparked an entrepreneurial idea when he noticed a gap in the UK market: "It was around this time that peanut butter in the UK was growing really fast, but still no one was speaking about it the same way we spoke about coffee, chocolate or wine. It was very commoditised and there was no craft and in particular there was no provenance."
Finding Their Way Through Adversity
The early days of ManiLife weren't smooth sailing. As Stu explains: "The day the first ton of peanuts arrived, our production partner pulled out."
This setback led to one of the brand's defining moments: "That summer got about 45 friends together, rent out my little club kitchen, and we spent the entire summer making 4,000 jars of peanut butter one jar at a time, which was hellish for me and my friends quite enjoyed it."
This challenge established three foundational elements of the business:
1. A resilient culture: "It was the beginning of like the kind of 'We'll always find a way' culture like the can money life hustle culture, which has played out again and again as we've grown."
2. A unique production approach: "We moved from that into a business that made the product in a way that was completely different to what had come before and still is."
3. Their best product: "And the last one is we invented our best product, Complete Bax, when we burned a load of nuts and then deep roast was the best thing we could come up with."
Transforming a Stale Category
When ManiLife entered the market, peanut butter was a sleepy category with little excitement. Stu describes it as "just a thing that would sit in the backyard cupboard for the whole year. Quite dusty brands."
While competitor Pip & Nut had started to rejuvenate the category, Stu felt they only added "glitz to the surface." ManiLife took a different approach: "What we brought was the real, craft is such an overused word now, but like real fundamentals, like below the surface craft, premiumisation, depth."
Drawing inspiration from premium coffee, ManiLife introduced multiple elements that elevated peanut butter:
- Provenance stories: "We were the first to bring that in."
- Multiple vectors: Including different roast levels, similar to coffee.
- Batch processing: "We are still the only mainstream peanut butter brand to use a batch process."
Defining Brand: More Than Surface-Level Marketing
For Stu, brand isn't just about logos and colours. He sees it as "the vehicle through which all is delivered and is probably the only avenue in the business ecosystem to deliver real depth and emotion. I think it's also seems like a high level, it's a promise."
From a business perspective, he views brand as "a second moat beyond product and operational specialisms."
Interestingly, Stu initially resisted the term "brand" due to negative associations: "My view of what brand was at that time was like very glitzy surface level polished." Instead, he wanted ManiLife to "be a person. Not in the sense I want it to be me, but I want it to act like a person."
This human-centred approach informed the brands philosophy: "The most interesting person in the room is the one who's the most interested. And so if you go back to what we were putting out, I think there was something to this. Like we would rarely talk about ourselves. We would talk about our community."
Three Core Brand Principles
Stu defines ManiLife through three clear principles:
1. "We are an indulgence, not function" - Focusing on enjoyment rather than practical benefits.
2. "We are feelers, not thinkers" - "We live very much in here [the heart] and not, Rational thought is probably quite low down the packing order."
3. "We are definitely like substance over surface" - Prioritising depth of experience over superficial appeal.
These principles manifest in practical decisions, such as their choice of packaging: "About three years ago, we decided that we were going to move to glass packaging. There was this big debate over whether we kind of indulge in the classic thought that consumers perceive size as height, which is why you've got lots of tall skinny jars but they're really annoying to use when you buy them."
Staying true to their "substance over surface" value, they chose a shorter, squatter jar that offers a better user experience.
The Deep Roast Discovery
Perhaps the most significant moment in ManiLife's journey was the accidental creation of their signature product:
"In my distractions keeping my friends entertained, we basically overcooked the nuts. We were gonna throw it out, we blended it out, we tried it and we were like, my God, this tastes fucking amazing."
What started as a mistake became a category innovation: "Deep Roast was the best name we could come up with for burnt or overcooked. And to this day, it is the greatest innovation in peanut butter for the last 80 years in the sense that it's not only our best selling product - our best product. It's not only the first product to be awarded three great taste stars, like the most awarded product in peanut butter in the country. It's been copied by virtually every major peanut butter player in the world."
Building Personal Connections at Scale
A key differentiator for ManiLife has been their focus on personal connections. From the beginning, they built a community: "It wasn't launched through shops, it was launched through people. So we had like, essentially peanut butter dealers that we called the Manilifers."
This personal approach has delivered measurable results: "We have the highest net promoter score, which is likely to recommend to a friend in the category." While product quality plays a major role, Stu believes "a not insignificant chunk of that is this real love that has been created through personal connection."
Maintaining this personal touch at scale remains challenging: "Ultimately, as far as we've got is just whenever anyone messages, respond as a person. And when you're reaching out to anyone, remember that try and distance yourself from this is a business, speak to a customer or a supplier or whatever, but make it more this is a person, speak to another person." This strategy continues to drive their success.
Category Growth Opportunities
Despite peanut butter's growth, significant headroom remains. Stu shares some surprising statistics: ", which is a lot of headroom. And the average consumption is 1.8 times a year and the average consumption for ManiLIfe is like five, six times a year."
He identifies several factors limiting category growth:
- It's primarily a planned purchase, not impulse. - Limited distribution points compared to other categories. - Located in quiet parts of supermarkets. - Legacy of average products.
ManiLife's strategy addresses these challenges through:
1. Better products: "You make better products, like we're there, and you expose more people to those better products."
2. Repositioning from planned to impulse: "Stuff like last year we created something called Mint's Pineapple Butter, which is like no one will plan to buy that. But if they see it, it's like, well, this is kind of interesting."
3. Reformatting for broader distribution: Creating formats that can exist in more locations.
Advice for Challenger Brands
For entrepreneurs launching challenger brands, Stu offers several key pieces of advice:
1. Just start and adapt: "There's all the cliche stuff around like, just start, don't even think about it, it will adapt."
2. Surround yourself with great people: "As early as you can, and probably earlier than you think, try and surround yourself with way better than you can imagine people that ideally cover holes that you don't actually cover."
3. Don't go it alone: "Ideally, start the business with someone else, because being a solo founder is pretty lonely."
4. Get out and expose yourself to luck: "Force yourself to get out and about; exposing us to luck, which is very hard to do when you're in work holes."
5. Find the balance between action and strategy: "Strategy and a well thought through brand, particularly around positioning has immense value, particularly as you grow. It is far more efficient if you have a kind of nucleus from which to grow, that is well defined."
The Power of Authentic Stories
What sets ManiLife apart isn't just their product but the authentic story behind it. Stu contrasts this with manufactured brand narratives: "You see a lot of these really well thought through brands and they have these awesome stories and you can just tell those stories are made in a highly talented workshop."
In contrast, "The real beauty of ManiLife is the fact that it was so unpolished and authentic. There is a genuine authenticity that is very hard to fake and retrofit."
This authenticity extends to their sourcing relationships. As Stu points out, that is impossible to imitate 10 years of relationship building with the family they source their peanuts from, especially when they had nothing.
From accidental beginnings to category innovation, Stu Macdonald's journey with ManiLife demonstrates how passion, resilience, and an unwavering commitment to substance over surface can transform not just a brand, but an entire category.
