Peter van Stolk Quotes
Peter van Stolk Quotes
I thought I would be the orange juice czar of Canada.
They’re there so that every day, as I walk past, I’m reminded of what I don’t want to be.
I couldn’t get the name Smith. It was taken because there was a Dr. Smith Soda in the Midwest. I wanted to be the Smith Soda Co….I wanted a traditional name for a product that had relevancy to a community.
How could we create a connection with customers, let them play with the brand, let them take ownership of it?
Run with the little guy…create some change.
Ninety percent of our business was in the U.S. If you want to play in the big leagues, the U.S. is where the business is done. It’s the market you have to be in to say you are successful.
My view is that Jones is more of an experience than just a soda. Nike isn’t just a shoe company – it’s an apparel company, it’s a lifestyle company, it’s a company that creates an emotional connection with customers. Nike would never be the company it is if Phil Knight thought of it as a shoe company.
Our competition spends over a billion dollars a year. We can’t play by their rules. When you’re marketing without money, you have to stay true to the fact that you need to make an emotional connection.
The reality is that consumers don’t need our s---. People get fired up about Jones because it’s theirs.
The big guys spill more soda in a day than we sell.
I said 'No, dude, we've got to open it to everyone.' So it just sort of happened like that. Lots of things in branding are like that.
We allowed the labels to be discovered and that gave consumers a sense of ownership. It makes it more relevant to them and provides an emotional connection. With big soda brands, the 'Britney Spears model' - paying a lot of money to some hot artist to sponsor your beverage - is just so done. The wonderful thing about our competitors is, for all the money they have, they should be thinking more originally but they don't. If they ever do, I'm dead.
The world doesn’t need another soda.
I hate it. I’ve tried to kill that flavour for like seven years, but they won’t let me. People really like it…I don’t know why. If there is not a daily fight over Blue Bubble Gum, something is wrong. One day I’m just going to pull the CEO card and cancel it.
I believe focus groups are junk. They only justify what you want to believe is true. We go in [to talk to kids] with no agenda. You’re so much more successful if you don’t fall in love with your own ideas.
The three rules we have right now are to be really consistent in the quality of our product, to be unpredictable, and to create emotion. That’s it.
It’s us making fun of ourselves. We look at our role as providing you with a treat. I’m a firm believer that soda is an indulgence. You drink or eat a treat on an occasion that puts a smile on your face. You don’t drink and eat one every five seconds. A treat should be fun. And if you’re putting out turkey and gravy or pea-flavoured soda, people are going to laugh. It’s easy to play and get people excited if you don’t take yourself seriously.
If we promote sugar, that changes the game quite a bit. The largest use of corn right now is high fructose corn syrup. If you remove corn syrup and put sugar back in the drinks, then you have a crop that could actually be used for ethanol. Maybe it’s my own fantasy, but that’s it. To me it sounds good and real, and that’s important.
The Toyota Prius led the way, so now hybrids are real. Look at what Chevrolet and Ford are coming up with now — hybrids. Selling a Prius won’t stop greenhouse gases, but it sets the example that will eventually stop greenhouse gases. If you don’t take that mentality, nothing changes.
In business, you have an opportunity to lead and you have an opportunity to follow. Companies and entrepreneurs that are successful tend to lead.
I think we can go mainstream but remain really cool. It’s like VW. They’ve gone from the Bug to introducing a $100,000 car.
Recently, I’ve been looking at all these athlete endorsements. It’s really cool that these guys are making all this money, but is that really going to make a difference?
I get a feeling, from when people pay for the speeches, it makes them feel good, too. They know the proceeds are going to something, and it makes them feel good. It's a double whammy.
We don’t really like to talk about it, because it’s not something we’re trying to push. It's not something we're putting in front and saying everybody should do this. From our perspective, if you just do things and do what you believe in instead of telling people, it becomes more legitimate and more real.
I’m going to switch our marketing fund from an athlete endorsement to cause endorsements and take the same amount of money I was going to spend on an athlete and give it to an organization. Why? Because it’s never been done. I’m going to promote them like I promoted an athlete - because I think that’s cool.
I want to be the beverage company that gets away from seeing Britney Spears on the commercial. Who cares? Who really gives a rat’s ass? I want to say, ‘Brought to you by Vitamin Angel Alliance and Jones Soda.’ That’s sick. No one’s ever done that.
When you look at the X Games right now and all those endorsements, I can’t see that people really care anymore. I talk to kids, and it’s just noise. When it wasn’t noise, it was important. There’s a cycle in everything. And if it gets too saturated, back the bus up.
I want to see how it works. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll use the same line that Steve Jobs uses: ‘Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes.’
If I had the chance to do it again, I probably would have liked to go to school. However, the benefit from not going to school is that I look at things differently and I listen differently.
My suggestion is to go to school. It will teach you the framework. It teaches you the game.
Life teaches you how to bend or break the rules to get what you want. If you only follow the rules of business, then you’re always going to follow what your competitors do.
Jones is an indulgence, and we want to be an indulgence. We will try to be a premium soda and be a niche soda.
Pepsi is bigger than Coke in a lot of ways. Pepsi is now a better overall beverage company than Coca-Cola. That’s a fact. If you look at it, Pepsi’s brands are Tropicana, which is #1 versus Minute Maid; Gatorade, which is bigger than PowerAde; and Aquafina, which is bigger than Coke’s Dasani.
Pepsi made the switch when they said they were okay with losing the cola wars. They decided to win everything else. When they took the approach that, ‘We’re not going to play the game any more,’ they won the game because they changed the game. That’s what I think is really cool. Companies have to change the game.
I think companies that spend all their time trying to figure out what the other guys are going to do will become really good at following. I will never be Coke or Pepsi in a million years, and I don’t really want to. I’m always trying to figure out how to change the game.
If you’re able to listen to customers from their perspective, not everything they say will make sense. Not everything they do will be right. But you’ll know more about what you have to do because of it.
I believe a lot of marketers have this fundamental belief that people care. I, on the other hand, have a fundamental belief that you don’t. If you don’t care, then I have to do something to make [the product] relevant to you. A really cool, funky ad may capture your attention, but it still doesn’t make you care.
If I put your photo of something you love, whatever that may be, on a bottle of Jones Soda, you’ll actually care, because it’s your photo, not mine.
Everyone is happy. It’s not rocket science.
It’s the difference between being real, and saying you’re real.
I’m not very smart. I’m just learning the beverage industry.
A soda company just means that you’re a carbonated soft drink or a beverage with sugar and bubbles. I think Jones means more than that.
We’re always evolving. If you’re not evolving, you’re dying.
Peter van Stolk Quotes
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I had a nice car, and I did it all myself. [My father] said, ‘Go to school,’ and I said, ‘Are you crazy?’
I thought I would be the orange juice czar of Canada.
They’re there so that every day, as I walk past, I’m reminded of what I don’t want to be.
I couldn’t get the name Smith. It was taken because there was a Dr. Smith Soda in the Midwest. I wanted to be the Smith Soda Co….I wanted a traditional name for a product that had relevancy to a community.
How could we create a connection with customers, let them play with the brand, let them take ownership of it?
Run with the little guy…create some change.
Ninety percent of our business was in the U.S. If you want to play in the big leagues, the U.S. is where the business is done. It’s the market you have to be in to say you are successful.
My view is that Jones is more of an experience than just a soda. Nike isn’t just a shoe company – it’s an apparel company, it’s a lifestyle company, it’s a company that creates an emotional connection with customers. Nike would never be the company it is if Phil Knight thought of it as a shoe company.
Our competition spends over a billion dollars a year. We can’t play by their rules. When you’re marketing without money, you have to stay true to the fact that you need to make an emotional connection.
The reality is that consumers don’t need our s---. People get fired up about Jones because it’s theirs.
The big guys spill more soda in a day than we sell.
I said 'No, dude, we've got to open it to everyone.' So it just sort of happened like that. Lots of things in branding are like that.
We allowed the labels to be discovered and that gave consumers a sense of ownership. It makes it more relevant to them and provides an emotional connection. With big soda brands, the 'Britney Spears model' - paying a lot of money to some hot artist to sponsor your beverage - is just so done. The wonderful thing about our competitors is, for all the money they have, they should be thinking more originally but they don't. If they ever do, I'm dead.
The world doesn’t need another soda.
I hate it. I’ve tried to kill that flavour for like seven years, but they won’t let me. People really like it…I don’t know why. If there is not a daily fight over Blue Bubble Gum, something is wrong. One day I’m just going to pull the CEO card and cancel it.
I believe focus groups are junk. They only justify what you want to believe is true. We go in [to talk to kids] with no agenda. You’re so much more successful if you don’t fall in love with your own ideas.
The three rules we have right now are to be really consistent in the quality of our product, to be unpredictable, and to create emotion. That’s it.
It’s us making fun of ourselves. We look at our role as providing you with a treat. I’m a firm believer that soda is an indulgence. You drink or eat a treat on an occasion that puts a smile on your face. You don’t drink and eat one every five seconds. A treat should be fun. And if you’re putting out turkey and gravy or pea-flavoured soda, people are going to laugh. It’s easy to play and get people excited if you don’t take yourself seriously.
If we promote sugar, that changes the game quite a bit. The largest use of corn right now is high fructose corn syrup. If you remove corn syrup and put sugar back in the drinks, then you have a crop that could actually be used for ethanol. Maybe it’s my own fantasy, but that’s it. To me it sounds good and real, and that’s important.
The Toyota Prius led the way, so now hybrids are real. Look at what Chevrolet and Ford are coming up with now — hybrids. Selling a Prius won’t stop greenhouse gases, but it sets the example that will eventually stop greenhouse gases. If you don’t take that mentality, nothing changes.
In business, you have an opportunity to lead and you have an opportunity to follow. Companies and entrepreneurs that are successful tend to lead.
I think we can go mainstream but remain really cool. It’s like VW. They’ve gone from the Bug to introducing a $100,000 car.
Recently, I’ve been looking at all these athlete endorsements. It’s really cool that these guys are making all this money, but is that really going to make a difference?
I get a feeling, from when people pay for the speeches, it makes them feel good, too. They know the proceeds are going to something, and it makes them feel good. It's a double whammy.
We don’t really like to talk about it, because it’s not something we’re trying to push. It's not something we're putting in front and saying everybody should do this. From our perspective, if you just do things and do what you believe in instead of telling people, it becomes more legitimate and more real.
I’m going to switch our marketing fund from an athlete endorsement to cause endorsements and take the same amount of money I was going to spend on an athlete and give it to an organization. Why? Because it’s never been done. I’m going to promote them like I promoted an athlete - because I think that’s cool.
I want to be the beverage company that gets away from seeing Britney Spears on the commercial. Who cares? Who really gives a rat’s ass? I want to say, ‘Brought to you by Vitamin Angel Alliance and Jones Soda.’ That’s sick. No one’s ever done that.
When you look at the X Games right now and all those endorsements, I can’t see that people really care anymore. I talk to kids, and it’s just noise. When it wasn’t noise, it was important. There’s a cycle in everything. And if it gets too saturated, back the bus up.
I want to see how it works. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll use the same line that Steve Jobs uses: ‘Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes.’
If I had the chance to do it again, I probably would have liked to go to school. However, the benefit from not going to school is that I look at things differently and I listen differently.
My suggestion is to go to school. It will teach you the framework. It teaches you the game.
Life teaches you how to bend or break the rules to get what you want. If you only follow the rules of business, then you’re always going to follow what your competitors do.
Jones is an indulgence, and we want to be an indulgence. We will try to be a premium soda and be a niche soda.
Pepsi is bigger than Coke in a lot of ways. Pepsi is now a better overall beverage company than Coca-Cola. That’s a fact. If you look at it, Pepsi’s brands are Tropicana, which is #1 versus Minute Maid; Gatorade, which is bigger than PowerAde; and Aquafina, which is bigger than Coke’s Dasani.
Pepsi made the switch when they said they were okay with losing the cola wars. They decided to win everything else. When they took the approach that, ‘We’re not going to play the game any more,’ they won the game because they changed the game. That’s what I think is really cool. Companies have to change the game.
I think companies that spend all their time trying to figure out what the other guys are going to do will become really good at following. I will never be Coke or Pepsi in a million years, and I don’t really want to. I’m always trying to figure out how to change the game.
If you’re able to listen to customers from their perspective, not everything they say will make sense. Not everything they do will be right. But you’ll know more about what you have to do because of it.
I believe a lot of marketers have this fundamental belief that people care. I, on the other hand, have a fundamental belief that you don’t. If you don’t care, then I have to do something to make [the product] relevant to you. A really cool, funky ad may capture your attention, but it still doesn’t make you care.
If I put your photo of something you love, whatever that may be, on a bottle of Jones Soda, you’ll actually care, because it’s your photo, not mine.
Everyone is happy. It’s not rocket science.
It’s the difference between being real, and saying you’re real.
I’m not very smart. I’m just learning the beverage industry.
A soda company just means that you’re a carbonated soft drink or a beverage with sugar and bubbles. I think Jones means more than that.
We’re always evolving. If you’re not evolving, you’re dying.
Peter van Stolk Quotes
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