Jonesing for Soda

The way marketing has taught us to talk about demographics is BS. Let's look at the 35-40 year olds. That's where their income is. But if you're going to be their aspirational brand, then you really have to look lower than the 35 year old. There's not a 35-year-old woman looking to a 45-year-old woman to see how she dresses. They're looking at a 25 year old. And they're finding the balance between a 25 year old and a 35 year old. So the aspiration always goes down. Everybody knocks Jones, says you're a kid's soda. Sweet, if I'm a 12- to 24-year-old brand. It's not the actual demographic you're aiming for, it's the aspirational demographic.

I'd like for people to talk about Jones the same way they talk about brands such as Diesel Jeans. Puma, Diesel, Nike. I want to be in that category. I don't want to be Coke or Pepsi. I like Puma because they created a category in a category. Diesel because they're always relevant, always fresh, always on target.

Listen and Learn

If you're able to give your customers the ability to give you info and you listen to them from their perspective, not everything they say will make sense. Not everything they do will be right. But you will know more about what you have to do based on the info you have. Because it's one component, but very critical component.

Focus groups are toilet paper: They're only used to cover your ass. You can get a focus group to tell you anything you want. When we do focus groups, tastings really, we have two choices: Does it taste good, or does it taste like crap? Yummy or crappy? Good or bad? It's not rocket science. And you get really good information. You have to be careful to make a distinction between getting the answers you want and honest answers.

People get cash-it is -- meaning they have cash and they think they have to spend it to drive revenues, etc. You've got cash, and you've got to do the right thing with it. Corporations think they can buy these kids and the kids are saying, screw you, you're a loser. That's the simple math. You have to have time to allow kids to discover you.

Built to Spill (Over)

Execution is where we need to improve. That's where we can get better. If you judge our company, for the last seven years we've been playing in the minors. And then last year, we got called up to the majors with Panera, Barnes and Noble. And we were sitting on the bench. This year we got to the plate once. With Target. In 2004 we got called up to the plate. From a baseball analogy, we've been in the minors for a long time. Now we've got something to prove. So obviously execution is something we have to improve. And if we're hitting in all aspects, this thing is going to go.

First thing is you change the rules. The Target deal is rule-breaker that is unbelievable. For the beverage industry, we took their game and shoved it up their ass. I watched Richard Branson try to do it by playing by the rules. He couldn't do it. It's so easy to scale this up by not playing by the rules. It's so hard to scale by playing by rules.

To steal a line from Sam Cook from Boston Beer, we don't sell as much as Coke or Pepsi spill in a day. There's so much room to grow -- Coke and Pepsi are so big -- we've got a long way to go before anyone notices. I'm more interested in growing geographically -- both domestic and international -- than by volume, to boost brand equity.