Delaney Vetter, Copywriter & PR Strategist
Delaney Vetter is a copywriter and PR strategist for food and beverage brands and CPG brands. She shares her insight on how good copy, branding, and founder stories can help your brand cut through the noise.
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00:02 Hi everyone, welcome back to a new episode of Emerging Brands with Kelly Bennett. I have a very special guest, someone who I absolutely love following on Instagram, one because she shares great content but too, she shares great food fines and especially in Brooklyn, I've been following along her journey 00:24 and Delaney Vetter. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Kelly. It's so welcome. So Delaney is a copywriter and PR strategist for food and beverage brands, CPG brands and I was just telling Delaney before I hit record. 00:44 I really admire how much she's knee down and how you built a business in such a niche market and so I would love to kick it off Delaney of how did you start your business? 00:58 What is your story? I wanted to know all the things. Yeah. Well, I know a lot of people who are like freelance or independent operators or PR people or whatever creative fields insert here, you know, worked at agencies for a long time, worked in house and then left to start their own thing or doing 01:20 it as kind of like a side hustle in addition to their job. My own a little bit different because I kind of accidentally started my business in a way. 01:33 I studied communication and college and thought I would go the traditional route of get a PR agency job or get a job rather path to existed and I graduated right into COVID in 2020 and so there were no jobs. 01:56 Everyone was fired. Everyone was laid off. My verbal offers from agency used to disappear overnight. Like grants my friends and I had applied for just immediately disappeared and so which sounds all really stressful and scary and it wasn't actually the whole pandemic of it all was but I think because 02:18 no one had jobs it was almost a little bit freeing because I think being you know a 21 year old going out into the real world feels really scary and stressful and having a little bit of that pressure taken off was really nice and basically I was doing all the things you're like quote-unquote supposed 02:41 to do. I was doing the facial interviews. I was applying for whatever there was and there's really was not a typo at the time because no one really knew what was going on and in my process of doing these facial interviews and chatting with like old colleagues and networking someone who had worked 03:00 with an agency before was like hey I have a friend and they need help with copywriting and some PR like five hours a week. 03:09 Would you be interested and at that point I was like two weeks away from graduating. I had nothing on the books. 03:14 I was moving to Utah for the summer to stay with family just to like write out whatever was going on and I was like okay sure yeah I'll be done with school. 03:24 I've no job. I'll be really bored. That would be great. That'd be great thing for me to like so my time. 03:28 Guess my experience while I'm on the like quote-unquote real job hunt. Right. Why started working for this company that was not included in beverage. 03:40 It's kind of unrelated. It's sort of doing some freelance work for her and quickly that five hours a week, became 10 hours a week and then it was 20 hours a week. 03:49 And then she was introducing me to clients and friends of hers who also need to help with those things. And so by August after graduating I had this full client load that had kind of been handed to me in a lot of ways. 04:02 Not necessarily brands that were my like dream company as dream industries to work with. But I think that was the first time where I was like, oh, they're like different options here. 04:13 Like I don't have to necessarily go the traditional route for my career. And also I think because everything that was going out of the world, there was a lot more freedom. 04:25 Like everyone was working from home, people, you know, just had a lot more flexibility in general. And I felt like I really had to give it a shot. 04:36 Like what I've ever seen in the day I have, I was like living at home, I rent free, like nothing is holding me back now. 04:42 I don't have an expensive mortgage to pay or anything. So this is like a great time to like take a risk on this. 04:50 And so I stopped applying for jobs. I turned down a job offer for, it was like for a food company, just kind of funny now. 05:00 And decided to go all in like, take it more seriously. You know, I had a little bit of a ride up contracts for me. 05:07 I started putting up a site together. I did all the like businessy things. And then January that next year is when I started being like, okay, well, I want to be more intentional the brands I work with. 05:20 And that's when I started not just taking the referrals that came to me and saying, yes, to everything, more like seeking out the brands I wanted to work with. 05:30 And positioning myself as, you know, the go to communications gal for food and beverage brands. I love everything you just said. 05:40 One, I want to also give you a shout out for a graduating college and already having that entrepreneurial spirit of figuring it out and really having the confidence to step out on your own. 05:56 Like that's something that most people even 10 years plus in their career can feel really overwhelmed by just on a confidence level. 06:07 And I just want to say, like, good for you, that's amazing. You're welcome. And then it's been a wild ride. 06:14 No, and I resonate with your story in a sense that when I graduated college, that was 2009. So that was like near. 06:23 That was, yes, that was the recession back then. And it was like, there was no jobs, no almost hiring. And I was like, well, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. 06:34 And I've been building businesses and being an entrepreneur ever since. So I could empathize with that feeling of like, well, everything, I got to do something. 06:45 Got to do something, got to figure it out. And I think that really also speaks to when we have these times in our economy when everything fills upside down, entrepreneurship is usually on the rise because you have to figure it out. 07:00 And so I love how that really also worked out. And again, another great takeaway is that you said, yes, to something that wasn't maybe ideal to what exactly you were looking for. 07:14 But it was that stepping down to really build the business that you have now. Yeah. And I don't often really realize about the time either because I think some of those first clients were very much not my vibe. 07:29 And I remember what I had to like quote unquote like fire my first client. I remember being like, oh, thank goodness, I'm done with that one, like onto the next, like a lot of better things. 07:40 And I think I can look like now and be like, well, that was really not ideal. And it wasn't a great client experience. 07:47 It wasn't super healthy work environment. But I now have like a crash course in boundaries and setting things up for my business that I, you know, have friends have been freelancing for five years and they've never had that experience. 08:02 And so they haven't had to deal with that. And then it comes up and all of a sudden, oh, my gosh, my contract doesn't protect me enough. 08:08 I, or still doing it all really are all these different things that kind of, I feel like I found out really quickly because I didn't, I didn't, I didn't know better. 08:17 And I think if I had gone, you know, into an agency and then into another agency, I might have, you know, been like, oh, well, this starts with this agency in this one, worked at this one. 08:30 So yeah, you, I think it's also speaking to the fact that even when something doesn't go quote unquote perfectly, you actually can learn a lot and leverage that. 08:40 So you can build actually what you want. Yeah, boundaries too. The sooner that you learn that, the better, like, that's the unlock of building a business is having good boundaries. 08:52 So let me ask you this, what did you want to do differently? I know that you've really niche down to food and beverage brands. 09:02 It's a cool combination of more behind the scenes of how that all works. Yeah, I mean, I think for me, I mean, I've always really loved to write. 09:15 So I knew the copyright thing was me part of it. I also think my entrance of subient payour agencies and they were, it was a food related payour agency that was like my name, internship and college. 09:24 And so I already had a little bit of experience. I was always an obsessed with food. So I didn't know necessarily what way that was the first experience where I was like, oh, there's I think like the food media world was so interesting to me because I didn't even know that existed. 09:43 I was like, oh, there's like food networks stars. There's like, I'm a garden like love. But other than that, like I don't know if I want to be waking up before I am to go work in a bakery every day. 09:58 Like I just didn't know if that was for me, even though I love food. And so that that interchange really opened up my world to, oh, I can work like in the food world and not necessarily be the one making this food. 10:13 And so new that I wanted that involved in what I did. I knew I wanted food to be part of it. 10:22 And when I was like, you know, more intentionally positioning myself as the professional and as a risk writer in the space, I don't know if I necessarily realize what my different shaders were at the beginning. 10:36 But now it's really understanding that these brands that I work with tend to be like women in my naughty own in their first like five years of business, some longer. 10:47 But really in that like growth stage, like they are maybe trying to bring on investment or they are totally bootstrapped and haven't had any investment yet. 10:58 But they are really, you know, they just want to get their name off there. They want to be, they want to grow, they have big dreams and they need people to help them. 11:08 And I working with agencies like both, you know, as a consultant and in house, whatever, I've just seen there's just a lot of like hold ups with that, you know, you have to, you write a pitch and it has to go through seven people before I get sent out. 11:24 Like it's just things on move as quickly and when you're a small scrappy startup, you can't afford that. You can't afford it. 11:31 Right. Any time, let alone the price point that large agencies are at. It's just not, it's just not equitable because you have these brands that deserve their stories, deserve to have their story shared, but they can't afford to pay this giant agency $25,000 a month, literally. 11:53 Right. To, you know, do their PR and so the brands that can afford that are the ones that are getting the features and getting the price. 12:01 So that's a terrific differentiator for me is being like a one person team. I can be it a more startup friendly price point. 12:12 I can, you know, work with brands more closely and we can, you know, pivot really quickly and be more dynamic and we're working on because I don't have to go play this game of telephone with people and figure out what we're going to do. 12:27 I can just, you know, be on a call to the client. They see something going on. I can say, okay, perfect. 12:31 I'm going to do that thing. And same thing for copywriting. I, you know, can be working really closely with the brand more as an extension of their team than this outside agency who the person you're on a call with might not be the person who's actually writing the copy for you. 12:48 And there's some agencies that are really wonderful and great. And I also have had some clients who come to me from agencies who felt very like forgotten and they're like, that's a really big investment to make to not feel like you're a priority. 13:01 Absolutely. And I think that you touched on a lot of important things that start at brands are looking for. They're looking for that extension of their team. 13:09 And they're in the in-between stage of maybe not being ready to hire someone full-time and they don't really necessarily fit within the agency space. 13:18 So looking for those people that they could trust and rely on to help them build their brand that is essential. 13:27 You need those people. So I really love how you filled in that gap. So tell me too because I think that for many startups, understanding all the nuance that it takes to build a brand. 13:40 And especially when it comes to say copyrighting and PR, I've noticed that many people are like, I don't necessarily understand the process or like how it works. 13:54 I think with design because it's so visual, they're like, okay, I need a logo. I know I need a website. 14:01 I know I'm going to need social media but as far as that communication, there is a little bit of a disconnect. 14:08 I've just seen that in our hands I've worked with. So how do you explain the impact of having good copy and also integrating really good copy with a PR strategy? 14:21 Yeah, good question. I think I agree. I think there are things that are so visual and obvious. I had so many brands that have been like, oh perfect. 14:31 We set aside $10,000 to higher designer designer website for us. But they didn't leave any money for a copywriter. And so then you end up with this really beautiful, you know, on brand, like really solid consistent design and no words to back it up or, you know, someone at the company that the founders 14:56 of, well, I'll just write it. And some people are amazing writers and some people totally understand, you know, and can do it themselves, sure. 15:06 But at the end of day, like, you're wasting money if you're not having those things go together. Because just as much as your brand colors need to be consistent and you're faulty to be consistent, like your voice and your tone needs to be consistent, too. 15:23 You know, that's why companies like Reformation or all birds, like if you, those are ones that come up a lot and like the copywriter, a brighter circle. 15:32 It's like they have a really, like consistent, obvious brand voice. And if you read a post from there as you would know it was there. 15:42 It wouldn't feel like disconnected. And right, maybe as a consumer, you wouldn't realize right away. Like if you were reading an email from Glossier and they totally like left all of their, you know, like brand guidelines, like they just ignore them, you might not notice it as like this is wrong. 16:01 They didn't put this thing in here. But you might be like, this is kind of not a great email. Or like this sounds kind of weird. 16:08 This is kind of confusing to me. And so being able to have the copy to backup your design is really important. 16:15 And same thing for PR, like PR and copy, I think the thing that is hard for some founders is copy and go a bit easier. 16:26 But for PR, it's not like a set deliverable you're getting. You're getting the like expert on your team to support you in, you know, increasing brand awareness, protecting reputation, you know, sharing your story. 16:42 And that's not always the most tangible thing. Because, you know, it's not, there's more, it's more than getting the press. 16:51 And the press is great. And you can totally like count how many press hits you get to like measure that. 16:56 But there's a lot of other things that it's not like this clear ROI. And I think that is really hard for a lot of founders. 17:04 Especially ones who've been maybe they were more on like the business side of things before. And so they're like, well, what's ROI to do? 17:11 Right. So that's this. And same thing with copy. Like, if then, I mean, I could talk about the ROI thing all day. 17:18 But like if someone comes to me, give you a number for that. But I can tell you that here are the things that it'll improve. 17:26 Like, you want someone to come to your website. And you want it to feel like an elevated experience. Like, how do you want people to feel when they're interacting with your brand? 17:33 Your copy needs to match that. Because it doesn't matter how good your product is. You're competing against so many other products. 17:40 And so you don't stand out with your copy and your design. And you're not getting new eyeballs on your product because you're facilitating a pressure at a G. 17:49 Like, you're going to have a time. Yeah, I think if you look at any of the brands that are performing really well in any giving category, they're likely doing those three things really well. 18:00 I absolutely agree with you. And I think one of the biggest misses that I find from emerging brand founders is finding a voice for their brand. 18:09 And I think that's where a copy really comes in. And then you're able to leverage that voice for social media for your website for packaging for PR, right? 18:20 And it all builds from there. So I think what you're doing is just so impactful. And I've seen the power of good copy over the years for brands. 18:28 It's like, no, put this on your priority. This is really important for someone who's getting started. And we'll say more so from a food and beverage emerging brand point of view. 18:42 Obviously, we know the importance of copy and PR. But anything else that you would say to them or maybe getting them ready to invest in copy and PR, what would you encourage a new founder to maybe put on the radar or to think about? 19:02 Yeah, I think on the PR side specifically, not every brand is ready for PR. Yeah. And I've also well, it's super important. 19:11 There are things you have to have before PR can work for you. And I've seen a lot of brands invest in PR too early because someone told them they should. 19:21 And then they don't have the resources on their teams to back it up. So that's things like, if you are paying some of your PR for you and your social media is like, not good. 19:34 And you're not posting existing content. And you know, you just don't have a clear identity. Then there's really no point in paying for PR because you don't, you need to know who you are. 19:47 So it can tell people who you are. That's part of it. Also other like logistic things. It's like distribution, make a big difference. 19:57 You know, there are some brands that I'm always very honest about this in a very nice way. But like there are some brands that aren't necessarily like storyworthy. 20:06 Like they're not doing something that National PR is going to help. Maybe they could focus on local PR or maybe they could focus on influence. 20:13 So we better for them. They're just certain things that are just trickier. Or like even like legalities like supplement companies. 20:20 Like there's things that there are a lot of some publications that won't even cover supplements because there's not enough research around them. 20:26 So things like that. It's a great point. Yeah. And like not every priority to see we'll tell you that. Like I was on a call today with someone and I was talking about their brand like a potential client. 20:39 And I was telling them these things that are like, oh well, you know, I think the reason you're struggling with this thing but National coverage is because you're not distributed nationally. 20:48 And if someone can't order your product online and you don't have your affiliates that up, we're not going to get coverage. 20:54 And they're like, we've worked with two other agencies and no one's ever told us that before. And that which was like very sad for me. 21:00 But I also think you have to just make sure that you have the things in place and that you're putting a team in place that's going to be honest with you because I think sometimes, they're probably they're looking out for them. 21:16 They don't want to lose you as a client. And if, you know, they might lose you as a client because they're telling you these things that's tricky thing. 21:22 But yeah, and like you want your design to be really good if you're a good in PR. Like I've had brands or they've come to me in the products really cool and they've really co-founding story, but they're packaging is like not media worthy. 21:35 I guess is the nice brand I put it in. And I've had to be like, hey, like are you planning a rebrand anytime soon? 21:42 And, you know, I don't think we'll be able to get coverage based on where your product is at now. And that's really hard to hear for some founders. 21:51 And it is a bit subjective, but there are certain things that just is just, you know, it's all about the picture. 21:58 They want to know it's a pretty product and they want to, it wants to look good on the big editorial spread. 22:04 And then on the copies out of it, I just think in general, there's so many things your brand can spend money on. 22:12 And I work with founders of all different budgets and things like that. And I just think you need to really clear on like what your priorities are. 22:19 Like if your priority is to get into more retailers, that's great. But then that's going to dictate our strategy here. 22:25 If your priority is to be a thought leader, that's going to be different. You know, who is your competition? Like those are all big questions to ask, but also, you know, maybe you can't, maybe you don't need to have a in-house graphic designer and someone doing all these new newsletters for you and 22:47 be posting on every single social platform and have sales teams in all these places and be doing all these activations and all of your partners. 22:55 Like you just don't need to do it all and you can't probably do it all well. And so picking like a couple areas you want to focus on. 23:02 And I think a little bias here, but I think getting your brand set up, like getting the brand voice and messaging, like set should be kind of your number one thing, as long as the product is already good. 23:16 You know, like there's some brands who maybe they're like well I don't want to invest a bunch into these things yet because we're still evolving as a brand. 23:24 That's totally fine, but then you shouldn't be paying for PR and influencer marketing and those things yet either. A thousand percent agree. 23:34 I really, I love how you just said that because I think that this is the really honest advice that so many people don't receive and they end up wasting money, wasting time, getting frustrated, spinning their wheels where it's like if someone just maybe spoke a little bit more candidly with them, it 23:53 could have helped them in the long run. So I think that was really solid advice. Well, and it makes me a bummer's meow because I think there are a lot of very, I like to think like well-meaning like consultants and people like that in this space that companies pay a lot of money to to tell them how to 24:11 make their business grow and a lot of the way they tell them to take their business grow. It's just spend more money on all these different things and sometimes those things aren't right for every brand. 24:20 Like not every brand is a good for PR, just like not every brand is a good fit for influence marketing and sometimes you know I think it's a retail. 24:28 Like some brands like maybe a judge can see a mirror is the right past for you. Maybe retail is maybe you're doing food service. 24:34 Like there's so many options and I think I guess I just like take everything like take all the advice you're getting with like a grain of salt because you know your brand the best. 24:44 Like you know what is going to work for you and having some founders that I've worked with and you know that I know just get like a little bit burned because they just like blindly took advice of someone that they thought had their best intention of mine and probably did have their best intention in 25:04 my book. I've come across that many many times. So like well I've already worked with this person and they told me this and I'm like yes and you know I don't want to shit on anyone else's work. 25:15 I'm just going to cut to the chase to all this money on design and then the design is like not good and I'm like oh yeah I know or just like again the brand voice or the messaging like something is a little bit off eat all the pieces you really do and I don't think that you necessarily need all the 25:39 pieces on day one. I think there's some things that you can grow into and test out and experiment and find what's going to really resonate with people but then when you find that doubling down on it. 25:53 Yeah you know that's what I do with many brand founders too it's like figuring out what's the thing that's hitting or will hit and helping them double down on it and then bringing that more to the forefront. 26:06 So for someone who's listening who's like okay Delaney I need your help I am an emerging food and Bev founder my brand I'm understanding that I need good copywriting I'm feeling like PR is something around the corner that I need to put on my radar how does someone work with you? 26:28 Yeah so there are kind of I guess there are three main ways so one is PR retainers so that is your I'm your PR partner I act like I'm your in-house publicist and we'll work to get your story out there to share your news all that fun stuff and that's you know a like a longer term partnership month of 26:51 your tanner kind of deal and then on the copy side there's two ways so there's like ongoing copy writing and content writing support so that's things like social posts emails blogs advertisements like stuff like that like basically a retainer for copy and then there's those kind of bigger scale like 27:13 one-time projects so or the hopefully to do one-time so website copy and then my brand messaging and voice guide is like probably what I do the most for like smaller brands where that's putting together all of your brand voice guidelines you know taglines all that good stuff and then some kind of packaging 27:35 copy and things like that those are kind of like dig this and you don't need to change yeah those I love that I love it well thank you so much oh wait before I let you go what is your website and what's your social my website is delaneyveter.com I have a contact form on there but also my email is 27:59 on my contact page I think and then my Instagram is at delaneyveter.com.co mm like communications. Send a few of that confused they're like what's your last name is at veter.com but that's my Instagram yeah and you can message me there you can message me I'm LinkedIn or email me and happy to have you 28:19 to chat. I love it thank you so much for sharing this was such a refreshing conversation and such an important conversation that I will absolutely be sending to clients who are building brands and need this really great straightforward advice like this was an awesome conversation thank you so much. 28:38 Thank you Kelly this is great you're so welcome and I'll see everyone on the next episode.
