Part 1: Growth Hacking Keurig Green Mountain with Dave Moran: $100,000 Expert Insights
The Keurig Green Mountain And K-Cup Story
When Green Mountain Coffee Roasters launched, the coffee market was in decline. In fact, during Dave’s telling of the Green Mountain story, he noted that coffee had been declining every year since the end of the Second World War.
But that didn’t stop Bob Stiller from buying a small company after falling in love with its coffee. In 1982, Green Mountain had just 30 employees, and because the budget was tight, advertising consisted of little more than giving out free samples.
In 1986, after several years of selling direct to restaurants, Green Mountain began selling direct to customers and after expanding to multiple retail locations, it eventually created the K-Cup, a single-use pod that has since taken the industry by storm.
The K-Cup story proves that big money can be made from waning industries when entrepreneurs are willing to innovate.
When you consider where Green Mountain started, it’s astonishing to think where it ended up. Initially, Dave Moran advised Bob not to invest in the company, but he did, and it clearly paid off for him.
In 2014, the company was valued at $1.25 billion when The Coca-Coca Company acquired a 10% share.
A couple of years later, it was purchased by a holding company for $13.9 billion and in 2018, Keurig acquired the Dr Pepper Snapple Group and became the third-largest beverage brand in the US.
Now known as Keurig Dr Pepper, it hires over 25,000 employees and produces a host of products, including the iconic K-Cups.
Bob Stiller
The K-Cup story began with Bob Stiller, the man who tasted a life-changing cup of coffee in the early 1980s and eventually became a billionaire.
In 2001, Stiller became the first Forbes Entrepreneur of the Year, and throughout his journey with Keurig Green Mountain, he devoted time and money to giving a little back.
For instance, the company was heavily involved with the Fair Trade movement and Bob ensured that everyone in the supply chain earned their fair share.
A significant share of the company’s pre-tax profits was also donated, accounting for tens of millions a year.
One of the most notable aspects of the Keurig story is that it was still defined as a small company back in 2005, some 25-years after it was founded.
As noted by Dave Moran during our interview, it was Bob’s persistence that helped him over the hump and turned Keurig Green Mountain into the beverage behemoth that it is today.
Innovation was also key to his success. He was surrounded by massive multinational companies and no one wanted to challenge their success. But Bob noted that these corporations were lacking innovation and were prisoners to Wall Street.
They were stuck, and he was confident he could out-maneuver them as a result.
Growth Hacking Tips: A Keurig Case Study
Through hard work, innovation, and strategic marketing, Green Mountain turned from a small coffee roaster to a multi-billion-dollar beverage company.
Dave Moran was instrumental in the success of this brand and he was also there in the early years when Bob Stiller bought the company.
He is clearly a knowledgeable and talented marketer and has a lot to teach small business owners across the United States.
What follows is a series of tips and techniques discussed during my interview with Dave Moran. All of these were utilized during the K-Cup story. They helped to turn Bob Stiller into one of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs and could provide some growth hacking tips for your business as well.
Distribution Lessons From The K-Cup Story
If the Keurig coffee machine launched in 2020, it would likely be backed by a massive social media marketing campaign.
We’d see YouTube advertising, Instagram snaps, and countless Facebook posts, with influencers, celebs, and everyday consumers making and drinking their K-Cups on camera.
When the machine actually launched, the internet was in its infancy and the social media boom was a good few years away.
To make K-Cups the massively popular product that they are today, Keurig Green Mountain adopted a unique distribution strategy.
The initial goal was to sell the machines to offices. Not only is this where most of America’s coffee is consumed, but it also gave countless office workers a first-hand experience of the product.
If you sell a machine to a single person, you will sell 1 or 2 K-Cups a day and influence a few of their friends. Even in the digital age, word of mouth marketing is very effective.
If you sell one machine to an office, you’ll shift dozens of pods a day and every single employee gets to sample the goods. They’ll tell their spouses and their friends, and from that one machine, you could sell hundreds.
Keurig also targeted college kids, as they drink vast quantities of the black stuff every day, but they adopted a unique approach by actually asking those kids to create their marketing plan.
They ran a competition asking for marketing plans and opened it to college kids, the same people they were targeting. It was an ingenious move, and it gave them insight into a valuable market.
And just like the office example, every machine placed in a college dorm influences every roommate and friend who samples the wares.
As any good salesperson will tell you, once the customer touches the product, they are significantly more likely to buy.
Keurig took this concept and ran with it.
You could be forgiven for thinking that these concepts no longer apply. To an extent, that might be true, but the idea is not to copy Keurig. It’s to take inspiration from what this company did and find a way to make it work for you.
For instance, I know of a major outdoor clothing brand that broke its first million by giving away freebies to local reporters during the winter.
These freebies were well made and used high-quality materials, and as they were manufactured in the state and given to well-known local reporters, it seemed like a genuine gift and not a PR stunt.
Yet, every time those reporters slipped on the coats for an outside broadcast, they were advertising them to thousands. They also recommended them to other reporters, and before long, everyone was wearing them.
For this to work, it has to happen naturally, and that will only occur if the product is incredible and the people promoting it are doing it of their own volition.
Many contemporary brands have tried to replicate this model by mass-producing cheap products and throwing money at influencers.
It works for the initial launch, but then the bad reviews pour in, and instead of recommending the brand, customers start bad-mouthing it and everyone who promotes it.
Create a good product, nail the distribution, and it will market itself.
Remaining Patient As Your Business Grows
Patience was key to the K-Cup story.
They had a brilliant product that everyone wanted, but they knew that moving too fast would cause operational challenges and bring the weight of the industry down on top of them.
As your business grows, patience is important. It could be the difference between $1 million and $1 billion; the difference between success and failure.
In the 2000s, Yahoo reportedly had chances to buy Google, Facebook, eBay, and YouTube, all at different stages.
Facebook is one of the most famous. The story goes that Yahoo wanted to buy the network for $1.1 billion, only to drop the offer to $800 million and send Facebook packing.
Today, Facebook is worth over $500 billion. Imagine how frustrated Mark Zuckerberg would have been if he agreed to that initial offer, only to see his business explode in popularity.
Countless entrepreneurs have been in similar positions. Some have accepted comparatively small offers, others have made snap decisions, and in many cases, they live to regret it.
It’s not just about buying and selling, either. One of the most common queries I hear is, “When should I distribute to Walmart?”
If you’re selling a retail product, Walmart and other major retailers are probably one of your main goals when you first launch. But you need to be ready for that move, otherwise, it could destroy your business.
Major retailers make a lot of demands that your business may struggle to meet.
Can you significantly increase production in the space of a few weeks? Can you reduce your prices to meet their requests? And, perhaps most importantly, can you change your packaging and product if they ask?
For instance, if you sell 120 K-Cups to a box, they might ask you to drop to 60 and use a simple plastic/paper wrap, instead. They will look to squeeze every cent out of your product and make it more suitable to their customers.
If you can’t meet those demands with ease, you’re probably not ready for Walmart. But that’s fine, as your time will come, and rejecting them now doesn’t mean you can’t accept them at a later date.
Finding The Right Model: Razor And Blade
The K-Cup story is proof of a concept I touched upon in my interview with James Orsini, which is that every aspect of a business can change. And if the market requires, it should change.
If you run a DVD rental business in a world of digital streaming, the answer is not to dig your feet in, continue doing what you’re doing, and then wait for this “fad” to pass. The answer is to pivot, pay attention to the changing trends, and discover ways to adapt.
Keurig Green Mountain began by roasting coffee and selling to high-end restaurants, but today, the brand is best known for its K-Cups, which are sold direct-to-consumer.
It’s not just the product that changed, either, as the Keurig business model was also altered by the introduction of K-Cups.
Dave Moran described it as the “Razor and Blades” model, so-named because it’s often used by razor manufacturers like Gillette.
Gillette creates a premium razor that it either sells for a marginal profit or for no profit at all. It then manufactures all the blades to go along with that razor, and as the margins on blades are much higher, the company turns a profit.
It’s something you also see with printers.
A manufacturer like Kodak sells a printer for a very low price, and that entices customers to buy. Once they have the printer, they need to buy proprietary ink, and that ink has a much higher mark-up.
Where Keurig is concerned, the Keurig machine assumes the role of the razor or printer, and the K-Cups are like the blades or ink.
No one is going to buy a Keurig machine and never purchase K-Cups. For most consumers, they’re buying that machine and stocking up on K-Cups, injecting more cash into the coffers with every purchase.
Whether your model is B2B, B2C, licensing, razor and blades, or anything else, it defines how limited you are, but it is not set in stone and can be adapted as your business grows.
Always Seek To Innovate
Bob Stiller is an incredibly ambitious and innovative entrepreneur—two of the most important traits an entrepreneur can have.
Without that ambition, he probably wouldn’t have purchased Green Mountain Coffee Roasters all those years ago; without that innovation, he wouldn’t have changed the company’s approach to marketing and he definitely wouldn’t have merged with Keurig.
The coffee industry, like the countless cups of drip-coffee being consumed every day, was stale and stagnant.
It was an industry dominated by big companies, all set in their ways and all pandering to their stockholders. It needed a company like Keurig Green Mountain to shake things up.
This is true for all industries. To succeed, you should always be the one innovating, the one embracing new trends and technologies.
Be Netflix, not Blockbuster Video; be Kodak, not Polaroid.
Think about the richest companies in the world right now. All of them got to where they are because they weren’t scared to innovate.
Apple went from a struggling computer company to a global powerhouse following the launch of the iPod and then the iPhone. Netflix began by renting DVDs, and after pioneering on-demand video streams, it became one of the biggest media companies in the world.
Every industry grows and changes, and the innovators are the ones leading the way.
Think of your industry as the NFL, and your company as a sports franchise.
You can be at the top of the league for years, relying on the pace of your wide receivers, the skill of your quarterback, and the loyalty of your fans.
You don’t want to make changes because everything is working so well for you, but eventually, those players grow old, the team loses its strength, and all around you, teams that have taken a chance on young and ambitious players out-pace you. The fans lose interest, sponsorships disappear, and before you know it, you’re a mediocre team at best.
Whether you’re new and desperate for a taste of success or you’re at the top and want to hold onto your position, you need to innovate, experiment, and get creative.
Create A Niche
When Keurig launched, the home coffee market was dominated by drip-coffee pots. They were flawed and were almost universally hated as a result.
These pots brewed up to 10 cups of coffee at a time. One or two cups would be consumed, and the rest would just sit there, gradually becoming stale and flavorless. Eventually, the coffee would be tossed away and the process would start over again the next day.
It wasn’t the best tasting coffee and it wasn’t very convenient either.
What if you only want one cup? What if you prefer a light roast but your roommate/spouse prefers dark?
Keurig K-Cups fixed many of these problems, offering a variety of high-quality coffees, all brewed one cup at a time.
They created a niche in a multi-billion dollar industry, and in doing so, they became the innovators that everyone tried to emulate. They stopped following and started leading.
It’s a concept I discussed in a recent interview with the founders of Magic Spoon. This entrepreneurial duo founded two companies, one selling protein bars and one selling cereal. Both industries were massive and established, but by using cricket protein for their bars and healthy ingredients for their cereals, they carved out their own niche.
As I have noted many times before, being unique in business is not about creating a 100% original product in a completely unexplored industry. It’s about establishing your own niche in an existing industry.
That way, you’re not building supply chains and marketing strategies from scratch. You’re trying to teach customers about a product they know nothing about. And more importantly, you can still learn from the failures and successes of your competitors.
You can find your niche by answering the following questions:
- What industry is your company best equipped for? You don’t necessarily need to stick with what you know. If you have a passion for a product and an industry, that’s all you need. However, if you’ve spent years blending, brewing, and tasting tea for a major tea company, it would make more sense to launch a tea business than a coffee/chocolate company.
- What problems do consumers have in this industry? If we stick with the tea theme, you could highlight the fact that loose leaf tea is healthier and tastier, and yet many consumers avoid it because it’s messy and time-consuming. Alternatively, you could focus on the fact that many teabags contain plastic.
- How can you fix it? Ask yourself what solutions you can bring to the table. In the above scenario, for instance, you might find a way to make loose leaf tea easier to portion and prepare or make teabags a little cleaner.
- Does it create more problems? If your “solution” causes more problems than it fixes, customers won’t care. Maybe you find a way of making loose leaf tea more convenient, but only at the expense of a massively increased cost or a product that tastes terrible.
- Will consumers care? Sometimes, the best innovations are completely ignored because the demand just isn’t there. Just because you find a solution, doesn’t mean consumers will buy it. Think about all the infomercials you see on late-night TV. Many of them are ingenious, but they fix minor problems and inconveniences, and most consumers just don’t care. Who’s going to buy an ice machine when bags of ice are cheap and abundant? Who cares about handwarmers when a pair of gloves is often just as effective?
- Is it actually original? Ask your friend for ten of their most original and creative product ideas, write all of them down, and then Google them. I guarantee that at least 8 of them will already exist in some form or other and most will be utter failures. Make sure the product is original and if it’s not (and it has failed many times before) find what they did wrong and don’t make the same mistake.
Prepare For Growth
According to Dave Moran, Keurig Green Mountain experienced 100% quarterly growth for 29 successive quarters. They experienced this growth because they were ready for it at every step.
Many small business owners adopt the mindset of, “I’ll deal with it when it happens” and while this can work for a single period of growth, it will ultimately stop that growth dead in its tracks.
As an example, let’s say that you’re selling homemade sauces or preserves that you’re making yourself in your kitchen.
It’s a low-risk business. Everything is sold online through your website and you make the products during the evenings and weekends while working full-time at an office job.
You produce 200 units a week with relative ease, and following a sudden surge in online sales, you increase this to 700 by quitting your full-time job.
A few weeks later, you get an endorsement from a massive celebrity and your sales grow to 500 a day. You hire more people, rent a large kitchen unit, and look into equipment to improve output.
Another two weeks later, before you have that equipment, you move to 1,000 orders a day. And then to 2,000.
You’re only just finding your feet, learning about industrial equipment, and hiring staff members, and you now have a massive number of orders to fulfill and a huge backlog to clear.
If your business is not prepared, that growth will be wasted, and you’ll be forced to slam the brakes.
Of course, this is purely hypothetical and you likely won’t experience that kind of rapid growth, but it still helps to have contingency plans in place.
Think about your premises, the equipment you will need, and whether or not your distributors and manufacturers can scale up quickly.
As the growth occurs, and as your budget allows, start hiring the right people and preparing the necessary infrastructure.
Have A Clear Vision
Keurig Green Mountain had a very clear and simple vision:
A brewer on every countertop and a beverage for every occasion.
As with many other aspects of business, simplicity is key. It’s easy to over complicate things and confuse matters. You reach a point where you’re being pulled in all directions and never know which area to focus on.
This is especially true for inexperienced entrepreneurs running growing businesses. They get excited by the growth and start daydreaming. One minute they’re turning over their first million and the next they are dreaming of world domination.
Streamline that dream and make sure you have a clear vision from day one.
If we return to the analogy mentioned above, about a small company creating homemade sauces and preserves, a clear goal would be to reach a certain amount of sales, be the leading seller of hot sauce/boutique preserves or expand into Europe.
An overly ambitious and vague goal would be to create a food company rivaling the likes of Nestle.
Once you’ve turned over a few hundred million and reached those initial goals, you can set your sights on world domination. But when you’re a one-person operation working out of your own kitchen, it’s best to keep things simple.
Good Marketing Never Changes
Marketing has changed immensely over the last few decades.
If you wanted to reach someone back in the 1960s and 70s, you invested in billboards and magazine ads. You sent letters to physical mailboxes and invested in 30-second spots on primetime TV shows.
Big companies paid for commercials to run during MASH, Different Strokes, and Charlie’s Angels, smaller ones focused on local networks and obscure late-night shows.
If you didn’t have the budget for TV for print-media, you got creative and approached people on the street.
These days, there are options for every budget and every type of company.
The industry has come a long way and created many more opportunities. On the surface, there’s a world of difference from the Mad Man era.
But despite all the differences, it’s still the same industry.
The typical 2020 entrepreneur, with his fleet of flash cars and minimalist home office, has a lot in common with the heavy-smoking, heavy-smoking Don Draper.
You can take comfort in this.
Every inexperienced marketer worries about the ever-changing rules of the game, and as I will discuss below, it is important to stay on top of these. But the foundations never change, and once you get to grips with these, you’ll have the tools you need to succeed.
Think of it in the context of SEO.
A few months ago, I spoke with SEO-guru Neil Patel. We addressed how the Google algorithm is constantly changing and causing all kinds of panic amongst the SEO community.
Writers, webmasters, and marketers worry that the next big change will impact their rankings. And for many webmasters and business owners, these changes are the reason they run a mile whenever someone tells them to learn about SEO.
But while changes do occur and can impact a business heavily, the most basic rules of link building and content creation never change.
Content is always king, images/video are always welcome, and it never hurts to add relevant internal and external links.
It’s the same with marketing. Trends and methods will change, and you’ll also see many dramatic shifts in ROAS. But the importance of connecting with your customers and appealing to their needs never changes.
Never Stop Learning
E-commerce guru was never my dream job. In fact, in my early twenties, I was a computer scientist and my day-to-day was a world apart from the work I do now.
More importantly, everything I know about e-commerce I learned through reading and practical application.
I am a great believer in the importance of education, but it has to come from a desire to learn and a desperation to apply.
I know many people who spent years in college, accumulated masses of student debt, and left with very little practical knowledge. At the same time, some of the smartest people I know dropped out of high school and spent their days learning about the subjects that interested them.
The desire to learn is more important and powerful than the most prestigious educational institutes.
It doesn’t matter how old you are and what your background is—pick up a book, learn everything it has to teach you, and then find another when you finish.
I recently encountered someone who had spent several years trying to market their own business and claimed to have taken many steps. They were frustrated because nothing was working, and they couldn’t use what they had learned to grow their business.
After digging a little deeper, I discovered that their education amounted to little more than a few YouTube videos and a “For Dummies” book. What’s more, they were so scared of losing money that they were trying new techniques and then giving up when they didn’t notice instant results.
Broaden your horizons, sharpen your mind, take some risks, and you’ll see the growth that you crave.
Once you’re up and running, don’t rest on your laurels. This industry is constantly evolving and if you want to succeed, you need to stay on top of the latest platforms, trends, and marketing techniques.
Read new books, try new methods, get advice from fellow professionals, attend as many events/seminars as you can, and don’t forget to watch all This Week With Sabir episodes!
Always Put The Customer First
Many modern companies look for the cheapest products they can find on Alibaba, pay a freelancer to staff their Live Chat, and then ignore all complaints and return requests. They take what they can from one business and move onto the next.
For example, there are several companies selling supposed “high-end” jewelry and watches. They create a brand with a fancy Italian-sounding name, create a logo, and then attach it to cheap $5 pieces that they sell for $300+.
The only thing premium is the price, but because they have such powerful marketing campaigns behind them, and because many consumers associate price with quality, they often succeed in their efforts.
Upon witnessing the success of these companies, other entrepreneurs follow suit, creating an endless succession of companies that put profits before customers.
It makes life harder for honest companies trying to create genuine products, but the cream always rises to the top eventually.
Take the time to care for your customers and they will reward you in kind.
A customer who hates your product, thinks they have been ripped off, and experiences bad customer service may leave you a bad review and tell their friends to stay away.
Forget about Cthulhu or Godzilla—if you have ever worked in retail, you’ll know that an aggrieved customer is one of the most destructive beings in the world.
The good thing about companies that chase profits and neglect customers is that they are found out eventually, and when they are, the hammer of truth hits pretty hard.
On the flip side, if you devote yourself to providing a quality product and offering good customer support, a single customer may leave a good review, tell their friends, advertise you on social media, and become a dedicated subscriber/consumer.
Keep the following in mind to ensure you avoid the wrath of unhappy customers:
- Genuine Need: The K-Cup is a product that consumers were crying out for. It fulfilled a need and significantly improved their lives as a result. They could enjoy a wider variety of coffees and sip a freshly brewed cup whenever they wanted. If you can meet a customer’s needs like this, you will have their loyalty and respect for life.
- Quality Product: Your product should be well-made and packaged. It shouldn’t feel cheap or amateurish and should last for as long as a customer needs it.
- Limited Waste: Many modern consumers get angry with companies that use an excessive amount of plastic in their product or packaging. Keep your waste to a minimum to ensure your customers stay happy and your business is future-proofed.
- Remove Uncertainty: When a prospective customer visits your website, all of their questions should be answered in a clear and concise way. Tell them how much the product costs, where it can be shipped, what its uses/benefits are, and more. You’re essentially assuming the role of a friendly local shop assistant.
- Returns Policy: You don’t need a flashy money-back guarantee (although it might help) but you should have a returns policy. If a customer changes their mind during transit or after ordering, or if the product malfunctions, they should be offered a straightforward returns process with a full refund or replacement.
- Good Support: Nothing makes a customer angrier than a call that goes unanswered or an email that is ignored. Give your customers as many contact options as you can (within reason) and make sure these are staffed every day. You don’t need 24/7 support, but you should have at least one person who answers emails and Live Chat messages 9 to 5 from Monday to Friday.
- Respond to Reviews: Any time someone leaves you a bad review, respond to them, address their issues, and look for a solution. Don’t call them names or accuse them of being a competitor. Your response will be read by prospective customers and if it looks petty and childish, they won’t trust you. Write with the knowledge that all new customers will be reading and, if possible, fix the issue. It’ll look great to other readers and may result in the review being removed or changed.
Unlock The Power Of Data
Before talking about the K-cup story in our Keurig case study, Dave Moran discussed the importance of data, highlighting it as one of the things that makes marketing more accessible than it was several decades ago.
Data is one of the most powerful assets that a company can have. It’s something that many companies have spent years trying to acquire and something that has landed many of them in serious hot water.
It’s also something that many small businesses don’t understand, but once you refine your data collection and utilization methods, you’ll see your business grow.
As an example, let’s imagine that you set up a brand-new website and have welcomed 10,000 customers in your first week.
If you’re not making an effort to collect data from those customers, the only things you’ll know are how big the average order is, how much revenue you have generated, and what your profits are.
If you add analytics to your site and advertising platforms, you can discover metrics such as:
- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Income Bracket
- Device/Browser
- Browsing Time
- Links Clicked
With this data, you can create email and SMS contact lists and determine how likely someone is to open an email, make a purchase, and more. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, as data can paint a complete picture of your average customer and the ways they interact with your site.
Google has some of the most complete user profiles on the web, and it has these on pretty much everyone who uses the Google search engine.
When you use a Google Ads Smart Shopping or Display campaign, it knows who to target with your ads and how likely they are to buy.
It can separate virtual window shoppers from people who are actually ready to buy, and it knows what they are looking for based on their search history.
It’s the stuff that dreams are made of for advertisers—the golden age of data.
As a business owner looking to grow your company, it’s an opportunity you can’t afford to miss.
The $100,000 Question
As always, I concluded my discussion with Dave Moran by asking him for his best advice on the subject of growth hacking.
After all, not only did he help to grow Keurig Green Mountain into a multi-billion-dollar company, but he has assisted countless other businesses as well.
His $100,000 advice was twofold, touching on some of the points outlined above while going into a little more detail.
Firstly, he emphasized the importance of focusing on the customer.
The customer-first attitude played a massive role in the success of Keurig Green Mountain and allowed it to become the trusted organization it is today.
His second tip was to always look for ways to evolve and adapt. If you don’t, your competitors will, and you’ll be left behind.
More Information
During our interview, Dave talked about the book Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change by David Cooperrider, which is well worth a read for anyone seeking to follow in his footsteps.
I would also recommend a book titled Think to Win. It was co-authored by Paul Butler, a strategic thinking expert who I was fortunate to have on This Week With Sabir a few months ago.
On the topic of coffee and growth hacking, you should check out my feature on the Coffee and Commerce podcast, where we look at growth hacking in 2020. And as always, stay tuned to This Week With Sabir for more great interviews and tips!
About Our Guest: Dave Moran
Meet Dave Moran. A superior strategic problem solver and “innovation architect” with a 35-year marketing consulting track record of driving profitable growth for large corporations and startups. In 2012, Dave and a partner founded Deep Relevance Partners (DRP), a communications strategy firm. DRP’s expertise is integrating leading-edge marketing science approaches with consumer strategy expertise to develop powerful consumer ideas that drive behavior change and in-market growth. A highlight of Dave’s career was as a Director of Keurig Green Mountain from the 1993 IPO to the 2016 sale. Today Dave is going to talk to us about how a company-wide commitment to “Total Innovation” fueled explosive and disruptive growth for Keurig Green Mountain. It is an insider’s story on what Forbes called “one of the most successful acquisitions in the history of the US Food and Beverage Industry.”
Prior to founding DRP, Dave was a leader and growth driver of three highly successful marketing consulting organizations: Marketing Corp of America, Cambridge Group and Fusion 5. He is an expert in generating growth through consumer insight, superior communication and innovation. Dave is a Synectics trained and experienced facilitator of group brainstorming, collaborative team strategy development and senior management problem-solving sessions.
Dave received a B.A. in Management and an MBA from Texas Christian University (TCU). He was awarded the Tandy Marketing Fellowship and earned Beta Gamma Sigma, National MBA Honor Society, honors. In recognition of his innovation results, Dave was selected by Tom Peters to facilitate his In Search of Excellence Innovation Leaders’ Summit. He was a long-standing member of the Board of Directors of Keurig Green Mountain (KGM). He was Chair of the CSR Committee and member of the Compensation/Organization and Governance Committees. Dave is also an Advisor to Prevu (prevuapp.com), a NYC based real estate startup with a disruptive model. Dave is a Director of Shepherds, Inc, a Connecticut based non-profit organization that sponsors and mentors “at risk” inner city students through private high schools.
Visit Dave on the Web at deeprp.com.