ARTICLE / THE MAKING OF... SERIES
The making of...
Jonny
Like all good things, we discovered sexual wellness brand, Jonny through recommendations from friends. Blown away by what we discovered, we reached out to Jonny co-founder Bec Park for her story. And as you’ll see, community, events, right-fit collaborations and ultimately, word-of-mouth recommendations have all been key to building the brand. Something that’s vital especially when, like many other start-ups, you don’t have millions of dollars for advertising.
Series
The making of... Series
Tags
Entrepreneurial
Start up
Welcome to The making of... blog series. To start, can you give us a bit of a background into who you are and where you’ve come from?
Hello, I’m Bec Park. At Jonny, we have three co-founders, originally friends, now business partners. We come from varied backgrounds but all have a similar love of good design, human-centric, purpose led brands that are making changes for good, and also a desire to do our bit for a more sustainable future.
Personally, my background is in marketing. I spent years in advertising before "crossing over" to the client side where I got to work with some incredible brands and leaders in the luxury goods arena, and then later on in life (while juggling single parenting) some well-regarded Australian businesses. Starting Jonny has been an incredible opportunity to put many (many) years of learning into practice...and the learning curve has continued to grow!
Coming from advertising to marketing, and now a brand co-founder we can definitely see the merit in what you’re doing. No doubt that also means you had numerous business ideas and various options. So, how did you come up with the concept for Jonny?
Jonny is a sexual wellness brand that wants to smash the stigma and awkwardness that still exists when talking about intimacy, sex and especially sex with condoms. We want to make condoms as normal, and accessible as toothpaste!
Jonny came about from a very informal chat the three of us were having around our loves, lusts, one-nighters etc and our various experiences. We soon realised that despite our age differences, we all had very similar experiences when it came to wanting to use condoms.
We all experienced the same awkwardness, and in some cases shame....and we couldn't believe that this still existed! (it was 2016 and before #metoo) It dawned on us that we could do something about this....and from there Jonny was born!
Jonny Co-Founder Bec Park (left)
That’s a great story and I’m sure a lot of our blog readers will agree with you. Knowing there are a lot of condom brands already on the market, what research did you do to arrive at what you have now? How did you test your product-market fit?
There were in fact two pieces of research that qualified our approach and really drove us to get Jonny to market as soon as we could.
First, we set about reviewing the traditional players, a competitive analysis of sorts to ensure that what we 'thought' was the problem was in fact still the problem. And it confirmed our thoughts in no uncertain terms. The marketing of some of the larger brands even in 2016 was archaic and to some degree misogynistic. We were shocked that these brands were still rolling out old marketing tactics from 20 years ago. To some degree, these brands, in my opinion, have contributed to the stigma that exists through poor and predictable messaging.
The second piece of research was a focus group with a small sample of our intended audience; young women. This was, we felt, a core opportunity in the market for Jonny. Women had been ignored as a target market by most brands and any attempts to talk to them had been poor. We couldn't understand why this was the case, after all, both sexes experience the use of a condom. To be blunt and please excuse the use of gender normative terms, a condom is "worn" by the male and it is inside the female. It is equal! Both are just as responsible for the use or not of a condom when practising safe sex. Anyway, I digress. The focus group was incredibly important in qualifying if our brand and packaging could alone encourage women to buy Jonny. To this day, the moment when our focus group went from "I will never buy condoms" to "oh wow, I would totally buy that" and "I'd be proud to walk through a supermarket with a pack like that" was truly a goosebump moment and one I will never forget.
When you put it that way, it starts to get less problematic and more democratic. And with that in mind, what were the first runs like? Were the first iterations of your product what you expected them to be?
Pretty much what you see today! We had done so much work on the look and feel prior to launching, and we haven't changed much. The product itself, the condom, is as good as you can get. The packaging, other than a few updates we had to do to be on the retail shelf, is as we had imagined from the early days. The real test of the brand is how we incorporate other products into the fold, which we plan to do 😉
Knowing your background, we wouldn’t expect anything less. How about funding? How did you initially pay for everything?
Ahhhhhh money! The toughest part of running a start-up! We bootstrapped and ran out! We had a couple of friends who were very supportive of Jonny and became minor shareholders before we even launched. And we also had the support of a very generous associate for a private loan. All that lasted 18 months!
Yes, funding is difficult for many start-ups. If we ran a poll, it would most likely be weighted towards bootstrapping, friends and family. You mentioned packaging earlier. Could you tell us about the branding process and how you arrived at where you are today?
Establishing the brand identity was actually the toughest part of setting up our business. Even the funding was easier!
Given my career in marketing, we were able to define and articulate what we wanted the brand to be and feel like. We knew we wanted a gender-neutral brand that was bold, playful and witty. We had the brand persona all worked out. The challenge was finding the right person/people to bring this to life through the brand mark and tone of voice. We spoke to many creatives - and many who said we needed to target men only! - and others that had a very predictable approach (smutty, crass etc). So finding the right creative fit was the challenge.
Through our personal networks, we finally landed on a couple of wonderfully creative humans who understood our vision for Jonny and brought that to life through the core brand assets you see today, and our signature tone of voice.
Knowing what you want and having experience in marketing always helps when it comes to branding. However, finding the right fit can be difficult. And what about awareness? How are you getting the word out there? How are you scaling the brand?
Digital digital digital. As a small business with limited dollars we need to put our money where it is measurable.
Social media was definitely a key tool in the early days e.g. Instagram. That landscape has changed rapidly and we had challenges given the ridiculous rules for advertising etc, but we continue to navigate this.
We got involved with, and continue to do a lot with Universities and brand collaborations.
And we developed clever partnerships that embraced the Jonny messaging early on and really helped drive our awareness. For example, we partnered with The Line (not-for-profit consent educator) and handed out 30,000 condoms at schoolies events; we got involved with Splendour and PASH (NSW government initiative) and distributed Jonny. So, we really targeted partnerships with those that were aligned to our overall messaging.
Our customers are our biggest advocates and driver of awareness. Our Jonny community is seriously an incredible group of humans.
There is sooooo much more to do and plan to do.
Yes, funding is difficult for many start-ups. If we ran a poll, it would most likely be weighted towards bootstrapping, friends and family. You mentioned packaging earlier. Could you tell us about the branding process and how you arrived at where you are today?
Establishing the brand identity was actually the toughest part of setting up our business. Even the funding was easier!
Given my career in marketing, we were able to define and articulate what we wanted the brand to be and feel like. We knew we wanted a gender-neutral brand that was bold, playful and witty. We had the brand persona all worked out. The challenge was finding the right person/people to bring this to life through the brand mark and tone of voice. We spoke to many creatives - and many who said we needed to target men only! - and others that had a very predictable approach (smutty, crass etc). So finding the right creative fit was the challenge.
Through our personal networks, we finally landed on a couple of wonderfully creative humans who understood our vision for Jonny and brought that to life through the core brand assets you see today, and our signature tone of voice.
Knowing what you want and having experience in marketing always helps when it comes to branding. However, finding the right fit can be difficult. And what about awareness? How are you getting the word out there? How are you scaling the brand?
Digital digital digital. As a small business with limited dollars we need to put our money where it is measurable.
Social media was definitely a key tool in the early days e.g. Instagram. That landscape has changed rapidly and we had challenges given the ridiculous rules for advertising etc, but we continue to navigate this.
We got involved with, and continue to do a lot with Universities and brand collaborations.
And we developed clever partnerships that embraced the Jonny messaging early on and really helped drive our awareness. For example, we partnered with The Line (not-for-profit consent educator) and handed out 30,000 condoms at schoolies events; we got involved with Splendour and PASH (NSW government initiative) and distributed Jonny. So, we really targeted partnerships with those that were aligned to our overall messaging.
Our customers are our biggest advocates and driver of awareness. Our Jonny community is seriously an incredible group of humans.
There is sooooo much more to do and plan to do.
