How Asian American food brand Omsom is using 'rowdy and rambunctious' marketing to break through

Brands on the Rise is a regular Ad Age feature spotlighting the marketing and business tactics of successful challenger brands. Read other installments here. Asian American noodle brands, such as Cup Noodles and Top Ramen, are many things: convenient, warm, and the perfect late-night study snack for any college student with a microwave. But the words “rowdy” and “rambunctious” likely aren’t how most people describe them. At least, until Omsom—an Asian American noodles and sauces brand—entered the space in May 2020. Founded by sisters and daughters of Vietnamese refugees, Kim and Vanessa Pham, the brand’s name actually means “rowdy or rambunctious” in Vietnamese. The co-founders seem to take the name quite seriously based on their marketing events alone, the most recent of which was a rave in a Brooklyn warehouse where they offered free tattoos and partied with influencers, journalists and Omsom fans into the early hours of the morning. They take their business seriously, too. Since the brand first rolled out, Omsom has grown its quarterly revenue by 500%, according to the brand, which declined to disclose dollar figures. It has also sold out more than 15 times online in three years, the brand said. By 2023, Omsom arrived in Target, and just a few weeks ago it entered national Whole Foods stores. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Omsom has disrupted the food and beverage industry at large, too. When the diet plan Whole30 added monosodium glutamate (MSG) to the ingredients allowed within the program, it cited Omsom as a reason why. This happened after Omsom partnered with Pepper Teigen, the mother of model Chrissy Teigen who has her own cookbook, on a product with MSG. Omsom has achieved all this with only eight full-time employees including the two co-founders. Below, how the co-founders burst onto the Asian-American food scene by playing hard and working harder. How it started Kim and Vanessa Pham had been talking about starting a business together for years—one that was based on their shared experience growing up as the daughters of Vietnamese refugees. They began working on Omsom in 2018 with an emphasis on community building, according to the co-founders. “Building a community in advance is just helpful from a product feedback perspective. And obviously, we also wanted to set our launch up for success,” Omsom co-founder Kim Pham said in an interview. “In the early days, when it was just the two of us … we literally would pop up at Asian American markets and events and expos and just serve our cooking sauces,” she said. But the strategy wasn’t just a way of checking if people liked the products that would become Omsom—it was part of “sneakily building up an email list,” Pham said. “The deal was, you’d get a little bite for free as long as you left your email,” she continued. “That was a really wonderful way for us to get in front of our community, especially our OG evangelists.” The sisters weren’t heading to any old farmers markets, however. They were popping up at “very specific” Asian American community building and networking events, such as Asian Hustle Network and The Cosmos. “We knew from the start that to build a brand like ours, we needed to have this ride-or-die OG community of Asian Americans who would advocate for our flavors,” Pham said. Also read: Top 5 food and beverage marketing ideas By the time Omsom officially rolled out, initially as a DTC brand, it had “a very decent sized list of Asian Americans, largely” who were ready and waiting for the products. Pham did not provide details on the size of that list. That official rollout happened at an inopportune time in many ways: May 2020. It was not only a difficult time for the world from an economic and pandemic standpoint, but also a difficult time to be part of the Asian-American community, with hate crimes against Asian Americans rising. “We had mentors and investors tell us we should hold off [on the launch],” Kim Pham said. But the co-founders didn’t listen. They believed that, with everyone stuck at home and the Asian American community especially searching for a sense of connection and home, the timing of the rollout still made sense. The launch sold out in 72 hours, Pham said. Tipping point Omsom products rolled out in Target in January 2023 and they recently expanded to national Whole Foods stores, which Vanessa Pham described as a “dream.” “We've long been fans of Whole Foods,” she said, recalling when the first Whole Foods store arrived in a “fancy town” near where the sisters grew up. “We were just in awe,” she recalled. But the journey into Whole Foods wasn’t exactly an easy one. “To get and hold the attention of a national buyer at Whole Foods is certainly challenging,” Vanessa Pham said. The community surrounding the brand got a buyer interested initially, according to Pham, but then “there were long stretches of time” where Omsom didn’t hear back from the buyer. So Vanessa took matters into her own hands: She flew to Austin, Texas, where Whole Foods is based, in a bid to meet with the retailer in person. “Look, I'm in town. Please meet with me, I’m gonna cook you all the products,” she told them. The day she got there, after a few hours of waiting, she finally got confirmation that she could meet with someone in person. “I came with six Tupperware” to meet with a national buyer, Vanessa said. “That was really the tipping point that allowed us to have that national launch.” Brands on the rise A look at up-and-coming brands disrupting their categories Read more here Marketing strategies Kim Pham says the brand’s marketing efforts have been fruitful, in part, because of Omsom’s targeted approach. “We are first and foremost an Asian American brand,” she said. “That doesn't mean that you have to be Asian to engage with us. But I do think having such a clear point of view and perspective really helped us build this friendly community on social of folks who really felt seen and heard by our work,” she continued, adding that the strong, differentiating point of view has “absolutely” been “the key to us cutting through the noise.” “I think a lot of brands in the early days make this mistake where they're like, … ‘I need to make everything feel really, really, really accessible,” Kim said. “But some advice that we got really early on … was ‘if you're for everyone you’re for no one.’” The brand uses a weekly founder’s newsletter, text messaging, authentic TikTok content and some paid Facebook and Instagram activations to communicate that point of view. They also do one or two events a year. @weareomsom find us at @Whole Foods Market, bb 🧡 #smallbusiness #startup #asianowned ♬ Makeba - Jain The recent rave Omsom threw to celebrate its saucy noodles product rollout is one of the best examples of the brand’s “rowdy and rambunctious” point of view. “The theme of that rave was extra saucy with three X’s, and that really was our way of reclaiming this idea of sauciness and pleasure, because those things are oftentimes weaponized against Asian Americans as a way to fetishize and flatten us,” Kim said. So for this event, the co-founders asked themselves what it would look like “for an Asian American brand to own our pleasure and own our joy,” she continued. That ended up looking like a rowdy rave party in Brooklyn that went until 2 a.m. complete with Omsom’s new products at a noodle bar, pole dancers and a tattoo artist. “This is not going to be a posh sit-down Soho dinner, it's going to be something a little bit different that speaks to rave culture within Asian America,” Kim said. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Omsom (@omsom) What the experts say Kendall Dickieson, the founder of Flexible Creative consultancy who has worked with other DTC brands in Whole Foods such as Graza, was at the recent saucy noodles rave—and got a permanent tattoo there. “It didn't feel like a launch event, because it was so natural,” Dickieson said in an interview. There were also moments built in throughout the event that felt very “shareable” on social media—for instance, people are obviously going to post about getting a new tattoo, she said. As someone who has helped roll out a DTC brand into a retailer, Dickieson said the Target move made sense for Omsom. It “opens them up to like a completely different demo around the country,” she said, which is especially the case in places that don’t necessarily have a lot of authentic Asian American food options in stores. Related: Behind the Grimace Shake TikTok trend Given current economic conditions, Omsom’s place as a home-prepared food puts it in a good place, according to Shelley Balanko, senior VP of development for market research firm The Hartman Group, More than one in 10 occasions now involve some form of Asian cuisine in the U.S., she shared. Forty percent of those occasions involve food that is sourced at home, rather than from a restaurant. “We all are living in this environment of inflation [right now],” Balanko said in an interview. “While we continue to eat out at restaurants a fair amount right now, consumers do like the opportunity to bring those experiences home [so] they can be a little bit more economical,” she said. “Brands that allow the consumer to kind of recreate those food service experiences at home, you know, really do fill that growing need that we see in our food culture,” Balanko added. What’s next While Omsom’s co-founders are still knee-deep in their saucy noodle Whole Foods launch, Vanessa said that Omsom has plans to “roll out in some other stores as well,” later this year. Bringing that new product to the Omsom community is currently its biggest focus, as well as bringing it to Amazon, Vanessa said—and increasingly expanding into retail. “We're working on some potentially fun partnerships for the holiday season,” Kim Pham added. Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here

How Asian American food brand Omsom is using 'rowdy and rambunctious' marketing to break through

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