How MUD/WTR Created Emotional Resonance in a Saturated Market With Shane Heath

Shane Heath is the Co-founder and CEO of MUD/WTR, which produces coffee alternative beverages designed to provide natural energy and focus. Under Shane's leadership, MUD/WTR has gained significant recognition for its unique branding, evolving into a popular choice among consumers seeking healthier alternatives to traditional caffeinated drinks. Shane's background in design and his ability to create a compelling brand narrative have been pivotal in MUD/WTR’s success.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:10] Shane Heath discusses how to mitigate consumer indifference
• [7:09] The power of embracing rumors for brand intrigue
• [9:42] Transforming every consumer interaction into a brand expression canvas
• [11:49] Understanding the balance between controversy and authenticity
• [14:07] How to avoid common traps when creating a non-indifferent brand
• [16:13] Building a unique brand world for lasting consumer impact
• [17:12] Align your brand's identity through world-building strategies
• [17:41] Why should brands embrace authenticity over tactics for stronger brand resonance?
• [18:18] Defining your brand's personality to strengthen its identity

In this episode…

Most brands don’t fail because they’re bad — they fail because no one cares. In a saturated ecommerce landscape, it's not enough to be liked; you need to evoke a strong reaction. How do you build a brand that cuts through indifference and resonates with people?

Shane Heath, a designer and entrepreneur, explains how to use branding and positioning to eliminate consumer indifference. Shane emphasizes the importance of building a brand with a clear voice, personality, and worldview. He suggests treating every customer touchpoint — from packaging to transactional emails — as an opportunity to express your brand’s identity. Rather than striving to appeal to everyone, Shane recommends creating something unique, even polarizing, to spark curiosity and emotional connection.

In this episode of Minds of Ecommerce, Raphael Paulin-Daigle interviews Shane Heath, Co-founder and CEO of MUD/WTR, about building brands that demand attention. Shane shares how authenticity drives emotional resonance, how to use brand voice as a filter for every decision, and why world-building is more important than flashy tactics.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Raphael Paulin-Daigle: LinkedIn | X
• SplitBase
• Shane Heath: LinkedIn | Instagram
• MUD/WTR: Website | Instagram
• “How BYLT Grew Customer Loyalty and LTV Using a Custom Shopping App With Ryan Groh” on Minds of Ecommerce

Quotable Moments:

• "The thing a brand needs to fear the most is indifference — it's not the competition."
• "Everything from the name to the emails should pass through a ‘no indifference’ filter."
• "When people feel something — even confusion — they’re far more likely to engage with your brand."
• "Transactional emails are one of the most overlooked canvases to express your brand voice."
• "By being authentic, you’re inherently being unique — and that’s how you avoid being ignored."

Action Steps:

1. Focus on creating a unique brand identity: Developing a distinct brand identity helps capture attention and reduces consumer indifference. By crafting a unique personality and voice for your brand, you can stand out in a crowded market.
2. Leverage all touchpoints as branding opportunities: Utilize every interaction with consumers, from transactional emails to packaging, as a canvas to express your brand identity. This holistic approach ensures consistency and reinforces brand recognition, making consumers less likely to feel indifferent.
3. Prioritize authenticity over controversy: Building a brand that is authentic to its values and beliefs, rather than seeking controversy for its own sake, fosters genuine connections with consumers. Authenticity helps create a unique presence that resonates more deeply with your audience, reducing indifference.
4. View your brand as a living entity: Conceiving your brand as a person with its own values, beliefs, and personality can provide a guiding framework for decision-making. This approach humanizes the brand, making it relatable and memorable for consumers, which helps mitigate indifference.
5. Focus on world-building: Create a cohesive brand universe by considering every element, from design to messaging, as part of a larger narrative. This immersive experience engages consumers on a deeper level, encouraging emotional connections and reducing the likelihood of their indifference.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by SplitBase.

At SplitBase, we design, test, and manage high-converting landing pages and on-site experiences for fashion, luxury, and lifestyle ecommerce brands. Our optimization program pinpoints exactly where your store is losing money most, and then we help you fix that.

The result? Increased conversions and profits for our clients.

With our team of conversion optimization specialists, performance marketers, and conversion-focused designers, we've got your back when it comes to testing and optimization.

Request a proposal on SplitBase.com today, and learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend.

You can find us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Don’t miss out on our exclusive podcasts at Minds of Ecommerce.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:06

Welcome to the Minds of Ecommerce podcast, where you'll learn one key strategy that made leading ecommerce companies grow exponentially. We cut the bullshit and keep the meat. In a 15-minute episode, founders and executives take us through a deep dive of a strategy so you get to learn and grow your online sales. In the last episode, you heard from Ryan Groh, associate director of ecommerce at BYLT Basics, who discussed how they're leveraging a mobile app to increase customer lifetime value. Now, today on episode number 60, get ready!

Shane Heath is the co-founder and CEO of MUD/WTR. And today we'll be talking about how to mitigate indifference through branding and positioning. I'm your host, Raphael Paulin-Daigle, and I'm the founder of SplitBase. This is Minds of Ecommerce. This episode is brought to you by SplitBase.

At SplitBase, we help leading eight and nine-figure brands such as Dr. Squatch, Hyperice and Amika and Once Upon a Farm go through customer-focused conversion optimization programs. Our programs pinpoint exactly where your store is losing money the most and then, well, we help you fix it. The result you get higher conversions, higher AOV, and of course, more money, which in turn allows you to scale advertising profitably. We've been at it for over a decade and can help you manage the entire SEO process from A to Z, so go to splitbase.com today to learn how we can help you get the most out of your marketing spend. All right Shane, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for being here.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 01:39

Yeah. Thanks for having me on.

Shane Heath: 01:41

Yeah. So as you know, this podcast is all about going deep, right. And dissecting one key growth strategy so our listeners can get the most value right away. Now today we're going to be talking about how to mitigate indifference amongst consumers and how you guys have done that through positioning and branding. But maybe just to give context to our listeners.

What does mitigate indifference means to you and to MUD/WTR?

Shane Heath: 02:10

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's interesting. So it's one of those situations where it's easier to connect the dots in reverse. And I get a question a lot from other entrepreneurs starting something of like, what did you do early on that you think was fundamental to supporting the success of MUD/WTR? And one of the things that I couldn't quite communicate clearly was that we just, like, found a way to stand out.

And my background is in design. I've worked for a variety of different companies, wore a lot of hats, so I was able to kind of express the vision that I had for the brand in unique ways. Over the last couple of years, I've started researching a lot more, you know, business professionals, entrepreneurs, and I came across a book from the Red Bull CEO who was on the Red Bull CEO. And one of the things that he said many times throughout the book is that the thing a brand needs to fear the most is indifference. It's not like the competition or any of those things.

It's people not caring about what you're doing. And I think it's very easy to launch a brand and, and play the safe route where you're like, I think a lot of people are going to like this, and people might not not like it, but they're not like, like typically when you're doing something that's resonating with culture, typically when people don't feel indifferent about something, you're going to have a bit of polarity, meaning that some people are going to hate it and be mad about it, and some people are going to absolutely love it. And that's a really powerful, I guess, tightrope to find in building a brand. And when it came to MUD/WTR, that's what I wanted to do without knowing that I wanted to do it, I guess. And, you know, I think that when people think about, okay, cool, like we got to put something out there that like, you know, people can't feel indifferent about a campaign, an ad campaign, like a billboard, whatever.

And I think I would take it a layer deeper and use it as a kind of filter for everything. So if you're starting a company, it's like everything from the name, the name to the voice, to what goes in the packaging, to how the emails are written. And that's kind of the approach that I took. So obviously, the name MUD/WTR, it's tough to feel indifferent about it. There's a lot of other names that would have been safer and quote-unquote, tastier sounding or more traditional, and they probably would have been fine.

But with our name, it caused you to pause and reflect, which is an important thing in marketing. And then you had to kind of like take a stance on it in a way, or you just leaned in and you were curious about like, what is this? And what I found that early on, once people or for those who were excited enough about it. Interested enough about it to try it. Once they got it, if they liked it, they were a lot more likely to share it.

Just because it was just because of the name. Because they knew, like, we're all personal brands. You know, everybody's got an Instagram, and whether you have a lot of followers or not, like you're posting because you're trying to resonate with your audience, right?

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 05:19

And totally.

Shane Heath: 05:20

The same principle applies if you're posting stuff that people are just like, whatever. People stop looking. And I think people just intuitively felt that if they posted, I'm drinking mud right now, I'm drinking mud water right now. But it would turn heads and and so it had like a virality component built into it. And so that's just like one example of applying that filter of how do you mitigate indifference.

How do you try to to be memorable? It can be applied. It can be applied to the voice and so on.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 05:54

And I think that's one of the biggest lessons of marketing, right. At the end of the day, if you try to appeal to everyone, you're are appealing to no one, right? So there are so many brands out there. There are so many products, right? If you're just average, okay, normal to everyone, you're not going to create enough emotional resonance to get anyone excited about the product.

And obviously on the name side of things, right. We can also think of like liquid death, right? Obviously very highly high-growth brand with a very controversial name. And that's the proof that sometimes something very controversial can also work quite well. Yeah.

Shane Heath: 06:32

So with Red Bull, just to like go off of that example, the example that was caught out in that book was when Red Bull was first started. There was a lot of rumors about what Red Bull was. Red Bull was an energy drink. But at that time, energy drinks weren't very popular. And there was rumors going around that Red Bull, the energy like what was creating energy in Red bull was from like a bull's testicle or something like that.

False. But like it has a bull on the logo and all these things. And what Red bull decided to do is not like not only not comment on it like they didn't like create a.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 07:08

Statement.

Shane Heath: 07:09

Like we're going to clarify exactly that. This is false. They're like, no, like let's let that go. Like let's let that kind of find roots and just like go around. And then I think they created a website that published all of these like, rumors on it.

I love that, like, leaned in because they could have squashed that. And they're like, people are caring. So let's put fuel on that fire.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 07:35

Love it. I think one of the main things that a lot of founders listening to this will lean into when they think about how do we create a brand that's indifferent is going to be design. Right now, if we kind of look back at the DTC space about five years ago, maybe a little further even, right. You had you had this new wave of DTC brands that were really just different because they were a boring product, but like a sexy and most and more exciting design. Do you feel like that's enough at this point to differentiate your brand through design, or is it just a part of it?

Shane Heath: 08:11

No, I mean it always depends. It might be enough, but I think that again, like my I like to encourage entrepreneurs to apply that filter to every part of their business. Like this is like a holistic thing. Like if your product doesn't, if your product creates indifference, like if it people are just like, I this looks fine, you know, that's great. Like it's not like people are like, don't like it.

It's just that they don't care. So the product should be differentiated. And that aligns with most best practices in business. But yeah I think it's it's typically tough to take a product and then just like create an amazing brand around it. But brands do liquid.

Liquid death is an amazing example right. They took water. So you could you can do it. I think it's more difficult. And the better path is to, you know, ideally have a differentiated product that creates a little bit of interest and polarity just on its own, just due to the ingredients, which I think Red bull had when they launched, and then create a brand around it that applies those same principles throughout it.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 09:20

Yeah. So design brand, narrative, product itself, name all ways where you can create something a bit different. Is there anything else that you guys are doing actively, whether it's in your marketing, in terms of product that you feel is a, you know, prime example of creating this?

Shane Heath: 09:42

I mean, anything that any yeah, anything that the consumer interacts with is what I would call a canvas that you can use to express your brand through. And I think some brands look at a canvas like an, a transactional email like they just ordered the product. And so it's just a transactional email we're sending them that they got we got the order. You know it's a confirmation. It's like, no, that's a canvas like that.

Those transactional emails actually have the highest open rate. You know they have way higher open rate than your like email flow that you're going to create after, because they're coming right after they ordered it. And that's a canvas like. And so we rewrote that whole email to come from me. And it has like this whole story to it.

And then it also gives them the information that they're typically looking for in that email. So I think there's a lot of like sub canvases that get overlooked, like the obvious ones, like what is the packaging look like? What is the website look like? How does this ad read feel like logo, those types of things. Then there's kind of second tier of like what is the brand voice like?

The brand should have a voice and that voice should be it should have a, have a stance, you know, like there should be a personality that you can identify and not feel indifferent about. And then it just goes into all the details, you know. Like, do you have little stickers in your packaging? What are those say? Do you like, do you make merch?

Is it just a logo on a shirt or is it, you know, like everything is an opportunity to, I guess, strengthen the brand's ability to create that magic that that makes them memorable. And I think in order to do that, people, that is that comes at the result of people not feeling indifferent about it.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 11:26

I'm thinking back of, you know, what you were saying about, you know, the name of the brand being quite unusual. And I'm thinking, you know, there might be some people listening to this that are kind of interpreting this as you need to create controversy. Do you really need to create controversy? Is that what it's about to create an indifferent brand, or it's really just about finding an angle that hasn't been exploited yet?

Shane Heath: 11:49

I think that's like that's one way to do it. I typically more so the way, the way I think about it is by being unique in and of itself. I think it's tough to be indifferent about it. And when I, I look at brands the same way that I do, people like a brand is kind of like a it's like a person that you're interacting with that has a personality, it has beliefs, it has values. It has, you know, things that it would die on a hill for and things that it doesn't care about.

You know, like a consumer interacting with packaging, website, ads, copy voice. They're kind of getting all that, you know, they're kind of putting all those pieces together. And when they're buying a brand, it's it's kind of like they're building a relationship with a some sort of like entity, some sort of social sculpture. And so, yeah, I don't think that a brand just needs to like, go out there and be controversial for controversy's sake to be indifferent. I think if you figure out, like what that brand, what you stand for as a brand and just be authentic, like by being authentic, you're inherently being unique.

And I think this is more I don't have any experience building like what I would call like a, a whiteboard business where it's like, oh, there's this opportunity here. And like, we can make money, like, let's go do it. I guess what I'm speaking to is more or may speak. Yeah. Speaking for is like the founders who have like a vision and they want to bring their vision to life because it serves some purpose they want to pursue.

And that's kind of where I was coming from. And so when I started Mud Water, I was just like a lot of the questions of like, how should it look? How should it sound? And just like, what? What's the brand that I want to see in the world?

Like, I'm not going to do consumer research here. I'm going to build what I want to build. And I think it inherently had a personality authenticity. And that made it unique. And then that made it tough to feel indifferent about.

But if you were building something in maybe a different way, there's probably different tactics to where you can kind of artificially inseminate some sort of controversy to like get that going.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 14:07

What do you think are the traps that people often fall into when they're trying to do this? Right? Because it sounds like, you know, maybe for you it's very intentional, and it was very natural. And but there are I know for some people it's definitely not the case. Right.

Especially if you're not minded as, you know, as a marketer, it may be a little tougher to find those things. So what would you say are maybe the traps to avoid falling into when thinking about this for your brand?

Shane Heath: 14:36

Yeah, I mean, it's probably just falling into what everybody else is doing because that's going to be the furthest away from authenticity, and you're typically going to land on something that's safe, something that's kind of like Mr. Potato headed together of like, oh, I like that about that. I like this. And you're kind of putting it all together, and it just it's going to feel really off.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 14:57

Yeah

Shane Heath: 14:58

Yeah. I mean, I haven't fully like, I would love to figure out a way to work with people and like, or work with people just so I can learn myself how to better understand it and teach it. But I, I again, like I think that the best analogy that I've found is like, think of your brand as a person and describe who they are. What? How do they, what do they stand for?

What do they believe in? Yeah. What are they, you know, willing to die on the hill for, you know, like just get a get out of the like lens of business best practices, five tips of like all these things and just try to describe it as a being I think is a good place to start. And like the best brands kind of build like little worlds, like they're like, I call it social sculptures before because they, they can like create their own little mini. Yeah, there's like little mini worlds, like liquid death is a world like.

It's like they have rules. they have their own aesthetic and they have their own thing. Right? And like you become accustomed to it. And you know, when you see liquid death product, you like feel that world when you're drinking it.

Patagonia has a world. It's its own world. It's completely different from liquid death.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 16:10

Yeah. And Red bull as well. Right.

Shane Heath: 16:13

As well. And so, like, you're just don't get caught up in the like minutia of like, what should the packaging say? Like at first, zoom out and like, what are what's the world that you want to create. Like if you're the founder or if you're the art director or whatever, like, what is that world and start to like, just have fun and just like playing with humanizing it. And then I think you can start to figure out like, okay, like we really like stand for this.

And when you find something that you stand for, I guess that's when like, you know, controversy, you know, might come into play. But it's not like you're just doing it for the sake of it. You're like, this is really the world that we're building. It stands for this, and we're not going to be shy about it, even though we know that some people are going to feel confused or it might piss some people off. We don't care because this is the world that we believe in.

And so that's where you start to find the edge that you're like you're willing to walk. And that's when it becomes a powerful brand that's tough to feel indifferent about. But it starts.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 17:11

With.

Shane Heath: 17:11

World building.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 17:12

What I'm getting out of this is don't be tactical about it, right? Because if you're tactical and you just try a bunch of things on their own, it's just nothing's going to stick. It's probably going to look cheesy, and it's probably just going to hurt the brand more than anything. But if you are very clear on who your brand is, what you're about, and what's your vision organically you're able to build that kind of, that, that feel of what the brand can put out there, and it's going to be a lot more authentic.

Shane Heath: 17:41

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's like I mean, like people are like, yeah, just start you got to start with a strong. Why? You know, it's like a Simon Sinek, like Maxim. Yeah.

And some founders, they get kind of like I don't even know really like what that means. And so I don't know if that's helpful is just like just build like start writing and having fun about like, what is the world that your brand? How do you want that to feel? What does it stand for? Who is it as a person?

Describe it as a person. What would they wear? What would your brand wear? How would they talk? Would they joke around a lot?

Would they be professional? Like, what is their vibe? You know, like those types of things. Just have fun. That's how I'd start.

That defines the why. That becomes everything else.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 18:18

Amazing. Shane, thank you so much for joining us. Now if people want to learn more about MUD/WTR and about you, where should they go?

Shane Heath: 18:28

Yeah. If you want to learn about MUD/WTR, go to mudwtr.com. Also we have a good Instagram drink. It's @drinkmudwtr.

And then if you want to follow me I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So Shane Heath on LinkedIn. And then my Instagram is @somanypossibilities. I'm also a fine artist and post a lot of work there, so yeah, feel free to reach out.

Raphael Paulin-Daigle: 18:52

Awesome! Shane, thank you so much for coming on the show. All right. Well, that's it for today's episode. And thank you so much for tuning in.

Outro: 19:00

Now, if you like what you've heard, and you don't want to miss any of the new episodes that are about to come out, make sure you subscribe to the podcast and well, bonus points if you also leave a review in the iTunes store or wherever you're listening to this. Now, if you're working on an ecommerce store that does over $1 million in revenue and you need help with conversion optimization or landing pages, well, I've got some good news because there's a pretty good chance we can help with that. Go to splitbase.com to learn more or even to request a proposal. If you have any guest requests, questions, or comments, tweet me @rpaulindaigle, and I'll be super happy to hear from you. And again, thanks again for listening. This is Minds of Ecommerce.

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