In a shift from polished marketing campaigns, more brands are letting customers peek behind the curtain. The latest example from Australia? Bobby Drinks new documentary series ‘Building Bobby’ shows the unfiltered journey of building their soft drinks company, from stock shortages to product development challenges, and they don’t sugar-coat it.
The Rise of Raw Brand Storytelling
More companies are discovering that customers want to see the real story. Netflix’s “Drive to Survive“ transformed Formula 1’s popularity. Gym Shark’s early YouTube documentaries helped build the cult following they enjoy today. And now, Bobby Drinks is bringing this unvarnished approach to the beverage industry. 
In an interview with Life Without Andy, Founder and CEO of Bobby Drinks, Kristian Johannsen (Better known as KJ), explained their approach;
“This isn’t a scripted ‘how-to’ on how to build a business – It’s a ‘what did we get ourselves into?’ We wanted to steer away from the corporate BS and really show off the raw, slightly off-kilter and chaotic side of building Bobby.” The series doesn’t shy away from showing real challenges, including the complex process of developing new products.”
An Aspirational Place To Work
You can envisage a young corporate worker who has just finished their degree watching this on their second monitor screen amongst bland spreadsheets, completely jealous of the fun that goes on at Bobby HQ. The start-up world is a fantasy to many; this series inadvertently raises a glass to other entrepreneurs and creative souls who have gone all in with building something they love.
What makes Bobby particularly appealing as a workplace is how they’ve integrated their brand ethos into their company culture. The same irreverent spirit and authenticity that defines their products also shapes their work environment. Casual brainstorming sessions often evolve into innovative solutions, while team-building activities double as opportunities to test new flavour concepts or marketing ideas.
Getting to know the people that create and distribute Bobby makes you feel connected to the brand and you can’t help but cheer them on.
For young professionals contemplating their career paths, Bobby represents the tantalising possibility that work can be both meaningful and fun.
A New Chapter in Brand Building?
With a challenger brand like Bobby going all in on the docu-series, could this be a strategy deployed by more Aussie brands sharing their behind-the-scenes content? Prolific writer and creator Mark Manson, who’s best known for his book ‘The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck’ thinks so. In a recent podcast episode of Creator Science, he shared his take on the documentary format:
“I’m trying to think of where the audience taste is going to be. The average YouTube viewer is quite young; the majority of power users are probably teenagers or early 20s.”
“I’m trying to pay attention to those tens of millions of YouTube viewers who today are watching Mr. Beast or Ryan Trahan, what are they going to be interested in seeing say 5 to 10 years from now? And how can I appeal to those, and how can I be already excellent at those formats by the time they get there? This ties into the long-term value of audience. One of the things we’re getting really good at is a documentary-style format. Today that is suboptimal, but 5 years from now, we will be ahead of the curve.”
As Bobby’s documentary series shows, modern consumers don’t expect perfection. They want to support brands that feel real and relatable. In a world of filtered content, showing what goes wrong might be just as important as celebrating what goes right.
