Memo: How Sanzo Won Marvel

A generation of young consumers deserve the credit for its role in how brands think about partnerships and messaging.

For today’s retailers, authentic engagement and depth can matter as much as reach when it comes to partnerships. This has become common practice in the world of modern brands and niche media outlets. But something bigger is taking shape. If there ever was a “trickle up” effect, this essay will serve as an example. One of the largest and most powerful media conglomerates in the world chose sincerity over cash, reach, and distribution.

Long gone are the days of no-brainer deals with Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Nike. Today’s public figures are setting aside their reliance on major brands in favor of partnerships that are more true to themselves. Authenticity is at the center of this shift, and it’s opening wide doors for nascent brands to compete against their elder statesmen. In a recent essay on OLIPOP’s partnership with Olympian Gabrielle Thomas, 2PM highlighted this changing sentiment around brand partnership:

In speaking with the agency for this report, they emphasized how important Thomas’s ideals were to her product sponsorship selections. The partnership between OLIPOP and Thomas was a natural fit as it is reported that she was already an organic fan of the brand. [1]

Now, that’s trickling up to film studios, sports leagues, streaming networks, and music festivals, which all seem to be following the same wave of authenticity. Over the previous year, digitally native retailers have done a remarkable job of positioning themselves for these opportunities.

In the past year, Rowing Blazers partnered with dormant English retailer Warm & Wonderful to produce the Princess Diana jumpers as Netflix’s The Crown wowed viewers with an inspired depiction of the late humanitarian. Kim Kardashian’s influence and business acumen helped land Skims as the official underwear partner to the U.S. Olympic Commission’s athletes. Madhappy partnered with Lebron James’s remake of Space Jam, producing hoodies and crew neck sweaters that are now sold on the secondary market for $450 or more. And hot sauce CPG brand Truff’s partnership with one Taco Bell location in Southern California has permeated social media conversations well beyond the border.

While each of these are notable, none accomplished what Sanzo has so early in the company’s lifespan. A recent report by BEVNET began: “Though it may not be a household name, when it comes to marketing partnerships Sanzo is punching above its weight.” The praise was deserved. Founded in 2019 by Sandro Roco, a Queens-born Filipino American, the brand is one of the latest entrants into the white-hot “fizzy water” market. The cap table includes the likes of Away’s Jen Rubio, Adobe’s Scott Belsky, and as of recently Simu Liu, the star of Marvel’s Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings. More on that last investor in a moment.

The Sanzo brand is emerging during a dynamic period for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Its two years in existence have been wrought with senseless and indiscriminate violence towards Americans of Asian descent. The angry rhetoric and exclusion birthed such hashtags as #StopAsianHate, a tag that you will find spread by a handful of the most powerful investors and businesspeople including Jeremy Liew, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The former executive at Bombfell and J.P. Morgan trader, Sandro Roco took a grassroots and hard-nosed approach to building Sanzo. In the beginning, you would find him hauling cases down the street, hoping to sample his way to omnichannel adoption by today’s most important retailers. It worked. While Asian Americans were being indiscriminately targeted in some of America’s biggest cities, Roco was positive and hopeful in his persistence to break through in an intensifying market. That often meant him doing the work at the street level with a dolly and cases of product. Take a moment to empathize with Roco’s cognitive load as scores of citizen-captured videos flooded social media by the day. He really wanted Sanzo to breakthrough the noise. And he found a way to do just that.

At the same time that indiscriminate violence was on the rise, the ‘easternizing’ of American culture accelerated. More commercial opportunities, once afforded almost exclusively to guys named Brad, were now afforded to actors, actresses, musicians, artists, and entrepreneurs of AAPI descent. This Roco quote from a recent Forbes article announcing Sanzo’s latest funding does a solid job of summarizing Sanzo’s appeal and the wave that may help it compete against larger, well-funded, and better equipped CPG conglomerates.

Back in mid-2018, we started to see what I describe as ‘easternizing’ of American culture with Crazy Rich Asians becoming the number-one film in the box office and K-pop getting a fever pitch. [2]

One of the national efforts to combat implicit and explicit bias towards AAPI citizens was the launch of Gold House. Founded in 2019, it was built to help Asian founders “overcome societal stereotypes” while elevating their work beyond what was customarily deemed their target market. Sandro credits Gold House for helping the Sanzo brand forge a relationship with Walt Disney Corporation, one that would later manifest into the Marvel Studios project. In a May 2021 NBC News report on the organization:

The nonprofit Gold House is best known for elevating films like Parasite and Crazy Rich Asians into epic blockbusters. But true representation of Asians isn’t just necessary in Hollywood; the organization is determined to see it in every industry, in every C-suite. [3]

The next big opportunity for Gold House was March 2021’s Raya and The Last Dragon, an animated feature by Disney Studios featuring Kelly Marie Tran, Sandra Oh, Gemma Chan, Daniel Dae Kim, and Awkwafina. The film grossed $122.7 million in the box office while simultaneously released on Disney+. Roco’s Sanzo brand was used as cross-promotion for the Disney picture and according to Roco, it was a profitable venture. He noted Disney’s positive role in partnering with an “unknown” for the project. Roco told 2PM:

It’s impossible to do anything in eight weeks with Disney. But they recognized that we are not Coca-Cola or General Mills. Together, we made it work.

He applauded his team’s hard work and diligence to make the latest partnership come alive. After the completion of the Raya partnership, Roco “shot his shot” and pitched a Shang-Chi collaboration. The green light came almost immediately. In the Sanzo founder’s conversation with BEVNET’s Martin Caballero, he added:

We’ve seen firsthand that both the Marvel and the Disney executive team have taken a more intentional approach to partner with brands that more authentically represent the messages of the films they are putting out there. They noted to us that the strength of our brand and the community that we bring in gives a certain level of authenticity.