Informing smarter innovation strategy for a global snacking manufacturer

An Innovation Sprint fuelled by Social Analytics (STAN) helped the client to ideate, create concepts, and ultimately reduce their go to market timings for their innovation.

Challenge

Our client wanted to launch a new product in the indulgence, afternoon snack space closely linked to chocolate and cookies. To do this, they needed a better understanding of:

  • Latest trends in indulgence
  • Latest product trends (taste, texture, visuals)
  • Sources for inspiration
  • Unmet needs from current ‘category’ offer
  • Consumer lingo

Approach

We used Social Media as a data source and Analytics as a way to structure information meaningfully to provide qualitative at scale and generate potential concepts.

We classified conversations through 10 different lenses covering more than 450 variables and 4,500+ potential combinations of trends. Some of the areas we looked into included:

  • Ingredients (e.g. mango, seeds, avocado)
  • Textures (e.g. melting, crispy, soft)
  • Motivations (e.g. weight management, relax, fitness)

Insight

There is a tension on the spectrum from indulgent to healthy, with choco-bakery having the ability to tap into various opportunities in different ways.

For each opportunity, there are emerging formats and ingredients which would set the client up with a future-proofed offer.

We discovered what ‘indulgence’ really means to consumers.

Impact

Once the concepts were developed from the insight we provided, they were tested to understand their distinctive proposition, ability to grab attention, need/desire fulfilment, and advantage.

Three were classified as ready and four as outstanding in meeting the need/desire. One of the consumer creations spotted with the research was developed as a concept.

The commercial impact thus far has been savings on ‘time to market’ (6 weeks after kick off). The success of the project will be proven once the products are launched.

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