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By Susan Vidler, Managing Director, Harris Interactive U.K.

To coincide with the launch of Toluna Start – the industry’s first and only end-to-end real-time consumer insights platform – we assembled leading consumer insights professionals from major brands like Facebook, CVS, eBay, Colgate-Palmolive and many more over the course of three days to share their critical business needs in the areas of new product development, collaboration and brand and communications research.

Consumers have changed this year. But getting a handle on what your target audience wanted and needed a few months ago is not enough to make safe assumptions for new product development today.

Why? Because they’re constantly changing in the face of unprecedented circumstances. And product launch success depends on your ability to keep up. During the first session of Toluna’s Digital Launch Event, we spoke with a panel of insights leaders from brands around the globe. If we could all agree on one thing, it is how crucial agile insights are to making quick decisions to move businesses forward.

  • “Some people are saying two weeks is agile and that’s not for me – 12 to 24 hours is agile.”
  • “…old methodologies are not able to answer today’s business questions. The shock of the year demanded this of us…to ask different business questions and create the space for agile solutions.”
  • “We like to share research results with a very large distribution list. Through COVID-19 we were running our tracker to review consumer shopping habits and could feed that straight into our forecasting models two to three times a week and the ability to feed that insight into the business in real time was critical to business planning.”

The pressure is on for organizations worldwide, fueling the need for efficiencies at every stage of the process to drive quality insights at pace.

What we’re seeing is that breaking down silos while putting automation and technology to work for you helps insights professionals meet the need for speed, quality, ease of use, flexibility and value – all at the same time. In light of today’s changed workplace and new demands, collaboration goes beyond working with your own team more efficiently to other teams and functions within the organization to answer business questions more effectively.

Why is agile new product development so important?

During the new product development cycle, critical stops are required to ensure quality decisions are made.

  • Identifying needs
  • Idea screening
  • Concept testing
  • Product optimization
  • Product testing
  • Post-launch

The majority of new product launches fail (you read that right)

If you believe in a product and see NPD through, it’s hard to imagine your new offering failing. It happens when companies mistakenly believe they inherently understand their audience’s needs, preferences and behaviors.

Inferences or outdated facts are setups for failure. It’s frustrating, costly and time-consuming. During a year of so much uncertainty, launching a new product without thorough research could be detrimental.

So, what concept will resonate best? Which claims can increase uptake? It takes up-to-date, meaningful data to answer these questions and more.

Here’s why putting data on your side is more important than ever

COVID-19 has been and continues to be a driver of change. Our personal and professional lives are in flux and so are consumers’ patterns and preferences. Globally, consumers expect to spend more on products and services such as household cleaning, personal care, health care and beyond. Conversely, consumers are cutting back in areas as there is a great deal of economic uncertainty and people are consuming products and services in different ways now.

Being able to adapt quickly has also proven critical for brands over the last few months. There’s power in real-world examples so here’s how clients use insights to make key NPD decisions, fast:

  • Household cleaning providers are testing new claims on existing products to ensure they resonate.
  • Beauty brands are following trends for in-home treatments.
  • Gaming companies are testing new products to meet the increased, at-home demand.
  • Subscription service providers are testing new content as demand increases.
  • There’s also a need for more effective communication around safety measures in many categories. Finding the right balance boosts consumer confidence.

But previous NPD challenges still exist

Yes, this year has presented business with an unmatched need for agility. But NPD hurdles have always existed – and still do. Here are challenges clients often meet across the board and how we answer them.

  • Speed: In NPD, it’s almost always crunch time. Templated questionnaires are a major time-saver. One client recently tested more than 100 ideas overnight across two markets as part of an agile sprint.
  • Quality: Thanks to technology, there’s no need to sacrifice quality for the sake of time. Technology has enabled best-practice methodology to be embedded into the solutions.
  • Ease of use: Again, thanks to intuitive, user-friendly tech, brands are free to spend more time on the project and less time navigating cumbersome interfaces to access data.
  • Flexibility: NPD is not a one-size-fits-all process and neither are our solutions. From additional questions to monadic or sequential monadic design and beyond, flexibility is a built-in service.
  • Value for money: Businesses are always expected to do more with less and that’s something we inherently understand. Automation helps control costs, empower businesses and solve business needs with consistency.
  • Technology: Cutting-edge tech powers the products and solutions that connect brands with invaluable consumer insights. Like consumer needs, it’s always evolving and being optimized.

At one point, a key speaker mentioned that we’ve seen three years of change happen over the course of three months. The pandemic has accelerated changing consumer needs and behaviors. What a target audience wanted a month ago may be totally different from what they expect today. That means fewer assumptions and more insights are needed to drive organizations forward.

The need to bring new products to market quicker remains but as the speed of consumer change continues to evolve, agility is more necessary than ever.

www.tolunacorporate.com