Beyond the basics: Leveraging consumer insights for game-changing brand creation
Editor's note: This article is an automated speech-to-text transcription, edited lightly for clarity.
How can consumer insights be used to create and refine a product?
In a session for the Quirk’s Event – Virtual Global, Eboni Washington of Suntory Global Spirits walked through the innovation process from start to finish. To successfully launch Nectar Collective, the team had to understand what their consumers wanted and had to remain collaborative among themselves and with their target audience.
Session transcript
Marlen Ramirez
Hi everyone, and welcome to the session “Beyond the basics: Leveraging consumer insights for game-changing brand creation.” I'm Quirk’s News and Content Editor, Marlen Ramirez. Before we get started, let's quickly go over the ways you can participate in today's discussion. You can use the chat tab to interact with other attendees during the session, and you can use the Q&A tab to submit questions for the presenters during the session. Our session is presented to you by Suntory Global Spirits. Enjoy the presentation.
Eboni Washington
Hello and welcome to “Beyond the basics: Leveraging consumer insights for game-changing brand creation.” My name is Eboni Washington and I'm the director of innovation futures for Suntory Global Spirits. Today I'm going to walk you through the process we undertook for Nectar Collective, our newest innovation, which is a better for you, ready to enjoy proposition.
On today's agenda, I'll be walking us through a little bit more context about the work stream, what our innovation process was, strategic collaboration, white space identification, how we approach consumer validation, commercial execution and then a few key takeaways.
To kick this off, I want to present one of my favorite quotes. It is from Mark Twain and it says, “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” I think a lot of times we can feel like we know the consumer so well, that things are so predictable, but people are complex, right? People evolve. I think even COVID-19 showed us that the world can turn on its head quite unexpectedly. So, it's important for us to always stay open to new information, new ways of thinking, new ways of doing, because we don't want to get stuck in a rut and keep trying to do the same things over and over because that's how we get to bigger, better innovations.
So, how we got to this project. Suntory was essentially looking to build out new platforms, which could have been brands, line extensions, business models that were unique, consumer relevant and scalable. We really wanted to have the goal of achieving profitable growth through a differentiated premium, ready-to-enjoy proposition that fused quality, taste and emotional appeal. The challenge though, is that we are in a very cluttered category, so we really needed to break through and we really needed to work around that consumer skepticism by addressing under met needs and tensions.
So why is it that certain categories resist disruption? We have established norms and entrenched competitors, we also have high regulatory or technical barriers and last, we have consumer loyalty to legacy brands. And all of these come together at times to kill ideas, right? It can be so much of a challenge that you stick with the status quo or you just change the flavor and that's it. But we really had to resist wanting to give up, but really push through and overcome these obstacles.
You also have to deal with internal dynamics. Lots of cross-functional teams play a part in launching a new innovation, and some of those can be helpful, some of those can be a little less than helpful. And yes, I do have legal at the forefront on purpose because I think at times they're the most likely to probably say no. Right? But what we did, and you'll see later on as I'm going through the presentation, is we really thought of ways to bring all of these teams together on the journey so that there was more buy-in, so that they felt like they had some skin in the game with some of these concepts and were really more of a support rather than an obstacle or a challenge.
So, we had a four-phase innovation journey, and that was really meant to guide these cross-functional teams from the early white space mapping to a launch-ready concept. We started out with territory mapping, and that's really just us exploring, us synthesizing the trends, understanding what's going on with consumers and really defining what those opportunity spaces were. That's how we got to a shared understanding of where to play.
Then we moved into ideation, and that's really where we brought in a lot of our cross-functional partners. We had them sit in a workshop and brainstorm, what are ideas? We said, sky's the limit. Nothing is too crazy for us. And I think one of the things we would say in the workshop is that you start with crazy and you work your way back to feasible. We also did a lot of rapid exploration just to see, can these ideas work? What's going on? And we got to a short list of viable platform directions.
Then we went into concepting, and that's where we started to shape and validate core ideas. We also moved into concept development. So, we started brand-cepting, thinking about what would these concepts look like in real life? And that's where we got to top concepts ready for refinement.
Then we went into planning out our innovation pipeline, really saying, hey, what can we prioritize for next year, for the next three years, the next five years, so that we are prepped for growth over time? And then we also started to design packs and optimize based on the consumer feedback and that's really where we got to a really strong functional pipeline that was going to really drive growth.
So, then we moved into figuring out what should strategic collaboration look like. We really want to build out and engage teams to get that maximum impact. So you see here, consumer insights, for instance, they were really there to unlock those consumer unmet needs and validate concepts. Of course they were involved very early in around the territory mapping and the concepting. R&D, they were there to, of course, to develop formulas aligned with brand promise. We brought them in during ideating and concepting. Design and marketing, they crafted the brand identity and packaging. We embedded them throughout the ideation and concept refinement process. Legal and regulatory, we use them to ensure compliance without compromising that edge, and we engaged at checkpoints. So, they may not have been involved in the forming of each part of the innovation process, but we did have regular check-ins just so that they could help guide us and make sure that we weren't going too far left or too far right. Sales and trade, we had them around to drive retailer buy-in and pricing strategy. So we looped them in at the pipeline activation and concept scoring just to get an idea of given that they have all the experience with customers, what do you think that a customer would get excited about? And then we had our steering committee to really provide that strategic alignment and unblock any resourcing. So, we engaged them to review progress at certain checkpoints as well.
For our core team, which is probably the most important part of this, we really had only four criteria. We wanted people that had a bias for action and agility, that were able to be strategic storytellers, that had a collaboration first mind-set and that had a familiarity with category nuance. You'll see here, there's nothing about function or tenure. We wanted a mix of all of that. I care less about how long someone had been at the company or what level they were at, but more so what could they bring to this project? How did their mind work? How creative were they? That was super important for building out that core team because sometimes you can feel like, oh, I've got to have this person because they’re a director and they've been here for 10 years, but maybe that person's not great at innovation, and that's OK to acknowledge, and it's OK to maybe bring in somebody, a junior person from finance because they're just super creative. So that's really what I thought about when we were building out this core team.
Then we have white space identification framework. So we basically started with consumer macro trends, and this is where we said, hey, what's going on in the world? It could be economic instability, people are really interested in global cuisines, or it could be that we have an aging population, just generally what is going on with consumers?
Then we drill down to say, well, because of those trends, what are the cultural shifts? What behaviors are changing because of these trends? And then we said, particularly for ready-to-drink, ready-to-enjoy, we said, what's the future of that? What would that look like for our category? And from there, we were able to really identify what opportunity spaces were the ripest for us, which then led us to creative territories, which we used to ideate. We used them as inspiration.
So here I'm giving you an example of one of the spaces that we created and the elements of that. So, what we found coming from the macro trend of health and wellness becoming more holistic for people is that we came up with a space called Better Being. This is really speaking to the fact that modern life is really wearing on people. That could be physically, mentally or emotionally, and/or, I mean, and as social media reshapes standards of wellness, many are seeking those quick functional benefits and daily rituals to counterbalance that stress and aging.
So, we see for our category in particular, where we see that going in a future state, is that we really want to avoid not being transparent, ingredient sourcing and clean labels are going to become more and more important because right now our category is really saturated with a lot of unknown ingredients, if you will, for example, Four Loko.
So, the opportunity that presented itself after we developed this space was an opportunity to break through in the ready-to-drink category by embracing this conscious consumer and delivering against those holistic lifestyle needs. We know that many RTD alcoholic beverages kind of mask that manufactured taste with overly sweet syrupy and bland flavors and we saw an opportunity to lean into realness through naturally sourced sweeteners and ingredients that celebrate authenticity and ultimately deliver a superior taste. So, we really wanted to just say no artificial flavors, no ultra-processed ingredients, just simple sweetness as nature intended.
When we think about engaging consumers, this is the most important part. We made a lot of time in the process to engage with consumers frequently. They were our No. 1 stakeholder. So, we started out doing a quant idea statement test. We had over 50 ideas so we created just two sentence idea statements and that allowed us just to get a really quick read on how consumers were reacting to the ideas we developed, and it really allowed us to cut down that list.
We also did an informal qual dip, and that was kind of a quick pulse-check with consumers for any obvious optimizations to some of the narratives and renderings that we had developed. Then we did a second kind of quant concept test. So, we took the 10 BASES-style concept narratives and renderings and two benchmark concepts into a quant screen to help inform us on what should be our top concepts to bring into product development. And then we started to prioritize based on the results of that test. And so those top concepts that were identified, we brought them into a qual research party, and that really began to kick off the full proposition testing and brand development. So, the research party, that was probably one of the most exciting and valuable parts of this process. This was the first time for me ever completing something like this.
Our agency, which was so amazing, they had a space that they transformed into essentially the brand world of the top concept. We invited consumers to come and live in the brand world to try prototype liquids and then to give us feedback on the liquids, on the mood boards and experience design for the brand. The consumers really enjoyed it. They felt super relaxed and they felt like they were more open to sharing their thoughts. We had everyone to bring a friend, so they really felt like it was kind of like a networking event, if you will. And to the right here, you can see some of the feedback you got just people saying what they loved about it, how it made them feel and the questions that we got and things that we knew, like someone saying, I wonder how much sugar is in them. So, letting us know that's something that we need to bring to the forefront. So yeah, again, this was just a really amazing part of the process where we really got to interact a lot more closely with the consumer and kind of see them in their natural habitat interacting with what would be the product or the prototype, if you will.
So here you can see an early rendering that we presented to consumers in that research party. This was just to give them an idea in addition to being in the room and living within the brand world, we also, this would be a part of the mood board. We showed them some of the marketing materials just to get their feel on, you know, would this inspire you to be curious? Would this inspire you to want to purchase this product? And we got feedback on packaging, we got feedback on what the assets would look like, what they thought about the in-store element. And again, super valuable feedback was received that we were then able to pour back into the product. And you'll begin to see the evolution as we continue on in this presentation.
So here you see the final design, right, the nectar collective design as it is now. And this is really all feedback from the consumer. So overall, we saw that the consumers appreciated a simple, yet elegant layout that was easy to shop, that had strong flavor, imagery and color. People really made it clear that they just wanted to know exactly what they were getting, but they wanted it to feel elevated. We included the tagline “Where flavors harmonize,” because that is meant to communicate a balanced and premium taste experience while being short and catchy.
Then we also had here the logo, the minimal icons suggest purity and natural ingredients, reinforcing the brand's premium and harmonious qualities. And that golden white color palette really enhances the luxurious feel, making the brand visually appealing and memorable. And then we have the ingredient imagery. Again, people really want to know what they're getting so we had a realistic representation of what the ingredients are, and that really helped to influence those quality and taste perceptions. Then of course, we have the flavor color. We wanted it to be bold, wanted it to be prominent because that really enhanced that shopability.
We put the concept into BASES to get that kind of final check to say like, hey, have we done our due diligence? Is this good? And to also get the volumetrics forecast that comes with BASES testing to understand, is this going to help us meet our commercial goals? And we were very excited to achieve a Brand Grower status in the BASES testing. And here you can see the version that went into BASES. If anyone caught it, you see the name change to Nectara. That was thanks to legal, but that was also one of the names before we got to Nectar Collective. But yes, this was kind of our confirmation that yes, we're on the right path. It gave us also a lot more evidence to show people internally, to show distributors, to show customers that we believe in this, the consumer believes in this and this could be a really big thing.
We also understood that the success of a breakthrough innovation requires go-to-market planning that best nurtures the brand. So when we thought about the go-to-market criteria, we said we wanted to have consumer validated concepts, wanted to have breakthrough marketing plans and assets, we needed adequate BI to breakthrough at scale, we wanted customer validated interest and distributor and commercial alignment.
When we think about alignment areas that we needed to have everybody agree upon, we wanted to refine proposition, we wanted to align on scope, whether this would be regional or national, we wanted to align on the investment model and we wanted to align on the commercial structure. So, what were the incentives, the KPIs, the merchandising. And then last, we really needed to work on would this be a national launch scale or would this be targeted? And again, it's just going back to what best nurtures the brand. And this was a really important part for us to input the consumer insights because we knew that this consumer was more of a holistic health-minded consumer. And so that's why we wanted to kind of stay targeted so we could really focus in, deliver for that specific consumer, learn a little bit more, and then start to scale and go national.
So, some key takeaways here are that you really want to utilize consumer trends to identify those white space opportunities. A lot of times we can say, we know our industry, we know what people want but it's sometimes important to take a step back and look at the trends and really say like, hey, what are those unmet needs? What are opportunities? What is no one else doing? Versus sometimes saying, I'm just going to copy what a competitor's doing or I already know what we need, et cetera.
You also want to leverage multidisciplinary teams for breakthrough creativity. One, bringing in cross-functional partners allows all of them to stay on the journey instead of you making the sausage and then showing it to them, or I guess feeding it to them. This allows you to let them see how the sausage was made, and they feel like because they've helped that there's more buy-in there, they're more supportive of the concepts. Also, it gives you a diversity of thought. You can get a lot of different ideas there. The way I think is very different than a person in supply chain thinks than a person in legal thinks. And so it's good to have all those different ways of thinking at the beginning as you're concepting and ideating, just to make sure you're taking all those things into account so you don't get too far down the road before it's too late to change something.
You also want to create space for frequent consumer feedback and optimization. This adds time, right? Some testing takes a couple weeks, and so you really want to make sure you have time to talk to the consumer because again, you don't want to get too far down the road and figure out that, oh, people actually don't like this as much. Because in this process, you're constantly iterating. Where Nectar Collective started is not how it was when it ended. And so, by us continuing to check in with the consumer throughout the process, we made sure we weren't moving too far away from the core idea that people love so much.
And then last, you want to embed those consumer insights in the commercial plans. I think a lot of times I've seen where insights don't go into this, it's just kind of like industry experience is what helps us decide these things. But I think because we knew who this consumer was, that they're a little bit more niche, they need to be targeted in a certain way, that really helped us to develop that go-to-market plan, to pick out what the key markets were, et cetera. So it is super important that you still maintain this respect for the consumer insights, even when you get to commercializing the product or the innovation, rather.
And so as I wrap this up, I want to do a special thanks to my business partner, Cherice Williams. She was really the leader of all of this whole work stream last year. And so this would not have been possible without her. So again, I want to give a special thanks to her, the agent, the innovation agency that we worked with Sterling Rice Group. They were absolutely amazing. I cannot say enough good things about them. And so also special thanks to them because just like with Cherice, without SRG, this would not have been possible. So thank you everybody for taking the time to join this session. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you found it valuable, and please let me know if you have any questions. I am more than happy to answer.