Are you currently launching innovative, new products for your food or beverage brand? Do you have ideas in the pipeline for the next 2-3 years? If not, you are already behind.
New product innovation is key to the success of every brand. If you’re simply relying on your current product offering for the future of your brand—then you don’t have a sustainable growth model.
In years past, brands could depend on their existing product line, year after year. Sometimes going even decades without innovation. Maybe they came up with a new twist, flavor, or product extension every few years. That model no longer works. Not only are consumers not satisfied with that old business model, but buyers are now demanding to see new items.
True innovation leads you to the heart of what consumers want and what they will ultimately purchase.
Product and brand innovation cannot be reactionary. You need to develop a process. If you start that process today, chances are, your product will not be ready to launch for 12-18 months—or longer—depending on the size and agility of your company.
With these long turnaround times, a disciplined innovation process becomes essential. This ensures you have multiple products in various stages of the pipeline at any given time—and eventually allows you to build out 2-3 years’ worth of great products and ideas.
Here are some ideas for starting or refining your process:
Start with Discovery and Ideation. Schedule one or two creative work sessions per year. Have these sessions off-site and led by a professional facilitator, who knows the food and beverage business—not an internal person.
Your ideation session can include leadership and internal team members from various departments including folks from manufacturing. Also include business partners and your marketing and PR agencies. Bring people like chefs, R&D, foodies, and other food experts and influencers. You’re looking for broad, fresh perspectives.
Next is the Concept Development phase. After sorting through all of the ideas, narrow it down to the top 10-20. Develop some conceptual, working names for the ideas, a basic description of the product, and if possible, some photography to show what the concept could potentially look like. This can easily be done with minimal food styling and photography equipment.
Now we are ready for what I refer to as Consumer Concept Testing. This can be online testing to see which ideas resonate the most with consumers. Just the raw ideas—nothing over-the-top. At this stage, we’re simply looking for a little insight into consumer preference.
Use those insights to narrow down your top ideas. From here, you can either move right into product development for further research, or you can do an internal audit to see which ideas have the best Market Potential, which are the best Strategic Fit for your organization, what is the projected Cost of Entry, or other internal alignment criteria.
But honestly, I think moving directly into Product Development is the way to go. This way, you are truly being directed by the consumer, as opposed to internal and external limitations and hurdles.
The Product Development phase is where most companies need to source a strong external partner who can help with product formulation, flavor profile development, ingredients, packaging options, regulatory requirements, and other aspects of product development that most companies are not equipped to manage. The end result you’re looking for here is Test Ready Prototypes to move into the Consumer Research phase.
This phase of Consumer Research needs to be significantly more sophisticated than the previous basic concept testing. Here, we are looking to perform Focus Groups, One-on-One, or possibly In-Home Testing, depending on the type of product. Sensory Testing along with Usage, Price Elasticity, and other consumer insights are key factors at this stage of innovation.
After this phase, you can decide which product(s) to continue moving forward with. You will most likely go back and forth with this level of research, tweaking ingredients, flavors, packaging, etc., until your product is ideally optimized for launch.
Now, you have a Market-Ready Product that you can be confident is the right quality and aligns with current trends and consumer demand. A far better process, and far less expensive than launching an untested idea.
Many brands will live or die based on the innovation they are doing today. It’s best to make the innovation process part of the culture at your company. The life of your brand depends on it.
Follow this process and it will lead to a long, sustainable, and profitable lifespan for your company and brands:
1) Discovery & Ideation
Creative work sessions for new product discovery and ideation.
2) Concept Development
Top ideas are developed into working ideas—names, basic descriptions, and photography.
3) Consumer Concept Testing
Online testing to see which ideas resonate the most with consumers.
4) Product Development
Product formulation, flavor profiles, ingredients, packaging options, etc. The end result is Test Ready Prototypes.
5) Consumer Research
Consumer sensory testing, usage, price elasticity, and other consumer insights are key factors at this stage of innovation.
Market-Ready Product ready for launch.
