Choosing a food brand’s voice for a neighboring market

The question

The brand’s business in a neighboring market had to decide whether the way the brand spoke at home would work there as it stood.

The shelves look familiar next door, and one story across two markets is simpler to run. The business wanted the answer to come from local consumers instead, heard on their own terms.

If the story needed to change, the business would need a direction of its own: how the brand should express what it stands for in that market.

Our approach

We gave the culture around the food as much attention as the food itself.

Consumer and cultural research looked at the context the brand would be speaking into, the roles its food plays in the lives of the people we heard from, and what the brand’s values mean to them locally.

Starting from local culture meant any direction for the brand would be built for that market from the ground up.

What the team came away with

We brought the research together in a debrief for the brand’s local business, with the implications for the brand set out alongside.

From there, we developed a direction for how the brand could express what it stands for in that market, built on what the people we heard from value.