Choosing where a food brand could credibly grow next
Stretch a brand too far and it stops being itself. A food company wanted to know where it could grow beyond its core, so we agreed the criteria with its leadership team, then explored new categories with its buyers.
- Client
- Food company
- Industry
- Snacks
- Kind of work
- Brand growth
- Our role
- Leadership workshops, consumer exploration, opportunity assessment and growth planning
The question
A food brand had a strong core business, and its next stage of growth would have to come from categories it wasn’t yet in.
Leadership could see several directions. The executive team wanted a shared view of how far the brand could go while staying recognizably itself, and how to plan the moves.
Our approach
We started with the leadership team, before any fieldwork, and agreed the criteria every opportunity would be judged on.
The criteria ran from brand fit and consumer credibility to feasibility. Agreeing them first meant every candidate category would be weighed the same way, before any evidence came in.
Online qualitative research explored what the brand meant to the people who bought it. With that grounding, we developed a broad set of candidate categories with early concepts, and explored them with the brand’s buyers in focus groups.
The groups ran on two tracks, with loyal buyers and with a broader mainstream audience, because a growth plan had to reflect the people the brand already had and the people it needed to reach. Leadership stayed close as the evidence built, and shaped the plan as it formed.
What the team came away with
The executive team had a growth roadmap, with guidelines for developing the brand in new categories.
Every candidate category had been weighed against the criteria agreed with leadership at the start, so the roadmap brought the brand’s ambition and its buyers’ view together.
Who we heard from
The brand’s loyal buyers and a broader mainstream audience, in online qualitative research and focus groups
Related work
View brand growth case studies- What we do
- Innovation
Thinking about where your brand could go next?
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