---
title: "Audience research for a staple food ingredient brand | antedote"
description: "Opportunity audience research for a food company: a category survey to size and compare audiences, then a digital ethnography with the one chosen."
url: "https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/choosing-new-audiences-for-a-staple-ingredient/"
author: "antedote"
---

# Choosing an audience to grow a staple ingredient brand

A food company had a staple ingredient brand and production technology it believed set it apart. We set out and sized several opportunity audiences for the brand, then went deeper with the one its team chose to pursue.

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**Client**
Food company

**Industry**
Food

**Market**
North America

**Kind of work**
Brand growth

**Our role**
Opportunity audience research, then a digital ethnography with the audience chosen

## The question

A food company sells a staple ingredient under its own brand, made with production technology it believed set its products apart.

It wanted to know which shoppers could grow the brand, and what it would take to win them. The audience it chose would decide where its product strengths had to count: in the range, in its claims and in the story its sales team told.

## Our approach

We defined opportunity audiences from a survey of category buyers, each framed by what the brand could already offer it, so none was a wish list.

Each was sized and set against shared criteria, from its value and its fit with the range to how hard it would be to deliver and how crowded the competition was, so the team chose among them on the same terms.

The chosen audience’s most engaged buyers then took part in a digital ethnography over time, showing us how they cook with, choose and talk about the products.

## What the team came away with

The first stage produced a knowledge bank of the category and a summary of each opportunity audience, with its size, its profile and the brand’s right to play.

The second produced a playbook for the chosen audience: a strategy, a set of plays and ideas for products, claims, digital and the sales story, each paired with examples from other brands and categories as sparks.

Product, marketing and sales could now work from one picture of the customer they had chosen. The other audiences stayed in the knowledge bank, sized and profiled, for later choices.

Who we heard from

People who buy and use the category across North America, in a survey, then the chosen audience’s most engaged buyers, in a digital ethnography

## Related work

[View brand growth case studies](https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/?work=Brand%20growth#library)

- Snacks

    ### [Choosing where a food brand could credibly grow next](https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/brand-stretch-new-growth/)

    The brand went on to launch in four new categories.

- Food

    ### [Generating and testing pack structures for a new indulgent range](https://antedote.com/explore-our-work/packaging-for-a-new-indulgent-range/)

    A food company had defined the products for a new indulgent range, made for enjoying at home, and needed a pack worthy of them.

**What we do**
[Strategic research](https://antedote.com/what-we-do/strategic-research/)

**The thinking behind this**
- [The technology works. What should it become?](https://antedote.com/thinking/from-technical-capability-to-customer-proposition/)

## Thinking about where your brand could go next?

We’d be glad to talk it through with you.

[Talk to us](https://antedote.com/talk-to-us/) · [hello@antedote.com](mailto:hello@antedote.com)

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