Preparing two pet food brands for a retailer review

The question

A pet food company sold two of its brands through a key specialty retailer, and that retailer’s innovation review was coming.

New directions for both brands had to stand apart in a competitive channel and add something to what the company already knew. They also had to make sense to a retailer weighing what each new idea would add to its category.

Our approach

We started from everything the company already knew, so each concept built on ground its team trusted.

Its positioning and innovation strategy, earlier qualitative research, previous concept work and a trends forecast all went into the thinking before a single concept was written, so nothing the company had already paid to learn was left on the shelf.

Each concept was then written for the retailer and the brand alike, opening with what it would add to a shopping trip and setting out the products it could grow into.

What the team came away with

Finished concepts for both brands were made for the retailer’s table, each argued in the terms a retailer weighs, for its shelf and its shoppers.

Every concept followed the same shape: the thinking behind it, its benefits, its back-of-pack story, the products it could grow into, its role in its brand and what it would need to succeed.

With every concept built the same way, the team had a set it could compare side by side and defend in one set of terms. It could also see, concept by concept, what each idea would ask of the business before committing to it.