Planning a food brand’s entry into a new market

The question

Before any media money was spent in the new market, the executive team wanted the target audience, the creative platform and the pack settled on evidence.

The work also had a second audience. Partners at home would want to see the case for the entry, so the research had to speak to them as well as to the team planning it.

Our approach

We built the work in stages, from the target to the positioning to the creative, so each stage gave the next a brief grounded in evidence.

To understand the target, we followed the whole journey: how people shop the category and weigh their choices, then how they store, prepare, cook and serve what they buy. Ethnography, shop-alongs, cook-alongs and time in people’s homes kept it close to real life.

We kept the stimulus moving. Guides and materials were adapted between sessions, and visuals reworked between groups, so each conversation sharpened the next.

What the team came away with

Each stage gave the client and creative teams, who worked with us throughout, evidence to brief the next.

First came the target, then a direction for the creative platform, then the detail of each component, from pack to PR to digital.

For partners at home, we made a short film about shoppers in the new market, so the consumer story could travel with the evidence.

“The research and strategy work we did with antedote was pivotal in informing our strategic decisions and helping us create a successful launch. It was comprehensive and completely aligned end-to-end process which meant we could shift some key KPIs with a relatively modest media budget.”

CMO, food brand