Sending a food brand’s leaders out with shoppers before a summit

The question

A food brand’s leaders were preparing for their brand summit, and wanted to explore the themes they had chosen for it with the people who buy the category.

Reports and data could describe those shoppers. The leaders wanted to meet them in person, hear the themes in shoppers’ own words, and arrive at the summit with that experience fresh and shared across the whole team.

Our approach

We chose shoppers for curiosity and ease with strangers as much as for their fit with the category, because the immersion depended on real conversation.

Leaders went out in small teams, each with a shopper and a guidebook to that person, on routes we curated in and well beyond the category, and shared photos and notes as they went in a record everyone could follow live.

A digital pre-task helped us choose the shoppers, and gave each team a first sense of the person it would meet.

What the team came away with

The leaders arrived at their summit with a regroup behind them, a guide for carrying it into the summit’s reflection, and a keepsake record of the immersion.

The regroup followed a conversation structure we designed, so every team’s experience was heard and set beside the others while it was still vivid, with the profiles of the shoppers they had met close at hand.

The record gathered the shoppers’ pre-task with the leaders’ own photos and notes, put together for the team while the immersion was fresh, so everyone had the same experience to return to at the summit.