Defining who a snack brand’s protein ideas are for

The question

Protein gave a food company’s snack brand a strong reason for people to choose it, and a risk of promising more than a product could back up.

Its innovation team wanted to know who looks for protein in a snack, in terms it could brief from, and how many of them there are in each of its markets. Without that, every protein idea would be judged against an average snacker nobody actually is.

Our approach

We started from the company’s earlier research and trend work, and from conversations with people seeking more protein, so the survey asked only what was still unknown.

Several ways of dividing the protein audience were built and compared with the client team in a working session, which chose the one that would serve innovation best.

Each group was sized in stages, from everyone conscious of protein down to people who see a protein snack as part of the answer, so the team could see how many people an idea would be for.

What the team came away with

What came back was a typology of protein snackers sized in the UK and Australia, and a framework mapping where ideas for each group could go, with sparks from other categories.

Each group came with a profile the team could brief from: what protein is doing for them, what they look for in a product, and how many of them there are.

A protein idea could now be judged by the snacker it was for and the size of that group in each market. Because the typology built on the company’s existing research, it could be read beside what the team already knew.