Deciding which R&D technologies should upgrade a savory snack

The question

A snack company’s global team wanted to upgrade one of its core products, using technologies its R&D group already had in development.

An upgrade only pays if snackers notice it, and R&D had more technologies than it could take forward. The team needed to know which ones people would feel when they ate, and which claims could tell them about it, in each of three markets.

Our approach

We began inside R&D, cataloguing every technology in development, so each one could be put in front of snackers on equal terms.

Snackers in each market then talked us through how they choose and eat the category, online and in person, and tasted prototypes in groups, so every verdict rested on eating. In a later phase, we facilitated workshops where the client’s R&D, brand and innovation teams designed the next stage of the program together, as owners of it.

What the team came away with

R&D had a technology library, refreshed as the work went on, and a clear view of which technologies to press on with and which to redirect.

A claims library set out every claims area the brand could take forward. Beside it, a framework described the whole eating experience from the snacker’s side, so each workstream could see where its work would meet the person eating, from choosing a snack to finishing it.

For the next phase, the teams had a staged process that turns product questions into technical briefs for R&D, each with agreed measures of success, and early group research on flavor and emotion to start it.