Mapping where a versatile snack format could stand apart

The question

A snack company made several of its products from one versatile format, and its suppliers sold the same base to other snack makers.

Any advantage would have to come from what the company did with the format: shapes, textures and flavors nobody else offered. Its innovation group wanted a view of the format as a whole, and to know where it could outdo what was already on the shelf and what a product would need in each opportunity.

Our approach

Snack eaters judged products in the format by look first and taste second, so the format’s own cues came through before flavor took over.

Online tasks beforehand let us see snacking in everyday life, and groups built their own snack ideas for each early opportunity. In a workshop, the innovation group set every opportunity against the company’s own commercial priorities with us, so the consumer and commercial views met in one place.

What the team came away with

Each opportunity area arrived with a first product profile, so the innovation group could compare what the format might become in each, side by side.

The second stage took one area further, with fresh research in two regions and an ideation workshop where the company’s market, R&D and design teams developed ideas together with us, so the people who would make the product shaped it from the start.

A summary of the work, written to circulate, meant colleagues who weren’t in the workshops could pick up the evidence and the ideas, and see where the format could take the range next.