Dopamine has become the buzzword of this summer. Apart from apparels, this bright "dopamine" color can be seen in quite a lot of aspects of our daily life including food and beverages. But food and beverage category is crowded with a wide range of choices, and has a variety of marketing designs, how can brands ride on the “dopamine” trend to capture the minds of consumers beyond the expectation

Grounded on years of solid understanding of product innovation and rich experience in food and beverage areas, THREE INNOVATION, an boutique of Illuminera focusing on innovation consulting, summarized three key directions for successful innovation, as well as innovation ecosystem checklists, to provide decision-making guidelines for food and beverage brands in diverse landscapes with different product portfolios.

Innovation of Best-selling Products by Existing Dominant Players

Back to basics for innovation opportunities

It is true that in China food and beverage is a quite huge market, but if we look at some special sub-categories, you will find stories are different, and they are so crowded that hardly new brands can thrive. Those best-selling products occupy consumers' mind early with a relatively stable market share. Top players are more concentrated and widely known such as Coca-Cola, oolong tea, Qiaqia melon seeds, Greek yoghurt, and so on...... For them, category almost equals with the brand itself. However, with the changes of consumer behavior and perception, the specific requirements and interpretation on the category might evolve even if the fundamental definition has not changed, which, in a result, would create new space for "product innovation".
   

Take the well-known yoghurt brand we served before as an example. Yoghurt, when it came to the market several years ago, was the ideal choice to enjoy health, nutrition, and good taste together, but with increasing health awareness, consumers no longer consider the original yoghurt to be the best option - they buy less for various reasons, too sweet or too thick. Therefore, yoghurt products need to be reinterpreted to return to the fundamental truth of the category, with a new look to meet the emerging needs of consumers. Many dairy brands have seized the opportunity to launch low-sugar, low-calorie and high-protein products to provide consumers with more choices. This is the typical practice of "back to basics" for innovative breakthroughs.

Competitive differentiation in a fragmented market

Highlighting unique advantages to capture the consumer mind

In the food and beverage industry, more products may be in another kind of "niche competition", i.e., the market is in a rapid development stage, with multiple brands are  competing and new brands are emerging time and again.

Hormel, a global branded food company Three innovation served was facing such a situation when strategizing innovation for its sausage products, international giants, traditional brands, and new players come and go in this 10-billion market, providing diverse product offerings and pricing themselves in different ranges - the maximum price difference can reach 8-10 times.

With the belief that brands need to highlight unique advantages based on their understanding of the category to seize consumers' minds to face the market competition, we assisted Hormel to bring consumers the enjoyment of authentic Western flavors, establishing a clear differentiation when working for the innovation of its new German-style grilled sausage.  

After scanning the consumer demands and market competition landscape, we also helped the client to sort out and polish the product features, and launch the Taiwan style juicy grilled sausage, which is the best in terms of flavor and taste, and finally won consumers’ mind by standing out with unique and differentiated product features.

Rapid Iteration in a Fierece Market Competition

Creating surprising & intriguing emotional experiences

In contrast, some sub-categories in food and beverage have a high degree of product homogeneity, and competition for consumer acquisition is particularly fierce. In this "highly involutional" market ecology, consumers expect brands to bring no longer just taste and texture differentiation, but to convey ever-changing emotions of surprise, as well as more sensory stimulation, social attributes, trendy symbols.

While vodka is known as a strong liquor, the contrast of "fruity + vodka" has certainly brought surprise to the market, and the communication strategy of fruity vodka, which Illuminera delivered, has given full play to this perfect match. Our insights revealed that the multiple roles of the modern urban women: they can be gentle, sweet and charming, also can be straightforward, confident and wild. The variety of roles is perfectly matched by the mixing of fruity vodkas, which creates a contrasting, yet heartfelt positioning for product communication. The brand has successfully catered to female consumers and become a new choice for them to enjoy happy time.

Brands continue to launch new products so that in communication they can stand out for closer user bonding. This objective requires brands to innovate boldly – bearing basics of category and product differentiation in mind, create collision, impact and trend through combination of different variables, and generate fresh and interesting experiences and surprises, finally harvest consumers’ mind with eye-catching but reasonable product features.

Based on the three types of innovation solutions discussed above, we have prepared a "innovation postioning" checklist, so that brands can find corresponding solutions according to their own competitive situation and their own product features.

With positioning of strategic product innovation, Three Innovation of Illuminera is committed to deliver a high-impact and actionable innovation strategy, to empower the “birth” and "growth" of products, and win in the increasingly competitive market.

For more information, please contact:

karen.liu@illuminera.com

marketing@illuminera.com