Why “Insight” is More than what Consumers Tell You…

By: James Harmer of Touch Packaging Innovation

Have you noticed? Cracks are appearing in the once impenetrable walls that guarded the key to product and pack design. The unswerving focus on consumer insight to supposedly unlock innovation is waning. Consumer Packaged Goods manufacturers are beginning to realise more agile innovation that brings competitive advantage and has staying power, needs to come from stronger innovation foundations—beyond what consumers tell us.

I have been noticing this for some time now. A reliance on consumer insight that is driven by the need to get ever closer to the end user is starting to feel like we have reached a tipping point. Worse still, it is starting to skew the outcome of so many expensive and lengthy initiatives.

Regardless of the sector—snacks to soft drinks, craft beers to health foods—the same rule applies: for innovation to truly have impact it must balance consumer wants and needs with an investment in more nimble, flexible manufacturing and supply chain capability. Instead of a quest for one holy grail, that brings short-lived delight to the consumer, we should be looking for smarter, more efficient ways to deliver innovation.

Rather than placing consumer insight centre stage, marketers should mesh it with brand and business opportunities. This means mapping the challenges across the entire product and packaging lifecycle, but the effort is worth it. By taking into account not only the consumer, but also the organisation’s core production capability, marketers will have a much more holistic framework from which to work.

Defining true consumer insights and needs, exploring cutting edge technologies, and combining these with the manufacturer’s current capabilities requires a detailed understanding of all the implications and commercial realities of innovation ahead of production.

Have you ever been to “one of those” internal innovation sessions that was doomed—not just by the absence of windows in the room, but by the absence of a clear understanding about what people really wanted, and what you and your supply chain could actually produce beyond a generic flow wrap, without having to spend millions on additional capex?

One of the issues is that organisations still tend to work in silos. Yet if the focus is shifted to ensure the brief is deliverable as well as visionary it is more likely to generate cradle to grave thinking from insight through to execution and ensure the vision and mission are intrinsically linked with current capabilities. Surely exploring opportunities for more flexible manufacturing that can generate multiple product and pack types, with tiered levels of good, better, best, designed into the infrastructure from the very beginning would make more sense.

Henry Ford is famous for claiming his customers would have been happy with faster horses. That is what he believed they would have claimed they wanted had he have asked them. Ford recognised that all too often research focuses on a two dimensional aspect of the end consumer—what they say they do and what they claim they want. Capturing what consumers actually do (as well as what they say they do), gives marketers and designers the granularity with which to go beyond that two dimensional viewpoint.

Taking valuable behavioural consumer learnings to the next stage requires meshing what consumers need with how best to deliver it. This means testing early stage innovation design hypotheses with designers and making a compelling business case for what’s needed to adapt existing production facilities and future proof them.

Truth be told, I have seen transformational changes occur, sometimes with minimal factory disruption. Deeper broader thinking about the business insights alongside consumer insight can lead to a raft of other benefits too, from a reduction in packaging material, carbon footprint savings through to improved product delivery and enhanced customer engagement.

Recent work we undertook for Europe’s largest cracker manufacturer is a good example of this as it highlighted the essential distinction to be made between what consumers say versus what they do. Traditional research techniques had indicated that resealability for freshness were the primary consumer drivers with the current packaging. So technical teams in the client’s packaging function naturally gravitated toward providing belt and braces hermetic resealability to protect the product and lock in freshness. Indeed, why wouldn’t you, if that’s what consumers are telling you they want? But this would have meant a paradigm shift from their paper based packaging material, which was at the very heart of the existing pack and had been an equity of the brand for over 100 years.

What we established via our proprietary packaging playground sessions across the client’s leading markets in Europe, is that although there were cultural preferences to take into consideration, protection for the sake of freshness had been misinterpreted. Consumers wanted to retain the natural packaging feel, simplicity was key. But they wanted reassurance of an appropriate level of freshness. Being able to reseal the pack, albeit via a simple fold or tuck, helped the consumer feel that the product was secure.

On establishing this, the client team recognised the value we were able to add. By marrying detailed consumer insight with the most cost effective methods of technical delivery we saved our client millions, finding a functional alternative to what would have ultimately been a costly and inappropriate packaging shift.

There is a sweet spot that rests at the juncture where carefully unearthed consumer needs meet an organisation’s technical and manufacturing capabilities. In reality there is no black magic to deep diving into consumer behaviour, from our perspective some of the most transformational insights we have uncovered have come from our consumer workshops. Nothing replaces watching consumers physically test out a new pack format. Mesh this with consumer interaction at point of sale and back at home and their actions speak louder than their words.

Surely that is the pivotal point for innovation: drawing inspiration from the strength of combined insights about what people want and how to deliver it in a cost effective, sustainable way.