/ CPG
Charting a Path to Growth
Challenge
Despite being first entrants into the organic petfood space, the category had been overtaken by stiff competition. The client team sought to inspire winning innovation by gaining a fresh perspective on kibble through uncovering unmet – or even unknown – pet parent needs and the jobs they hire products to do to satisfy those needs.
Path Forward
We engaged 20 category and brand consumers (both dog and cat) via a week-long mobile ethnography study to understand their current category behaviors, drivers and barriers and unmet needs related to meals, snacking and treats. We then conducted follow-up IDIs to dig a bit deeper and pressure test initial learnings. Egg identified a range of needs and Jobs to be Done across the pet food landscape, which we prioritized to inform 3-4 kibble-focused innovation springboards that served as the creative and strategic inspiration for our innovation Hatchery. We led an immersive and creative virtual ideation to produce “platform–able” ideas for kibble. Finally, we tapped consumers’ perspectives to evolve our top 6-8 kibble ideas forward and optimize them for quantitative assessment.
Impact
In the end, we delivered 4 platform concepts with multiple ideas beneath – at least half of which were quantified as either Breakout or Breakthrough – all provided via a strategic, data-rich, visually-compelling final report. By translating actionable kibble insights into breakout and breakthrough innovation, we helped build growth strategy and innovation pipelines that will enable them to regain category leadership, justify premium pricing, and distinguish their brands for incremental growth.