About this masterclass:
Consumer insights are a powerful tool for food entrepreneurs to guide decisions around product development, positioning, price or product experience.
The ability to quickly size a market opportunity and tap into what consumers are thinking – and even co-create with them – is essential before you start making a big investment.
Our trainers will help you navigate between different consumer research approaches – from ethnography, quick survey, focus group and co-creation – to ensure that your next product meets the changing needs of consumers.
This interactive masterclass will allow you to interact in discussion rooms with other participants who share similar challenges. The presenters will bring to life the workshop content with real-life case studies from the food industry and practical tools.
Who should attend?
This masterclass is particularly adapted to startups and marketing managers, looking for agile and lean methodologies to develop new product ideas.
Meet your speakers
Vanessa Mayneris
Vanessa is a strategy and innovation consultant with a passion for food, beverage and sustainability who has over 20 years of experience as innovation director and insight consultant for L’Oréal , Danone, AbbVie, ?What If!
She works with FMCG companies like Emmi, Mars, Arla, Pepsi, McDonalds, but also supports start-ups looking to expand their portfolio, want agile consumer research and insight methodologies.
She is a founder of the Little Big Collective – a group of independent consultants and designer thinkers – helping clients to transform their brands with insight-led products and services.
Vanessa is particularly interested in consumer food changes, from the plant-based revolution to the COVID impact on food behaviours and holds an international marketing MBA from HEC Paris.
Sascha Dutta
Sascha has over 15 years corporate marketing experience working in Brand Management & NPD for companies like Pepsico, Coca-Cola, AB WorldFoods, Muller Dairy, Geest Foods Europe (now Bakkavor) and Marston’s Brewery both in UK and International roles.
She now specialises in Marketing & Social Media Strategy as a Freelance Consultant offering consulting, coaching & training programmes. Recently she started a free community to help food & drink start-ups grow their brand on social media with a mission to help 10,000 start-ups worldwide.
Sascha is Chartered Marketer with the CIM Diploma in Marketing and an Advanced Diploma in Strategic Social Media Marketing, as well as being the Lead Ambassador for FoodHack London (a community for Food & Drink Entrepreneurs) and the F&B Branding Expert on the Advisory Panel for The Startup Club F&B Pitch Events.
Content overview
At inception, start-ups are very close to consumers but, as the operational pressure grows, it’s easy to lose track of changing consumer needs. We’ll look at successful examples and failures due to a lack of consumers insights. We’ll run a consumer shoes exercise (confronting our beliefs and the reality of consumers needs) around flexitarian consumers.
Key takeaways: we never know what consumers really think, why insights are key to design the right product and avoid costly mistakes.
Beyond checking if a product tastes good or has the right name, we’ll look at how contextual research can help early on product managers to design their next innovation and what needs or ‘job’ it should fulfil.
We will look at an example of digital ethnography and discussion groups in sports nutrition.
Key takeaway: Research tools to get the consumer bigger picture, how it impacts the product design and positioning, how to involve your team in consumer research.
Defining what you want to learn from research at different stages of the innovation process is very important. We’ll look at how to build a good research brief and the KPI, from relevance to differentiation, for successful NPD.
Key takeaways: Good practices for innovation research brief, Innovation KPI.
We will look at the different tools to use for innovation research and their function. From quantitative (quick market survey, concept testing) to qualitative research – live or online- even using market fairs to quickly validate your ideas. But also in situ research or behavioural research, when testing an idea is not possible or when asking consumers isn’t enough.
We’ll share some real-life examples with Sasha Dutta and a start-up ‘in-situ’ testing experience with sustainable packaging solutions. We will point you towards inexpensive solutions and recruiting tools that still deliver quality insights.
Key takeaway: resources for building your own research. What tool to use at what stage of your product development. Dos and Dont’s.
This is your chance to exchange with other participants and put into practice the masterclass discussions. In groups, you will design a research plan to answer an innovation challenge. Feedback will then be given on this exercise.
Key takeaways: Insights from other participants and their challenges, apply learnings from the masterclass.
