When it comes to sales, nothing works better than trial – getting the product into the consumers’ hands and having them see it, touch it, try it out. Whether you are selling food or beverages, a fancy new smartphone or a hip, eco-friendly car, bottom line, trial pushes consumers further down the sales funnel and ultimately toward purchase. It also gets your brand known and talked about.
Bryan Mattimore
July 3, 2018
Not too long ago, I was working with a very successful U.S. discount clothing chain to create store-of-the-future concepts. To help prepare for the project, I looked at trends not only in retailing but in the U.S. as a whole. One of the things that struck me as I researched these trends was the dichotomies or complete contradictions that I was seeing. Yes, there was a trend toward eating healthier foods, but Americans had never been fatter. Being green was important at the same time sales of SUVs were skyrocketing. “Do-it-your-self” was gaining popularity while “do-it-for-me” was also on the rise.
It occurred to me that exploring what was driving these extremes might be a way to inspire very different, maybe even breakthrough new retailing concepts.
Furthermore, by employing these extremes, we’d have potentially two very different ways to trigger new ideas, either by:
1) generating new store ideas that could reconcile these extremes, or
2) picking one of the extremes and using it to inspire the new idea.
I was pleasantly surprised when more than a half-dozen truly revolutionary concepts for new stores came out of this dual-thinking approach.
And yet it wasn’t because of this immersion into “extreme thinking” that I’m sharing this story. It’s that an even more powerful and broadly useful technique resulted.
As I was facilitating the store-of-the-future ideation session with the client, I found myself placing the extremes on either ends of a flip chart and drawing a line between them to help the group visualize a range of possible ideas. I was hoping that they would populate the continuum with new ideas that fell between the extremes. And indeed, they did.
But as we worked these continuums, I also realized that I had stumbled on a simple way to clearly identify existing brand positionings vis-à-vis the competition, as well as inspire entirely new brand positions.
We now call this exercise “positioning continuums,” because it literally positions – and visually portrays – a brand against a variety of strategic factors, product features, and consumer benefits. It allows our clients to see what place their brand occupies on a variety of continuums, while also comparing and contrasting their unique brand position with those of their competitors.
Clients tell us that what that makes this new brand visualization tool so powerful is that on a single page they can get a clear, simple picture of where they are relative to their competition on the factors that matter most to their customers. And seeing where they are on these continuums also makes it easier for the strategic growth planning team to discuss if and how they might want to migrate toward or away from one factor, feature or benefit, to another.
How can you create positioning continuums for your brand? Simple. Start by brainstorming a list of twelve to fifteen diametrically-opposed product or service, features and benefits. For example, if you’re positioning say, a design firm, some of your opposing factors might include:
For an established food product, your opposing factors might include:
Once these factors have been identified, then locate your service or product where you think it belongs on each continuum. Is it in the middle? Far to the right? Far to the left, or somewhere in between?
Next, place your perceived key competitors on these same continuums. You can even add “non-obvious” competitors or potential industry disruptors like Amazon, Google or Walmart, and imagine if they entered your market, where they would land on each of the continuums. This will give you a good idea of where your brand and the competition – real and imagined — are today.
Then, with this clear picture of “the current state,” you and your strategic and innovation planning teams can make informed decisions about how you might “re-position” your service or product across these continuums to achieve strategically-informed competitive advantages and growth opportunities.
That’s it. Simple, right? But don’t let’s its simplicity fool you. Some clients have told us, especially those who have been in charge of their brand’s growth for many years, that this exercise made it “easy to see where they needed to strengthen, re-position, and occasionally entirely re-invent their brand” given their positions, relative strengths and gaps (or “unoccupied territory”) on the positioning continuums.
Our experience has shown that the brand positioning continuum tool can help a brand planning team add a new level of strategic thinking rigor – and occasionally – even creative inspiration that might be overlooked in a conventional brand planning process.
Note: This article was adapted from Bryan Mattimore’s book Idea Stormers, How to Lead and Inspire Creative Breakthroughs (Wiley Jossey-Bass).
The national craving for simpler, natural and more locally sourced ingredients and products has expanded its footprint in Connecticut’s economy through a new public-private sector project — Food’NBev Connect — Connecticut’s first food and beverage brand accelerator.
Food’NBev Connect is an economic development initiative whose mission is to nurture and grow start-up and scaling natural product companies and promote Connecticut and Fairfield County as a key epicenter of the natural products and brand movement. The effort will be led by The Business Council of Fairfield County, with support from leading executives in the food and beverage categories, the CTNext/Innovate Stamford program and several sponsor organizations.
“Critical to the success of entrepreneurs is a network of advisors and experienced mentors that entrepreneurs can tap into,” said Glendowlyn Thames, executive director of CTNext. “The expertise and capital residing in Connecticut is second to none and linking our food and beverage innovators into that network is a logical extension of the work of CTNext and Innovate Stamford.”
Since the recession of 2009, while the overall manufacturing sector has declined in Fairfield County, food manufacturing has actually grown. These locally grown businesses are meeting the increasing consumer demand for nutritional food, snack and beverage products made with simpler recipes and natural ingredients. No longer satisfied with mass produced, delivered and merchandised options, shoppers are now focused on fresh offerings with identifiable ingredients offered by smart, local and authentic brands.
Connecticut has a long history of bringing better packaged, innovative brands and products to market – from Pepperidge Farm cookies to Bear Naked granola, from Tasty Bite to Spiked Seltzer – and it has many successful entrepreneurs, advisors, investors and related businesses that can help young companies grow.
As described by Gary Breitbart, managing director of the initiative, “Food’NBev Connect is about connecting our vast resources to make it easier for start-ups to access talent, find funding and advice without having to recreate the wheel and to make entrepreneurs aware that Fairfield County offers resources to help start and grow their concepts.”
“There are many questions a first-time entrepreneur has, and this seems amplified for anyone in the food space,” commented Will D’Agostino, CEO and Founder, Stamford-based Nutshell, a Food’NBev Connect member launch brand. “The information network is very disjointed and finding answers takes so much time away from more pressing business activities. Creating a community to provide efficient insight from experienced professionals gives business owners a way to get more hours out of the day and make quicker, more informed decisions.”
Meet our brands
Ten brands have initially been accepted into the initiative at launch, representing new and rapidly growing segments – from kombucha to cold brewed coffees and lattes, from nutbars to small batch granola, a thai soup and broth company and even engraved chocolates, as well as gourmet marinades and glazes and ice cream dessert brands. These companies are all growing fast, but need help scaling further and funding their enterprises.
“We’re really excited to be a part of this initiative,” added Will Kelly, COO of Norwalk-based Kelly’s Four Plus granola. “We joined because there is a growing community of innovative food and beverage companies in Fairfield County and we want to contribute to that as much as we can. The Food’NBev Connect cluster gives us access to advisors and other resources that will help take our brand to the next level.”
Food’NBev Connect is supported by an Executive Advisory Panel of proven food and beverage executives. The Executive Advisory Panel members include Tim Brown, previously President of Chobani and CEO of Stamford based Nestlé Waters North America; Ashok Vasudevan, founder of Stamford based Preferred Brands, the makers of the Tasty Bite brand; Janet Steinmeyer former CEO, Centerplate, a Stamford based food services company and current President of Mitchell College in New London, Connecticut; and David Cingari, CEO of David’s Soundview Catering, a local food service leader.
“I believe the food and beverage accelerator model will play a crucial socio-economic role in the region and beyond,” explained Food’NBev Executive Advisor Ashok Vasudevan. “The unstoppable megatrend of rising health care costs combined with an increased consumer belief in functional and holistic foods will be major tailwinds for food entrepreneurs dedicated to consumer wellness. This is yet a sunrise industry with promise of major growth both domestically and worldwide.”
For more information about Food’NBev Connect contact Lisa Mercurio of The Business Council of Fairfield County at 203-359-3220 and visit www.foodnbevct.com.