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A global confectionery brand uncovered new market opportunities using our Crowd Signals platform, powered by strat7.ai, to analyse consumer sentiment, emotion and relevant cultural shifts.
Challenge
Our client, a beloved confectionery brand that has been a favourite among parents and children for many years, has established a strong reputation for producing high-quality products that parents feel comfortable about giving to their kids.
However, despite consistently strong sales, the company recognised times are changing and that this positive perception could potentially be under threat.
To maintain their position as a trusted brand for families, they needed to know what was on the horizon.
We interrogated multiple online conversations, combining this data with desk research and expert interviews, to provide a comprehensive understanding of consumer trends and preferences.
Approach
The search for what’s next
In order to locate the challenges and opportunities of the future, we needed to look not just within the sweet and snack category but also outside of it. In order to do this, we turned to our AI powered unstructured data tool, Crowd Signals, to tap into several relevant cultural shifts.
We combined our data analysis with additional desk research and five expert interviews to obtain a full-rounded perspective on our trends. We spoke to nutritionists, a food anthropologist and a family blogger who could help provide expertise across our core markets of UK, France and Germany and add a fresh perspective onto our data.
The cultural shifts we looked at included:
1. Responsible progress: our first cultural shift focused on sustainability, a key topic of concern for the company. What can we learn from conversations around the circular economy, packaging and eco-marketing to help better position future treats as a sustainable choice?
2. Wellbeing recharge: here we looked at trends relating to mood foods, more accessible healthy alternatives and precise nourishments in which foods target specific parts of the body such as the mind or gut.
3. Elevated indulgence: our next shift looked at new experiences and experiments in food and flavour. We looked at trends related to new novelty experiences, status-serving snacks and how brands are incorporating play in unique and surprising ways.
Impact
These all had important learnings for our client in how they could better position their products and build a positive perception with parents of the future, as well as informing our qualitative work that followed.
Some of our key findings included:
1. Responsible progress: Sustainability plays second fiddle to nutrition and food happiness, but parents expect brands to lead. While sustainability is an increasingly important topic in snacks and treats, parents believe that it us up to brands to play an active role in the environment without comprising on the price or quality of their products.
2. Wellbeing recharge: While healthier alternatives such as vegan chocolate are rapidly growing, we can’t ignore the importance of the social value brought about by sweet treats for children. When we looked at the data, we saw a rise in discussion around healthy alternatives such as sugar-free, lactose-free and specific plant-based alternatives. However, this wasn’t the full picture. Parents knew these healthier alternatives would only work if they didn’t come at the expense of valuable play time. Our experts highlighted this as a key part of children’s mental and emotional wellbeing.
3. Elevated indulgence: Children and parents love the surprise factor in sweet treats, making it crucial for brands to clearly differentiate themselves in the market. We were able to glean valuable insights from the rise in franchise related treats (Barbie Froyo), odd partnerships (French Mustard and Skittles) and social media hype (Prime drinks). To defy the ordinary and truly stand out in a competitive market, brands often need to bring bold and innovative products to the table.
What is Crowd Signals?
The Crowd Signals Platform has advanced NLP, AI and machine learning capabilities, powered by strat7.ai, to search social posts, forums, search engines, review sites, client sales and behavioural sets – and ultimately uncover meaningful stories of culture.
Click here to find out more (you will be redirected to STRAT7 Crowd DNA’s website).
