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Challenge
Air Wick, a globally renowned home fragrance brand with over £1 billion in annual sales, faced the challenge of understanding the distinct consumer needs for two of its largest product platforms. With a diverse range of products like aerosols, candles, and diffusers, Air Wick needed to avoid the risk of converging two platforms on similar use cases, which could lead to unnecessary duplication in their portfolio.
STRAT7 Advisory was engaged to delve deep into consumer behaviour, then translate these findings into a unique product innovation strategy for each format
Approach
Consumer observation and provocation
We combined observation and interrogation of normal use with provocation from a deprivation and product swap exercise. The study highlighted a surprising new use case and some deeply emotional needs which were worked up into discrete opportunity spaces that were aligned with the full client team.
The team employed an innovative three-part online ethnography methodology:
- Natural usage observation: Consumers were observed using their products in their usual way and interrogated about why they do what they do. This revealed a new and unexpected use case which contradicted the established wisdom about the product.
- Deprivation study: Participants were asked to abstain from using all home fragrance for 48 hours. Understanding their feelings and what they missed during this period uncovered key lifestyle moments where products have most impact and helped consumers identify the emotional benefits which they’d previously taken for granted.
- Product swap exercise: Consumers exchanged their usual products for a different format, allowing them to articulate their needs and preferences by directly comparing the formats. This highlighted that while the desired outcomes of the two formats were similar, the contexts and situations of use varied significantly.
Post-study interviews provided further insights into consumer behaviours and preliminary ideas for innovation.
Ideation through multiple lenses
To translate opportunity spaces into actionable product concepts and long-term strategy, we conducted a two-day ideation workshop which combined highly creative and thought-provoking stimulus with pragmatic refinement and prioritisation:
- Day 1 (divergent thinking): Focused on generating a wide range of ideas. Activities included:
- Immersive exercises to get under the skin of consumers.
- Input and provocation from external design experts.
- Inspirational tours of high-end design and homeware stores for creative stimulation.
- Day 2 (convergent thinking): Prioritisation and development of ideas into detailed concepts. This phase involved:
- Overnight consumer testing of top Day 1 ideas.
- Identification of key themes which drive consumer preference
- Refinement of concepts based on feedback.
Strategic review
To refocus the ideas back to the original objective, we assessed each shortlisted idea against the agreed opportunities to ensure they were delivering on the established consumer needs and tensions. We then looked back at the long list of ideas and identified which could deliver on the opportunities in ways which are distinct vs the shortlist.
The new shortlist was then assessed for feasibility by Air Wick’s technical team and written up by STRAT7 into concise concepts. To help bring each idea to life we used AI tools to rapidly generate visuals for each concept.
In addition to concepts, we identified a number of long-term innovation themes which can be delivered through successive concepts over time. This step was crucial to illustrate how a long-term product strategy can be much more impactful than series of disjointed ideas.
The full project was completed in the space of 13 weeks and concepts are now being taken into quantitative testing and will form a crucial backbone of Air Wick’s product pipeline.
