How do brands innovate to be meaningful, salient & different?
Aggregated data from three Kantar studies* showed that innovative brands grew at over twice the rate of other brands and the strongest growth was enjoyed by brand innovation that was grounded in meaning. Brands that are both meaningful and perceived to be innovative or shaking things up with well designed products, grew 54% faster than other brands.
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Kantar shares these lessons from successful brand innovators:
1: A Consumer-First Mindset
A revolutionary technical advance in materials, functionality or design may offer potential for innovation, but unless that innovation involves real consumer tension it is unlikely to be successful. This is even more true in challenging times when people’s needs are evolving. Winners were looking for this human tension, beyond just whitespaces to focussing on blind spots. They also thought about the factors that influenced choice and designed their innovations to address these. So, check-in with your target audience at critical stages throughout the innovation journey. How can you create a different set of experiences for people to interact with and experience your product, as this has the potential to re-frame it in their minds.
2: Be fit for your brand
Winning brands are clear about their brand foundations and have a clear purpose. They build on this clear understanding to help them ensure their innovations are fit for their brand, getting the balance right between protecting the core and looking for incremental growth. Always looking for new ways to be meaningful and different. To do this you need to check your innovations support your brand purpose and the broader portfolio, and look beyond short-term sales to understanding the long-term impact of your innovation on brand equity and growth.
3: Learn, Test, Learn
Innovation is a continuous journey, and winners are willing to learn from their mistakes. They break from the traditional stage-gate thinking to focus on testing assumptions, looking at the unknowns and putting more energy upfront, to seek more meaningfully different ‘opportunity spaces’. They also spent energy on how they executed and how they understood the performance of their innovations in the marketplace. Anticipate the future, continue to test critical assumptions and sense-check progress, building in learning along the way.
4: Better for the Planet, better for you.
Top growing brands put sustainability at the heart of their innovation. 79%* of people want to buy environmentally sustainable products, but a similar proportion believe that it is the responsibility of companies to make sure their sustainable products are affordable. (*Kantar’s Sustainability Sector Index 2022) This presents a big challenge for many brands, but the evidence suggests the payoff is worth it. Brands rating highly on sustainability grew their brand value by 31% over the prior year. (The Vegetarian Butcher is a great example here)
5: Shape the Future
The first step in futureproofing your innovation strategy is to step outside the boundaries of what exists now and anticipate what the future might bring. Innovation is a driving force that not just shapes a brand, but also the future of the category and market. Innovative brands have continued to safeguard and grow the entire category.
Technology companies are often at the forefront of shaping the future, but it applies to all brands, big or small in any category. Future-shaping is about systematically bringing in holistic outside-in and inside-out thinking lenses to address long-standing and evolving human tensions.
“We cannot solve problems with the kind of thinking we employed when we came up with them”
– Albert Einstein
