Research

New innovation launch for Florette: Gourmet Slaws

We loved working with the green-fingered team at Florette UK&I on the idea generation and concept development for the new Gourmet Slaw range, launching today in Sainsbury’s, and next month in Tesco, Booths (and more to follow).

The insight revealed a simple unmet need: people like coleslaw but get frustrated that too often, they’re pretty bland and often slathered in cheap mock-mayonnaise.

Not these: three flavours; fresh ingredients… ready to make or complete any meal, from a light lunch to a tasty dinner. So cawsome, they’re slawsome!
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If you’re looking to develop new products so good they should be against the s-law, get in touch!

Not All Insights Are Created Equal

Debate and opinion on insights in marketing orientates around three topics. One, whether a business or brand is market-orientated at all, and how it becomes it. Two, how to gather insights. And three, debates about whether ‘insights’ are actually ‘insights’ at all or merely ‘data’, ‘observations’ or ‘truisms’ (and therefore somehow of less value). Enough indeed, for a Chapter each in the not-yet-started-or-frankly-needed, Crow Marketing Text Book.

What isn’t discussed is the utility of your insights. This tends to be assumed, but it would be incorrect to do so. A suite of insights that have been developed or identified for the brand are exploitable in different ways and in different degrees. In effect, insights are not created equal – deciding which to use and leverage is the one of the critical transition points between strategy and action.

Start with the brand positioning: if leveraging the insight creates dissonance with the task of refreshing or reinforcing what the brand stands for, then stop – you’re about to waste effort and resource.

Next, consider whether the insight is emergent – too often, it’s easy to be beguiled by a trend that seems exciting and new, but in fact isn’t scalable – at least not yet. Here, have a watching brief and bide your time.

Conversely, watch for being late to the party, when the words “we have to…” are being used around the business. You may have identified an insight whose time is passing and is beginning to recede. The risk here is that you spend resource on something that isn’t ownable and so doesn’t benefit the brand long term.

Discussing choosing between insights may seem counter-intuitive… after all, there’s an almost unstated assumption that insights are semi-mystical entities only capable of being found when you’re in the bath or when an apple drops on your head – neither of which are particularly likely to happen on a Teams call (at least not with the cameras on). And it isn’t true. Insights can be built and developed through being observant, curious, challenging and testing.

That’s when the real challenge emerges in insight: which will best help me grow my brand?

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success. For a different take on insights: david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1283 295100; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. Copyright 2024

Why Corporate Claptrap is really bad for brands

Whilst doom-scrolling on Linked In early one morning, an article from The Economist caught my eye. It’s a theme we’ve been coming back to over many years – how company employees begin to talk utter claptrap very quickly after starting in the business world, and how, viewing this through a marketing lens, this is really bad for brands (it’s bad, full stop, but that’s for another post). We wrote about in 2018, and the post is presented again below.

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We’ve been ‘peeling back the onion’, we’ve had a bit of an ‘idea shower’ and we’ve got something we want to ‘run up the flagpole’ – something that we’re ‘110% frustrated’ by. This post is about the terrible curse of Corporate Claptrap.

The truth is that using corporate language is almost inescapable and virtually unavoidable given how much time we spend at work. It’s engrained in organisations’ cultures. The first time we hear it we’re confused – it makes no sense – but before we know it we find ourselves ‘road mapping’, ‘shifting paradigms’ and ‘burning the boats’.

However, finally, thankfully, a few organisations are beginning to call it out for what it is: an issue that negatively impacts business and the engagement of those working within it… but we’d go further. We’ve ‘touched base offline’ with brand owners taken a ‘helicopter view’ of the research and concluded that it’s also damaging for brands and brand building. Why? Well as management Professor Jennifer Chatman of Haas School of Business recently wrote, “jargon masks real meaning”. And when it comes to brand building, establishing real meaning is what it’s all about…

The heart of the issue lies in the complexity of the human language. Unlike other animals, our language is more than systematic noise grunted to one another (teenagers excepted). It contains cultural meaning and, critically, spoken words also communicate unspoken meaning. Our language therefore becomes a filter that processes our understanding and influences how we behave beyond our conscious awareness. That sounds high-fallutin’, but consider these three brand-damaging implications.

Claptrap is a barrier to understanding
Claptrap stops us from being close enough to our consumers. As corporate language becomes engrained in a business, the culture of that business shifts with it. With every reference to ‘building a strawman’, every generous delivery of a ‘heads up’ or ‘reach out’, with every meeting that starts with ‘getting people aligned’ and finishes with a ‘hard close’ at ‘the end of play’; for every ‘mission critical’ task, for every concept that gets ‘dropped in the pan to see if it floats’; for every ‘deck of slides’, ‘turd polisher’, ‘clocksucker’ or ‘boiling of the ocean’ and every ‘re-stage’, ‘re-purpose’ or resodding anything… we move further and further away from the people that really matter: consumers.

The key to brand building lies in truly understanding your consumer, their needs, their frustrations, their problems, their hopes and their motivations. When you’re engrained in a business this is tough at the best of times. Why, then, would we accept the use of a language that further divorces us from the world our consumers live in and cements an ivory-tower world- view?

Claptrap prevents action
Claptrap delays action and excuses procrastination. We would never undervalue the need for stakeholder alignment. However, the business language often becomes the hiding place for inaction as the need to ‘onboard decision makers’ is used to excuse the adding of weeks or months of unnecessary delay into business. And as inaction becomes the norm, the business language explains it away: we need to ‘put our foot on the ball’ in order to deliver a plan that will ‘move the needle’ or, we need to ‘deep dive’ further to ensure that the sales team’s concerns are ‘on the radar’. Yes, debate is needed; of course we shouldn’t rush into action without consideration; but great brands never forget that impacting their end consumer is the only thing that counts. Anything that stops that is a waste.

Claptrap creates groupthink
Claptrap creates unwritten rules about behaviour that hinder progress. Next time you hear a presentation from the company owner or CEO, listen out for how many of the phrases that they use quickly enter common parlance. People adopt the same language to show support, to tow the line and to fit in. People naturally shy away from standing out (unwittingly or not). This can be a great and powerful thing. However, if the language used is convoluted and idiosyncratic (Corporate Claptrap) then nobody asks the simple, basic brand building questions for fear of looking stupid.

This is so dangerous for brands because the questions that make the biggest difference in marketing are the childish ones, the ones that are brutally simple and disarming. The language that drives the greatest change is often the Bluntest, yet in Corporate Claptrap Land, people are inadvertently dissuaded from using it.

So try binning the business language, pick up your brand plan and embrace your inner-child. Ask the simplest questions:

Will this make a difference?
Do we really have to do that?
What would happen if we didn’t do it?
Why can’t we do it now?
Why can’t we do it bigger?

You’ll be amazed how quickly you release the ‘sleeping giant’ in your brand…

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If you want help cutting through the B.S. and getting to the heart of it, get in touch.

David Preston is founder of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success. david@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1283 295100; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2023

Brand humility

When managing brands client-side, I used to advise every new starter in the marketing team to write down all their associations with the brand on their starting day, particularly so if they were new to the company, and keep it for future reference.

Because from that day forward, their immersion into a biased world would begin – both overtly, being professional and getting thoroughly up to speed with the brand, and tacitly, taking on (typically non-consciously) the cultural or group beliefs, myths, opinions and legends of that brand, like layers accreting one upon the next.

Much of the immersion is required to run the brand of course. And much is positive; after all, if a Brand Manager can’t champion a brand, who the heck can? But many of those layers – and it can be difficult to spot which – become biases or curved lenses which distort the truth. And distortions of the truth mean that you can’t easily stand back and have an honest, objective, critical awareness of the brand and how it’s really standing relative to the other players and competitors.

So view your brand with humility. Ensure that you are researching the brand well and researching it with dispassion and regularity, giving yourself the tools to more accurately wear your target consumers’ shoes, even if they do whiff a bit. Yes, publicly beat the drum; but privately be tough on the brand. That’s the path to making the best decisions.

Hourglass Brand Planning

Brands only get built when the activity they implement is noticed and influences attitudes and behaviour of their intended.

Too often though, impacting the market falls down because brand strategy (assuming it exists) doesn’t get effectively translated through the process of a brand plan. And great brand plans require rigour and focus to get down to the one or two things that really matter to consumer and brand. It sounds easy, but it isn’t.

At The Crow Flies, we call our approach ‘Hourglass planning’ because it goes broad in the market analysis, then narrows to ensure everything is focused on delivering for the brand, before widening again as activities are defined and agreed.

However, whatever the shape or the name, there are key elements you really need to work through to develop a plan that will actually make the difference you want.

In the analysis, go broad, and go deep. You need to ‘hear’ the different opinions in your business to sort out which are relevant, which are opinion, and which need to investigated through your consumer research. You’ve got to be consumer focused, but you’ve also got to get the plan through internal stakeholders, so you need to really hear them and deal with their concerns (or ideas).

Choose what’s important. Don’t forget in situational analysis the human act of sensemaking. Research will illuminate and inform, not make the decision. Be prepared to use judgement to choose between competing options. You’re looking for company or brand strengths that are distinctive, defensible, ownable and leverageable, or competitor weakness that are the same. Boil it all down. Focus on the few enablers and blockers of growth because these will be at the heart of your action plan.

Be clear on who you’re competing for and evaluate and test everything through their lens.

Ensure you have long term foundations in place. Purpose, mission, vision are not interchangeable. You need to know the role of each and how it helps you make clear decisions that more often than not, are right. And don’t confuse brand purpose with social purpose.

Only have a small number of action platforms that flow directly out of the diagnosis. If you can’t see the insight threads from the diagnosis at the top of the process to the actions at the end, then your plan is likely misdirected, and you’ll struggle to get buy in and engagement.

Great brand plans sacrifice. Don’t confuse this with prioritisation. Too often, prioritisation is a pretence that some things are more important but, through sleight of hand, we can still do everything. You can’t. Kill stuff properly and just focus on what’s really important.

Brand activities that deliver against the essentials: we have yet to see an effective brand plan that does not deal with three themes: the brand’s ‘mental availability’, its ‘physical availability’ and bridge between the two, trial & repeat. The 4P’s fit here.

Our experience in brand planning is built from both client side and agency experience. If we can help you with your planning challenge, get in touch.

Marketing responsibly

“What do you do?”

Having spent virtually my whole career in marketing you would think that when asked this question I would have my answer down to a quick, well, honed response. Instead, I used to say quite glibly “I make people buy things they don’t really need,” having learnt that trying to explain the ins and outs of what I do often results in polite vacant expressions and conversation soon moving on to another topic.

However, in today’s reality of the cost-of-living crisis coupled with climate breakdown my answer of old isn’t one that sits well with me, nor I imagine an ever-growing number of people, and neither should it. What, then, should be the answer to the real question of “What is marketing?” Or better “How do we do marketing responsibly?”

This isn’t about all brands having to have a “social purpose” – but about brand owners and retailers stepping up to ensure people can close the intention gap between wanting to buy sustainably and the reality of what they actually do or can afford.

As marketeers this is, something we’re adjusting to in the moment – still, here are 5 pointers to how we can be more responsible marketeers.

(1) Mean it. Really mean it. Most of us now agree with the science on human-accelerated climate breakdown and recognise the need to act, at pace and scale. But as a brand you’ve got to mean it. If you’re treating it as a tactic, or just sugar-coating a real lack of sustainable action, or if it’s just a way of sneaking out some new-news to attract some focus, then prepare to reap a poor harvest.

(2) Be honest and realistic about where you are and where you want to be. All companies and brands will be at different stages. Be honest about where you are today and confront the brutal truth about what it will take to change. You’re not alone. From talking to consumers in research two things stand out like sore thumbs.

Firstly, brands that are in catch-up and make a raft of sustainable claims without fully owning them get found out. Are they really substantiated? Are they what consumers want? Are they ownable and leverageable? Do they reinforce the positioning and associations consumers know of you? Rather than being an opportunity, it’ll be wasted effort.

Secondly, people want brands to do. You don’t have to solve the world’s problems in one go and no one is expecting you to. Tell people the journey you’re on, where you’re falling short and what you’re doing about it.

(3) Think of all your stakeholders. Ultimately, brands are created when your different stakeholder groups all know what you’re about. Your 30% plastic packaging reduction might shift the needle a touch, but the real win may be in corporate reputation, or a retailer being more willing to back you over someone who isn’t taking action. And this is important, because your immediate return on a sustainability investment may not add up in the short term – you’re going to have to evaluate it against your long-term brand and commercial goals.

(4) Keep it short, keep it simple, stand out. It’s always sobering, but vital, to remember how little people think about your brand, how little it actually means to them. Shopping is done in autopilot, the focus of attention is elsewhere and the world of sustainability – a complex and confusing soup of claims and strange terms, and sadly, hype – makes it even more difficult. Whatever you do needs to be easy to makes sense of, fast. It needs to be consistent against what consumers already know about you. Declutter your pack. Focus on what’s important. Shout it, don’t whisper it.

(5) It’s about ‘and…’ Again and again in research we’re hearing that people don’t want to have to compromise, be it on product quality, convenience, or their favourite brands unless they really have to. But this isn’t about fitting a round peg into a square hole – the ultimate act of marketing responsibly is to see that being sustainably offers us new ways to deliver what consumers want, but better and with fewer negative impacts…. if we’re willing to embrace the challenge to get there.

The Crow Flies are presenting at the Soil Association Organic Trade Conference on 19^th October, including on themes of greenwashing and marketing sustainable products during the cost-of-living crisis. If your brand is facing these challenges, do get in touch.

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Gael Laurie is Brand Building Director of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success. gael@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1283 295100; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2022

Natural & Organic Products Europe, 4th April 2022

Crow Gael is flying from the Nest to present and be part of a panel at this year’s Natural & Organic Products Europe. It’s down in the Smoke at the ExCel on 4th April.

She’ll be talking about “A Changing Attitude towards Food, Sustainability and Organic” – informed by our research on behalf of the lovely bunch at the Soil Association. So, if you need a nice and natural day out and promise not to heckle, we’ll see you there Crow Friends! Bring your own worms.

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Link to register & join: https://lnkd.in/e7B-c4As

Consumer Closeness

In our last Chronicle we wrote about designing and running Consumer (or Customer) Closeness programmes. Off the back of a number of enquiries and questions about it, we thought it would be worth writing a short blog with a few more details.

Let’s start with the issue – it’s entirely natural working in a business that you lose the impartiality about your consumers or end customers. Weeks, even days, into starting with a new employer the culture, belief systems, opinions and company narratives build up layers of filters or lenses through which you begin to view your market. Inductions accelerate it. It’s entirely natural. So it takes some real skill to objectively and impartially shed those comfy company moccasins and slide yourself into a pair of your consumer’s shoes. Not actual shoes mind, that would be weird.

The real warning sign here is if you think (or if you hear others saying), ‘No, this isn’t me. I have the skills and experience to be impartial’. Really… no; you don’t. And you can’t. And it’s not a problem, providing you’re open to it. The real knack is being able to move deftly from one foot (business world) to the other (consumer world) and think about the consequences, correlations, causes and patterns that link the two.

That’s the role of a closeness programme – and it can be designed to suit you. The idea, ultimately, is to get the people that matter closer to the people that matter. To get – to force – your stakeholders to shift onto that other foot. Whether it’s facilitated groups; home visits or extended Consumer Connections; whether it’s online diaries or consumer-accompanied safaris (around stores, round an online shop, mooching in competitor environments or just hunting for ‘clues’ for inspiration) the effects are powerful, long-lasting and can profoundly affect your brand building efforts and build engagement for your important strategic shifts or executional plans.

Closeness programmes can be organised as impactful ad hoc sessions to inform strategy or plan development, as on-going campaigns with a varying focus each time or even as part of a team engagement event.

If it’s something you think could help your brand building, get in touch.

Crow will be speaking at #Organicto2030, 21.10.2021

Crow’s very own Gael Laurie will be speaking at the Soil Association Certification #OrganicTo2030 Trade Conference on Thursday 21st October. Book your free ticket to hear the most recent research focussing on changing shopper motivations and behaviours when making sustainable and organic choices here.

Research update, August 2021

Howdy Crow Friends! Hopefully you’re all enjoying / have enjoyed or are about to enjoy some precious staycation. We’ve had a few questions on #market#research and specifically when face to face qualitative research can begin again. The answer is now – viewing facilities are opening up in a Covid secure way (and need our support) and many hotels are happy to welcome you.

However, it’s important not to forget the needs and current feelings of participants. Many people are nervous about turning up to strange rooms with strange strangers (and equally strange moderators!) for obvious reasons.

And as well as that, many people are working from home, making a trip to do research ‘live’ a specific destination rather than a convenient add-on. As always, the best advice is to think mixed methodology – targeted face-to-face, targeted online as both have brilliant strengths. In fact, there’s no doubt that going forward, the opportunity to blend approaches to get more actionable insight is enhanced as participants who were nervous about online research previously, now feel fluent and confident.

Drop the Crow team
a line if you want to chat more about it [caw@thecrowflies.co.uk}
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#marketresearch #research #brands #strategy #diagnosis #innovation