Searching for the new

x Sponsored content on Research Live and in Impact magazine is editorially independent.
Find out more about advertising and sponsorship.

Indeed the brands that are most committed to thinking big and bold are generally those that are even better at conducting the groundwork. Think of Virgin and the way it has diversified since it began life as a record label, or Lego, which has moved beyond being a simple toy to become licensed by many major movies (that’s without even considering its own movie) and offering retailer exclusives and consumer engagement via its own theme parks.

These are the companies which consider the wider context, draw their inspiration from other industries and categories, look closely at their competitors and what they are focusing on and then use this knowledge to differentiate their own approach. They explore the context in which their product functions and look for sometimes, adjacent innovations, which may be harder for others to replicate over the short to medium term.

Many of the most successful innovators seek to understand consumers at the very first stage of innovation. This may be the point when they look at their category (or an adjacent category) to understand the areas that could be ripe for innovation, where the consumer may be experiencing problems or frustrations. They will learn how consumers use the brands in the category in their everyday lives and how could they, as innovators make things better. This stage will most likely be a qualitative exploration. Once they have developed a list of perhaps 10 (or more) viable ideas, they’ll use quantitative screening methods to try and understand the scale of the idea. As launch becomes closer a more concrete volumetric can be used to predict likely sales volume under various marketing scenarios.

These are the companies which recognise the value of building integrated, multidisciplinary teams; where marketers and brand strategists sit alongside R&D, product development, engineers and finance experts. This is truly a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Some companies, of course, have always had separate innovation teams that work very well but when that culturally has not been the case then creating a new team just to innovate rarely works. We have noticed how often discrete innovation teams can start off isolated and become more so and rarely seem to deliver on their early promise. This is because innovation isn’t just about the product. The most successful companies consider the whole process: the set up – which might be the profit model or the processes; the offering itself – the product or service, and, of course, the delivery – the brand, the channel, the customer experience.

There’s another reason for the success of a multidisciplinary approach, innovation that works across a number of areas is less easy to copy. A change to a product or to technology is relatively easy to replicate, but if these are combined with changes to processes and delivery, the impact is likely to be greater and longer lasting. Some examples of these might include offers that help build a habit (e.g. fridge packs) which encourage frequency of purchase or developments that build on trends that are going to be long term as opposed to a short term fad. You can be second to market and still do well if you bring brand strength as well as a superior offer.

Understanding why new products fail is often as important as understanding why they succeed. We’ve trawled back through the company archives and have come up with a number of common reasons:

1. Plans on the ground just don’t match the plans on paper. This could range from advertising being less effective or extensive than expected; distribution not being as wide as planned, or because the plans themselves were unrealistic to begin with.
2. The product’s in-store position wasn’t ideal, which could be a retailer issue or something as simple as packaging being too tall to fit on the middle shelves only on the top, which can be tricky for a new product that needs visibility. Nearly all in-store issues could have been resolved before the product hits the shelves.
3. The product simply isn’t different enough to what’s currently out there and somebody else has already captured your target market by the time you hit the shelves
4. The product doesn’t suit an obvious occasion or the concept is sufficiently unusual that it proves hard to get consumers to understand. Habit breeds frequency – for example, breakfast biscuits have worked well because the product states the occasion when they are to be used, thereby creating a new habit.
5. The product itself doesn’t deliver on its promise. The taste, size or even packaging just doesn’t deliver.
6. The price /value equation doesn’t work with this particular product offering. The brand is too optimistic about its ability to command a price premium, often regardless of what the research may have said.
7. The name or name change you opted for isn’t well received. After all, Coco Crispies soon went back to being Coco Pops.
8. Your target audience just can’t find the product or at least not in the obvious place in-store. Perhaps the branding isn’t obvious or the packaging hidden, an issue that may seem small in research but which becomes a much bigger deal in the real world.
9. The product itself is just too complicated for people to get their heads around. They don’t feel they actually need it in their lives. If it is not a good idea in research, it’s definitely unlikely to become one in the market.

In our 10 years at Engage, we have researched more than a thousand new ideas – an average of 100 per year – and only 40 of those ideas made it to market. But here’s the real standout figure, only 20% are no longer on the market, which is the reverse of the oft-repeated figure that 80% of all new product launches fail. Innovation projects can be fraught with obstacles and politics and stress. Research should help make that path easier.

Lyndsay Peck is director at Engage Research

This article originally appeared in the October 2015 issue of Impact