Map for tomorrow
Develop a proprietary, predictive view of where to play that defines the consumer frame of reference, addressable market, and best opportunities to commercialize strategic choices.

Why it Matters:
A common insights foundation guides innovation and brand strategy, allowing brands to stay ahead of tomorrow’s opportunities and anticipate where to play in the future.

Role of Insights:

• Develop a proprietary consumer definition of the category that combines learnings from leading-edge consumers, emerging trends, and other industries
• Update and evaluate annually as a key input into annual business/strategic planning

Result:
This forward-looking market map empowers the team to plan ahead and creates the right to win.

Assess your job prospects
Expand thoughtfully by regularly assessing and re-assessing which jobs your brand can win.

Why it Matters:
Breakthrough revenue growth comes when brands successfully expand their reach into new spaces.

Role of Insights:

• Build a deep understanding of brand resonance and consumer benefits to identify which jobs your brand will be “hired” for
• Reconcile these potential jobs with the firm’s capacity to support expansion based on category and company dynamics

Result:
An effective insights foundation identifies the brand’s repeatable growth model and enables smart and sustainable expansion.

Create conviction
Know where to play – and just as importantly, where not to play.

Why it Matters:
As organizations grapple with big choices on how to prioritize multiple opportunities, they need the clarity to make difficult decisions, especially when that means challenging convention.

Role of Insights:

• Actively seek new lenses of insight to inspire different outcomes
• Arm the organization with these insights to enable teams to make, communicate, and defend difficult decisions
• Use insight to create the case for change and future-proofing

Result:
Insights-driven decisions that build widespread support for broader organizational direction.

Champion your leading edge
Inspire disruptive innovation by learning from the leading-edge consumer—that is, consumers other than your category’s mainstream core consumer.

Why it Matters:
Research based on today’s core results in close-in line extensions and product modifications, not forward-looking innovation that creates the right to win.

Role of Insights:

• Identify what “leading-edge” means for your business. It may be lapsed users, ultra-heavy shoppers, younger shoppers, or the most informed shoppers
• Understand how these shoppers use, avoid, or “hack” your focus categories
• Connect these leading-edge behaviors to unlock growth from mainstream shoppers

Result:
Understanding the leading edge allows the team to disrupt by better meeting unmet or emerging needs.

Embrace omnichannel
Think outside the traditional channel structure when researching or planning go-to-market efforts.

Why it Matters:
The siloed “channel-first” approach fails to account for the increasingly cross-channel nature of shopper journeys. As methods to engage consumers and shoppers become more fragmented, it is critical to understand shopper journeys and key trigger points from an omnichannel perspective.

Role of Insights:

• Reinforce a “consumer first” mindset, instead of a “channel first” approach
• Map the end-to-end consumer journey to understand where consumers want to discover, learn and buy
• Assess the most critical inflection points for reaching your target shopper

Result:
Insights functions can enable organizations to make go-to-market decisions and integrated demand plans through the lens of the consumer.

Spark digital transformation
Reimagine your organization’s approach to digital by placing the consumer and shopper at the center of your strategy.

Why it Matters:
Your shopper’s path to purchase increasingly involves fragmented digital touchpoints, and she expects a seamless brand experience across these points – on her terms.

Role of Insights:

• Build the fact base and vision required to orient strategy and justify investment in digital transformation
• Infuse digital and ecommerce perspectives into all research initiatives

Result:
Organizations can transform to align with this new consumer reality, justifying their investment with a solid fact base.

Activate the 4Es
Elevate the value equation from the traditional 4Ps to the new 4Es: Experience, Exchange, Evangelism, and Everywhere.*

Why it Matters:
Today’s consumer has more choices than ever, requiring brands to work harder to win trial and build loyalty. Consumers want to engage with brands on their own terms before “rewarding” them with a purchase.

Role of Insights:

• Understand the consumer and shopper beyond their interactions with your product.
• Elevate your brands’ value proposition with broader cultural and lifestyle contexts
• Spark a mindset shift from “marketing against the 4Ps” to “providing consumer experiences”

*In the digital age, a successful brand must engage consumers through the 4Es. The Product becomes an Experience that delivers memorable moments. Price evolves to an Exchange that goes deeper than a transactional relationship with the consumer, offering value beyond price. Promotion turns into authentic, consumer-led Evangelism. And Placement becomes Everywhere: a consistent product and brand story available everywhere your consumer expects to see it.¹

Result:
Mindset shift equips brands to authentically deliver against new growth levers and strengthen consumer loyalty.

Prioritize packaging
Reimagine packaging to enable the 4Es and elevate the brand value equation.

Why it Matters:
Packaging is often under-utilized for growth but plays a vital role in unlocking new consumer engagement and distribution opportunities.

Role of Insights:

• Consider the role of packaging in research initiatives such as leading-edge consumer research and price-pack architecture
• Understand packaging’s ability to deliver multiple benefits, such as ecological credibility, functional benefits, new need states, superior storage, seamless fulfilment, and badge value

Result:
Full leverage of a critical growth lever.

Leverage e-commerce learning for rapid iteration
Use digital as a learning channel in addition to a sales and marketing channel.

Why it Matters:
The rapid acceleration and “failing fast” needed to win in eCommerce can fuel success in other channels, too; this is a critical part of the challenger brand playbook.

Role of Insights:

• Use digital learnings to optimize product mix, refine messaging, and more deeply understand the consumer
• Own coordination of insights and application across the demand landscape

Result:
Better-informed omnichannel planning and successful retail launches.

Unlock the value equation
Drive revenue growth by better elevating the consumer value equation and proactively addressing ecommerce-driven pricing challenges. If not already existent, establish a Strategic Revenue Management leadership function to guide decision-making.

Why it Matters:
Among global top-50 CPGs, two-thirds of revenue growth is driven by pricing and mix, not by volume gains. ecommerce-driven price transparency makes revenue and profit growth even more challenging.²

Role of Insights:

• Understand consumer jobs, shopper missions, and customer needs to identify incremental opportunities
• Pair these insights with knowledge of current price-pack architecture to build consumer-driven architecture
• Offer unique, customer-specific architecture that delivers and captures more value

Result:
Brands can thrive across retail environments even as price transparency issues increase.