Speaking at the Fi Conference: Innovations in Dairy in Amsterdam, July 2012

On 10 July 2012 I was invited as an innovation speaker to present at the Radisson Blu Hotel at the heart of beautiful Amsterdam at the Fi Conference, Innovations in Dairy.

Speaking on how to use consumer insights to improve brands and products, I explained the stages of category development and the importance of timing your innovation with consumer readiness for your new idea.

One of the hardest things for Marketers to achieve is to change someone’s mind. Have you tried changing someone’s mind? A far better, far easier and far more cost effective approach for Marketers is to find an audience who are looking for a story and tell them the story they already believe. That way, when they see your innovation it strikes them with instant appeal as being a solution for their lives that they’ve been looking for all the time!

Instead of resisting your new idea, they are instantly open to its arrival because it comes from their frame of reference and understands their way of seeing the world. In this way, as soon as you know your target, the task of launching and communicating your innovation becomes hugely simplified.

The Radisson Blu Amsterdam - venue for The Fi Innovations in Dairy Conference.

At the Healthy Marketing Team, we use a proprietary innovation model to predict the up-coming opportunities within the categories of food, beverage, ingredients, supplements and personal care. The way we help our clients, who range from the world’s largest multinational corporations to small local and family businesses, is by helping them to predetermine the success of their launch. Not only can we help them to time it and position it correctly, but we help them to fine tune the concepts prior to launch as well – all based on what their target consumer already wants to buy. It’s so logical it’s a wonderfully exciting process to save companies and individuals the pain of launching the wrong product at the wrong time. [..]

Q: What happens when science class meets a massive consumer trend?

A: Maybe a little bit of magic!

You may recall discovering energy in fruit in your own science classes? Here fruit juice giant, Tropicana take the simple science experiment and add the trending consumer desire for natural energy food and the all important media ingredients: street theatre, social media and a catchy little tune… Et Voila! [..]

Final Call for Sponsors for the 2010 HealthFocus(R) Global Shopper Trends Survey.

In Jan/Feb the HealthFocus(R) Survey will be conducted across 18 Countries including ‘incredible India’. Here’s my quick video blog from the breath-taking Taj Mahal in Agra.

The survey is the longest running of its kind anywhere and unique in its ability to present trended data across the key topics of most interst to Food & Beverage brand and ingredients manufacturers.

The survey will continue to update you on the latest health and nutrition points of concern, issue, and problem as well as taking a deeper looking into some of today’s most burning issues – sustainability, packaging, waste, organic and much more.

You’ll also find out how the HealthFocus(R) Segments (Managers, Healers, Investors, etc. ) are shopping differently after the Global Crisis, as well as getting an update on the changes to the Gatekeeper Segmentation which tells us Marketers how to communicate with parents buying for their children.

Don’t miss your chance to ask proprietary custom questions to the primary grocery shoppers in your target markets. Find out what they are thinking, what they want and what they are avoiding in 2010.

Sign up before the 17 December Deadline (9 December for China).

For more information and to arrange a personal telephone conference with Sam Waterfall of the HMT and HealthFocus(R) General Manager, Steve Walton to discuss your brand research objectives contact Sam at sam@healthymarketingteam.com or +44 (0) 20 7814 1937.