Sam Waterfall on successful emerging market branding.

On Monday 16 July I delivered a FourFactors Marketing Masterclass in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The FourFactors were developed and refined by Peter Wennström and we use them at the Healthy Marketing Team to help our clients to test concepts and to create concepts within the Food, Beverage, Ingredients and Personal Care categories.

This particular Masterclass was delivered to a private audience of Senior Marketers from one company. It’s a fantastic way of ensuring that everyone from the business shares the same view of the marketplace, the consumer and the specific category they are looking to operate within. [..]

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. [..]

Sam Waterfall on Emerging Market Innovation: Addressing 100+ of Egypt's leading Marketers at a private bluechip invitation only Innovation Seminar in Cairo in June 2012.

Addressing Leading Marketers in Cairo, Egypt…

Having worked with a client extensively on a global basis, in June I was asked to speak at their headline customer event. With an audience of 100+ top marketers from the Food & Beverage industry in Egypt, I was asked to outline the drivers of Emerging Market Innovation: “What makes it successful?” and “How can you predict what’s coming next?”

While these both seem like massive questions, it turns out that with the right strategic tools and an overview of global Food & Beverage activity, answering them may be easier than you’d think. As Senior Partner at the Healthy Marketing Team, I use our Healthy Marketing Innovation Model to help our clients predict and create successful products and brands.

It turns out that Egypt is a particularly fascinating market for Food & Beverage Innovation. While the countries is at a political crossroads following last years revolution, the people of Egypt, like the populations of other emerging markets are full of hope that tomorrow will be better than today. They are looking for products and brands to support the development and health of their families as they strive to achieve in an economy which is set to grow.

While the timeless Egyptian Pyramids have stood still for thousands of years, the country's Food & Beverage Consumers are increasingly demanding, creating huge opportunities for companies who can deliver the right combination of quality, differentiation and branding.

What I observed was in many ways similar to my observations in Vietnam last year: There is a huge amount of launch activity but there is a lack of structure and clear communication. The result of this is visible in many emerging markets… Lots of new products, all struggling to create meaningful differentiation and all contributing to growth stultifying consumer confusion. The problem is that this ends up with brands fighting it out in the commodity zone and [..]