Brand Strategy: Future-Proofing Confectionary
Background:
A global confectionary company wanted to ensure their portfolio of brands would have success well into the future. They had a mix of strong-performing and declining categories, and needed to know what they should be doing to better align each product with Gen Z wants and needs.
Objectives:
Educate the brand teams on Gen Z overall, after years of focusing on Millennials. Showcase how Gen Z values and behaviors come to life for their category. Develop insights on how the brands’ products, retail strategies and marketing plans need to evolve.
Approach:
The client did not want to conduct custom research for this project. Instead, we leveraged several data sources to build a robust guidebook to Gen Z:
Existing brand and category research provided by the client
The TRU Youth MONITOR, a Kantar Consulting subscription product that provided syndicated data and insights on Gen Z
Video and written assignments completed by the Youth Streetscapers, a group of teens and twenty-somethings who completed assignments for the TRU Youth MONITOR
Desk research about the category and for examples of other brands succeeding with Gen Z
My Role:
As the Vice President and Head of the TRU Youth MONITOR, I was the Gen Z expert assigned to this project. I partnered with other Kantar consultants to comb through our data and reports to pull out the trends and insights most relevant for the category. I guided junior consultants through analyzing the client dataset to help us understand the size and positioning of each brand. I worked with other senior consultants to synthesize the findings into a report for each of the client’s three portfolios that included unique findings and recommendations.
Outcomes:
We presented the findings to each portfolio separately in full-day sessions. Each session included an overview of Gen Z, insights about the category overall, and recommendations for that portfolio specifically. Brand leaders were guided through exercises in which they took the insights and recommendations and brainstormed how to apply them to each brand. Discussions centered around evolving product offerings, retail strategy, marketing partnerships/sponsorships and paid media optimization.