By Ranjana Gupta
In the first part of this series, we concluded that innovations must not be just different or disruptive but ‘meaningfully different’ and that can only happen if you innovate to the tensions that are relevant to the people you are hoping to win over. Revealing people tensions and innovating to solve for them is critical in the market and for long-term success.
However, innovations do not work in vacuum. They are married to the brand. Innovations that do not suit your brand ethos run the risk of not bringing gains for you, regardless of how great the offer itself is. Similarly, if your innovation succeeds but your brand or portfolio does not gain from it, it is not really a success.
This means that innovations should not be treated as pure bursts of creativity. They are a business and marketing lever like advertising. Here are three checks for ensuring that your innovations help your brand, portfolio and company grow:
- Check for incrementality: Is your innovation likely to bring in new people to your brand, increase usage or frequency, allow you to enter new markets or grow value or volume? If the answer to any of these questions is ‘yes’, only then consider bringing it to market. This incrementality comes in only if the innovation is meaningfully different. A common, quick fix innovation to increase FMCG penetration is launching sachets in India. This worked for Nescafe, allowing the already aspirational brand to grow its penetration (Source: Kantar Worldpanel) but it did not work as well for health/ milk food drinks because the relevance of the category itself was being questioned.
- Check for brand fitment: Is the innovation going to add to, build or detract from your brand equity? If it adds value in short term but detracts from your brand, in the long term it will do more harm than good. Tata Nano is a good example. It created a lot of buzz and interest but ultimately it cost Tata Motors equity, that it has only recovered in last few years with thoughtful, meaningfully different innovation like the EVs.
- Check for accessibility: Is your innovation going to be accessible to your target group? Will they see value in it and be able to afford it? Pricing is a critical piece of the innovation puzzle. The price that people are willing to pay for an innovation is something that depends as much on the innovation as the brand. Some innovations work better than others, even if the offer and price is similar. The reason is brand equity.
It is critical to make sure that we pay more than lip service to these checks. These should not be guesswork – educated or otherwise – and ideally must be backed by data. A lot of readers would argue that marketers do not have enough time to gather data or do consumer work before the launch.
To them I would simply say, the cost of hindsight – launching and then failing – is likely to be higher than the time and cost of speaking to consumers.
The series is concluded. The author is innovation lead, South Asia, Insights Division, Kantar