Challenge
The challenge presented to research was to identify key brand propositions the client can use to create a persuasive product portfolio, brand, and marketing strategy for investors and customers.
Solution
We worked with the client to test their brand propositions and packaging, exploring the competitive landscape at the same time.
Impact
The client was able to quantify the in-market appeal of their products and back up their hypotheses.
“It was a pivotal moment for us to hear from a robust sample set – [the data shows that] we have a very powerful idea. So we’re now spending the dollars to bring a team of consultants in, solidifying our brand and products, and scaling production. I mean, talk about actionability out of insight. I’m not sure we would have had the confidence to invest without the clarity that Dig’s study brought us.”
The client is a producer of freeze-dried superfood smoothies.
The Client
Launching a brand in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) space isn’t a task for the faint-hearted. It’s more saturated than almost any industry out there, and it’s also monopolized by some well-known global giants. But when you understand the space, and you’ve got an idea that fills a very real customer need or pain point, you can rest a bit easier.
Everipe is a brand that falls into the latter category. The founders, Greg McMullen and Kerry Roberts, have both been in the grocery and CPG game for decades; Greg’s family background running specialty grocery stores, and Kerry’s background in CPG marketing and consumer insights helped them feel uniquely equipped to take a shot at building this business.
Everipe is a growing startup that harnesses the power of freeze-dried technology to create delicious, nutrient-rich smoothies that are ready to slurp in 60 seconds flat. The brand exists for the consumer that wants a superfood smoothie waiting for them in the pantry, but without any of the icky stuff (think: preservatives or added sugar). It’s also a product that’s good for the world – it doesn’t need to be refrigerated, and generates significantly less waste than a typical fresh fruit smoothie routine might.
We sat down with Kerry to chat about where the idea behind Everipe came from:
“Greg went on a real health kick a few years ago, he started making smoothies every single morning. He did a ton of research, and got really into it. At one point his pantry looked like Martha Stewart’s – glass vials of labeled super foods everywhere, and each smoothie became a 20-minute production.”
But Kerry notes that this wasn’t practical in the long-term, so Greg switched to smoothies in powder form, which just didn’t satisfy.
“It became purely functional eating, there was no joy.”
That’s when the wheels started turning: was there a way to capture the sensory experience of real food with the convenience of powder? There had to be. Greg started working with a holistic nutritionist, a chef, and various food suppliers and was able to find a brand new offering in the form of freeze-drying.
Big Dreams
With an innovative new smoothie concept under Greg’s belt, Kerry entered stage left. When she joined Greg at Everipe, she immediately understood the gap in the market that this product would fill, given her background at Kraft. But she also got excited about the overarching vision for the company.
“As it stands, 60% fruits and vegetables end up in landfill. And when I dream big – like really, really big – I think Everipe could help feed people that desperately need access to fresh, nutrient-rich food. We could take fruits and vegetables, freeze-dry them, and move them around the world.”
Armed with an exciting proposition, Kerry needed a product portfolio, brand, and marketing strategy that’d make investors and consumers alike take note.
The Challenge
“We’d always heard that our concept was exciting, but we struggled to prove it out.”
It’s a problem that most marketers and insights professionals can relate to – the inherent difficulty of quantifying a concept’s potential. This was the exact issue Kerry came up against at Everipe:
“We were constantly working with the manufacturer and iterating on the product, and we were struggling to bridge that gap between the product, the wider vision, and the anecdotal feedback we’d get from people that sampled the product.”
Because of her background in CPG, Kerry knew that they could solve this problem by conducting representative quantitative research. But being familiar with the typical research agency model also meant that Kerry was wary of the outputs and price tag – she didn’t want to wait ages to get data back, or pay for data that couldn’t actually help them bridge the gap between idea and marketing, or product and perception.
The Solution
To help Greg and Kerry get a sense of Everipe’s in-market potential and benchmark their product against core competitors, we leveraged our innovation insights platform Upsiide. Upsiide makes it easy to screen ideas and test concepts in whatever format they come – creative, messaging claims, food packaging, or logos. Our team used Upsiide’s swiping methodology to understand consumers’ intuitive interest and initial commitment to the Everipe proposition, as compared with the propositions of their key competitors. We then ran a study that dove deep into the Everipe brand and product portfolio, to understand how consumers felt about the brand and packaging – again – as compared with their competition.
Kerry and Greg found the insights valuable for two main reasons: findings allowed them to properly quantify the in-market appeal of their existing product suite, but also gave both she and Greg a renewed confidence in their proposition.
“The power of this particular methodology for us has been that we didn’t have to trade off the quant sample – which gives us true data integrity – for the qualitative richness. I’ve never seen a methodology that doesn’t make you choose between those two. Dig gave us the best of both worlds.”
Kerry also spoke highly of the “efficiency of spend” that Dig’s idea screening methodology afforded:
“I know how dependable the data is that comes from a ‘forced choice’ study experience. If you’re working with a limited insights budget, this methodology means you won’t have to trade off on the integrity or sophistication of a larger quant survey.”
The Outcome
So – the ever important question – what will Kerry and Greg do with the insights that came from Upsiide’s work? In a few words: invest in the company’s foundations and future.
And the data hasn’t just been useful for Everipe’s founders, it has been socialized across their partner agencies and new marketing agency as well.
In the next two to five years, Kerry hopes to come back to Dig Insights for help leading their innovation pipeline, and to continue to optimize their brand and product portfolio. We can’t wait to see where the brand goes.
“Thanks to Dig and Upsiide’s work, we have a marketing partner on board that truly believes in our concept and proposition. All of this was achieved through one simple swiping exercise. It really doesn’t get better than that and we have shared this approach with multiple clients who love the simplicity for consumers but the 
depth they get.”
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