Leading the Future with Botanical Ingredients

Creating a botanically-inspired brand platform to get ahead of the competition.

Challenge

Our client, a global brand and innovation team in a highly competitive consumption category, discovered that botanical ingredients had the R&D potential to differentiate their brand's product portfolio. But, they didn't know whether consumers would be interested. And if they were interested, they weren't confident they could stretch the brand to expand into botanicals.

Approach

We started by gathering inspiration from the fringes to the mainstream of culture through a series of Innovation Safaris in Tokyo, Seoul, Moscow, Milan, and Portland, Oregon. Our goal was simple – understand how different cultures perceive the power of botanical ingredients.

The Safari uncovered rich insights and 100+ emerging signals of botanical innovation that we translated into five potential platforms for botanical innovation, each with a solid fit to the brand's DNA.

Using the 5 botanical innovation platforms as fertile ground for ideation, we facilitated ideation sprints with 60+ cross-functional participants worldwide to imagine the future products within each platform.

We then translated the workshop learnings into consumer-ready research concepts and put them through an iterative, multi-method research approach. The work resulted in a winning platform with unprecedented interest, resonance, and appeal within the category.

Output

• 5 Innovation Safaris - Tokyo, Seoul, Moscow, Milan & Portland
• Insights Report, Innovation Platforms & Ideation Sprints
• Research Program Management
• Brand Proposition Re-articulation, Innovation Roadmap & Product Development Briefs