Turning A Challenging And Unreliable Supply Chain Into An Advantage
SIMULTANEOUSLY GAINING BRAND CLARITY, VISIBILITY AND LOYALTY
Service: North Star Vision & Growth Ambitions
Industry: Food, Beverage & Agriculture
\ Challenge
Pepsi India gave us a one word scope: MANGO. Indian consumers love mango, and Pepsi wanted to expand their current mango beverage brand, Slice, to capture market with other beverages or food. Slice had lost its focus, and simply wasn't appropriately articulating (or receiving, for that matter) the Indian love of mango! They had tons of ideas but weren't sure which to pick. And, there was this nagging problem that you couldn't get high quality raw product year round.
\ Our Approach
We used our Rapid Brewery approach and brought together a cross-functional team from food science to finance and marketing to packaging to explore mango in a two-day working session. Utilizing a build-test-build structure, we came up with and built out opportunity areas in the morning, and tested them with early and later adopters that night. Early adopters hone in on the best value propositions and explain them to later adopters - giving us greater clarity and fantastically targeted marketing language. On day two, we prioritized and refined the opportunity areas based on consumer insight, and tested the strengthened concepts that night.
Key Insight: Consumers were really passionate and knowledgeable about mango, each able to articulate their favorite varietal from their region of origin. But, due to increasing urbanization, they often weren't able to get them.
Success!
So, we created products focused on provenance. Three mango varietals from three regions - Alphonso, Dusheri, and Bangnapali. When mango supply ran out - so did the product - creating a premium offer rooted in scarcity. At last, Slice captured the excitement and pleasure of mango in drink form.
The Pepsi team did an incredible job launching the new Slice products with an engaging marketing campaign featuring Bollywood star Karina Keif. The product was a huge success and created a mindset in Pepsi that was no longer tethered to a stable supply chain.