Breakthrough Innovation

The Challenge

With the wildly popular functional beverage space getting more and more crowded, creating differentiation was becoming a thing of the past. With that, one of the pioneer brands in the kombucha space needed help seeing into the future. To grow the category, and define what the gut health space has the potential to become, it needed to first reimagine its portfolio strategy—from product centric, to needs driven—and then craft its pipeline for success.

The Approach

Challenge accepted. We connected with the people that know the most about the category––experts in the field of integrative holistic health, microbiome research and fermentation to name a few––who helped us see what the future of gut wellness looks like and how science and innovations in adjacent categories were already shifting consumer expectation, and would soon reshape their needs.

To ensure the innovation pipeline would also resonate with the consumer of the future, we digitally engaged with leading-edge health consumers to get a real-time understanding of all the moments when they did something in service of their gut. This peek into their behaviors helped illuminate both needs and tensions in everyday moments thirsty for a solve.

With a new needs-based (and not product-centric!) portfolio strategy, we launched into a 2-day innovation sprint, including deep consumer immersion, experiential trend treks, inspirational ideation stations, and a final session to “pitch” our top ideas to a panel of consumer “sharks!”

The Impact

A range of new product ideas may soon be in a store near you!