Last year I consulted with a food startup who had an interesting product idea that they thought would turn the industry upside down. For confidential reasons, I can’t share too much.
But I can tell you…
- They had figured out how to manufacture the product and identified all the equipment needed.
- They lined up a team to start working together with experienced manufacturing, finance, and sales expertise.
- They had a beautiful package designed by an outstanding agency.
- They raised significant funds to produce and market the product.
They were missing one thing – the voice of the customer. Or to be more accurate, the palate of the customer.
Ask a Customer
The missing element of their plans was that they hadn’t engaged any potential customers in a way that they could watch, learn and understand how this product might fit with their lives. They never tested if the product fit the occasion.
We didn’t do focus groups in the traditional sense of hiding behind a glass wall. Instead, we brought products to places where their target hangs out and watched, observed and saw how consumers reacted. The consumers didn’t know they we were watching.
We created several opportunities for a small team to meet with consumers to gauge some real-world reactions to the product. This food product was for runners. So, we attended several marathon events and brought competitive products as well as this companies new product.
The runners could pick whatever they wanted from a basket. All were free, so we weren’t testing pricing differences, just package and taste considerations.
Follow the Wrappers
What we learned came by observing what was left. No one seemed to finish my client’s product. They took a bite or two, but no one finished this product made for runners. These same runners consumed the competitor’s product, and their wrappers were empty.
Why?
When I saw someone not finishing the product, I asked a few of the runners why they didn’t consume the entire product. And several told me that it was so dry – they couldn’t swallow it after the run. And even though they were hungry, the product was just too dry to eat at that moment.
Hanging out to Dry
We learned some valuable lessons from real world users even though our sample was small.
If we expected runners to consume the product after running for miles, we needed a product with more moisture.
The company needed to reformulate.
And even though the company did some taste testing before this experiment, it was never with someone who had just run many miles. In hindsight, this was an obvious oversite. I told my client that they had done the equivalent of tasting wine at breakfast. Wrong time, wrong place to accurately evaluate the product.
The big lesson is that context matters. Watch behavior in context, don’t just listen to what people say. That is why focus groups can be fundamentally flawed methods for learning in context.
What people say and what they do are very different things. When you can witness your product or service “in the wild,” you’ll run away with lots of insights.
Sometimes marketers are so close to their project, that you can miss a key insight by a mile.
Have a new product you are ready to market? An outsider like me might be able to bring a fresh perspective and some new ways to test the service or product in the real world. Text me at 919 720 0995 or email me at jeffslater@themarketingsage.com
Photo credit: Quino Al – https://unsplash.com/@quinoal
