Why Innovate?

I got invited to a CPG food marketers group Zoom call recently and was excited to attend. The subject was innovation and the lady presenting talked about product innovation and creating a culture of innovation at companies. We talked about timelines and budgets and how to ask the right questions and how to iterate. 

Then we got to the end of her presentation and she asked for questions. There were a few hands that went up and people asked some good questions about how to foster a culture of innovation at their companies. 

I couldn't help myself. I put my hand up and asked a question that I ask myself all the time:

"Why should we innovate?"

She had a pretty good answer, so it's not like this was her first time getting the question. She talked about how innovation didn't have to be a product, it could be a new way of doing things at a company that was better than the old way of doing things. I like that answer and it resonates with me.

But when we all in CPG are talking about Innovation we know what we mean, don't we? We're talking about new products. Shiny new products with hopefully some new "health and sustainability" claims (more on why that's in quotes in another post). Maybe a trendy new ingredient or processing method.

So my question is really "Why should we make new products?"

I'll get into this deeper in another post that's more marketing focused but I firmly believe in these two pillars of a (a) Compelling Offer for the (b) Right Audience. I'll skip ahead and tell you that this is the only time I think we should ever make a new product. 

A Compelling Offer for the Right Audience.

The majority of innovation is doomed to fail because it doesn't complete this equation. The offer (service, product, price, packaging, etc) has to be compelling. I mean that it has to really have a reason to exist. I'll give you one that I've heard a lot about our brand. "Yellowbird should make a ketchup." What would be compelling about Yellowbird ketchup? Our Organic Sriracha is sweetened with dates so maybe we could make a ketchup sweetened with dates? That's cool but there are already brands doing that and some of them doing it really well. They have positioned themselves for this exact sort of product. Maybe we could make a spicy ketchup? Again, plenty of that is out there, and even Heinz has struggled to get adoption of spicy ketchup SKUs. And Unilever just folded Sir Kensington's Ketchup. You need something really special to enter that category. A compelling offer.

The one brand I'm excited about in that space right now is AWSM Sauce. They make a ketchup powder. You add some water to it in a jar and shake to end up with ketchup that's comparable to Heinz but with a lot less waste. (They also make hot sauce powder, but don't buy that 😉).

Our hot sauce line is pretty uniquely positioned. It is a best-in-class offering with great branding and packaging and the price architecture works really well in a lot of different channels. Some of this was on purpose and some of it was a happy accident. Suffice it to say, I only ever want to make products that work like this line. 

You also have to have the right audience, not just an audience. Again, I think it would be a mistake for Yellowbird to launch a line of products specifically aimed at the Keto audience just because this is trendy. Are we a Keto brand? I mean, some of our products are Keto-friendly, to be sure, but Keto is not our audience. So even if we have a compelling Keto line, we don't necessarily have the right audience to support that.

There is a lot of pressure to innovate. Everyone wants to hear about innovation. Investors, retailers, partners within the company, friends and family. Everyone. I get asked multiple times every day if Yellowbird is coming out with anything new. I'm not mad, I'm glad people care. But we also spent years developing the supply chain and production methods for our original innovation: a better class of hot sauce. 

It's crowded out there. There are a lot of great products and services being created and marketed by some really smart and motivated people. If you want to innovate, you'd better bring your A-game.

(Mad scientist witch art by reddit user Willow & Roxas)