Foresight & Trends

The most comprehensive analysis and understanding of your category, today and tomorrow.

TRENDS ARE MOVING AT LIGHTNING SPEED, ARE YOU?

Anticipating change has never been more important for brands. Traditional research methods rely on directly questioning a sample of respondents which is rear-view by nature and can leave blind spots.

Applying AI to Social data gives us the opportunity to surface insights from real-time conversations to predict what’s next.

Our foresight & trends analysis gives you the unprecedented opportunity to view the category from the perspective of millions of consumers and identify the trends that will shape its future, earlier.

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the questions we answer

  • What’s most important to consumers in my category now, and in the future?
  • Where is the category white space and future growth going to come from?
  • Which new brands or products are the biggest threat to my business?
  • Which gaps and opportunities should I be addressing with my brand?

Our method

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    Deep-dive into now

    The entire category conversation is scanned to establish the most important macro themes from the consumers’ perspective — not the researcher’s – giving you a true view of the category landscape. Each theme is interrogated through a series of lenses to understand in granular detail what’s behind it, e.g. the ingredients lens uncovers key food types associated with a new benefit.

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    Predicting what's next

    We use data science to plot each theme on a maturity curve and score its attractiveness based on its predicted future growth. This objective process of ranking trends by their potential — not current — profile puts unknown and emerging topics on your radar earlier in the research process than before — giving you a first mover advantage.

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    Applying opportunities to your brand

    The future category growth drivers identified by step 1 and 2 are analysed and prioritised against your brand’s strategic priorities to identify gaps and recommend innovation territories to explore. Our expert Insight Consultants make the data actionable, from testing your specific hypotheses to bringing the data to life through workshops and interactive tools.

Case Study

HELPING PEPSICO REFRESH THEIR INSIGHT PROGRAMME

their challenge

PepsiCo asked us to help create a Global 360 always-on trends capability programme to understand the present and future state of their core categories and identify key consumer trends earlier.

our approach?

  • Across 11 markets we analysed >500m conversations from twitter, news, blogs, forums and reviews.
  • We identified and ranked 14,000 micro trends based on their predicted future importance.
  • Created 12 key global category trend opportunities, exploring nuances at a country level.

the impact?

  • A continuous, global framework for analysing category trends and identifying new opportunities across its portfolio of markets and brands.
  • Early trend identification enabled several new breakthrough product innovations launched ahead of the market.
  • Ongoing stimulus and input into PepsiCo’s annual strategic planning process across R&D, Brand Development and Activation business functions.
“We can distinguish between the emerging trends that matter and the many that don’t, and scientifically predict which trends will sustain growth, versus those that will fade away.”

TIM WARNER

Vice President of Insight & Analytics, PepsiCo