Sometimes the most important insights are the ones that come out of nowhere.
LRWMotiveQuest conducted an online anthropology study looking at consumers’ unprompted online conversations about the snack brand over a two-year period. We casted the widest possible net over the social conversations found in online communities, forums and blogs so as to not introduce any biases related to assumptions about the who, where, or why of these naturally-occurring consumer discussions related to the product. The resulting dataset – an enormous body of social media discussions – was then subjected to computational linguistic analysis, under the direction of a team of anthropologists and marketing strategists.
LRW quickly discovered that moms generated only a subset of brand discussion, and that young adults were responsible for most of the growth in brand-talk. With the brand’s blessing, LRW pivoted the study to explore the jobs to be done by the product with the unexpected segments interested in the brand. We confirmed brand consumption behavior through linguistic analysis, and segmented this young-adult audience by usage drivers, identifying potentially high-value segments including nostalgia-loving millennials, time-starved on-the-go young adults, and health oriented adults looking for more sources of protein.
In doing so, the client identified pent-up demand for convenient packaging and protein and created a new product line addressing the needs of the adults, expanding the category sales.
