PepsiCo launches massively successful Giants with help from early-stage testing

PepsiCo 101 As a global food, snack, and beverage company, PepsiCo’s products are enjoyed by consumers more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world.

Key results • Identified a new innovation with early-stage testing that contributed to growing the brand by 45% YTD • Gained consumer insight needed to determine how to successfully take the new innovation to market • Achieved significant Twitter buzz without any ad spend Opportunity: Unlocking greater potential from well-known UK brands

Walkers has been around since the 1940s and holds tremendous relevance today as one of Britain’s most-loved snack brands. Several sub-brands in the Walkers portfolio are also famous in their own right, such as Wotsits (similar to the brand in the US), , and .

While these brands have great scale and brand recognition, the team recognized significant untapped potential that could be unlocked with an increased focus on innovation.

A front-end innovation process was kicked off to identify new innovations that would accelerate growth across a three-year time horizon, balancing quick wins with longer-term bets. The end result Traditional tools would was 35 viable ideas, each addressing a different potential product angle the brands could stretch in. require the company to spend significant time and resources fleshing out each of the ideas before they could be tested with consumers — and even then it would be too costly to test all 35 ideas. How could PepsiCo identify which of the many ideas had the most consumer potential early on? 2 Research: Early-stage concept testing with Zappi Early Concept

The company turned to Zappi Early Concept for early-stage testing. The solution allowed the team to use the Zappi platform to get rough sketches of products and simplified articulations of ideas (not lengthy concepts) in front of consumers with just a few clicks.

Zappi Early Concept categorized the ideas according to their trial potential and breakthrough potential, plotting them within a grid relative to one another in one of several quadrant classifications: “scale and sustain,” “short-term trial,” “seed and grow,” “emergent,” or “deprioritize.”

Several concepts fell into high potential spaces and were identified to build out the three-year calendar.One in particular, initially called Wotsits XXL, scored very high in the “shortterm trial” quadrant, indicating that while it was not the most revolutionary new product for UK snack consumers, it had scale potential.

3 Understanding the complexity of breakthrough versus scale potential was critical in shaping a successful go-to-market plan. An idea fit for shortterm trial means it’s best to expedite the product and limit initial investment. Legacy tools would have missed this nuance, leading to a slow moving and too-costly launch strategy.

The research output expedited the innovation process, as well as the strategy to release. The decision was made to trial in one major supermarket to test, drive early demand, and create a feeling of exclusivity. As the idea progressed from inception to commercialization, the name transitioned to Wotsits Giants.

Final concept

Early-stage concept 4 Impact: Wotsits Giants finds major success

Once launched, Wotsits Giants were a big hit — bigger than the team could have hoped for! The innovation flew off the shelf and the brand found itself trending on Twitter without any ad support at all, showing just how exciting this discovery was for UK snacks shoppers.

The Wotsits brand grew 45% year to date after the launch of Giants, signaling a halo effect of the innovation on the core range of products. This is a remarkable acheivement in an intensely competitive category.

The clarity that Zappi Early Concept provided was key to unlocking subsequent scale. The team had the data to support their plan to focus on one account, track market buzz, and begin scaling when most profitable. Now that Giants are a proven success within one supermarket with growing consumer demand, PepsiCo is rolling them out nationally across retailers.

5 The Zappi difference

Early Focus Deeper consumer context

Concepts tested with Zappi Early Concept Zappi’s categorization of concepts are meant to be rough, early-stage ideas. beyond the traditional “proceed,” The tool enabled PepsiCo to test more “proceed with caution,” and “stop” gave ideas upfront than it could typically do the team an indication of the potential with traditional tools, without having for each concept. As opposed to using to flesh out all 35 of these ideas first. No a traditional concept testing solution, ideas had to be left on the “cutting room” they were able to gain more context floor so Giants could be spotted as a into how concepts would perform in potential big winner in the market. the market and the best path to take to achieve the most success. They knew Giants had high potential but that they had to move fast to get it out there.

Faster turnaround

The “rough and ready” nature of the concepts and the speed of Zappi Early Concept meant the team could get ideas into testing and get results back within days of wrapping up the workshop — rapidly advancing from idea generation to a short list of strong ideas that could be moved into the innovation pipeline. 6