Using Agile Research to Drive Sales: A Case Study with Everipe and Dig Insights

Challenge

Everipe Superfood Smoothie Kits recently launched as an all-in-one solution where the consumer adds ice and water, or a favorite milk, and blends. The brand exists for the consumer who wants a superfood smoothie waiting for them in the pantry, but without any of the icky stuff (think: preservatives or added sugar). It’s also a product that’s good for the world: It doesn’t need to be refrigerated, and generates significantly less waste than a typical fresh fruit smoothie routine might.

There is now interest in validating their proposition in the market, as well as exploring a potential line extension, Everipe Smoothie Mates. This innovation provides pre-portioned superfood combinations that can be added to a smoothie.

With these challenges in mind, the brand team wanted to uncover the following:

• How is the current Everipe Smoothie Kits product viewed in the market? How can Everipe optimize its offering to generate more sales?
• Considering the key stages of the purchase funnel, where are Smoothie Kits and Mates performing well or poorly?
• Is Smoothie Mates a viable innovation? How well does it perform versus in-market products? What is its potential volume/market share? From what in-market products does it source volume? Is it incremental or cannibalistic to the Smoothie Kits product?

*Enter Dig Insights at stage left*

Solution

To help Everipe understand in-market potential for their innovation (Smoothie Mates) and benchmark their current product (Smoothie Kits) against core competitors, Dig Insights leveraged their innovation insights platform Upsiide. Upsiide makes it easy to screen ideas and test concepts in different formats, including creative, messaging claims, food packaging, or logos. Dig used its proprietary Upsiide platform to understand consumers’ intuitive interest and initial commitment to the Everipe proposition, as compared with the propositions of the company’s key competitors. They then ran a study that dove deep into the Everipe brand and product portfolio to understand how consumers felt about the brand and packaging as compared with their competition.

On top of the work Dig’s team did on Upsiide, the company ran a TURF (Total Unduplicated Reach and Frequency Analysis) that helped tit model its brand portfolio in the current market.

Dig Insights ran a study that dove deep into the Everipe brand and product portfolio to understand how consumers felt about the brand and packaging as compared with that of the competition.

Outcome

Kerry Roberts, Everipe’s co-founder, found the insights valuable for two main reasons: The findings allowed the team to properly quantify the in-market appeal of the company’s existing product suite and gave it a renewed confidence in its proposition. Based on Dig’s findings, Kerry knows that Smoothie Kits had the potential to win market share in its category. They also now know that the company should lean into Smoothie Kits as its hero product, focusing on Smoothie Mates (the company’s new innovation) in situations where it can lead to incremental distribution.

Of the analysis, Kerry noted:

“The power of this particular methodology for us has been that we didn’t have to trade off the quant sample – which gives us true data integrity – for the qualitative richness. I’ve never seen a methodology that doesn’t make you choose between those two. Dig gave us the best of both worlds…

It was a pivotal moment for us to hear from a robust sample set; [the data shows that] we have a very powerful idea. So we’re now spending the dollars to bring a team of consultants in, solidifying our brand and products, and scaling production. I mean, talk about actionability out of insight. I’m not sure we would have had the confidence to invest without the clarity that Dig’s study brought us.”

In the next two to five years, Kerry hopes to come back to Dig Insights for help leading its innovation pipeline and to continue to optimize the company’s brand and product portfolio.

Header Image: Joanna Kosinska, Unsplash