5 Lessons Legacy CPG Brands Learn from Emerging Brands

The Product Innovation Process

The product innovation process has changed tremendously over the past decade–for some companies, that is.

Every team responsible for developing physical products wants to adhere to best practices and go to market with a product that consumers will love. But many teams aren’t yet equipped with the tools and tactics that enable doing so in today’s incredibly fast-moving, competitive environment.

For the teams who haven’t evolved with the latest trends in product development, this is bad news–because many of your competitors have evolved. And they’re leveraging these tools to achieve levels of speed, efficiency, and efficacy that were previously unachievable.

“Before, a product would launch in 18 months. Now, people are demanding
products to be launched in 6 to 12 months–and that’s already slow. Some
people are launching products in 3 to 6 months.”
- Mike Wong, Chief Science Officer at Orveon

Often, smaller, newer companies leapfrog old ways of doing things. Larger enterprise firms have their own advantages, but they also need to learn from these smaller upstarts in order to stay competitive.

Emerging brands are often new in every way. The product itself is new, and the brand is new, too. Companies of this size have no brand equity or perception of quality and trust to rely on. Their only differentiator is the product itself, so they are laser-focused on creating something consumers really love.

At Highlight, we’ve taken notice of the way many emerging brands in the CPG space are innovating at lightning speeds–and we wanted to share those takeaways with companies of all sizes. The same mindset applies beyond CPG:

Lesson 1: Break down silos to build multipurpose projects

One reality of working in smaller companies is that it’s easier to get everyone in the same room. That’s not as easy in companies of 50,000 or 100,000 employees.

But, it’s one advantage that gives emerging CPG brands the ability to build research that meets every team’s needs at each stage of the product innovation cycle.

When every team involved has the opportunity to voice their research and data needs from the beginning, companies can save time and money and avoid data gaps.

For example:

Takeaway for legacy CPG brands: If you’re a member of an enterprise team planning your own roadmap, reach out to your adjacent teams. Be the cross-functional hero your product needs to succeed in market.

Lesson 2: Use initial touchpoints to make quick pivots

Emerging (and fast-growing!) brand Verb Energy uses Highlight to act early and quickly.

“Emerging brands are really impatient,” explains Bennett Byerley, co-founder and COO at Verb Energy. “So it’s really nice to get early data and evidence that you can start to use.”

All the pieces don’t have to be in place to start acting on the insights you have. Instead of waiting for the “perfectly packaged” data report that comes at the conclusion of a specific research project, Verb Energy uses Highlight’s data dashboards with real-time results to incorporate insights into their seller presentations and begin internal feedback and review.

Takeaway for legacy CPG brands: Start using the data you have to make an impact early. Don’t wait for your research to be neatly wrapped up and tied with a bow–because your competitors won’t.

Lesson 3: Test early and often

Unfortunately, there’s a misconception amongst some product innovation teams that in-home usage testing (IHUT) and other forms of product testing are late-stage product development initiatives.

This could not be further from the truth. Many emerging CPG brands have discovered the value of beginning with product testing to make sure they are investing their capital wisely.

Brands pursue product testing in early development stages for data insights like:

And the list goes on! Here at Highlight, we see emerging brands put early-stage product testing to use for a thousand different reasons, and use that data to fuel their innovation.

Takeaway for legacy CPG brands: Product innovation needs consumer data at every stage of the process to ensure your resources are not being wasted and you’re keeping up with a changing market. Don’t wait until the very end of your innovation process to see if your product is working with consumers.

Lesson 4: Don’t be afraid to "fail"

Risk-aversion is critical no matter how big or established your business.

For emerging CPG brands with no capital to waste, the stakes are high. You might think that discourages risk-taking amongst emerging brands, but that’s not exactly true. While enterprise brands can get caught up in risk assessment, the most successful emerging brands know that risk is necessary to grow.

For example, with Highlight’s Highlighter community, many emerging brands test a product, identify where it fails, and then use those insights to innovate improvements. Then, these brands can come back and retest with the same group of consumers to see if their new prototype hits the mark.

Takeaway for legacy CPG brands: Use data to help you de-risk. Dive deep where your product is resonating with consumers, but don’t neglect the data from consumer groups rejecting your product. Make improvements and recontact those testers with new prototypes.

Lesson 5: Try new technologies

One big advantage emerging brands have is a lack of “standard operating procedures.” They’re not hemmed in by old ways of doing things because there ARE no old ways of doing things.

Takeaway for legacy CPG brands: The secret for many emerging brands is Highlight’s product research platform, which enables high-quality consumer data access at lightning speeds. Don’t be afraid to try new tools–because your emerging competitors are trying every option available.

Ready to apply these lessons to your innovation roadmap? Highlight’s product research platform helps legacy CPG teams test early and often with feedback from the Highlighter community.