Five Ways to Make Your Brand Easier to Use and Like.

Ready-made dishes are no longer sprinkled with guilt. Instead, they represent the smart choice – and only with a scent of compromise. Retailers’ quick meals are now coined convenience and are considered the food industry’s response to the modern consumer’s busy lifestyle.

Yet, the tendency to consume convenience does not only change our habits or expectations. It also changes the way companies should develop and market their new products and services.

Convenience is often marketed as time-saving, although the real value lies in cutting corners. It’s about helping consumers achieve more than they otherwise could. Whether it be putting Indian cuisine on the dinner table without ever navigating the supermarket’s spice aisle or incorporating more vegetables into your diet without knowing cauliflower from broccoli.

Cut the Tricky Corners

Convenience has entered all parts of our everyday lives, from food and laundry to transport and banking. But to leverage the convenience trend, listening to consumer demands is not enough. Companies need to focus on the motivations that drive the demand.

One of the first places to start is by creating a feedback loop in your marketing that helps identify product development initiatives. So, ask yourself, how can you better understand consumers’ underlying motivations?

Kelloggs’ has cleverly introduced a so-called “Speed Team”. In just one year, they launched two new brands. Nurturing a start-up culture, they began small with new products released in small markets. As the consumer interest grew, they acted on their feedback and were quick to adjust their products accordingly.

In addition, companies need to figure out if consumers think their brand is worth spending time with or whether they should prioritise helping the consumer find time for what they consider essential in life. Does convenience add value, or is your brand loved because it forces people to choose, think, learn and improve? Where lies your value?

Is Your Brand Convenient?

Branding is still about relevance and differentiation – helping consumers save time is a hygiene factor. That doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant, but it suggests that the value creation isn’t limited to ease.

In conclusion, we have summarised five points to get you going on embracing the convenience trend:

1. Help your consumer cut the tricky corners – not the easy ones.
2. Do not define insights on what consumers tell you but on what their motivation is.
3. Communicate from your emotional selling point. Go outside-in, not the other way around.
4. Look at your target audience as a niche and make it appealing to a broader audience.
5. Create a feedback loop in your marketing that helps propel your future product development.

Curious for more? Get in touch for a talk on how your brand can benefit from taking a convenient turn.