The Quantitative MindReading Agency
Fast Forwarding >> Innovation
on Cif Power Cream
By John Kearon, Founder & CEO of BrainJuicer Ltd
+44 7967 175 621 chief.juicer@brainjuicer.com
“We’ve just inherited an almost empty innovation funnel which we need to fill fast and launch at least one successful
new product in the next 14 months. The problem is our usual process takes almost twice that long. Can you help?”
Unilever’s Household Cleaning Innovation Centre – Director of Insight – Nicky Boud
This honest admission and its challenging circumstances marked the beginning of a whirlwind project that would break all
internal speed-to-market records and result in the international launch of Cif Power Cream.
Together with the brand team, we reviewed the typical time-to-market for their stage-gate process and found that of the average
30 months it took to get a product to market, research constituted 12 months of it [see the table in Fig. 1]. Our challenge was to
significantly reduce the time required for research whilst maintaining the very high standards of consumer insight and validation
in the process. In fact it soon became obvious that to stand a chance of launching a new product within 14 months, we needed
to cut the research time by more than half!
First, we explored retaining all the research steps in the current process but replacing every quantitative stage with an
equivalent online research approach. The qualitative stages would stay the same but we were confident from experience that
conducting the research online we could reduce the concept testing stages from 5 weeks to 2 weeks, the in-home testing from 6
weeks to 4 weeks and the Volumetrics from 11 weeks to just 6 weeks. In total this would have reduced the total research time
significantly from 12 to 8 months. In normal circumstances this would have delighted everybody but it still wouldn’t allow the
team to launch a new product in 14 months, so we continued searching for more creative solutions.
In order to match the timings we agreed on 2 radical research solutions.
The first was to run the whole process without any focus groups and to rely on BrainJuicer’s ability to add rich qualitative
diagnostics as part of every quantitative stage. The team would then have to rely on these diagnostics alone to guide
development of the strongest ideas. This was obviously a huge leap of faith but one necessitated by the time constraints and
facilitated by our patented MindReading technology which produces a MindMap of what consumers think about the concepts,
what’s behind their thinking and how they feel about it.
The second solution was to employ a pioneering technique, called Predictive Markets, which we had been experimenting with
as a faster and more accurate early stage screening methodology. Based on the work of Nobel economist Vernon Smith, the
challenging supposition behind ‘Predictive Markets’ is that a large group of 500 people, buying and selling shares in ‘ideas’ will
be just as accurate as a classic, scientifically sampled research approach. In all 5 of our own experiments where we tested 15
concepts in a Predictive Market head to head with a classic monadic test, we found the ‘market’ selected the same top five
ideas with no significant difference in purchase intention. For the weaker ideas however, the market was much more punishing,
helpfully sorting ‘wheat from the chaff’.
Using a Predictive Market was another enormous leap of faith but it allowed us to test 15 alternative ideas at the very early
stage across Europe and get a clear quantitative read on the strongest concepts. Then together with the qualitative diagnostics
on each concept, the team were able to quickly and easily evolve the mix for the 2 lead concepts. These two concepts were
then tested monadically and the strongest was prototyped and trialled in-home. The final volumetric test confirmed the potential
of the Cif Power Cream and the product was successfully launched across Europe precisely 14 months after the project started.
®
Fig 1. Comparative Timings; Normal vs. Internet vs. BrainJuicer
®
Normal Internet BrainJuicer Funnel & Gate
Research Timings Funnel & Gate Funnel & Gate Research Timings
esearch Timings esearch Timings
ation 20 weeks 14 weeks 4 weeks
al screening of brainstorm ideas 2 2 2
s groups to explore top 6-12 ideas 4 4 -
titative early concept screening 5 2 Predictive Market = 2
s groups to develop those ideas 4 4 -
titative test on the lead 4/5 ideas 5 2 -
asibility 19 weeks 14 weeks 6 weeks
s groups to develop lead ideas 4 4 -
titative concept test on lead ideas 5 2 2
s groups to develop mix options 4 4 -
me product testing 6 4 4
pability 16 weeks 8 weeks 8 weeks
BrainJuicer® Ltd – 77 Oxford Street – London – W1D 2ES - Tel +44 7967 17 56 26 / Fax +44 1223 46 14 60
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ept / packaging testing 5 2 2
metrics (STM) 11 6 6
TAL 12 Months 8 Months 4 Months
As our Unilever client said, “In less than a year and a half, we’ve gone from an almost empty funnel to a full one,
launched an exciting new product and broken every internal speed to market record we’re aware of. It’s quite an
achievement. Thanks”.
Cif Power Cream is performing well in the market and regarded as a company success.
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BrainJuicer® Ltd – 77 Oxford Street – London – W1D 2ES - Tel +44 7967 17 56 26