Thinking
ARTICLE
Brands must break the shrinkflation cycle and earn back consumer trust
Dan Quinn
In the face of the cost of living crisis shrinkflation has become so pervasive it’s an issue of national debate. There’s hardly an FMCG category that is untouched.
But there are better ways for brands to maintain margins without destroying consumer value and risking reputational damage.
ARTICLE
Why retailers are the new innovators and what FMCG brands can do about it.
Dan Quinn
Supermarket brands are becoming more innovative and exciting for consumers. They are actively redefining value across a whole range of categories. What is holding FMCG brands back and what can they do about ?
ARTICLE
What is the future for human insight in the age of AI?
Lee Manning-Craik
AI has already demonstrated immense value across the insight, strategy and innovation value chain. From generating insights territories to creating innovation platforms and bringing creative ideas to life, AI's capabilities continue to expand. Despite these advancements, we believe that there are still some areas where human input will continue to create value for businesses and brands.
ARTICLE
Have FMCG brands forgotten how to innovate?
Dan Quinn
In our work with large FMCG companies, We've noticed a recurring theme. Many brands are no longer effectively innovating. In response to current economic pressures brands are overly conservative, are too tactical and are failing to make the necessary long-term bets on the future.
ARTICLE
Demand Spaces: a tool for C-Suite decision making
Joe Catling
The most successful projects are those where Demand Space work is used to support board-level decisions such as growth strategies, capital investments, mergers and acquisitions but they don’t always make it this far up the company. This is how to get them there.
ARTICLE
How to survive the creator economy
Dan Quinn
Influencers and content creators who have successfully monetised their audiences via content and merchandising, are now moving into FMCG spaces, with enviable returns. Rather that seeing this market disruption as alarming, brands should learn from the creator economy to power up their own innovation.
ARTICLE
The CMO perspective: The Forge’s talk at Quirk’s London 2024
Laura Halliday
We were extremely grateful to host two insightful CMOs at our Quirk’s London 2024 panel –Anthony Wells and Mark Roberts. The conversation illuminated several insights on how brand managers can drive volume and value growth. These are our key takeaways:
ARTICLE
Getting value from AI. Our learnings so far.
Lee Manning-Craik
AI has arguably been the biggest conversation in marketing over the last 12 months. Much has been promised (and threatened) about its potential. We have been experimenting with it on several live client projects. It's clear that in certain circumstances it can be an incredibly potent tool, not only for creating efficiencies but for driving greater thinking too. Here are our learnings so far.
ARTICLE
Sustainability marketing is dead. Long live marketing in a sustainability world.
Simon Garnett
Sustainability marketing is based on a fundamentally false premise: because we are selling sustainability, people will buy sustainability. But this is not why people buy. They buy for reasons of 'what’s in it for me' - be that taste, value, utility or something else. The sooner we focus on these benefits, the faster we will sell out sustainable offerings.
ARTICLE
EVENT: Forging Perspectives: cutting through the hype – how will AI actually change marketing
Adam Rowles
AI is arguably the biggest conversation in marketing. We have all heard the dystopian and utopian futures promised; that we will all lose our jobs or we will never have to work again. At our most recent Forging Perspectives event, we assembled an expert panel to cut through the hype and understand how AI would ACTUALLY change marketing.
ARTICLE
5 questions to ask yourself before predicting the future
Steven Melford
'Future Of' projects come in many shapes and sizes. Whilst the question is usually the same 'what is the future of X category', these types of project can be completely different depending on the outcome you are looking for. To help you decide what type of Future Of project you need we have created a set of five questions to ask yourself as you shape your next Future Of brief.
ARTICLE
Worth paying more for? Or worth paying for at all?
Steven Melford
We regularly work with brands to help them develop and market products that command a premium price. However, our clients have recently started to ask us a different question. Instead of “How can we charge more for our products?”, we are hearing “How can we justify and defend our existing price point?”
VIDEO
How to create Demand Spaces: 7. How do I ensure adoption of Demand Spaces?
Danielle Todd
Danielle Todd, Director at The Forge, talks through how best to land Demand Spaces in your organisation and maximise return on your investment.
VIDEO
How to create Demand Spaces: 6. Can Demand Spaces predict growth?
Joe Catling
Joe Catling, Director at The Forge, explains how to incorporate trends and CAGR data to show which Demand Spaces are in growth and which are static or in decline.
VIDEO
How to create Demand Spaces: 5. Can I size Demand Spaces?
Joe Catling
Joe Catling from The Forge, using snack foods as an example, explains how to size Demand Spaces.
VIDEO
How to create Demand Spaces: 4. Do Demand Spaces need fresh data?
Shanna Boland
The Forge director Shanna Boland explains all of the different data sources that can be used to create Demand Spaces.
VIDEO
How to create Demand Spaces: 3. How do I build Demand Spaces?
Joe Catling
Joe Catling, Director from The Forge, uses snack food as an example to explain how to build Demand Spaces so that they are useful, commercial and intuitive for the end users.
VIDEO
How to create Demand Spaces: 2. How do I define my category
Shanna Boland
Using the beer category as an example, The Forge's Director, Shanna Boland shares some things to think about when defining your category.
VIDEO
How to create Demand Spaces: 1. Do I need Demand Spaces?
Danielle Todd
The Forge's Director, Danielle Todd explains the benefits of Demand Spaces and when they should be used.
WHITEPAPER
Unleashing Innovation:
Take your FMCG innovation to the next level
Download this free whitepaper to learn how to sustainably grow your brand with an effective innovation strategy centred on future consumer value.
ARTICLE
EVENT: Forging Perspectives on the climate emergency. ‘Transformative’, ‘inspirational’, ‘terrifying’.
The first in our series of events covering the big challenges affecting us. This one on the climate emergency included Rupert Read, Charmian Love, Hannah Robinson and was hosted by Simon Garnett of The Forge.
ARTICLE
Making trends sticky: three billion media impressions and counting
When Unilever Food Solutions approached us to create a thought-leadership report that would raise brand awareness and, by exciting chefs about the opportunities offered by plant-based foods, help to move the world towards a more sustainable future, we were delighted to be involved.
ARTICLE
Could this be why your attitudinal segmentation isn’t working… and is ‘reverse’ segmentation the answer?
We sometimes get to work with insight professionals who have been disappointed by previous investments in segmentation. We have a hypothesis about why this happens and, based on this, we’ve been using an approach – reverse segmentation – that reduces the risk and maximises the return.
WHITEPAPER
Future Consumer Value:
Why anticipating needs is the only sustainable path to growth
ARTICLE
How to get more from your Demand Spaces
In categories like FMCG, the uptake in demand spaces has been so near complete that clients are no longer asking how to create them but looking to understand how to get more out of them.
We explore the options in the following article.
ARTICLE
Better addressing identity
We recently worked with an FMCG client to understand how the attitudes, motivations and needs of a specific identity group influenced behaviour. The findings were not completely as expected.
WHITEPAPER
Growth: Three Ways
Pt. 3 – Growth through Premiumisation
Download this whitepaper to learn how to unlock growth by premiumising your portfolio of brands, products and services.
WHITEPAPER
Growth: Three Ways
Pt. 2 – How to grow through increasing Frequency
Download this whitepaper to learn how to unlock growth by increasing the frequency of purchase of your brands, products and services.
WHITEPAPER
Growth: Three Ways
Pt. 1 – How to grow through increasing Penetration
Download this whitepaper to learn how to unlock growth by increasing the number of people that buy your portfolio of brands, products and services.
WHITEPAPER
How to Create a Winning Customer Strategy
Download this whitepaper to learn how to unlock growth by creating value for your customers at every interaction they have with your brands.
ARTICLE
Too Much Information, Not Enough Insight?
The rapid recent rise in online tools gives us information more quickly than ever before. So why then are we seeing more clients suffering from information-overload - more and more data with fewer and fewer insights?
ARTICLE
Is There Still Demand for Demand Spaces?
Used correctly, Demand Spaces can be an incredibly effective tool. In this post, we’ll discuss what they are, how they are frequently misapplied, and how we might use them in the future.
ARTICLE
Fewer, Bigger, Better. Why a Strategy is Your Best Tactic
Covid-19 accelerated changes in consumer behaviour; businesses have had to deal with all of this against a backdrop of fewer resources and significant cost pressures. How well they bounceback will depend on how well they can focus on a clear strategy.
ARTICLE
How to Create a Customer Strategy in 8 Steps
Extracted from our whitepaper How to Create a Winning Customer Strategy, and brought to life with instructional how-to videos and examples from the world’s most famous brands, this blog sets out the 8 simple steps.
ARTICLE
The Big Framework For Growth
The Forge's proprietary model, The Big Framework for Growth, is used to map changes occurring in your category. It helps you to understand where the opportunities are but also flags the risks and dangers to your business. Find out how to create and deploy one in your organisation here.
ARTICLE
Divided by a Common Language. Why Fat Words Create Risk
When a business is working to multiple expressions of the same word it creates confusion, a lack of efficiency or a loss of effectiveness. We need to break down these broad concepts into meaningful expressions, before then going on to understand which ones are most relevant to us and to our consumers.
ARTICLE
Half the Time. Half the Cost. Twice the Impact?
The proliferation of new insight tools has prompted massive changes to the research industry and to how organisations harness the power of insight.
This plethora of tools has, understandably, led to an assumption that you can get more for less; you can spend half the time and half the money but get to answers that deliver twice the impact.
Half the time? Definitely. Half the cost? Almost certainly. Twice the impact? Hmmm…
ARTICLE
How and Why You Should be Thinking About Naturals
In the last 2 years we’ve barely worked on a project in retail or FMCG where the ‘naturals’ conversation wasn’t relevant. Even if you feel like your brand is far removed from this conversation currently, there are elements of ‘naturals’ narratives that you can leverage without feeling like you are creating dissonance in your brand story.
ARTICLE
Demand Spaces – Blunt or Broken?
Demand Spaces are a useful tool to help understand a category and provide clarity on opportunity areas. So why are we working with so many clients who are finding that their Demand Space models are simply not helping in achieving their growth ambitions?
ARTICLE
The Power of Raw Debriefs
How do you get information into a business in a way that makes sense, makes people think differently and gives them the confidence to make better decisions as a result? Answer: a sheet of Perspex.
