Repositioning a portfolio into category whitespace

Context

Gum and candy sales were falling in both markets. The category had settled on breath freshening as its main claim, so most brands were competing on the same functional benefit at similar price points. There was little to separate one brand from another and little reason for a shopper to pay more.

Brand teams needed to know whether they were dealing with a pricing problem, a distribution problem or a positioning problem.

Mandate

Diagnose the cause of the category decline in both markets, and recommend a response that brand and product teams could act on.

Approach

I ran consumer research across both markets to understand why people bought gum and candy and what they wanted from the occasion. The responses pointed to several needs the category was not serving, including oral health, mood and simple enjoyment.

I mapped the existing portfolio and the main competitors against those needs. This showed where brands were sitting on top of each other and where positions were still open.

Working with brand, sales and product development teams, we translated the open positions into changes to the products themselves and to how they were advertised. Television and digital creative was tested with consumers before launch and revised where it did not perform.