subject: Keeping Your Fmcg Brand Alive With Innovative Idea Management Solutions [print this page] Accelerated lifestyles and increasing awareness are making it harder to please consumers, thereby drastically shortening product life-cycles. Consumers are spoilt for product choice you can check out how many different types of options are available for each product in your supermarket. Therefore to increase the chance of getting your product into a consumers basket and drive brand preference differentiation and innovation are the primary key factors. Whether its a new packaging format thats easier to open or a formulation change thats better for you your innovation must essentially be meaningful to the consumer, fuel demand for your products over competitors, and of course be valued enough to command a higher price that the consumer is happy to pay.
The primary success of an innovation depends on more than just the strength of the idea. For most enterprises, innovation has become a holistic issue focused on building the company-wide capability to develop a constant stream of innovative products and bringing them to market faster. In recent years, the ability of firms to innovate is creating significant differences between the best and the rest. A recent study of over 200 companies entitled "Winning New Products" conducted by the Kellogg Graduate School of Management shows that successful innovation firms were more likely to generate growth rates of 20 percent or more compared with less successful ones.
Most of the brand names have been around for a long time and may even be in the maturity stage of their life cycle. The need is to drive value up and move away from discount pricing and continue with innovation and finding better ways of doing things being vital. A few years ago, there were hardly any takers for packaged curds as most households set curds every night to consume it the next day. But now consumers are not only buying branded curd, but also probiotic curd, low-fat curd, and flavored yogurt.
Many industry bigwigs like HUL, have launched a number of innovations in skin care alone in 2010-11, and made way into new segments such as premium skin-lightening, hand and body lotion, male grooming and anti-ageing. These products have been launched under existing skin care brands - Lakme, Ponds, Fair & Lovely, Vaseline and Dove. The company has also extended its renowned brands in emerging categories - Hamam has been extended to hand wash, Rin to fabric whitening and Rexona to deodorants. Biscuit major, Britannia has extended its brands to launch biscuits and snacks for health conscious and diabetics. Eventually it is all about brand survival.
As Steve Jobs once pointed out "innovation distinguishes between a follower and a leader." Innovation is no longer a luxury it holds the key to survival. With idea management solutions, successfully manage the full Lifecycle of idea management from the idea capture all the way through development and implementation.
