Consumer Goods

The Walls brand have been making children's ice cream for over 80 years in countries all over the world. Maintaining a market leading position means understanding what children and parents want from the category today.

This project set to dissect every detail of what makes ice cream exciting for children all over the world to feed into the new ice cream products of the future.

We measured the key aspects of excitement from 1200 Children and drivers to purchase from 1200 Parents from Germany, Mexico and Thailand via online surveys. This was done with concept images each highlighting a particular element of excitement for the child to rank and evaluate through a hot spots survey technique.

Creative workshops with children were then held in Germany, Mexico and Thailand to explore excitement in more detail and co-create new ideas for development.

The research culminated in a half day debrief and learning workshop. At the end of the workshop Unilever had a clear understanding of the kid’s ice cream market and were given five themes of excitement to use in future strategy. We produced a brochure and interactive station for each theme, detailing it's relative importance, showing examples of how excitement can be generated within this theme and how this would effect merchandising, packaging and product design.

Ready meals form an important part of 2 Sisters Food Group’s meal solutions and with a greater than ever choice of these available, research was needed to explore and understand the opportunities for kids ready meals, to ensure 2 Sisters continue to grow and provide ready meals that keep parents happy and hungry little tummies well fed.

We needed to understand how family life affects meal choices today and the role of ready meals for children aged 4-8.

For one week we carried out ethnography via our digital to understand family meal choices in and outside of the home. Parents and children gave feedback to a number of tasks, via written responses, photos and videos.

By exploring real life in the moment, we were able to understand why different meal solutions were sought and how parents and children felt about their choices. Coffee morning sessions with parents to explore the rationale for their decisions in more detail were used to support this.

As a final reality check we observed family meal times, to see first hand the challenges.

The results were debriefed via an interactive workshop, where thematic analysis was presented to inform on the meal choices made and importantly the context of these choices.

This allowed 2 Sisters to ensure their development of kids ready meals in M&S was driven by feedback from those buying and eating their meals. Helping them to provide new & innovative solutions, rather than ‘me too’ products.