Dare to be different: Lessons learnt from innovating in the food, soft drink and alcohol sectors

Being ‘different’ is the main driver of above average stock market returns, from technology to finance to consumer-packaged goods, according to recent analysis from Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and Kantar BrandZ. This indicates that the brands most likely to generate these exceptional levels of return are those that are different to their competitors, in a meaningful way and set trends.

This session focuses on the role that innovation plays in driving this ‘difference.’ We drill down into the food, soft drink and alcohol industries, which are all crowded marketplaces with tough conditions for delivering meaningfully different innovation. Understanding how the top brands in this sector innovate will help all brands understand how they can make a difference when it comes to innovation. We find that those who do successfully produce innovations that are ‘different’ and incremental do so using a different approach. They dare to be different, seamlessly using insight at speed, through a different type of innovation journey, involving more hypothesis testing and learning using a combination of implicit and explicit consumer responses to enable more meaningful and different outcomes. We’ll leave you with five key lessons learned by brands in these sectors as they take this different learning journey.

Key takeaways:

1. Successful brands focus on being different (in a meaningful way).
2. Successful brands dare to be different by taking a different innovation journey.
3. A different innovation journey needs to be underpinned by strong expertise and enabled by technology platforms such as Kantar Marketplace.

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