IN A NUTSHELL
type
non-governmental organisation
length / size
18 months / 15 people working from Brussels, Armsterdam & Milan
scope
Europe with pilot in Italy
partners
Glocalities & Diana Coulson
INNOVATION
consumer profiling
market segmentation
ideation & concept
value proposition & testing
new business model co-creation
CUSTOMER ACQUISITION
data-informed personas
customer acquisition journey
Thanks to its consumer-centric approach to design thinking, beez identified, tested and rolled out new sources of revenue for EuroConsumers Group, a federation of national consumer organisations.
In November 2016, Barbara D’Arrigo, an alumnus from Unilever and Mondelez, joined EuroConsumers Group as Head of European Marketing Strategy for the Health & Food department. Most of the division’s income came from subscriptions to a monthly print magazine (without advertisements). Yet, the novel digital habits of Millennials and Gen Z generations were at odds with this traditional business model. Thus, EuroConsumers Group was struggling with a rapid ageing of its readership. Barbara’s priority was therefore to recruit new (and possibly younger) subscribers to ensure the long-term viability of its department.
Barbara reached out to Emmanuelle Sangouard for help in facilitating the collective creative process that would enable EuroConsumers Group to reach out to this younger audience across Europe. beez suggested following its three-step consumer-centric Design Thinking method: reframe, create, and deliver.
Reframe
At the onset of the collaboration, beez sat down with the client’s project team to review the available information about the magazine’s audience and its reading habits. It became quickly evident that more data was needed on subscribers’ values and needs to better profile them. To that end, beez suggested calling in Glocalities, its trusted partner for psycho-graphic market research.
Following a quick dive in its databases, Glocalities produced some trends about health and nutrition in Italy, Spain and Belgium. A memo with preliminary insights were shared with the project team ahead of a videoconference to discuss next steps. Understanding the need to have a clear picture of the target audience and its motivations, it was agreed to focus on one market – Italy – and dig deeper. EuroConsumers Group introduced beez to its Milano-based member, AltroConsumo, and tasked Glocalities with conducting further market research. The aim was to collect more data about health and food attitudes in Italy.
In December 2018, once the market survey was completed, beez summarised the main findings in a memo and further discussed them with the project team via videoconference to ensure alignment. A week later, the 15-member project team met in Milano for a 2-day hackathon facilitated by beez and a representative from Glocalities. Building on the most recent insights, the objective was to profile current and prospective AltroConsumo members (persona design) around their values and needs in health and nutrition. And to generate insights on how AltroConsumo could best address them.
Create
Once the consumer immersion was complete at the end of the “reframe” phase, the ideation phase could start. beez thus organised a second hackathon in Milano in January 2019. The initial group was expanded to 21 with more representatives from Glocalities and beez joining for the “create” phase. The objective was to brainstorm ideas on recruiting the consumer personas identified in the first hackathon and thus generate new revenue sources for EuroConsumers Group. In two days, some 25 solutions were put forward, debated, fine-tuned and prototyped. We used mood boards to help visualise the different options
beez brought strong methodologies
and complementary experts.
Together, we designed data-informed
consumer personas that guided us
in expanding our services portfolio.
Working with beez was such a success
that it prompted my colleagues to adopt its
participatory ‘design thinking’ process.
During the various workshops,
beez was tactful and effective
in engaging colleagues from diverse
horizons, functions and personalities.
Deliver
In March 2019, for the “deliver” phase, beez worked closely with EuroConsumers and AltroConsumo to cluster the 25 different solutions around three different business models for the future. Each of them included details about the route-to-market of about 8 solutions.
After debating the pros and cons of each business model, the project team agreed on prioritising one of them. On that basis, following an internal feasibility screening, four top solutions were selected within the selected business model.
beez then fine-tuned the four solutions with EuroConsumers and AltroConsumo to come up with four prototypes ready to be tested by Glocalities through a second quantitative survey in Italy.
Throughout the project, bi-monthly meetings were organised between EuroConsumers, AltroConsumo, beez and Glocalities to follow-up on the 18-month project.
Outcome
Together, beez and EuroConsumers defined:
-
-
- 25 viable solutions
- 3 business models and route-to-market strategies
- 4 target consumer personas structured around 7 insight platforms
- 25 viable solutions
-
The 2019 business plan was projecting a 20% increase of membership and new revenue of 15 million euros.
