What was needed

1. Weight Watchers were updating all the packaging across the Food Range - to align with their new Food Products brand strategy. This change would take the look-and-feel from one of 'restrictive, white, clinical', to 'foodie, natural ingredients, yummy'. Yoplait, therefore, needed to re-design all the packaging within the Chilled Dairy range.

2. In-depth analysis on Weight Watchers Chilled Dairy products to:

• identify key gaps in the market, and
• understand why Fromage Frais was in decline vs a growing Yogurt portfolio - their hypothesis was that the flavour combinations weren't working.

What we did

1. For the Packaging Project, we worked with the brand team to:

• map all the previous consumer research done, to build a profile and persona around who the Weight Watchers customer was, and why they bought Weight Watchers, rather than Shape or other 'light' yogurt products,
• analyse competitor packaging elements and how both light and full-fat yogurts appeal to their target consumers,
• build a packaging design brief, get it through Yoplait and Weight Watchers approval process,
• brief and manage the agency bidding process, and appoint a design agency,
• brief and manage the in-home, qualitative consumer research process for the first round of concept designs.

2. For the Product Sales Analysis project, our task was pretty clear, take raw sales data, sift through it, look at the task from every angle and find the inconsistencies. We worked through Nielsen, Dunnhumby and TNS data and found: 

• Light Chilled Desserts were on a strong growth curve. Consumers who are on a low-fat, or food restricting diet of any sort, were desperate for food that satisfied dessert or chocolate cravings - without the consequential guilt or calories. They liked a variety of flavours in their yogurts, as the range of food and flavour within their diets was often quite restrictive.
• Consumers who purchased Weight Watchers Yogurt, often additionally purchased other Weight Watchers products at the same time.
• Weight Watchers Fromage Frais sat next to Weight Watchers Yogurt on shelf. As the yogurts had more promotional activity than the Fromage Frais, consumers tended to purchase more Yogurt packs on promotion - even if they preferred Fromage Frais (this finding saved Yoplait £'000 in not having to develop and launch 2 new Fromage Frais packs).
• We worked with the brand, sales and supply chain teams, to improve Fromage Frais promotional activity in-store (at the same time, we helped to improve supply chain costs for Fromage Frais).

Final presentation of findings was made to and approved by both Weight Watchers UK and Yoplait Marketing team.

What they've said about our work

Carolyn came in and covered a maternity leave role for me and I was delighted with her work. She is thoughtful in her approach with a great feel for the consumer. I was really impressed with how she quickly built a strong relationship with the internal and external stakeholders and got on with the job with a minimum of fuss. She has a can do attitude and is a nice person as well. 

Gerry Roads, Marketing Director, Yoplait Dairy Crest