InnovAsian® Cuisine, a Seattle-based maker of Asian food for both retail and foodservice, was generating around $160 million in sales and wanted more out of their multi-serve retail offering. The frozen Chinese segment was a sea of “non-brands” whose primary tactics consisted of trade ads and price promotions. The entire category lacked awareness, HH penetration and brands with distinct positioning. Concentric helped InnovAsian by getting them focused on a select set of metrics to find sustained growth.
INSIGHTS
Concentric realized that, despite some decent offerings, the frozen Asian segment was not enjoying the same success that other segments, like frozen pizza, had in capturing take-out and delivery dollars. In addition, because the brands had done so little to position themselves, even consumers who shopped the category couldn’t describe the brands they purchased and had no loyalty. Finally, we discovered that P.F. Chang’s (ConAgra), which entered the category with a lot of fanfare and dollars, opened the door to trial for other brands.
GROWTH DRIVER
FOCUSING ON THE RIGHT NUMBERS
Concentric determined that InnovAsian could drive growth by Focusing on The Right Numbers: strengthening results by focusing on a select set of growth metrics.
STRATEGY
We worked with InnovAsian’s sales team to create a dashboard to focus on days between purchase, HH penetration and ACV. By placing more emphasis on these particular indicators, we created a clear path for our client to double sales. We concentrated on markets with high category development, but low brand development, leveraging a disparity that presented white space to achieve the biggest sales growth for InnovAsian.
CREATIVE
Understanding the significance of Asian takeout as a family meal solution, Concentric developed a creative strategy of introducing the idea of “take-in” to our target consumer in grocery, positioning the brand as a convenient and tasty solution for time-pressed family meals. At the heart of the solve were experiences that allowed the consumer to discover the authenticity and taste of the food, combined with messages delivered between the key hours of 3:00 and 6:00 pm, when people are making decisions about dinner options. This combination encouraged shoppers to add InnovAsian to their shopping list and freezers on a regular basis.
