How Iceland’s insights got a power-up, turbocharging its wellness range with AI

case study
ConceptEvaluate AI unlocked unprecedented insights for a British supermarket chain to turbocharge its ready-made meals wellness range with AI.
Oliver Gilding Head of Innovation and Licensing, Iceland, said“The future of food has arrived. Through this innovative collaboration, we’ve harnessed Kantar’s AI 'oracle' to unlock unprecedented insights and rapidly refine concepts, guaranteeing both market relevance and differentiation.

This cutting-edge approach has identified high-potential categories, and I’m excited to announce that our first AI-created ready meals will launch early 2025—poised to drive sales and elevate consumer engagement.”

Challenge

Iceland has experienced remarkable success in recent years, driven by their exclusive brand lines such as The Sidemen and TGI Friday’s.

To continue its growth trajectory, the brand aspired to pioneer the use of AI in creating a range of energy-focused branded products. To achieve this ambitious goal, Iceland needed a partner to help uncover the potential of its ready-made wellness range with AI, while maintaining confidentiality and delivering swift, expert results to inform product development.

 

Approach

Using ConceptEvaluate AI on Kantar Marketplace, multiple concepts were analysed through the AI-powered platform and assessed against a database of over 10,000 concepts. The results demonstrated the potential success of each concept efficiently and cost-effectively while removing the risk of ideas being seen by customers and competitors. This gave a clear indication of predictive trial, differentiation for the Iceland brand and relevancy to customers for a clear AI-powered success or failure.

 

Insight

The resulting tests highlighted a short list of concepts and then identified the highest-potential concepts that could drive engagement and excitement for the range. Data also helped prioritise the lines that would be most relevant to Iceland consumers and ultimately drive sales for the brand. Additionally, the AI allowed us to test concepts at scale and explore different energy benefits for the health-conscious consumers, which intuitively fed into product optimisation and learning for future innovations.

 

Impact

The project provided Iceland with a strong understanding of the pros and cons of each concept, which helped them develop the brand, manage internal stakeholders, and allocate resources more effectively. The findings also helped pinpoint concepts that would be most suitable for their health-conscious customer base, resulting in increased sales and engagement for the resulting brand.

Watch out in early 2025 for the first AI-created ready meals!

 

 

 

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