"Our Freshest Formula for Even More Kisses" represents a good claims case-study example for Listerine, and the five-steps that we typically follow with leading brands to generate new claims that can transform the appeal of an existing product with a new target audience.
We define winning claims as a memorable promise about a product or brand, that GRABS the attention of a relevant target audience. The five steps below also show how writing more compelling claims (deeper insights and winning claims) can be used to inspire and guide final on-pack design work.
1. Focus on Key Benefits
The first step in any successful claims innovation project is to be clear about strategic benefit focus. For the Listerine case study, the claims challenge was how to make the Listerine brand more relevant to younger consumers, and how to make the benefit of "oral mouth freshness" more compelling. This tighter strategic benefit focus gives clear direction in identifying deeper insights and consumer language, not only relevant to the primary benefit of freshness, but how this benefit could resonate with younger consumers. If you are running your own innovation project, read more about how to define your innovation focus.
2. Look to Gather Fresh Insights
Once you have identified the strategic benefit focus for claims generation, take time to look for deeper insights and relevant target consumer language. For Listerine, this meant what "oral mouth freshness" really means for younger consumers? When looking for new insights, we typically revisit “old research data” with a fresh pair of eyes, combined with “social media listening” to capture additional insights from online blogs, community forums or competitive product reviews. This can be supplemented by depth interviews and consumer observational work. Watch this short video on how to quickly gather fresh insights to inspire new claims.
3. Confirm Your Deeper Insights
In step 3, we would review lots of "early insights", to select and refine 10-15 "winSIGHTS” that had the potential to inspire claims generation. This work is normally done virtually with our Zip-Zap platform or in an Insight Brainstorming Workshop. When writing and refining insights, we look to capture three or four key elements of a "deeper insight" including the situation; the specific pain-point; the “deeper why” behind the pain-point; and a possible indication of the consumer's end motivation. For Listerine, an example of a winning insights for this project is: "when meeting a potential new partner, I always feel worried that my breath will smell, especially for those intimate moments.” If it's a good insight, you should already be thinking of new ideas!
4. Brainstorm Claims with Deeper Insights
Once you have identified a few winning and deeper insights, focus on each one in turn to brainstorm a wide range of different potential claims. Our team of Creative Agents look at each insight in turn, brainstorming potential claims linked to the "stated so whats" and then the "inferred so whats" of the insight. Taking the example insight for Listerine from step 3 ("worries about breath smelling for those intimate moments”), the stated "so whats" include fears about breath smelling or nerves about intimate moments. The "inferred so whats" might include a way of testing your breath; getting closer to your partner; or for even better kissing! And you guessed it, a claim for "even more kisses" was something that easily popped out. For more details, read how to use insights to inspire new ideas.
5. Use Winning Claims to Inspire New Designs
Our final step is to identify the winning claim that can inspire fresh design thinking along with advertising executions (and even new R&D work). For Listerine, one of the leading claims was called "NEW DON'T STOP KISSING FORMULA: New FreshBurst™ mouthwash delivers an instant clean mouth feeling and is our freshest formula for even more kisses." The image above shows how this claims inspired early design ideas, with the current design on the left, together with three design for our "freshest formula for even more kisses" claim. On most projects we would normally look to screen around 20-40 potential claims with target consumers, to identify 3 or 4 winners that can be used to inspire on-pack design work, and if budgets exist, relevant advertising executions for winning claims.