GLEBE FARM FOODS
PERSONA DEVELOPMENT
The Brief
With its range of oat-based drinks and cereals, Glebe Farm Foods is a relatively new entrant to the plant-based food and beverage category. Glebe Farm Foods has a distinct market positioning, which lies in its expertise in gluten-free products, high-quality ingredients, and a commitment to delivering both nutritional value and delicious taste. This is evident in its PureOaty oat drink, which competes with the biggest brands in a highly competitive marketplace.
There was a lack of clarity in the definition of PureOaty’s target audience and a skew in their brand profile towards a niche positioning for specific health conditions and sustainability agendas. This meant that Glebe Farm Foods required assistance to increase range and distribution of PureOaty in their key retailer, which is currently Morrisons. Glebe Farm Foods were keen to revisit their target audience definition and develop a new brand profile that would help them build powerful trade selling stories with Morrisons and, moving forward, with other potential key retailers.
Our Approach
In common with many other FMCG consumer brands, Glebe Farm Foods was heavily reliant on market research to identify their target consumer for PureOaty. They did have some sales data, and some shopper insight from various sources, however there was no first party data available for profiling and segmentation. Serendipity2 (S2) therefore embarked on a detailed landscaping review of the available market research and customer insight findings from Glebe Farm Foods. This enabled the S2 Strategy & Insight team to identify and draw out the main demographic, lifestyle and attitudinal characteristics of current and potential oat drink consumers.
Using a proprietary multi-dimensional approach, S2 then used the demographic, lifestyle and attitudinal characteristics of the potential oat drink consumer to identify target geodemographic segments. These attributes were then applied to the Mosaic platform, with S2 identifying which of the 66 Mosaic types represented the oat drink consumer. The Mosaic types were then grouped into three Pen Personas to reflect the different consumers. By ranking and grouping geodemographic clusters, S2 were able to turn a granular classification into an actionable segmentation of distinct and recognisable oat drink Personas.
As well as three target Personas, S2 also defined a fourth ‘Anti’ segment comprised of those types for whom oat drinks are just not relevant. Very often it’s the ratio of those consumers that are ‘for’ or ‘against’ a product or brand that determines the potential of an area.
The Result
Since the building blocks of the Personas are geodemographic clusters available for the whole of the UK, Serendipity2 were able to deploy the PureOaty brand profile in their MarketView mapping and data visualisation system. MarketView showed Glebe Farm Foods the market potential and dominant Persona in every local area. By then overlaying the locations of Morrisons stores, creating store catchment areas and ranking the stores by oat drink consumers within those catchments, Glebe Farm Foods could instantly see where to focus their sales activity in the areas of greatest potential in relation to their target consumers.
S2 also overlaid PureOaty sales data from Morrisons stores into MarketView, enabling a quick and easy analysis of sales vs. persona concentrations. This provided invaluable insight into potential over and underperformance in stores already stocking PureOaty.
S2 provided Glebe Farm Foods with an artworked presentation that described the three target Personas in everyday terms so that they could be communicated around the business and with Morrisons. Persona segmentation gives brands their own language for talking about consumers, helping to embed the typology in the culture of the organisation and providing a framework for developing trade selling stories (see Serendipity2 PureOaty trade selling stories case study).
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