QUICK SUMMARY
Juanita’s Foods partnered with DIG Insights to transform their innovation process by starting with trends exploration rather than consumer insights, enabling them to identify new white space opportunities beyond traditional Mexican food categories. The comprehensive program included trends investigation, qualitative research, an immersive field trip to Mexico City, platform development, and cross-functional ideation workshops that brought stakeholders along throughout the journey. This approach helped Juanita’s, an “80-year-old startup,” shift from a manufacturing-focused operation to an insights-led innovation strategy aimed at defining new product categories that express authenticity in the market.
KEY QUOTES
- “We were really chasing the insights instead of the other way around. So we were like, whoa, whoa, let’s fix this process. We need to let the insights really lead innovation.”
- “Starting with trends kind of set the tone for the whole project as a whole… it helped us really expand our minds to the possibilities.”
- “Cross-functional alignment was even more important because pretty much everyone’s gonna have a hand in innovation at some point within our organization.”
FULL SESSION SUMMARY
Introduction to Juanita’s Foods and DIG Insights
The session began with an introduction to DIG Insights, a global insights firm focused on helping clients drive predictable brand and innovation success through a combination of human expertise and in-house technology. Their approach to innovation centers on three lenses: desirability (voice of the consumer), viability (voice of the market), and feasibility (voice of the business).
Erica DeLeon introduced Juanita’s Foods as a California-based Mexican food company with nearly 80 years of history, focused on bringing authentic Mexican food to shelves without sacrificing taste or quality. Despite its long history, Juanita’s has only recently adopted a growth-oriented approach in the last five to six years, describing themselves as an “80-year-old startup.”
The Challenge
Juanita’s Foods had historically been a manufacturing-focused operation that “sold what they made” without much strategic growth planning or insights integration. Though they had begun incorporating insights in recent years, their innovation process was reactive rather than proactive. The brand team found themselves “chasing insights” instead of letting insights lead innovation. They approached DIG Insights for help identifying white space opportunities to bring impactful products to market.
The Comprehensive Innovation Process
DIG Insights implemented a multi-phase approach:
- Trends Investigation: Rather than starting with consumer research, they began by scanning for emerging trends and future directions, providing directional guidance for where consumers might be headed.
- Qualitative Research: The qualitative team explored identified themes with consumers to understand what these emerging trends meant to their target audience.
- Immersive Field Experience: The teams conducted a multi-day trip to Mexico City with cross-functional stakeholders from Juanita’s, bringing trends to life through sensorial experiences (tasting, touching, smelling) to help gain buy-in from various departments.
- Platforms and Innovation: This phase focused on understanding Juanita’s brand parameters and how they could stretch based on learnings, codifying insights into unique white space opportunities supported by product territories.
- Co-Creation Workshop: A full-day workshop with cross-divisional teams (sales, finance, R&D) generated a large list of ideas that were then prioritized.
- Segmentation Integration: In parallel, Juanita’s worked with DIG’s quantitative team on a robust segmentation study to understand new consumer profiles and how they mapped to identified areas of interest.
- Idea Screening: The next phase would test approximately 40 ideas against the new consumer segments.
- Concepts and Pipeline: The final phase would visualize concepts, add marketing messaging, test market opportunities, and develop a pipeline strategy including new capabilities or manufacturing partnerships needed to bring ideas to life.
Key Insights from the Process
The Value of Starting with Trends
Erica emphasized that beginning with trends exploration “set the tone for the whole project” and helped expand their thinking beyond limited perspectives of where Mexican food could exist. The trends investigation revealed wider possibilities than initially imagined and showcased creative approaches to authenticity in different spaces.
DIG’s approach involved understanding Juanita’s brand pillars and scanning for growth areas in the market that aligned with the company’s core identity.
Signals That Stretched Thinking
Two key signals helped stretch Juanita’s thinking:
- Regional Preferences: The importance of regionality in flavors and profiles highlighted that Mexico is not a homogenous country but has distinct regional expressions that could be brought to the US market.
- Better-For-You Space: Despite previous hesitation based on research showing consumers expressed interest in healthy options but didn’t follow through with purchases, DIG provided context on how to bring better-for-you options to market in an authentic way.
Cross-Functional Alignment
A critical success factor was involving stakeholders from across the organization throughout the process. Juanita’s invited team members from finance, sales, marketing, and operations to participate in the Mexico City immersion trip and expanded participation in the ideation workshop to include HR and additional departments.
This approach helped everyone feel part of the process from the beginning, encouraged creativity, and built confidence in the innovation direction. As Erica noted, “Everyone had a great time… they all really embraced it.”
Benefits of a Single Research Partner
Having DIG Insights lead the entire process provided significant advantages for Juanita’s lean team. The continuity eliminated the need to coordinate multiple partners and prevented the “telephone game” with insights. The knowledge transfer was seamless as the program lead stayed involved throughout all phases, ensuring learnings built upon each other.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Start with trends exploration before consumer research to identify future opportunities that consumers might not articulate in traditional research settings.
- Involve cross-functional stakeholders early and often in the innovation process to build buy-in and leverage diverse perspectives.
- Immersive experiences bring insights to life more effectively than presentations alone, helping teams internalize opportunities and think more creatively.
Delivery on Event Focus:
Aligning Innovation with Business Strategy
This session demonstrated how Juanita’s transformed their approach to innovation by aligning it with their business strategy of growth and authenticity. By starting with trends exploration and involving stakeholders across the organization, they ensured that innovation efforts were directed toward viable market opportunities that fit their brand identity and business capabilities.
Delivery on Event Theme:
Harvesting Innovation and Sowing Seeds of Future Growth
Juanita’s journey exemplifies both harvesting innovation (by leveraging their 80 years of expertise in authentic Mexican food) and sowing seeds for future growth (by identifying new categories and opportunities beyond their traditional offerings). The trends-led approach helped them look beyond current market conditions to anticipate future consumer needs and preferences.
Action Steps for Innovation Experts and Corporate Changemakers
- Reverse your innovation process – Start with trends exploration before consumer research to identify future-focused opportunities rather than reacting to current consumer articulations.
- Create immersive experiences for stakeholders to bring insights to life through all senses, making abstract concepts tangible and building organizational buy-in.
- Involve cross-functional teams early in the innovation process to leverage diverse perspectives and ensure alignment across the organization.
- Consider regionality and authenticity as potential differentiators in your category, exploring nuanced expressions rather than broad generalizations.
- Evaluate the benefits of working with a single insights partner who can maintain continuity throughout the innovation process rather than managing multiple specialized vendors.