Weight Watchers made a strategic decision to move from weight management into healthy living, with a new brand named Heathy Kitchen. Innovations would play a key role in establishing this new brand, so they introduced a fresh meal kit offering into a limited test. The test indicated a clear need to get a better understanding of the younger meal kit target and what would appeal to them, from the perspective of branding, positioning, product, and communications. The biggest part of the challenge was that all the work had to be done, with concepts ready for quant testing, in 4 weeks.
We believed that the answers would come through insight work, which we did both digitally and in-home, the first week. At the same time, we mapped the competition to see what space the new meal kit offering could own. We found that the competition was sitting on top of each other with the same products, saying the same thing, and the new Healthy Kitchen brand could go after a very different and much more meaningful demand space. During the second week we created different branding scenarios, positioning concepts, product line offerings, and imagery, which we explored in focus groups the third week. Then based on our learnings and experience, we crafted the strongest 3 concepts, which went into a quant test the fourth week.
Each of the concepts tested exceeded the benchmark, and one was chosen to re-stage the new meal kit business. Additionally, our work more broadly informed the re-branding of Weight Watchers, and the positioning of Healthy Kitchen, which is getting significant positive press, and is expected to play a big role in helping Weight Watchers rebrand itself from a weight loss support system to a healthy lifestyle touchstone.
