Product design for a frozen meal line
Overview
About this project: This project explores the development of a new product, “Nashville Style Hot Chicken with Cauli-Rice”, and its feasibility, including logo rebranding, product package design, and website mockup for the new product. This integrated case study, based on a fictional company, won first place in a Kelley case competition of over 300 students. My role within this project besides conceptualization included marketing research, graphic design, and UI design.
Background
BrightMeals is a frozen meal company that aims to provide healthy alternative to frozen food options for families. The firm began with three core meals including, “Midwestern Salisbury Steak,” “Bright Fried Chicken Dinner” and “Grandma’s Turkey Dinner.” The brand later expanded the line to include “Homestyle Chicken Tenders,” “Grandma’s Pot Pie” and “Classic Shepherd’s Pie.” Each meal consists of a meat-based protein, potatoes and a single vegetable, typically corn or peas. BrightMeals dominates 14% of the market with a revenue share of roughly $221.2MM.
Problem
How can Bright Meals increase its market share in the frozen meal industry?
The growth of Bright Meals’ products had tapered off in 2012 as the national appetite for frozen meals began to wane. Despite the sluggish sales, Bright Meals’ market share remained relatively consistent, reflecting the damage being inflicted across the industry as a whole. The trend only intensified in 2013 as sales continued to flatline and even decrease year-over-year. In need of a new source of growth, the Bright Meals’ management team must search for, and ultimately develop, a new product.
Solution: develop “Nashville Style Hot Chicken with Cauli Rice” into their meal product line
After a thorough marketplace and consumer analysis on current trends, the most feasible option seems to be a healthier alternative to complement BrightMeals’ existing offerings, without sacrificing nutritious value and renowned taste. The successful production and promotion of this product will support an industry effort to alleviate the unhealthy stigma surrounding frozen meals, and Bright Meals will be able to position itself as the frontrunner in the growing market for healthy frozen meal options. Our analyses support the push for this product as it has the potential to greatly increase cash flows and provide diverse opportunities for the future. These results will be achieved by enhancing operating capabilities, constructing a cohesive marketing strategy.
Product Conceptualization
SECONDARY RESEARCH: Research trends in the food industry to find opportunities
When evaluating which items to include in the new offering, we focused in on what has become an emerging trend in the frozen space: cauliflower. Once considered the “less colorful, less delicious cousin of broccoli,” cauliflower is now found in dishes across the country, from Mexican restaurants in Austin, Texas to Michelin-starred French restaurants in New York City. According to TIME Magazine, the trend can be attributed to carbo-averse consumers’ desire for a healthy alternative to white rice and gluten-filled grains. Grocery stores and vegetable suppliers have cashed in on the growing demand and expanded their product lines to include items such as cauliflower and tater tots. During the summer of 2017, Whole Foods introduced cauliflower rice to its freezer section and it now ranks fourth in the store’s top ten frozen vegetables. Similarly, Trader Joe’s introduced a cauliflower rice option that was so popular that they began enforcing a two-bag limit per customer. After B&G acquired Green Giant in 2015, the company immediately expanded its cauliflower line to include three distinct types of cauliflower rice.
Next, we shifted our attention to identifying a protein to accompany the cauliflower rice. In recent years, Kentucky Fried Chicken released a Nashville hot chicken menu item, Kroger introduced a Nashville hot flavored kettle cooked potato chip and Shake Shack began offering a Hot Chik’n sandwich. The flavorful, spicy fried chicken has caught on nationwide and the major big players have scrambled to join
Analysis and Product Decision
After discussions and identifying the success that retailers had been experiencing with cauliflower rice, we decided to include a spiced cauliflower rice rather than the vegetables as a standalone side. We came to this conclusion after identifying the success that retailers had been experiencing with cauliflower rice. Regarding protein, after researching the market to identify what consumers were excited about, another glaring trend presented itself: Nashville hot chicken.
Ultimately, this move will be an offering that is similar to a current product and yet innovative in just one or two aspects. Although it’s a significant departure from BrightMeals’ typical offerings, we view the move as bridge to the future direction and products of the company and initiate external excitement about what bolder moves Bright Meals might make over the next two to four years.
Integrated Marketing Communications Plan (IMC)
Evaluating STPD (Segmentation, Targeting, & Position)
Based on past trends, we determined the current target market for Bright Meals is middle-aged women between the ages of 28–42 wanting to provide meals for their families. This market has been loyal to Bright Meals because of its friendly and sensible positioning. Our team decided to keep this target market for two reasons, the loyal customer base and its wide age range. The frozen meals industry has declined over the past eight years, but a recent surge in popularity among millennials. By keeping the same target market, the age range includes the loyal mother, but also includes millennials. We understand the importance of millennials because they have aided the resurgence of the frozen meals industry in 2018, but are a difficult group to target without changing everything about Bright Meals. Being able to include millennials in the overall target market is a way to incorporate an interested demographic while still focusing on those who bought Bright Meals products in the past. Next, we shifted our attention to identifying a protein to accompany the cauliflower rice. In recent years, Kentucky Fried Chicken released a Nashville hot chicken menu item, Kroger introduced a Nashville hot flavored kettle cooked potato chip and Shake Shack began offering a Hot Chik’n sandwich. The flavorful, spicy fried chicken has caught on nationwide and the major big players have scrambled to join.
Customer perceived value (CPV)
The perceived internal value of a product is a dynamic criterion to finding the consumers’ willingness to pay for a product. Hence, maximizing on attributes that consumers perceive to have the greatest value can be a vital determinant to driving the success of this new product. With the new target market of middle-aged women and millennials, Bright Meals must keep the family-centric style of branding, but also expand their image to be more socially responsible in order to attract millennials. These groups value: health, convenience, taste, price, and fulfillment which greatly influences their CPV.
By increasing prices, the internal perception of quality increases which leads to a higher CPV. To effectively capitalize on this psychological effect, we must increase its function by creating a visual experience through the products’ appearance which captures a feeling of prestige established from the higher price. As Bright Meals expands to include millennials, brand image will be key. Consumers want to eat food that defines them by buying into brands and ideologies that they relate with. Therefore, to capture the health-inclined and environmentally-conscious values, Bright Meals must establish credibility by conveying itself as an ethical, healthy, and more responsible company through image, logo association, and corporate social media perceptions.
Logo redesign
Prior to the development of this project, BrightMeals had a more sterile image for their brand logo. The target market for BrightMeals, as mentioned previously, is middle-aged women; the brand is aimed to be family-centric. The creation of this new logo strives to create a more wholesome and inviting image in order to entice the target user group to notice and purchase the product. The previous font has been replaced with rounded letters, more neutral colors, and a colorful and playful lightbulb to keep a light-hearted tone to the brand, with a minimalistic approach to the BrightMeals image. The lightbulb serves as a new “main logo” of the brand, as an image to represent how BrightMeals lights up the meals and experience of eating.
Value proposition and positioning statement
Bright Meals provides families with more satisfying options than traditional frozen meals by offering healthier, more nutritious ingredients in larger portions with flavorful spices.
The value proposition of Bright Meals’ new product should capitalize on the CPV In this case, under the premium pricing structure and dedication to provide a healthier and larger meal option, Bright Meals will use with the “more-for-more” positioning offering a higher price, for a higher quality product. The value proposition for this product and its focus will be offering quality food that fills you up. We propose the following positioning statement to reflect this: Bright Meals provides families with more satisfying options than traditional frozen meals by offering healthier, more nutritious ingredients in larger portions with flavorful spices. This statement addresses two key differentiating factors, a larger size and a healthier product. This is visualized in the product positioning map to the right. The map places Bright Meals’ relative position in terms of health and size in comparison to other major frozen food companies. The data points of each company are ranked 1–6 (6 being highest) in each category, estimated from a general analysis of each of their products.
Visual Design
Package Design
Our communication strategy should emphasize the values outlined in the CPV section. Therefore, we believe the design aesthetic should be simple and minimalistic, but call attention to the benefits the consumer receives: taste, healthiness, convenience, and large and filling portion size. The integration of cauli-rice capitalizes on the consumer desire for healthier products. The logo incorporates this desire. The prototype of the package we have designed utilizes a plate with a leaf to emphasize the healthy benefits derived from the cauli rice. To highlight the delicious taste, we have also bolded and enlarged the words “hot chicken” to appeal to the consumer. Underneath the logo for “Nashville Style Hot Chicken with Cauli Rice,” we have created the following word hook: “Make your meals bright”, with a bolded emphasis on “right” in order to convey to the consumer they are choosing the best, healthiest meal option. Our team decided
that the word hook should match the new product, but also be applicable to the brand overall. The multi-usability
of this word hook gives Bright Meals a phrase that can be used on any product makes it easier to be remembered by consumers for the future. By creating the word hook that can apply to both the company and the product, it integrates the concept throughout the entire communication strategy for this new product and BrightMeals.
Product webpage sample UI
This webpage for Bright Meals’ website is meant to create a more engaging user experience with the new product. The theme of making the “bright” choice comes back into play here, once again emphasizing the delicious taste of the hot chicken as well as expanding on the nutrients and the health benefits the consumer receives. Below the brief title, the user can click to “Learn more” which expands to a brief and persuasive overview of the product that will entice the consumer to purchase the product. Below the description will be a rating system, as depicted in the mock-
up, in which the consumer can read other reviews and write their own. This will create trust and credibility into the product to further persuade the customer to purchase the product. At the bottom of the page, there will be an interactive option to find the nearest location that carries our product, using a locations-based algorithm that will pull up the nearest store to their selected zip code. Although the design can be rearranged, we believe these are the utmost crucial factors to include in the webpage to allow the customer to feel comfortable and persuade them to hit the purchase button.
This is one marketing portion, selectively chosen based on its relevancy to product design, from a 100-page report of the product creation project. To view a sample of the rest of the report, including financial and operational analytics, please download here.
Reflection
Meet as a team as much as possible
Initially, we tried to work on our separate sections with resulted in gaps in communication in certain areas. The project was incredibly varied to reflect the entrepreneurial style of the case, with each person playing a different role in the creation, from the finance guy to the marketing gal. But there were several times where we would get stuck in our respective parts of the project and get lost in the project. Since the deadline was glooming over us, each of us had to really focus and use each other as resources to come to a concise, organized solution. When we met as a team, we were much more efficient and easily able to snowball different ideas and easily bounce off of each other. We were also able to easily look over other work and proofread each other.
Stick to the schedule
Before the project began, we created a draft plan on Google Sheets dictating what needs to be completed and when. This helped us move forward instead of waiting for someone to catch up, since everyones’ sections were equally integral in performance and formulating the perfect pitch. By easily visualizing what we need to complete for each day, we could start each day with a goal and streamline the process along which was especially vital in a deadline-heavy project such as this. We split our respective tasks evenly, but if someone finished their task for the day, they could easily see the schedule to see what else they can do in the meantime.
Good design is good business
This is the case that inspired me to pursue a career in user experience design. The market research was crucial to find opportunities to capitalize on, but the most salient part of the project was researching the user group and finding strategies to communicate the new message and position of BrightMeals in the frozen meals industry. Along that included the customers’ journey from purchasing the product to reading about it online. Everything in the process of redesign ultimately relied on its aesthetic, especially since we were catering to a specific demographic and defined user group.
This project also helped me to place a “why” with everything that I did. For every change, there needs to be a way to justify it. Something even as simple as font choice needs to be thoroughly explained. It’s easy to look over those tiny details in the grand scheme of things, especially since our project involved the entirety of the business process as a mock company.
