ORLANDO, FLA. — Amid increasing competition, rising consumer demand for better-for-you (BFY) products and the growth of private label, baking and snack brands are innovating with new products to stand out on an increasingly crowded shelf. 

Introducing these products is a risky endeavor, however. Ninety-five percent of products that can’t meet a consumer need/want fail in the market, according to Nielsen IQ, while 1-in-4 launches shrink their parent brand’s portfolios. 

At SNAXPO25, held March 30-April 1 in Orlando, Fla., Fernando López Martinez, leader of strategic analytics and insights for NielsenIQ, shared how producers can leverage consumer data to ensure their new product launches are successful ones. 

“Consumers are more intelligent every day; they have more information to harness every day,” he said. “Success is going to be developed by having great ideas, great product and great activation. Those are the three things we have found consistently that if you do all three of them correctly, you are going to have a great proposal strategy for the consumer.”

López Martinez highlighted Purchase, NY-based PepsiCo’s Cheetos Mac N’ Cheese as an example of a successful product launch. In Mexico, the product achieved more than 15 million pesos ($750,455) in sales its first year and more than 20 million pesos ($1 million) in year two.

Cheetos Mac N’ Cheese capitalized on consumer research that indicated growing demand for household cooking staples as consumers ate more meals at home, López Martinez pointed out. At the same time, there had been few innovations within the mac and cheese category in the years prior. 

While PepsiCo identified a consumer demand and opportunity to innovate with a new product, it still needed to ensure the launch of Cheetos Mac N’ Cheese connected with audiences. To do this, Cheetos launched its “Mac Hacks” campaign, partnering with influencers to share their hacks for enhancing Cheetos Mac N’ Cheese, adding “Mac Hack” ideas to the back of packaging, and developing retail bundles of the product with Cheetos snacks. 

The brand additionally partnered with famous fashion designer and macramé artist Coral Castillo to launch a MAC’ramé collection, combining bold Cheetos colors with macramé shoes and fanny packs. 

These product activation efforts helped Cheetos Mac N’ Cheese surpass one billion social media impressions in the first 24 hours of the launch announcement. 

“They had double-digit sales growth per year, great distribution and even some stock out, which is not ideal, but it meant that demand was even higher than expected already,” López Martinez said.

Well-executed product activation like this is critical, he said, as a third of new launches fail because they lack sufficient support in year one.

López Martinez added that brands must follow the full consumer journey to understand their purchasing decisions and how to activate a product so that consumers purchase it. For example, 85% of consumers shop across multiple channels, 43% are willing to change stores or brands for promotions and 60% evaluate different channels to find the best price.

Brands should also consider leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) technology to better gauge how consumers will react to their new product. 

“AI today is already able to understand and predict analyses with product testing and formula testing,” he said. [Instead of] having 500 people test your product, we can do it with AI already.” 

Using this technology, brands can better predict which version of their formula consumers will enjoy most. López Martinez shared the example of Jack Daniel’s Whisky and Coca-Cola, which was reformulated using AI testing and saw a 350+% increase in sales in Mexico and a 90% increase in repeat purchasing.

“The most important takeaway I will share here is the importance of doing market research as simple or as complex depending on what your brand needs,” he said. “Some countries today are facing a lot of uncertainty, changes and price increases, so bringing innovation is a responsibility.”