Your Lumina data subscription holds a treasure trove of valuable insight waiting to be unlocked! In this blog, we’ll explore how you can harness the power of your subscription to create impactful insight that will give your business a competitive edge. Whether you’re conquering the convenience market, venturing into out-of-home channels, or revolutionizing your menus and product ranges, Lumina’s data tools are here to help.
Below we’ve compiled a list of the top 10 projects our clients tell us they get the most value from, of which the first two examples I share more details in the following pages…
- 1. Channel Strategies
- Use Lumina to analyse channel variations, shopper behaviour, competitors, and performance drivers to build your strategy.
- 2. Board-Level Data Reporting
- Leverage our key performance metrics to make clear concise reports for board meetings.
- 3. Competitor Benchmarking Analysis
- Assess brand performance versus competitors through metrics like share of occasions, NPS, and consumer satisfaction to identify strengths and weaknesses in customer base.
- 4. Entering New Markets
- Use our data to help inform category expansion/development decisions to make sure these are in line with consumer sentiment, as well as spot gaps in the market to capitalise on.
- 5. Category Planning Excellence
- Use our data to help convey your category’s value to customers, by aligning it with missions, trends, and spending patterns.
- 6. Data Driven Hypothesis Testing
- Use Lumina for hypothesis testing, ensuring alignment with consumer preferences and aiding in range, product development, and positioning.
- 7. State of the Nation
- Gain deeper insights into the UK out of home and convenience markets, identifying opportunities and threats for long-term business planning.
- 8. Dynamic Monthly Reporting
- With the help of your Customer Success Manager and our Pyramid systems, you can create automated reports, accessible through our portal, refreshing monthly for efficient KPI delivery.
- 9. Seasons/Events Performance review
- Assess seasonal performance, align range, promotions with consumer needs, and maximise sales during key occasions.
- 10. Commercial Sell-Ins
- Utilise Lumina data for compelling commercial sell-ins and pitch decks to showcase data-driven insights effectively.
Creating an Effective Channel Strategy
Why a Channel Strategy Matters?
Before we delve into the ‘how’, let’s talk about the ‘why’. A well-crafted channel strategy is the cornerstone of any business success. It is the roadmap that guides you through the complexities of the Food and Drink sector. Below is a framework to help create your own Channel Strategy that can be applied to any Lumina subscription. My top tips will be focused on the Eating & Drinking Out Panel (EDOP), but please get in touch for support on how to apply this to the Convenience market.
What should go into a Channel Strategy?
Whether you work in Retail or Out of Home, building a channel strategy follows the same structure…
- Market Outlook & Economic Context
- Channel Differentiation
- Consumer Insight
1. Market Outlook & Economic Context
This section will give you the foundations for building your strategy, helping you understand where your focuses should be and guiding your decisions with the next 3-5 years in mind. Below are 5 things you should consider including:
- Market turnover, growth, and forecasts
- Current and forecast economic outlook e.g., CPI, GDP, Consumer Spending, Average Earnings
- Consumer Confidence Tracking
- How other business leaders view the trading environment (top tip: use our Top-of-Mind Report for ready-made insights)
- Current or future legislation that could impact certain channels e.g., HFSS
Top Tip: This type of information can be found on the client portal at the beginning of any Convenience Strategy Forum and Food Strategy Forum Debrief slides!
2. Channel Differentiation
We must first understand how consumers behave differently in each sub channel and how to leverage what drives their changing demands. We’d recommend looking at year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter analysis to create a better story. In EDOP we recommend using ‘WHERE – Subchannel’ which covers cafes, street food, pubs, restaurants, bars, more. Consider using the key performance indicators below and remember to benchmark these vs total market to easily identify where channels are over/undertrading and to spot key behavioral differences:
- Penetration (% of consumers who have visited the channel in the last 7 days)
- Frequency (How often do they visit)
- Average spend per visit
- Share % growth/decline
- Daypart % share and growth/decline
- Geography influences; regionality & location & area (e.g. cities, villages, business parks etc.)
- Occasions (e.g. sports, celebration etc…)
- Drivers to choosing that establishment and reasons for going out in the first place.
Top Tip: Use the dimension ‘WHY- Reason for eating out vs preparing food/drink at home’
Top Tip: If you have an ODI subscription, use the channel outlet and turnover growth. Plus remember to break this down by brand to see fastest growing operators in the Channel.
Top Tip: Remember that online delivery is an important part of this Channel, and you can get to this by using ‘HOW-Buying Method’.
3. Consumer Insight
Next, you need to focus on who the consumer is; what is driving them to the channel and what they purchase when they are there. This will enable you to tailor your products, services, and marketing strategies to better meet their needs. You should consider including:
- Who are the main consumers in the channel? Age, Gender, Social Grade & living situation.
- Group composition of their visit and their intention
- What are their values & attitudes of these consumers e.g., are they brand led, quality led or driven by sustainability?
- Which categories/dishes/drinks are being purchased in the given channel, and which have seen the biggest growth
- What type of promotions are consumers looking for in this channel?
- Impact of changing dietary requirements; vegan, diet, no sugar, free-from, milk alternatives
Top Tip: Use ‘WHAT Free-From Dishes’ or choose ‘WHAT- Food Items’ and select ‘Alternatives’ from within the ‘Protein’ line.
Top Tip: Use the ‘WHO -‘prefixed dimensions to find relevant demographic, psychographic & attitudinal dimensions.
Top Tip: Look at what dishes are growing in the channel using use ‘WHAT – FOOD ITEMS’ or for drinks categories use ‘WHAT – drinks bought and consumed’.
A winning strategy is only successful when you transform your data and insights into solution-based actions! So, what’s next? The insights you derive from each section needs to be turned into action drivers and practical solutions. At Lumina, we recommend doing this through interactive workshops; where key stakeholders can generate ideas into clear and practical plans to implement. These sessions help define your new objectives and how to allocate resources collectively to execute these new ideas.
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Board-Level Insights Reporting
A board-level presentation should be well-structured, data-driven, and focused on providing solution-based ideas that facilitate the decision process. It should highlight any risks and challenges as well as provide clear and realistic recommendations. In our most recent Insights Academy LIVE event, our group discussion focused on the different things one should consider when presenting to a senior audience. Regardless on the companies’ specific mission and agenda, we found many commonalities across the industry, so here are some of the key elements to really engage your senior stakeholders:
1. Know what they’re looking for
Understand how each member defines value and cater to their unique concerns. Be ready to respond to important queries, offer explanations on technical aspects, and encourage open conversations.
Whatever the brief for the session, be sure to cover at least these four things:
- Costs
- Timelines
- Risks
- Impact
We would always recommend doing a bit of background research into each of your key stakeholders. Even better if you can draw on previous interactions or ask others who might know them better. This helps you identify which parts of your presentation might need more attention or where you should direct any initial questions to engage them in the content early on.
2. Craft a concise, yet compelling narrative
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- Define a Clear Core Message: Condense your message into one or two precise sentences, identifying the issue and your proposed solution.
- Structure your narrative: Begin with the conclusion, introduce 3 to 5 essential points, and gradually introduce supporting details, ensuring sustained engagement and clarity.
- Use Data and Examples Cautiously: Add numbers, pictures, and anecdotes to make your narrative more interesting, but don’t overdo it. Put most of the detailed stuff in the appendix, so your story can focus on your main point.
Top Tip: Use my ABC method below to structure your narrative more easily.
Top Tip: Walk the board through the process from context, to problem and then solution. Make sure there is a call to action and remember to keep key facts and figures in your notes to validate your point. Use real life examples and anecdotes of other businesses to further demonstrate feasibility of the solutions you are recommending.
3. Create easy to read slides or documentation that provides both the big picture and some key details
For presentations, keep it concise, focusing on the conclusion and key highlights.. Consider how long your presentation should be, where possible try using less than 10 slides with keywords, facts and images, not lengthy sentences. Ensure data is well-organized in backup slides for easy retrieval during Q&A. Finally, minimise cognitive overload by simplifying language, removing unnecessary elements, and guiding visual attention. A clear, professional presentation can significantly improve communication, while clutter will often limit how much the audience understands.
Top Tip: Use YOY growth & decline figures to tell your story rather than lots of data points on a chart. You can find these on your Lumina Dashboard. At Lumina, we include just the %pt change so the audience know the key data changes of significant value. Use this display format:
4. Be realistic and tangible
As Senior stakeholders are tasked with making high level decisions and ‘bigger picture thinking’, every board level presentation should always have these questions in mind:
- What is the impact of this on the business?
- How can we increase our % share of market?
- How do we drive sales growth?
- What new opportunities can help us reach more consumers?
Tangible insights like size of opportunity allows your board to see which decisions can have the biggest ROI. One example of this would be using Lumina data to assess opportunity gaps for innovation/NPD. For example, x% of consumers have a coffee when they go out, by offering coffee you could reach X thousand customers, or x thousand more OOH moments. Reaching more moments is one of the best ways of growing your penetration.
Take your analysis further with this top tip:
Top Tip: Example using EDOP in calculating Annual Soft drinks Visits (but you can apply this to any category!)
- Take the Est UK Population from ONS
- Take our annual study sample which is 1500*52= 7800
- Calculate our survey’s capture of the UK population by diving annual study (2.) by UK pop (1.)
- Calculate weekly soft drinks visits by taking Total Soft Drinks occasions raw data from EDOP and dividing it by the decimal place from step 3.
- Multiply the figure from step 4 by*52.
Now you have calculated the estimated actual annual soft drinks occasions in the UK.
5. Ending with a Q&A and feedback
With these types of presentations, only the necessary data points should be included. Think about the types of questions you are likely to be asked and remember all of the detail and analysis that helped you reach your solution. This will become the perfect support when answering Q&A.
We recommend having an appendix of slides that helped you get to your conclusions, as these can be helpful pointers when answering questions. Don’t forget to ask for feedback, in doing so you show that you value the boards insight and it also permits you to develop your skills in creating future board presentations.
