Wrigley wanted to know what oral health and hygiene meant globally – and what role a chewing gum brand could own.
We mapped the cultural shifts, emerging technologies and human behaviours that would open people to entirely new ways of caring for their teeth – and built an innovation roadmap from that foundation that guided a new strategy for the business.
Services:
Design Research, Ethnographic Research & IDIs, Semiotic Analysis, Trend & Technology Mapping, Strategic Workshop Facilitation, Concept Sketching & Storyboarding, Product Design Development & Prototyping, CAD & Rendering, Innovation Strategy & Portfolio Architecture, Design Guidelines, Communications & Presentation Design, Video & Animation Production
Wrigley is one of the world's most recognised confectionery brands, but with no category innovation in the preceding 50 years, they needed more than a product update – they needed a new vision for what chewing gum could become by stretching into the oral care category.
We partnered with the Wrigley Growth Centre to define a 10-year product roadmap for brand and product expansion in oral care, one grounded not in technology push or market data alone, but in deep human meaning: the cultural shifts, hygiene and healthcare beliefs and behaviours and emerging needs that would open people up to new ways of caring for their health and wellbeing.
Over nine months of ethnographic research, expert interviews, semiotic analysis and concept development across the US, Mexico, Egypt, Russia, India and South Korea we identified five major meaning shifts. We then translated them into 12 distinct brand and product opportunities, built on four shared science platforms that targeted new consumer segments and occasions stretching beyond Wrigley's existing core.
The resulting roadmap gave Wrigley's R&D, marketing, engineering and manufacturing teams a shared, actionable compass for both short- and long-term investment decisions for the first time.
One year on, Wrigley was activating the first rungs of the product pipeline – and using the work to create entirely new reasons for people to engage with the brand and their products, with meaningful potential to transform personal health and wellbeing.
"Recipe’s expertise in design research and seamless translation into executable design concepts gave a strategic edge to the project, helping to land it in a structure that is guiding short- and long-term investment for the business."
Russell Avens
Wrigley Growth Centre
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