Thinking

ARTICLE

Why your portfolio could be getting in the way of your growth ambitions

In the face of the cost of living crisis shrinkflation has become so pervasive it’s an issue of national debate. There’s hardly an FMCG category that is untouched. But there are better ways for brands to maintain margins without destroying consumer value and risking reputational damage.

31/03/2025

ARTICLE

Seven success factors for brand portfolio projects

We are seeing clients with issues around business growth and performance that have a common thread: a lack of an effective portfolio strategy. From working with clients in this position, we’ve learned what makes a successful strategy, as well as the watchouts and potential pitfalls. We’ve put together seven factors that can make a big difference to the outcome.

31/03/2025

VIDEO

How To Unleash Innovation: 8. How will you create momentum and ownership?

Dan Quinn explains why your innovation lives and dies by how it is rolled out and how to create the right incentives to drive momentum, ownership and autonomy.

28/10/2024

VIDEO

How To Unleash Innovation: 7. How will you prioritise and decide?

Joris Westerman

Joris Westerman talks us through how to decide which innovations to prioritise, introduces The Forge's DCV model and talks about the role of passion and excitement

28/10/2024

VIDEO

How To Unleash Innovation: 6. How will you unlock creativity?

Elspeth Edwards

Elspeth Edwards shares how to fuel your innovation journey with creativity.

28/10/2024

VIDEO

How To Unleash Innovation: 5. How tightly defined is your brief?

Joris Westerman

Joris Westerman explains the questions you need to answer to maximise the effectiveness of your innovation brief.

28/10/2024

VIDEO

How To Unleash Innovation: 4. How well do you know your consumers?

Dan Quinn explains why consumer insight is critical to innovation success and where to look for it.

28/10/2024

VIDEO

How To Unleash Innovation: 3. Where will your innovation fit in your portfolio?

Joris Westerman

Joris Westerman shares his perspective on innovation horizons one, two and three and the optimal mix for short-term gain and long-term upside.

28/10/2024

VIDEO

How To Unleash Innovation: 2. Is your organisation set up for success?

Elspeth Edwards

The Forge's Director, Elspeth Edwards shares the seven questions you need to answer to ensure your business is set up for innovation success.

28/10/2024

VIDEO

How To Unleash Innovation: 1. Why are you innovating?

The Forge's Director, Daniel Quinn explains why starting with the strategic goals is the first step to unleashing innovation

28/10/2024

ARTICLE

Brands must break the shrinkflation cycle and earn back consumer trust

In the face of the cost of living crisis shrinkflation has become so pervasive it’s an issue of national debate. There’s hardly an FMCG category that is untouched. But there are better ways for brands to maintain margins without destroying consumer value and risking reputational damage.

31/08/2024

ARTICLE

Why retailers are the new innovators and what FMCG brands can do about it.

Supermarket brands are becoming more innovative and exciting for consumers. They are actively redefining value across a whole range of categories. What is holding FMCG brands back and what can they do about ?

31/07/2024

ARTICLE

What is the future for human insight in the age of AI?

Lee Manning-Craik

AI has already demonstrated immense value across the insight, strategy and innovation value chain. From generating insights territories to creating innovation platforms and bringing creative ideas to life, AI's capabilities continue to expand. Despite these advancements, we believe that there are still some areas where human input will continue to create value for businesses and brands.

30/06/2024

ARTICLE

Have FMCG brands forgotten how to innovate?

In our work with large FMCG companies, We've noticed a recurring theme. Many brands are no longer effectively innovating. In response to current economic pressures brands are overly conservative, are too tactical and are failing to make the necessary long-term bets on the future.

31/05/2024

ARTICLE

Demand Spaces: a tool for C-Suite decision making

The most successful projects are those where Demand Space work is used to support board-level decisions such as growth strategies, capital investments, mergers and acquisitions but they don’t always make it this far up the company. This is how to get them there.

30/05/2024

ARTICLE

How to survive the creator economy

Influencers and content creators who have successfully monetised their audiences via content and merchandising, are now moving into FMCG spaces, with enviable returns. Rather that seeing this market disruption as alarming, brands should learn from the creator economy to power up their own innovation.

30/05/2024

ARTICLE

The CMO perspective: The Forge’s talk at Quirk’s London 2024

We were extremely grateful to host two insightful CMOs at our Quirk’s London 2024 panel –Anthony Wells and Mark Roberts. The conversation illuminated several insights on how brand managers can drive volume and value growth. These are our key takeaways:

09/05/2024

ARTICLE

Getting value from AI. Our learnings so far.

Lee Manning-Craik

AI has arguably been the biggest conversation in marketing over the last 12 months. Much has been promised (and threatened) about its potential. We have been experimenting with it on several live client projects. It's clear that in certain circumstances it can be an incredibly potent tool, not only for creating efficiencies but for driving greater thinking too. Here are our learnings so far.

05/03/2024

ARTICLE

Sustainability marketing is dead. Long live marketing in a sustainability world.

Sustainability marketing is based on a fundamentally false premise: because we are selling sustainability, people will buy sustainability. But this is not why people buy. They buy for reasons of 'what’s in it for me' - be that taste, value, utility or something else. The sooner we focus on these benefits, the faster we will sell out sustainable offerings.

02/02/2024

ARTICLE

EVENT: Forging Perspectives: cutting through the hype – how will AI actually change marketing

AI is arguably the biggest conversation in marketing. We have all heard the dystopian and utopian futures promised; that we will all lose our jobs or we will never have to work again. At our most recent Forging Perspectives event, we assembled an expert panel to cut through the hype and understand how AI would ACTUALLY change marketing.

04/01/2024

ARTICLE

5 questions to ask yourself before predicting the future

'Future Of' projects come in many shapes and sizes. Whilst the question is usually the same 'what is the future of X category', these types of project can be completely different depending on the outcome you are looking for. To help you decide what type of Future Of project you need we have created a set of five questions to ask yourself as you shape your next Future Of brief.

04/01/2024

ARTICLE

Worth paying more for? Or worth paying for at all?

We regularly work with brands to help them develop and market products that command a premium price. However, our clients have recently started to ask us a different question. Instead of “How can we charge more for our products?”, we are hearing “How can we justify and defend our existing price point?”

17/11/2023

VIDEO

How to create Demand Spaces: 7. How do I ensure adoption of Demand Spaces?

Danielle Todd, Director at The Forge, talks through how best to land Demand Spaces in your organisation and maximise return on your investment.

31/10/2023

VIDEO

How to create Demand Spaces: 6. Can Demand Spaces predict growth?

Joe Catling, Director at The Forge, explains how to incorporate trends and CAGR data to show which Demand Spaces are in growth and which are static or in decline.

31/10/2023

VIDEO

How to create Demand Spaces: 5. Can I size Demand Spaces?

Joe Catling from The Forge, using snack foods as an example, explains how to size Demand Spaces.

31/10/2023

VIDEO

How to create Demand Spaces: 4. Do Demand Spaces need fresh data?

The Forge director Shanna Boland explains all of the different data sources that can be used to create Demand Spaces.

31/10/2023

VIDEO

How to create Demand Spaces: 3. How do I build Demand Spaces?

Joe Catling, Director from The Forge, uses snack food as an example to explain how to build Demand Spaces so that they are useful, commercial and intuitive for the end users.

31/10/2023

VIDEO

How to create Demand Spaces: 2. How do I define my category

Using the beer category as an example, The Forge's Director, Shanna Boland shares some things to think about when defining your category.

31/10/2023

VIDEO

How to create Demand Spaces: 1. Do I need Demand Spaces?

The Forge's Director, Danielle Todd explains the benefits of Demand Spaces and when they should be used.

31/10/2023

WHITEPAPER

Unleashing Innovation:
Take your FMCG innovation to the next level

Download this free whitepaper to learn how to sustainably grow your brand with an effective innovation strategy centred on future consumer value.

24/10/2023

ARTICLE

EVENT: Forging Perspectives on the climate emergency. ‘Transformative’, ‘inspirational’, ‘terrifying’.

The first in our series of events covering the big challenges affecting us. This one on the climate emergency included Rupert Read, Charmian Love, Hannah Robinson and was hosted by Simon Garnett of The Forge.

07/08/2023

ARTICLE

Making trends sticky: three billion media impressions and counting

When Unilever Food Solutions approached us to create a thought-leadership report that would raise brand awareness and, by exciting chefs about the opportunities offered by plant-based foods, help to move the world towards a more sustainable future, we were delighted to be involved.

07/08/2023

ARTICLE

Could this be why your attitudinal segmentation isn’t working… and is ‘reverse’ segmentation the answer?

We sometimes get to work with insight professionals who have been disappointed by previous investments in segmentation. We have a hypothesis about why this happens and, based on this, we’ve been using an approach – reverse segmentation – that reduces the risk and maximises the return.

12/04/2023

WHITEPAPER

Future Consumer Value:
Why anticipating needs is the only sustainable path to growth

11/02/2023

ARTICLE

How to get more from your Demand Spaces

In categories like FMCG, the uptake in demand spaces has been so near complete that clients are no longer asking how to create them but looking to understand how to get more out of them. We explore the options in the following article.

23/09/2022

ARTICLE

Better addressing identity

We recently worked with an FMCG client to understand how the attitudes, motivations and needs of a specific identity group influenced behaviour. The findings were not completely as expected.

16/06/2022

WHITEPAPER

Growth: Three Ways
Pt. 3 – Growth through Premiumisation

Download this whitepaper to learn how to unlock growth by premiumising your portfolio of brands, products and services.

11/05/2022

WHITEPAPER

Growth: Three Ways
Pt. 2 – How to grow through increasing Frequency

Download this whitepaper to learn how to unlock growth by increasing the frequency of purchase of your brands, products and services.

11/05/2022

WHITEPAPER

Growth: Three Ways
Pt. 1 – How to grow through increasing Penetration

Download this whitepaper to learn how to unlock growth by increasing the number of people that buy your portfolio of brands, products and services.

05/05/2022

WHITEPAPER

How to Create a Winning Customer Strategy

Download this whitepaper to learn how to unlock growth by creating value for your customers at every interaction they have with your brands.

17/11/2021

ARTICLE

Too Much Information, Not Enough Insight?

The rapid recent rise in online tools gives us information more quickly than ever before. So why then are we seeing more clients suffering from information-overload - more and more data with fewer and fewer insights?

29/10/2021

ARTICLE

Is There Still Demand for Demand Spaces?

Used correctly, Demand Spaces can be an incredibly effective tool. In this post, we’ll discuss what they are, how they are frequently misapplied, and how we might use them in the future.

29/06/2021

ARTICLE

Fewer, Bigger, Better. Why a Strategy is Your Best Tactic

Covid-19 accelerated changes in consumer behaviour; businesses have had to deal with all of this against a backdrop of fewer resources and significant cost pressures. How well they bounceback will depend on how well they can focus on a clear strategy.

23/03/2021

ARTICLE

How to Create a Customer Strategy in 8 Steps

Extracted from our whitepaper How to Create a Winning Customer Strategy, and brought to life with instructional how-to videos and examples from the world’s most famous brands, this blog sets out the 8 simple steps.

29/01/2021

ARTICLE

The Big Framework For Growth

The Forge's proprietary model, The Big Framework for Growth, is used to map changes occurring in your category. It helps you to understand where the opportunities are but also flags the risks and dangers to your business. Find out how to create and deploy one in your organisation here.

27/01/2021

ARTICLE

Divided by a Common Language. Why Fat Words Create Risk

When a business is working to multiple expressions of the same word it creates confusion, a lack of efficiency or a loss of effectiveness. We need to break down these broad concepts into meaningful expressions, before then going on to understand which ones are most relevant to us and to our consumers.

20/01/2021

ARTICLE

Half the Time. Half the Cost. Twice the Impact?

The proliferation of new insight tools has prompted massive changes to the research industry and to how organisations harness the power of insight. This plethora of tools has, understandably, led to an assumption that you can get more for less; you can spend half the time and half the money but get to answers that deliver twice the impact. Half the time? Definitely. Half the cost? Almost certainly. Twice the impact? Hmmm…

10/06/2019

ARTICLE

How and Why You Should be Thinking About Naturals

In the last 2 years we’ve barely worked on a project in retail or FMCG where the ‘naturals’ conversation wasn’t relevant. Even if you feel like your brand is far removed from this conversation currently, there are elements of ‘naturals’ narratives that you can leverage without feeling like you are creating dissonance in your brand story.

07/05/2019

ARTICLE

Demand Spaces – Blunt or Broken?

Demand Spaces are a useful tool to help understand a category and provide clarity on opportunity areas. So why are we working with so many clients who are finding that their Demand Space models are simply not helping in achieving their growth ambitions?

19/01/2017

ARTICLE

The Power of Raw Debriefs

How do you get information into a business in a way that makes sense, makes people think differently and gives them the confidence to make better decisions as a result? Answer: a sheet of Perspex.

19/01/2017

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