Put yourself in your customers’ shoes… and solve their problems!

If you want to change the world, you have to throw a better party than those destroying it. In a similar vein, if we want to make an impact on food waste, our products need to be better than all the alternatives, attracting customers to our party, not theirs.

For-purpose brands need people to buy their products, otherwise they can’t achieve any of their goals. Therefore, we work hard to ensure we don’t make any sacrifices on taste, usability, consistency and ingredients.

Taste is, of course, the most important factor. No one can win share without a fantastic-tasting product. Our approach is to continuously interact with our target audience (from kids to university students and Heinz fanatics) to guide us to taste perfection. And (not to brag) the proof is in the pudding: we have several Great Taste awards.

However, another important area for our category is usability. Rubies stubbornly stuck to glass bottles as the obvious and preferred sustainability choice for a long time. We battled appealing to young families or large ketchup consumers who enjoyed the ease of a squeeze.

With 96% of the ketchup market in squeezy bottle format, we decided to undertake an 18-month project to create our 100% recycled and recyclable plastic squeezy bottle to be able to compete side by side with the leading brand.

Our most recent change has been to our mayonnaise recipe. With the majority of our vegan mayo sales in out-of-home settings, a lot of our customers were looking for allergen-free products to make it easy on their menus. Therefore, we reformulated our recipe to remove allergens (mustard and garlic).

This was a significant change for us, but being nimble enough to cater to the needs of your customer base is a great way to outmanoeuvre a rival brand and unlock a wider audience.

If you can solve a problem for a buyer or consumer – tasting superior in a category, being easier to use, ticking sustainability goals or simplifying menus with allergen-free products – you can win the sale. It’s all about addressing their needs and solving problems.

So get in the shoes of your customer and solve their problems. Make consumers not just switch to your brand but stick to your brand. For me, the best way to do this is by meeting them, speaking with them and getting into their psyche.