Recently, we published a blog post highlighting the importance of CPG brands identifying and segmenting their audience to maximize brand availability and reach in order to make the most of their marketing investments. Since we posted, our client conversations on this topic have exploded.   Understanding the changing Canadian landscape is becoming more challenging as the drivers of the changes are multifaceted. It’s also becoming much more expensive to really dive into the data, as Canada’s largest syndicated data provider has (apparently) announced double digit price increases.   

These conversations have motivated us to dig deeper into the extensive market research data that is available to us on demand. We have real-time access to the Numeris RTS survey (through the intellgentVIEW platform), almost 45,000 Canadians (45,000!!!) form the basis of the audience pool and we can delve into a vast array of topical subjects that are highly meaningful and relevant for CPG brands. These include (but are not limited to):

• Consumers focused on Nutrition, Health and Wellness (plant-based, free-from, organic) 
• Canadians motivated by Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility 
• Channel and Banner Shopping Preferences including eCommerce 
• Pet Ownership
• Attitudinal/Psychographic drivers including (but not limited to)
  • Brand Loyalists vs Switchers
  • Supporters of “Local”
  • Canadians who prioritize saving money over saving time (and vice versa)
  • Canadians who like to try new products  

Like you, the BSG team is highly inquisitive and we regularly attend thought-provoking webinars led by organizations like Caddle or by industry associations such as the CHFA and Plant-Based Foods of Canada. During a recent webinar reviewing Caddle’s findings on the Canadian plant-based foods consumer, there were a number of critical questions asked by attendees that could not be easily answered. Questions like (paraphrased):

• How much of a factor is ethnicity as it relates to plant-based foods consumption?
• How big of a driver is income in consumer engagement in these products? 
• Are food deserts negatively affecting the opportunity for Canadians to engage more easily into plant-based food and beverage products?  

Following this webinar, we got together as a team to discuss and realized that we had the ability to answer many of these questions. Leveraging the intelligentVIEW platform, we quickly built out an audience of Engaged Plant-Based Food/Beverage Consumers and ran the profile focusing on the Vancouver market as a test. Our target audience was based on 997 people in Vancouver, projected to represent 870,894 people (36% of the GVA). We were immediately able to see that:

• Ethnic engagement (purchasing and consumption) in Plant-Based Food/Beverage categories is extremely high in Vancouver, one of Canada’s most ethnically diverse cities. Chinese, South Asian and Filipino Canadians are some of the biggest and most well-developed groups.
• The averages mainly skew to high income, wealthy, well-educated, white collar consumers but there are some interesting exceptions that pop at the lower end of the income spectrum.
• Households with children just slightly edge out Singles as the largest “family structure” but those with the youngest kids over-indexed the most.
• We are still peeling back the layers on the food desert question, and we do have the ability to put these audiences down on the ground in Google Maps.
• Many of these metrics start to shift as we move from a city to a province, then again zoom out from a provincial to a national view.  

Knowing that we have access to this incredible Canadian consumer intelligence resource, we decided that we needed to make it more readily available and accessible to the market. So we made it happen! 

In our industry this is typically “planning season.”  Brands are working on formalizing their innovation and marketing plans, and customer and category teams are determining where and how to go to market while firming up their JBP’s with Canada’s largest retailers. We put our heads together and curated pre-defined, low cost, high-value audience insights packages that would resonate well given the dynamic nature of the Canadian market. We’re pleased to introduce our first five audiences:

1. Committed Green Consumers: Canadians who stand for green, believe it is important to buy from socially and environmentally responsible brands and are willing to pay more to do so.
2. Engaged Plant-Based Consumers: Canadians who regularly buy/consume plant-based food/beverage categories (weekly/biweekly/monthly). This audience will also be bolstered with data from Caddle for what we expect to be the most comprehensive view of Canadian Plant Based consumers (10,000+ Canadians).
3. Active Natural/Premium Grocery Shoppers: Canadians who regularly shop in banners like Whole Foods, Farm Boy, Organic Garage, Rachelle Béry, Urban Fare, Choices, Goodness Me, Community Natural (weekly/biweekly/monthly).
4. Frequent Convenience Store Shoppers: Canadians who most frequently shop in Convenience Stores (heavy and medium frequency shoppers).
5. Emerging Discount (Dollar Stores/Giant Tiger) Shoppers: Canadians who have shopped at both of these outlets either in-store or online in the past month and regularly shop at these banners (weekly/biweekly/monthly).

We’re excited to engage the industry with an innovative, timely and affordable option to enable all of us to stay on top of the trends. These audience packages are the first in what will be a regular cadence of insight reports that we will be running ongoing.

Our questions to you are: which audience(s) are you most interested in? What audience/consumer group(s) are you wondering about? Let us know and we can put our heads together on how to best provide you with a deeper understanding of who they are, how they live, where they shop and importantly, how best to reach them.     

As CPG brands continue to navigate the ever-shifting consumer and retail landscape, partnering with BritOn Solutions Group to leverage intelligentVIEW makes it easier than ever to understand how to identify and engage high-potential consumers and retailers with speed and precision.    

Read more about the new audience insights packages here or reach out to us directly at info@britonsg.com.

BritOn Solutions Group Inc. is a boutique sales and marketing consulting agency with advanced expertise in crafting comprehensive, multi-disciplinary strategies that deliver profitable revenue and growth for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies, brokers and retailers. Visit britonsg.com to learn more.