Case study

Grounding Innovation In Truth — A Global Segmentation Across 27 Countries

Company

Whole Earth Brands

Industry

FMCG

Challenge

Anchoring a fast-moving innovation pipeline in concrete consumer understanding across global markets

Impact

White spaces identified and sized across 27 countries - portfolio mapped to demand moments and typologies for sharper innovation and renovation decisions

Whole Earth Brands is among the fastest-moving innovation companies encountered in the industry — a business with the rare ability to translate ideas into market reality at pace. The team arrived with a clear and sophisticated objective: to ensure that innovation velocity was matched by the depth of consumer understanding underpinning it.

The mandate was to build a global segmentation framework that would serve as the strategic foundation for innovation and renovation decisions across the brand's international portfolio.

The challenge

Speed is an asset, only when pointed in the right direction

The pace of innovation at Whole Earth Brands was a genuine competitive strength. The opportunity was to channel that strength more precisely, ensuring that future innovation and renovation decisions were anchored not in assumption, but in a concrete, globally consistent understanding of who the consumer is, what occasions drive their choices, and where the portfolio had room to grow.

With a footprint spanning markets across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, the complexity of the task was matched only by its importance. A framework was needed that could hold across 27 countries while remaining specific enough to drive real decisions at the brand and portfolio level.

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The solution

A global framework. A precise foundation.

A comprehensive consumer segmentation study was designed and executed, arriving at a clear, actionable definition of the key consumer typologies and demand moments that shape category behaviour across global markets. The work moved beyond demographic categorisation into the motivations, occasions, and needs that actually drive consumption decisions.

From that foundation, a deliberate prioritisation was made: identifying the core target typologies and the most strategically relevant demand moments to serve as the primary lens for all future development work. This gave the organisation a shared language and a clear hierarchy of focus across markets.

White spaces were identified across all 27 countries. Each opportunity sized and evaluated for its strategic attractiveness. The portfolio was then mapped across demand moments and consumer typologies, bringing into sharp relief where the brand was well-positioned, where gaps existed, and where the greatest potential for innovation and renovation lay.

The outcome was a globally coherent, locally nuanced strategic platform; precise enough to make choices, robust enough to sustain them.

Results

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