According to Delicious, “The new Shapes Flavour Shakers allow you to sprinkle the flavour of Barbecue Shapes on absolutely everything from hot chips to peanuts and popcorn.”
Shapes Brand Manager Alice Johnson says, “Shapes consumers are very passionate about the leftover flavouring in the bottom of the box, we found that 62% say they find a way to use it.”
We suspect this is a well-executed Façade Pretotype. It’s presented as a limited offer and has great messaging if you miss out: ‘We’re sorry, but this offer was too
good to last! Watch this space for more flavourful ideas soon!’
What works well here is the bravery and commitment to running a quality experiment. Placing this new product as a highlight on the main brand page takes some actual doing in most businesses. The CTA is direct, and the offer is real but contained to get data vs opinion.
I’d also love to know what the XYZ Hypothesis is — what does ‘good’ look like for the experiment? What is the go/no-go decision point?
What are the takeaways?
Always present your experiment as real, not as ‘coming soon’ or ‘express your interest’.
Respect your customers but don’t be afraid to run these experiments. Remember, no experiments, no learning. Giving away a small sample is great as you’re fulfilling your customer promise, and the messaging of “We’re sorry, but this offer was too good to last! Watch this space for more flavourful ideas soon!” is on point.
Make your offer look and feel as real as possible. Experiments must look believable and high quality but not too perfect and over-engineered. Speed to data matters!
In the field
We recently worked with Reece Plumbing to embed our Experimentation Framework (EXF) to help their teams increase their experiment velocity and drive up the number of experiments. Alan Sharvin, who leads the team, shared that the main benefit of increasing their experiment velocity is that “we’ve been able to validate and have confidence on what to continue with. We gather the data we need quickly, get closer to our customers, and have a lot more confidence in what we invest in. There has been a lot of celebrating, and we are genuinely happy when we find out something that we shouldn’t do!”
Understanding that experimentation is a journey over time like any other process or change is key to getting the results we’re looking for — money saved, risk averted and investing in the good stuff!
One thing
Still true in 2022, still true forever!
From a Jeff Bezos Shareholder letter in 2013, via this tweet.
Reece is an Australian success story that has been innovating since its humble beginnings. Founded over 100 years ago, the company began by selling things out of the back of a ute. Now it’s a six-billion-dollar business with an international name and hundreds of stores Australia-wide. Read more.
Join our pretotyping Slack community
Our community is full of innovators from around the world – join us to ask questions, share ideas, and learn from the best.
