Capturing the imagination of home-starters' in 3 pilot markets.

Depending on your algorithm, your social media might be filled with an endless stream of DIY and home renovation content. As a result, the Direct-To-Consumer (D2C) online paint market in EMEA is an emerging space, particularly appealing to younger adults and starters, who prioritize brand alignment and online convenience.

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Key Challenge

AkzoNobel’s key challenge was navigating the highly competitive D2C market. They recognized the necessity to explore different positioning of sub brands to compete with new, agile entrants. This project aimed to test three distinct brand concepts, identifying the strongest option to bring to life in pilot markets with confidence.

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Approach

To systematically validate the brand concepts, our team set-up and led a four-sprint experimentation track. This provided real-time insights to inform decisions at each stage as we filtered, mixed and matched brand properties towards a final blend.

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Digital expertise was brought in to help reach the target audience in different pilot markets. By combining deep consumer insights with quantitative performance testing, the team was able to validate and discard elements of each concept on a local level, and frame these results in relation to local European online purchasing behaviour.

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Throughout each sprint, cross-functional sessions ensured that AkzoNobel teams were aligned and engaged in the process, promoting buy-in and collaborative momentum.

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"It was a really good project. What we really appreciate is the fact that there were constructive challenges as well from the team."

• - AkzoNobel Sr. Commercial Marketing Manager

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Outcomes

AkzoNobel successfully selected and optimized a winning brand concept that not only resonated with the target market demographics and geographies, but also outperformed competitor brands in key performance metrics. Through structured iteration, the final brand concept offered a refined positioning and clearer understanding of customer-aligned values, priming it for a strong market debut.

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Project Highlights

Innovation isn’t just about generating new ideas; it’s also about knowing when to let them go. A memorable highlight from this project was the decision to “kill a darling”—one of the three brand concepts that initially seemed to hold strong potential. The concept was popular among both the designers and the AkzoNobel team, standing out as distinctive and modern.

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Early qualitative testing echoed this excitement, but when it came to quantitative results, the data told a different story: consumers made other choices when it mattered. While challenging, this decision to let go underscored the strength of a mature innovation process, where data-driven insights take precedence over personal preference.

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