Home delivery services rapidly transform consumer habits, making FMCG companies face new opportunities and challenges in capturing customers. Companies like Unilever are exploring innovative ways to meet these evolving demands.
Recognizing the potential to expand its desserts portfolio in this dynamic space, Unilever partnered with us to redefine how their products reach customers online, and prove to the organisation that all you need, is an idea, a team, and a few weeks of time.
Key Challenge
With the growing demand for home delivery foods, Unilever wanted to build a scalable, direct-to-consumer model for ice cream sales. Initial tests through food delivery platforms showed potential, but operational, promotional, and product strategy questions remained. How could the model be optimized to achieve significant business impact and expansion?
Approach
To tackle these challenges, our team stopped thinking and started acting, entrepreneurially. We launched our own small-scale online "Dessert Shop" to conduct research, run small-scale experiments and gather real-world data on customer behavior. The data included conversion rates, drop-offs and click patterns.
This unbiased, real-world environment showed us what actually improves sales.
From this data, we could map a detailed customer journey, both online and offline, for ordering ice cream. We found the best-performing products and combinations and optimized the conversion rates for online channels like social media ads and search engine advertising (SEA).
The optimized online store became the model for scaling the new strategy to other geographies.
Outcomes
The “Dessert Shop” model was rolled out across 8 key markets, backed by a practical playbook guiding future expansion. Our experimental approach generated powerful insights, leading to the development of a refined digital customer journey and an optimal mix of forms and flavors.
Feel like having a dessert? Surely by now you can get instant ice cream in a few minutes - no shoes required.
Project Highlights
You can't set up a store without products, and your cant deliver without delivery. For those that wondered about the back-end beyond the digital platforms: our office fridge filled with all our favorite flavors, and our team delivered orders around Amsterdam by bike in shifts. Not a bad deal in summer!
Services in this project
Business
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