Activate It Early

Overview

Activate It Early helps you identify early-stage concepts with the best in-market potential and make them better. Nuanced strategic guidance, category benchmarks, and industry-leading target audience identification let you prioritize early concepts and allocate resources more effectively. AI-powered concept optimization and rich diagnostics like open-ended feedback, heatmaps, and System 1 emotional reactions, help you optimize the strongest ones.

Tailored to industry specifics.

Available for: Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) and Quick Service Restaurants (QSR).

AI Quick Reports are available for Activate It Early

Testing Process


Evaluation	Monadic concept test measuring growth potential of early-stage concepts
Metrics	Comprehensive KPI set, including concept classification by Trial and Breakthrough Potential, tailored to industry specifics
Sample default	200 broad category users — unlocks a broad, targeted sample to assess the overall opportunity per brand growth principles
Analysis	Side-by-side testing or robust benchmarking analysis
Diagnostics	Rich open-ended feedback: auto-coded theming for likes/dislikes, heatmaps, attributes assessment, and emotional assessment via System 1 emojis

Stimuli Guidelines

Every Activate It Early concept should include four key elements:

Product/pack/feature visualization — a rough design or sketch is fine
Brand name and logo — important context that influences decision-making
Bite-sized description — reflects how people actually consume information (more engaging than long-form concepts). Keep it conversational and focused on what matters, including a benefit statement plus emotional and rational justification
Product specifications — flavors, variants, features, sizes/servings (weight or volume), ingredients, where it can be purchased, and price

Note on pricing: For priced concepts, price exposure is introduced later in the survey and should not be included in the stimuli itself. For unpriced concepts, respondents are instead asked about concept premiumness.

A full explanation of all stimuli and inputs is available in the Methodology Guide (page 11).

Questionnaire Flow

Concept testing varies by organization and industry. Activate It Early offers three standard variants:

Fast Moving Consumer Goods
Quick Service Restaurants
Quick Service Restaurants – Offers

See the Methodology Guide for the high-level questionnaire flow.

Analysis

Key Measures

Trial — scaled Purchase Likelihood
Breakthrough — average of Distinctiveness & Advantage
Priced concept purchase likelihood or Premiumness
Concept diagnostics

Choosing a Benchmark

Three benchmarking approaches are available to assess how your concept stacks up against the competition:

Approach	Best for	Minimum concepts
Normative benchmarks	Broad view of how consumers rate your concept vs. a wide range of category/country products	20 concepts
User-defined (tagged) benchmarks	Precise view vs. close-in competitors or other products in your own portfolio	5 concepts (recommended)
Direct benchmarks	Statistical significance testing to directly compare two or more concepts tested together	2+ concepts (tested together)

Activate It Curated Norm is also available for normative benchmarking.

Concept Classification Framework

All concepts are classified into one of five "buckets" based on two key measures: Trial Potential and Breakthrough Potential.

Scale and Sustain

Strong potential for scale among category consumers — prioritize these. Develop full articulation and further research to confirm commercial viability. With strong potential among Early Adopters: prioritize and act quickly, before the window to be a pioneer with this concept closes.

Short Term Trial

High competitive trial potential, but not innovative enough in the category context to sustain excitement long-term. Develop further to capture short-term revenue where trial matters more than long-term potential. With strong potential among Early Adopters: Early Adopters see more breakthrough potential here than category consumers do, develop further and consider how to extend that perception to a wider audience.

Seed and Grow

Breakthrough potential with more modest trial. Consider a slower or alternative growth approach — different routes to market, limited distribution, or test-and-learn. With strong potential among Early Adopters: their response confirms the breakthrough potential — capitalize quickly at smaller scale via alternative routes to market, limited distribution, or test-and-learn.

Emergent

Strong ability to drive distinction and advantage perceptions, but low trial — suggesting an early signal of breakthrough innovation. Monitor and reassess in the near future. With strong potential among Early Adopters: on-trend potential is emerging among this group — consider developing at a smaller scale to explore the opportunity.

Rework

Moderate-to-low breakthrough and trial potential among total category consumers. Investigate potential among specific Audience Profiles, rework and retest, or deprioritize. With strong potential among Early Adopters: explore further potential among this group to confirm the trend, and consider moving to a "Seed and Grow" approach if confirmed.

About Early Adopters: consumers who try new products/services when first available, faster than the average person. Concepts with "Strong Potential with Early Adopters" resonate with these behaviors, helping you spot breakthrough innovation you might otherwise deprioritize.

More detail: Understanding the Concept Quadrant Chart.

Key Concept Performance Indicators

The Key Concept Performance Indicator chart shows Top 2 Box calculations. Each measure maps to a specific survey question. Use the chart page's configuration sidebar to adjust scale display, profile/subgroup, and chart type.