Andresy bets on customer experience … in the marmalades business

I met at SIAL 2012 with Laure Cassan, the energetic CEO of Andresy Confitures, a 50-employee family SME located east of Paris.

Laure was kind enough to give me an overview of her products, one of which had been awarded a SIAL innovation prize.

I was especially interested in the gourmet marmelades that were launched under the brand “instants gourmands” (“gourmet moments”). In this product category consumers are used to shop by taste (apricot, cherries, strawberry, … you name it). This is not the path that was followed by Andresy this time. As in many SMEs the innovation process is in first instance a valuation process of internal ideas. Andresy is no exception to that rule and that’s how they gave birth to a product line which revolves around the different moments of the day when marmalade is used.
The Andresy team noticed that consumers are not alike when it goes to eating marmalade. Some people like it for breakfast, other eat it with yogurts, still other in the afternoon when children come back from school.

Different recipes where therefore developed to fit these different moments of consumption.

My take :

What Andresy did (consciously or unconsciously, this is not the point), was to carefully look at the “touchpoints” different segments of consumers may have with their products. They also succeeded in breaking usual marketing patterns and in particular product categorization by taste.  I can’t say whether they will be encounter an above-average success with their product range, but what I can say is that it’s a very clever job from a marketing viewpoint. It’s actually the kind of innovation that exemplifies what a customer experience approach can bring. Well done!