What Do French Press Coffee And Great Consumer Insights Have In Common?

There was something about watching our entire family of adult children, parents, and grandma enjoying French press coffee recently that got me thinking about the similarities between coffee made with a French press and great consumer insights.

You may be thinking it is a stretch, but give me a few minutes. If you have never made coffee with a French press, you should give it a go at your next opportunity. If you are not a coffee connoisseur, maybe a fantastic cup of tea is more to your liking, and some of the same comparisons for making the perfect cup of tea still apply. (Try to substitute the making of your perfect beverage in place of the French press coffee analogy below.)

If you are not terribly familiar with a French press, it is a device which uses the steeping method to brew rich, robust coffee. The French press brews coffee by adding coffee grounds and hot water into a cylindrical pot, then allowing the grounds to be submerged for a few minutes. Next, you utilize a mesh filter to push and hold the grounds on the bottom, while you pour the coffee from the pot.

French Press Coffee

If you are a coffee lover, it is generally a critical component of your morning. It’s something you enjoy and something you need to get you going in the morning, and perhaps to get you through the day.

Consumer Insights To Drive Strategy

To manage a successful business, you will need customer insights in order to inform the decisions that are being made on a daily basis regarding products, advertising, messaging, pricing, packaging, distribution, shelf displays, promotions, etc.

French Press Coffee

Without it, you could be…
Starting your day without a great combination of warm, creamy flavors and robust taste.
Starting your day without the optimal amount of caffeine to help your brain engage in the morning and take on the day’s challenges—which can be very difficult.

Consumer Insights To Drive Strategy

Without it, you could be…
Targeting the wrong audience and utilizing the wrong messaging, or perhaps missing a crucial part of the target audience.
Wasting R&D money and materials on products that are not most important to the key target audience.
Damaging your brand by introducing products that are less than optimal in terms of strategy and product formulation.
Pricing products at less than optimal price points that either alienate consumers with prices that are too high, or that leave extra money on the table that the customers are willing to pay.
Introducing a “drag” on your marketing efforts, which would allow multiple inefficiencies to slow the progress of your organization overall.

French Press Coffee

Besides the French press device itself, quality water and coffee beans are required. High-quality fresh water and high-quality freshly ground coffee beans which suit your taste in terms of darkness and roast are important. As soon as the coffee beans are ground, you should prepare the French press coffee, as quality starts to decline from the time the ground beans first encounter oxygen.

Consumer Insights To Drive Strategy

Many components are needed for great consumer insights—quality and fresh consumer observations brought to the business. This means the ideas need to fit the types of initiatives that the organization is working on for the future. If the planning components are not well done, the output of the consumer insights (and therefore, the strategic decisions) will be less than optimal.
You may ask yourself why the word “fresh” is important. The insights have to continue to be discovered and delivered to the organization, as we are living in an ever-evolving and quickly changing economy and marketplace. If the organization rests on the insights and “wins” of last year, those will surely not last, as the marketplace and competition, as well as consumer needs and demands, are changing at lightning speed. In addition, it would take multiple years to roll out initiatives; therefore, you have to identify the trends and be working on the solutions for two to three years in advance.

French Press Coffee

Now for the “steeping time,” where the hot water meets the ground coffee for the steeping process to begin. The more time the hot water and the coffee grounds are together, the deeper, fuller, and darker the coffee. This is the time before the “press” or “plunge” occurs.

Consumer Insights To Drive Strategy

The more time spent (“steeping” time) with the shoppers or customers, observing behavior, asking questions, etc., the more you will learn and the deeper your understanding of your key target audiences will be. This can include shop-alongs with consumers, watching them prepare meals with their families at home (ethnography), seeing pictures and video of storage areas of their homes, etc. This time can be spent studying photos, videos, statistical analyses, tabulations, charts, and graphs.

French Press Coffee

As previously mentioned, the French press uses a mesh screen to filter out the larger coffee grounds, leaving you with a nice, smooth cup of coffee that is fuller- bodied and that brings out the sweet flavor profiles of the coffee beans. (This stainless steel screen filtering method is more pure than filtering the coffee through a paper filter, like many Mr. Coffee-type machines or other Keurig-type cups, in my non-expert opinion.)

Consumer Insights To Drive Strategy

A similar process is done with consumer insights in both qualitative and quantitative research. You are gathering a lot of data and you have to “filter” out the pieces already known, or that are less meaningful, to find the true consumer insights that will lead to great strategic decisions for the organization. During this stage, consumer insights experts are sifting through videos, tabulations, statistical trends, etc. to find the true nuggets that could help increase business.

French Press Coffee

French press coffee is as much a “science” (including the chemical reaction when the ground beans meet the hot water for the steeping), as it is an “art.” The science exists when all the variables converge, including the temperature for preheating the pot, the temperature of the water, the coarseness of the grounds, and the amount of time that the water and grounds are together before you slowly plunge the coffee grounds down. Then, you have your French press coffee. The science also exists as you experiment to find your favorite cup of coffee, which can come from the right degree of coarseness of grounds, temperature of water, and time before you plunge the grounds down, etc. The coffee journey continues as you find all your favorite places and ways to enjoy your favorite French press cup, which is more the “art” of the experience.

Consumer Insights To Drive Strategy

Consumer insights is a blend of “science” and “art.”
There is significant science behind the methods selected to explore the business issue at hand. In addition, science occurs when we are selecting the appropriate target audience and recruiting them for qualitative interviews or focus groups, or for online or telephone interviews. The sampling techniques and procedures are all science-based, as are the advanced analytics tools that are frequently used for segmentation, pricing analyses, shelf-set displays for retailers, and analyses of tabulation and statistical data for reporting and providing recommendations.
The art comes into play when we are visually displaying data in a compelling way, telling a story about the shopper or the consumer, or editing videos to help demonstrate the key findings of all the research. This dynamic continues to evolve and change as the executive team regularly communicates the findings internally within an organization.

May you find your best cup of coffee, tea, or whatever makes you happy! May you have a wonderful year with consumer insights leading you to great strategic decisions!

I would love to hear your favorite consumer insight of the past year (if it can be shared) and your preferred cup of coffee or tea! Feel free to reply here or send me a message on LinkedIn or email.

Author

Bonnie Janzen

President

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She drives growth for client companies by leveraging strategic consumer insights, innovation, and analytics to shape impactful marketing campaigns and new product development programs. Her consulting expertise includes guiding clients through new business concepts, mergers and acquisitions, including global expansion. She is particularly passionate about advertising and messaging research and plays a key role in the company's strategic direction.

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