Our Top Ideas for Innovation in 2025
In the world of advertising, Promotion is often one of the most talked-about of the 4 Ps of marketing. At System1, we’re no strangers to celebrating the campaigns that successfully promote brands. But today we’re taking a closer look at the incredible world of Product.
New Product Development (NPD) drives brands forward (Nerds Gummy Clusters anyone?!), gets them talked about among consumers and, with the help of Promotion, creates a reason for a consumer to seek out the brand assuming Price and Place are not a hindrance. After all, the 4 Ps require careful consideration and balance.
We’re such big fans of Product that we launched Test Your Innovation to help brands refine and launch their best ideas. With a new year underway, we’re exploring some innovation trends that we want to see more of and offering up some tips for marketers and R&D teams to consider in the hopes of making their new product launches a success.
Top Trends for Innovation
So, without further ado, here’s what we’d love to see in the world of innovation in 2025.
- Culturally Relevant Collaborations
From Barbie in 2023 to Wicked in 2024, we’ve seen some pretty epic brand collaborations alongside the year’s biggest films, not to mention all the brands saying ‘bonjour’ to Emily in Paris tie-ins. With more brands leaning into major cultural moments, how can you stand out?
First, there’s the all-important step of making sure that the collaboration is the right fit for your brand. Some, like Duolingo, are comfortable aligning themselves with the horror show Squid Games. But that doesn’t mean the content is the right fit for everyone. Mattel’s Wicked fashion dolls are a perfect example of thoughtful consideration for a partner.
Additionally, new innovations should have a strong tie to the source material, leveraging character IP, distinctive colors and familiar themes. Too loose of a connection and you’re unlikely to capture the fervent attention of fans.
Furthermore, the product should make sense within your wider portfolio. Perhaps you go the route of re-releasing a popular product with updated branding and packaging. Or launch an extension of your line that naturally fits within your offerings. Both are great options for ensuring that audiences will readily accept the product.
- Adhering to the “80:20 Rule”
In founder John Kearon’s book, System1: Unlocking Profitable Growth, he introduces the 80:20 rule as a reminder for innovators to “delight, not disrupt.” System1’s extensive ideas testing reveals that the biggest difference between those that score well with consumers (predicting greater in-market potential) compared to those that don’t score highly, is the number and percentage of people feeling happiness towards the idea.
In some cases, brands will lean into shock value to drive interest. This can be a useful strategy for limited-edition products, like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese flavored ice cream or Lay’s x IHOP syrupy pancake-flavored chips. But to sustain lasting interest among consumers, the perfect balance is 80% Happiness and 20% Surprise. Successful innovation evokes positive feeling, but the type of feeling elicited matters.
OREO is a brand that has mastered the 80:20 rule, releasing new iterations of their famous cookies. Sometimes these are entirely new flavors, returning seasonal favorites or collaborations with Pokémon or Super Mario. Nerds Gummy Clusters are another success story – they leverage existing familiarity with Nerds and add a new gummy element to the recipe. Launched in 2020, Gummy Clusters surpassed $500 million in sales in 2024.
- Luxury and Accessible Brands Uniting
Some of the most interesting product collaborations are a mix of high and low. Recently, ready-to-wear fashion brand Tibi (a designer brand) partnered with L.L. Bean (a more affordable brand) for a reimagining of its boat tote, which has been around since the 80s and has seen a resurgence in interest among younger generations. Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS brand is also a fan of this approach, with collaborations with Swarovski and Dolce&Gabbana. H&M and Target have also historically found success with this approach, bringing designer fashion houses in for limited-edition collaborations, often fashion and home goods.
Innovation testing can help uncover price sensitivity, which is particularly essential when two major brands are bringing the worlds of luxury and economical goods together. Getting feedback from consumers on the optimal price point can ensure long-term success. While limited-edition drops may opt for slightly higher prices given pent up demand for a hard-to-get item, long-term collaborations may want to have a less aggressive pricing structure.
- Authentic Flavors Expanding their Audiences
Recently, Lindt announced that its latest offering, Dubai chocolate bars, would be available at its NYC flagship and that the brand was considering making the product more widely available. Lindt rightly credited the creator of Dubai chocolate, baker Sarah Hamouda, in its announcement, citing an interest in bringing “Dubai-inspired flavors and textures” to the US, with its own special recipe. They’re certainly not the first brand to capitalize on growing interest in global flavors. In 2024, Lay’s, which has a long tradition of flavor innovation, released its Tzatziki (Greece), Masala (India) and Honey Butter (Korea) chips.
When bringing flavors that are so entrenched in cultural traditions to new or wider audiences, there are numerous considerations. Have you preserved authenticity? Is there enough interest and understanding of the product and its flavors among the masses? How do you best communicate the flavor profile to those who may have never tried it?
Pre-testing your innovation can help you get a pulse on the sales potential of the idea in the country or countries where you’d like to market the product. It can also uncover deeper insights around perceived taste, identify the groups the product appeals to most, highlight implicit attributes and offer recommendations for improvement.
- Thoughtful Influencer Launches
Despite TikTok’s looming US ban, influencers will continue to have an impact on culture and consumerism. In fact, Alex Cooper, host of Call Her Daddy, the most-listened to podcast by women, is kicking off the year with Unwell Hydration, a new electrolyte-infused drink in partnership with Nestlé.
There’s been an undeniable rise in influencer-backed brands coming to market, some more successful than others. In 2025, we’d love to see more thoughtful influencer collaborations, even if it means fewer influencer launches. Consumers can see through inauthenticity, calling attention to blatant cash grabs and products that don’t deliver on quality.
Before aligning with influencers, brands should carefully consider whether they’re the right fit for them and their audience. Ideally, the influencer will appeal to the existing customer base and attract new buyers. Innovation testing allows brands to test a range of different influencers to get feedback on who would provide the greatest sales opportunity.
Emotion is at the Heart of Innovation Success
Brands are constantly innovating in order to maintain consumer interest, create additional revenue streams and better position themselves in the market. This can range from NPD to revamping logos, introducing new brand characters or updating packaging to better promote a product. Unfortunately, the majority of new innovations fail to succeed.
How can brands get a better read on whether an innovation will resonate with consumers, and whether key elements of promotion (like packaging, logos, taglines or characters) are well-positioned to drive interest in the brand and its products?
System1’s Test Your Innovation platform recognizes the important role that emotion plays in building mental availability for brands and driving purchasing decisions. After all, the more people, the more they buy.
Our testing gets to the heart of three key areas tied to innovation success:
- Emotional Pull: Using our FaceTrace® tool, we measured the emotional resonance of each activation, capturing how effectively it connects with consumers on a personal and emotional level. After all, feelings drive festive cheer!
- Share Trading: We asked consumers whether they’d metaphorically “buy” or “sell” the idea, giving us clear insights into their enthusiasm for the activation and its alignment with their preferences and behaviours.
- Decision Speed: By tracking how quickly and instinctively consumers engaged with each concept, we uncovered how natural and immediate their reactions were. Faster responses indicated genuine enthusiasm, while slower ones revealed hesitations.
Want to see how innovation testing can support NPD and refining logos, taglines, packaging, concepts and more in 2025? System1’s Test Your Innovation platform helps brands predict and improve the in-market potential of their ideas.
