Andrew Wiseman returns to Greggs to consider why the new Steak & Stilton Bake feels like a very different kind of innovation, and what it can teach us about familiarity, risk, consumer behaviour and getting people to try something new.
A few months ago, I wrote about the Greggs chicken roll. My conclusion, after eventually tracking one down and eating it, was that it was a bit weird. Not horrible. Not inedible. Just weird enough that I haven’t felt any great urge to have another one.
It led me to write about the dangers of apparently logical innovation. Chicken is having a massive moment, pastry is quite clearly something Greggs knows a thing or two about, so putting the two together makes perfect sense on paper. It just didn’t particularly make sense to me when I ate it.
Fast forward a few months and Greggs has rather inconveniently launched another new product, meaning that I’m in danger of becoming some sort of self-appointed pastry correspondent.
This time it’s the Steak & Stilton Bake. Naturally, I had to have one.
There was much less trepidation this time around. Steak and Stilton is a combination that needs very little explanation. Greggs already has the Steak Bake, which has been around since approximately the dawn of time, and those of us of a certain vintage might also remember the old Steak & Cheese Roll.
So while the Steak & Stilton Bake is new, it doesn’t really feel that new. More importantly, it was bloody lovely.
Slightly hotter than the surface of the sun when I first bit into it, admittedly, but delicious nonetheless. Rich, cheesy, unmistakably Stilton-y without completely overpowering the steak. Unlike the chicken roll, there was no moment where I found myself wondering exactly what it was I was eating. It just worked.
Why familiar innovation can be easier to choose
This made me consider the other side of the innovation argument. We can become slightly obsessed with newness. New products have to be different. Distinctive. Disruptive. Ideally something nobody else has thought of before.
Except sometimes the cleverest innovation is much simpler than that. Take something people already know and like, change it enough to make it interesting, but not so much that you lose the thing they liked in the first place.
The Steak & Stilton Bake does exactly that. You don’t need to explain the concept. You don’t need to educate people about how or when to eat it. If you like a Steak Bake and you like Stilton, there’s a pretty decent chance you’ll look at it and think: go on then.
Reducing the risk of trying something new
There’s another bit I really like too. Greggs is offering a guarantee with the launch. Try the Steak & Stilton Bake and, if you don’t like it, they’ll swap it for a regular Steak Bake. That might seem like a bit of promotional fluff, but I think it’s quite clever.
Trying something new always carries a little bit of risk. Not massive, life-changing risk, obviously. We’re talking about a Greggs bake, not remortgaging the house. That said, you’ve still got to give up something you know you like and spend your money on something you might not. The guarantee takes that away.
You can try the new thing safe in the knowledge that, if Stilton in your Steak Bake turns out to be an appalling mistake, your old faithful is waiting for you. It also feels like quite a confident thing for Greggs to do. Presumably they don’t expect thousands of people to take one bite, recoil in horror and demand their Steak Bake back.
Therein lies the important lesson. Good innovation doesn’t always have to ask people to make a massive leap. Sometimes it just needs to give them enough of what they already know, with enough that’s different to make it worth trying.
What does this mean for innovation research?
Innovation research has a role here too. Not simply asking whether people like an idea, but understanding how far you can stretch something familiar before it stops feeling right. What absolutely has to stay? What can you change? What creates interest rather than uncertainty? What might persuade somebody to switch from their usual?
The guarantee tackles that last question beautifully. It doesn’t make the new product better. It just makes choosing it easier.
I still stand by what I wrote about the chicken roll. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Perhaps the Steak & Stilton Bake adds the other half of the argument.
Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent anything at all. You just need to know what people already love, what you can do with it, and give them a good enough reason to try it. Although preferably after it’s cooled down for five minutes.
At Mustard
We help brands make better decisions about innovation, from identifying the opportunities worth pursuing to developing concepts, testing propositions and understanding what will genuinely persuade people to try something new. Because successful innovation isn’t always about finding the biggest idea. Sometimes it’s about knowing exactly how far to move from what already works.
If you’re developing a new product, proposition or service and want to understand what will genuinely make the difference, get in touch. We’ll help you identify the opportunities worth pursuing, test the ideas that matter and understand what will get people to choose something new.