From Generic to Extraordinary

Co-authored by Dr. Constantinos Pantidos and Dr. M. Velissariou

For ingredient companies, one of the greatest opportunities for growth lies in moving beyond functional performance and technical specifications to become true strategic innovation partners to their customers. But doing so requires a way to connect what an ingredient does with what consumers ultimately feel, desire and choose.

This white paper, based on a fireside conversation between Dr. Constantinos Pantidos and Dr. M. Velissariou at IFT FIRST 2023, explores how food ingredients and packaging materials can be transformed from potentially interchangeable components into carriers of emotional meaning and distinctive consumer experiences.

At the center of the discussion is THE WHEEL OF MOTIVES®, a neurobiologically grounded system developed to decode the fundamental human motives underlying consumer choice. Rather than treating emotion as an abstract objective at the end of the innovation process, the methodology makes it operational: first defining the emotional territory that should shape strategy and positioning, and then translating it systematically into concepts, ingredients, formulations, textures, flavors, packaging, communications and other brand touchpoints.

This creates a two-way translation between meaning and materiality. A desired emotional experience can guide the selection and combination of ingredients, sensory properties and packaging cues; conversely, the neurological and sensory effects of ingredients can reveal the emotions, concepts and experiences they are capable of expressing.

The paper illustrates this through practical examples—from designing a deliberately unconventional snack around the motive of Defy, to understanding why the distribution of chocolate within a croissant can change the emotional journey of consumption. It also examines how this approach helped O-I move beyond selling glass packaging to capturing the emotional DNA of its customers’ brands in bottles and jars.

The implications for ingredient companies are significant. Vanilla no longer needs to compete simply as vanilla: depending on how it is used, it can become a precise vehicle for reassurance, nostalgia, indulgence or exoticism. Texture, flavor, shape, color and material can similarly become elements of an emotional language.

In this way, THE WHEEL OF MOTIVES® provides the bridge between consumer emotion, brand strategy and the physical design of the offer. Ingredient companies can move upstream in their clients’ innovation processes—helping determine not simply which ingredient to use, but what experience the brand should create and how that experience can be engineered into the product.

The result is a fundamentally different value proposition: from supplying ingredients to creating structured emotional experiences; from responding to briefs to shaping them; and from being a supplier to becoming an indispensable strategic innovation partner.

Read the original white paper below.