Herta — Finding the Friction Points No Survey Could See
Herta is a well-established Nestlé food brand known for pizza dough and charcuterie. When loyalty metrics began showing early signs of dip, the challenge wasn't the product quality — it was something happening at home, in the kitchen, during actual use.
The Challenge: Understand What Surveys Can't Capture
Standard consumer surveys and focus groups kept coming back with vague answers. Customers were frustrated but couldn’t articulate exactly why. We needed to observe the real behavior — not the reported one. The mandate was to go into consumers’ homes and see what was actually happening.
My Approach: Ethnographic Observation + Rapid Fix
I designed a series of in-home ethnographic observations — watching real consumers prepare Herta products in their own kitchens, without prompts. This method revealed three specific moments of failure that surveys had completely missed: small handling errors in how consumers interacted with the packaging that led directly to frustration and product waste.
From these observations, I ran collaborative workshops with R&D and Marketing to translate the insights into rapid prototypes: simple packaging changes and instruction improvements that could be implemented quickly without reformulating the product.
Results
3 critical failure points identified and solved
all invisible to standard survey methods
Targeted packaging and instruction changes implemented
with minimal development cost
Insight delivered without a major product reformulation
a direct protection of R&D budget
“The most expensive consumer insight is the one you skip. When someone stops buying your product, they rarely call to explain why. Observation — real, messy, in-home observation — is how you find out.”
Amandine Devergies
