Bear Brand — 2 Products in 6 Months Across 3 Continents
Bear Brand is a Nestlé nutrition brand with strong equity in affordable dairy products, primarily sold in Asia, Africa, and South America. The project brief was to rejuvenate the brand with new product formats that could deliver genuine nutritional value at price points accessible to consumers in markets with very different economic realities.
The Challenge: Fast Insight Across Very Different Markets, Simultaneously
This was a project management challenge as much as an innovation challenge. Running three simultaneous market explorations — Asia, Africa, South America — each with different consumer realities, infrastructure constraints, and cultural codes, while maintaining alignment with a global team and hitting a tight timeline, required exceptional coordination.
My Approach: Deep Local Listening + Structured Parallel Execution
I designed a structured parallel exploration framework: three market teams running simultaneously, each using the same core methodology (observation, food diaries, consumer journey mapping, expert interviews) but calibrated to local realities. I coordinated across all three in real time — ensuring consistent standards while allowing local teams to adapt their findings.
Throughout, I maintained a clear global project roadmap that allowed leadership to track progress, compare insights across markets, and make investment decisions with confidence. The discipline of parallel execution, rather than sequential, was the key to achieving the 6-month timeline.
Results
2 market-ready products kicked off
within a 6-month window
3 parallel exploration projects successfully managed
and coordinated globally
Rigorous consumer-tested concepts developed
using deep local insight in each market
“Running parallel projects is not about doing more things at once — it’s about designing a coordination structure that makes complexity manageable. The framework is the product.”
Amandine Devergies
