Wrigley's extraordinary market position in confectionery masked a strategic risk: core category growth was structurally limited. Breaking through to adjacent categories required a mindset transformation — from protecting category leadership to pursuing adjacent innovation with the same rigor applied to core business.
Vivaldi used consumer ethnography and deep brand equity analysis to map adjacent territories where Wrigley's brand promise and distribution muscle could be leveraged. The process generated four breakthrough concepts that tested strongly with consumers and represented genuine category entry opportunities.
Two of the four concepts advanced to test market, with one ultimately rolled out commercially. The program delivered a projected +10% year-over-year growth contribution and fundamentally changed how Wrigley's leadership team approached innovation strategy.
Wrigley partnered with Vivaldi to break through its category leadership constraints by reframing innovation from defensive protection of core gum to active pursuit of adjacent growth. Vivaldi’s consumer ethnography and brand equity work generated four breakthrough concepts, two of which advanced to test market and one rolled out commercially, delivering a projected 10% year-over-year growth contribution and reshaping how Wrigley’s leadership approached innovation strategy.
The Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company is the world’s largest manufacturer and marketer of chewing gum, with iconic brands including Orbit, Extra, Doublemint, and Juicy Fruit. Founded in Chicago in 1891, Wrigley held a dominant 64% global market share at the time of this engagement. The company was acquired by Mars, Inc. in 2008 in a $23 billion transaction.
Vivaldi used consumer ethnography and brand equity analysis to identify four breakthrough concepts in adjacent categories where Wrigley’s brand promise and distribution strength could carry. Two of the four advanced to test market, one was rolled out commercially, and the program delivered a projected 10% year-over-year growth contribution that broke the structural ceiling in core chewing gum.
Ethnography revealed how Wrigley’s brand promise actually functioned in consumers’ lives across moments and occasions, not just product categories, which exposed adjacent territories where the brand could plausibly extend. The brand equity analysis then filtered those territories to the ones where Wrigley had a credible right-to-win, which is what separated breakthrough opportunities from generic line extensions.
Dominant brands are organizationally wired to protect existing share, which produces incremental innovation aimed at fending off competitors rather than creating new categories. Breakthrough work requires the leadership team to apply the same rigor and investment to adjacent categories that they apply to defending the core, and that shift is harder culturally than it sounds because every quarter the core still produces most of the revenue.
The work moved Wrigley’s leadership from treating innovation as a defensive expansion of the core to treating it as a discrete capability with its own concept gates, success metrics, and investment cadence. The funnel logic of four concepts to two test markets to one rollout became a repeatable shape rather than a one-time program, which changed how the company allocated resources to white-space exploration going forward.