This is the story about how, as Sr. Marketing and Innovation Manager, I meticulously crafted Ambev's 10-year business and marketing strategy into a comprehensive innovation portfolio roadmap covering the short, medium, and long terms. We hired great strategic partners such as Questtono, Bomma, and Alexandria for that mission.

Setting up a new way of thinking

Ambev is part of AB Inbev in Brazil. Since its beginning, the company has had solid leadership; one of its strengths is distribution. Ambev had muscle but needed the correct mind to keep its position for the following years.

Ambev also had already launched the most important innovation within ABInBev, Brahma Double Malte. It hugely impacted culture and sales during the pandemic, but the way the company thought its portfolio was, to be honest, a bit binary. Using the category framework, the company had products in every space within the market.

It was like a Naval Battle where Ambev had already felt every space gap.

We significantly shifted from the category (price x liquid) to the Needstate framework. While there are more modern ways of understanding consumer tension, the Needstate framework perfectly fits our business goals and tools, instilling confidence in our new approach.

We proactively conducted several studies among societal macro-forces to comprehensively understand their impact on all beverage categories, not just beer. This thorough analysis was a cornerstone of our strategic planning, ensuring we were well-prepared for potential challenges.

We anticipate Brazil's beer category facing challenges in the next few years. The country's religious landscape is shifting, the population is getting older, and the new generation will drink fewer and fewer and fewer alcoholic beverages.

Thus, we developed a new strategic framework mixing the 'Growth Opportunity Areas [Confidential] with consumer's need state to identify and make business bets on new opportunities in the beverage market.

Setting a new portfolio pipeline approach

With a broad direction defined, we also developed an innovation process to conceptualize a new approach to thinking product development at Ambev. The company has already had the scale start-ups would like to be but acted like any other CPD.

It was essential to set a suitable mental model. So, just as with any start-up, we realized the delivery process was costly. Ambev had already launched other products and moved straight to the second stage but failed. In the first stage, I researched the right problem, tensions, "job to be done," and consumption arenas.

We tested all paths quickly, so in a few weeks, we already knew which were most relevant to consumers, brands, and Ambev's size of opportunities and business goals.

In the delivery stage, we wrapped up different areas, such as every squad for each GOA, supply, P&D, logistics, marketing, sales, beverage specialists, external cultural experts, and leading decision makers, such as the president and vice presidents, to co-create agilely.

We prototyped the superior concepts and tested them quickly in small areas to see the performance of each one, just like a start-up.

Results:

Our rigorous Research Methodology by Ipsos approved 45 innovative concepts, which were brought to life through 15 successful prototypes. This testing process has given us a promising glimpse into the future of Ambev's innovation portfolio.

Brasil with S:

You probably don't know, but recycled beer bottles can use only 46% of old material. For the first time, we could use 100% of the glass used.

We defined Colorado as a brand because of its relationship with Brazilian culture. In popular houses, using a small shard to pave the floor is very common. So, we call it "Colorado Brazil with S: every piece of small shard makes our history."

Chopp Brahma in a Can

In Brazil, there's a law says only non-pasteurized beer can be named "Chopp" (our draft beer). Other flash-pasteurized products are available on the market, but the truly "Chopp" only Brahma has. A great product, but only on-trade because it needs to be refrigerated.

Chopp in a can is not a liquid or packaging innovation. It's an innovation of logistics and platform. We guarantee a refrigerated and quality product in the Ze Delivery app. The same as the bar.