Strong concepts win markets: How to validate product and campaign ideas before they go live

Product innovation is a high-stakes gamble unless you validate early and often. You don’t have the time or budget to bet on the wrong idea.  

TL;DR

• When every idea sounds promising internally, it’s hard to prioritize

• Early screening with real consumers helps avoid costly flops and political decision‑making

• Zappi lets you rank and validate dozens of ideas fast — so you only invest in the strongest

So how do you find the best ideas without getting locked in your bubble? It starts with early consumer validation.

When everything sounds like a good idea in the room, nothing gets built. You can go in circles for weeks, so how do you focus and move ahead? 

Data shows gut feelings and stakeholder opinions can’t reliably pick winners. If they could, the product launch success rates would be higher. Instead, Harvard Business Review reports 95% of product launches fail. 

That’s why it pays to explore non-obvious thinking. Rohit Bhargava, co‑author of Non‑Obvious Thinking, calls this the power of noticing “patterns others ignore and twisting them into something new.” That twist is often where the winning ideas live.

Take Goodles mac and cheese, for example: 

• Stepped out of the traditional kid-dominated mac and cheese by targeting adults 

• Provided a familiar comfort plus a nutrition upgrade 

• Included adult flavors like smoked gouda and cacio e pepe  

• Added a cheeky personality

Now the brand is taking market share from the legacy contenders without a mass-market TV budget.

That’s non-obvious thinking. 

This is where idea screening changes the entire innovation game. You can test dozens of ideas with real consumers before committing resources. 

Let’s get into some common roadblocks and how Zappi can help.

We have too many ideas and no clear way to prioritize

Early innovation stages can leave you with a long list of ideas. But which possible products or campaign directions make sense to focus on? 

Without real feedback, decisions can default to politics or instinct, and both are risky. McKinsey found companies using structured idea screening have a 2.3x higher innovation success rate — which makes sense, as the ideas are now being served to consumers first. 

🧠 Zappi in action: If you’re trying to sort through too many ideas and don’t know which direction to turn, you can use idea screening to test multiple ideas at once and rank them by appeal, differentiation and purchase interest.

We need a faster way to decide what’s worth developing

Traditional concept testing takes too long for early ideation. By the time results come back, priorities have shifted and the team’s lost momentum. 

Speed matters and early-stage validation accelerates decision-making with data so you can move with confidence.

For instance, McDonald’s innovation team uses Zappi to evaluate dozens of product ideas at once to: 

• Run multiple concepts through idea screening to identify a new McFlurry flavor

• Narrow the top two winners within 48 hours based on consumer appeal and purchase intent 

• Allow R&D and marketing to focus resources immediately, skipping weeks of internal debate and avoiding investment in low‑potential flavors

"For a new shake flavor, I analyze the drivers of interest and purchase in all the shakes we’ve tested before. I can see how consumers play those concepts back and what they want us to do differently. There’s a lot I can do easily with the dataset."

- Matt Cahill, Senior Director of Insights Activation, McDonald's

🧠 Zappi in action: With our idea screening solution, you can launch a screen in minutes and get clear results in days — so you can move forward with speed and confidence

Our current process relies too much on internal feedback

Stakeholder opinions and brainstorming sessions aren’t the same as consumer signals. 

Relying too heavily on them can be an expensive mistake. New Coke has long served as a cautionary tale. More recently, there was the $30 million Tropicana mistake, when the orange juice brand went all in on a rebrand without the input of its target audience. The takeaway? Don’t let internal bias overshadow market reality. Instead, you can validate your ideas with real consumer insights. 🧠 Zappi in action: Use idea screening to test directly with your target audience to see how ideas resonate with real people — not just your team.

We waste time and money developing ideas that flop

Many failed launches can be traced back to untested assumptions. Even small investments in screening can prevent large-scale misfires. Clorox used Zappi’s advertising solution Amplify TV to evaluate a TV ad before full production. After spotting that it was likely to underperform both in sales and brand impact, they made adjustments. What happened next? The results improved significantly after these tweaks.

"We were right in the middle of a creative process when we started talking about Zappi Amplify TV. We've been using Zappi for awhile now, and at this point it's part of our process: the automation, key metrics and clear reporting are all really valuable to our agile research."

- Ben Jordan, Associate Director, Human Insights Center of Excellence, The Clorox Company

🧠 Zappi in action: Use early idea screening with consumers to catch low-potential ideas early and shift focus to those that show real traction in the market.

Stop spinning your wheels on unproven ideas and internal debate. With Zappi’s Idea Screening solution, you’ll quickly see which ideas your audience loves, which ones they don’t and why. 

Test early. Learn fast. Build the winners.