What is Happen®?
Start with the end in mind
Happen® is the creative innovation agency that opens up opportunities for companies that are serious about improving their business’s innovation success rate.
We have set ourselves the audacious goal to achieve 100% market place success with our clients. We know it’s a bold benchmark, but we bring something most innovation agencies don’t – we add commercial sense and dogged determination to leading edge insight & creativity.
We focus on realising potential and making new things actually happen. From setting the vision, identifying the team and creating the environment for change, we take great pride in getting results. Results derived from our approach to new product and service innovation, strategic marketing and brand development.
Nimble and compact, experienced and hungry, we are leaders in the field of innovation. We take on the needs of our clients worldwide and are willing to share in the challenge and the pain of opening up new and exciting opportunities.
Happen® - turning ideas into value, making new things happen
Our services
Strategic Innovation, Insight and NPD
FIRE!™
Much of our success is driven by our insight-led innovation roadmap, which contains highly refined tools for insight discovery, idea generation and concept creation. The result is better value (superior ideas, shorter workshops, less of your valuable time) and more success in the market. Every project is tailored to the task using a range of leading edge “plug-ins”. These are available to clients to dig deeper for insights, create more or less radical new product/service ideas, enhanced ideas and specific new claims and overcome technical innovation challenges.
Some of these plug-ins are highlighted below:
Leading edge Consumer Immersions - Understanding the consumer need is what we do. It takes us from the boardroom to the high street via the home. We are interested in what drives the unmet need and exploring ways to get close to consumers to allow us to articulate a need that demands attention.
Voice of the Product - Eyes on the World - Somebody somewhere has solved the contradiction or problem you are trying to solve. We apply systematic innovation techniques routed in patent analysis to assess how we could go beyond where your business currently lies. Our objective is to develop exciting new ideas for your brands products and services.
Outside Experts (direct, analogous, wildcard) - We work with a network of Happen Friends globally from the worlds of technology, Silicon Valley, academia, advertising and more to give fresh and new perspectives on your challenge.
Business Case Development - Identifying and picking winners. Making the call that aligns high commercial value and ease of implementation can be pathway to getting wins on the board for the business. We help guide and make the case for ideas that have commercial potential and consumer traction.
Strategic Marketing and Brand Planning - Uncertain times require concerted action. We work closely with clients on sustaining the value of their brand assets, creating strategic marketing plans which are aligned with the commercial vision and the needs of a changing market.
Organisational Development - The key to the success of any significant innovation or change initiative is the planning and development that goes into preparing and motivating teams and organisations to make things happen. We help individuals and teams to drive change on project training, feedback loops, enhanced communication and motivational development that goes beyond the timeline of the project . Our techniques ensure that it becomes ingrained within the culture of the organisation.
Kudos
Happen® has grown very quickly in the past couple of years, something which we hope to continue to do well into the future. We acknowledge our success so far has only been possible through the trust we received from our clients.
Some of the things said about working with Happen®
We love Happen. Firstly because they truly live up to their name by making things happen. Going beyond insight and concept development (which they do superbly), Happen understand that to make innovation happen, the wider business and our customers need to truly engage with new ideas. Working with us as partners, Happen are helping to deliver game-changing innovation for us. They also just happen to be great people to work with. Arun Prabhu, Head of Future Creations @ Arla Foods |
The team at Happen has helped us tremendously to get the Vanish growth story to continue over the last years. Their genuine interest in the categories we work in, their way of preparing and running innovation sessions in a tailor-made way, their expertise at finetuning concepts that score top results, are all capabilities that set them apart from other innovation agencies. Frederic Larmuseau, Global Category Director @ Reckitt Benckiser |
The team at Happen truly remains on proposition when it comes to making things “happen” but further to this they make it happen exceptionally well. From aiding decision making (market & consumer assessment, pulling out real insights, innovating) to relationship building (challenging our thinking & keeping us on track)… Happen does all the above with personalized attention, genuine involvement and great results. Not just an exceptional input in decision making but a true partner all around. Roshni Pandey, Director Consumer Insights Asia Pacific @ InterContinental Hotels Group |
Happen has the fantastic ability to deeply understand both technology and consumer. They come up with some of the most creative and effective ideation stimuli and exercises. The combination of their understanding and creative stimuli has led to innovative problem solving and ideas. Linda Lee, Director Global Gum Innovation @ Cadbury |
Did you know that over 50% of ideas never make it to market successfully? Happen knows. It knows why and it knows how to change the odds. Now we know too. And we have seen the bottom line effect. Lohan Presencer, CEO @ Ministry of Sound Music Group |
The real strength of Happen’s methodology is in uncovering fresh insights which create ideas that really resonate with consumers. We had excellent concepts test results from the session we ran with them – particularly strong on insight and purchase intent. Mark and David have both been excellent - always pushing the extra mile to deliver the results. Jorge Arias, Global Brand Marketing Manager @ Reckitt Benckiser |
Happen helped us to get new insights for our business in a fast, flexible and focused way. Guillermo Elizalde, Global Brand Marketing Director @ Sara Lee |
Not often does insight work leave the team with simple/re-applicable ways of working and well-organized/fruitful materials which can be used in the future. Happen’s work does. Myles Zhong, Marketing Director China @ Reckitt Benckiser |
Winkle™
Winkling out the bright ideas
Our sister company Winkle™ offers an online range of purpose designed insight tools to improve success rates particularly at the early stages of idea generation and concept development.
We currently offer four main tools:
Insight Screener - Built to sharpen and develop rough consumer and business insights; it provides an understanding of the emotional and rational resonance plus its super fast and sets a new bar in value for money.
Concept Screener – Working with rough concepts, it provides diagnostics on which elements of the idea/concept are working and an understanding of the emotional impact of the ideas/concepts. Super fast in its execution, it can be used globally with your customer base across the world.
Lead User Co-Creation – Consumer driven innovation can be the difference between success and failure. Our consumer recruitment and platform approach can create a community of consumers who are aware of their unmet needs around a service or product and are highly motivated to invent new ways of changing their circumstances.
Winkle Picking – A specialist service designed to recruit the really hard to find consumers, lead users, experts etc for insight discovery or to help with concept and product co-creation.
Read more on winklingworld.com.