FMCG Brand Innovation – elBulli Style

How do you do successful brand innovation in food and drink?  You’ll find the answer at Brand elBulli, a retrospective at London’s Somerset House of elBulli, the most innovative and critically acclaimed food brand – and Catalonian institution – to date.

Sponsored by Spanish brewery S.A. Damm, and their flagship beer Estrella Damm, the show walks people through the creative pyramid of elBulli’s masterchef and visionary Ferran Adriàm who perfected the art of nouvelle cuisine and molecular gastronomy.

Start by experimenting with variations of products that already exist, progress to combinatory creativity – combining different products to create something new, and finally, the apex, embark on conceptual creativity – own a idea, sensation, feeling in the mind of the consumer…

• Molecular deconstruction – Break products down into component ‘molecules’ and then recombine in creative forms
• Continuous experimentation – Innovation is not act, it is a continuous process of experimenting, testing, and prototyping
• The Sixth Sense – Innovation must appeal not only to the five senses, but to the “sixth sense” – emotion, evoked by surprise, memory, humour, and wellbeing
• Moment O – The experience of the innovation should be built around a jaw dropping wow moment (“Moment O”)

The elBulli principles of creativity will be at the centrepiece of elBulli DNA, a new food innovation foundation to be launched in 2014.

10 Principles for Food Innovation (Gault and Millau “formula”)

1. A rejection of excessive complication
2. Embrace science and technology
3. Use of natural flavours
4. Use of freshest possible ingredients
5. Fewer, but better, variations
6. Clean flavours
7. Light, not heavy
8. Use of local and regional produce
9. Good nutritional value
10. Creation of new combinations and pairings

So now you know.  elBulli: Ferran Adrià and The Art of Food is at Somerset House, London until September 22nd.