Turning data overload into bold, behaviorally grounded innovation for IFF within 48 hours

InsightsNow’s Claira™ helped IFF navigate GLP-1 behavioral disruption and redefine snacking innovation

Global leader in flavors, fragrances, food ingredients, health, and biosciences, International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF), had more research on GLP-1 users’ eating behaviors than they knew what to do with, leaving mounds of untapped opportunity. Their teams were not starving for data, but for direction.

Challenge – Not a data issue, but an activation issue

IFF had invested heavily in understanding how GLP-1 was reshaping consumer behavior across taste perception, portioning, motivations, and sensory expectations, and was seeing big shifts in their data. Their customers were asking specific, urgent questions: “how is GLP-1 changing snacking occasions, formats, and formulations?”
However, the true challenge wasn’t about researching the consumer… It was moving from deep consumer understanding to behaviorally-grounded innovation that R&D, marketing, and packaging teams could all align around, at a pace IFF’s clients demanded.

Claira™ changed that.

How Claira™ did it – From behavioral map to market-ready concept in a single workflow

To close that gap, IFF brought in Claira™ – InsightsNow’s purpose-built LLM and agentic AI for behavioral innovation. Within one integrated workflow, she ingested 17 IFF proprietary research reports and more than 25,000 GLP-1-related social media posts, then mapped the associations between consumers’ contexts, internal needs, and external motivations to surface unmet opportunities within consumers’ behavior.
From this behavioral map, Claira™ identified over 20 distinct moments of opportunity. The InsightsNow team presented 10 to IFF, who chose a clear opportunity: GLP-1 users wanted to unwind at the end of the day but found that traditional snacks no longer delivered the comfort and joy they once had.

With the moment of opportunity identified, IFF co-created with Claira™ to come up with hundreds of product ideas grounded in this behavioral context and consumers’ motivators. The team identified a standout concept: “Liquid Comfort Pearls”, a snack that releases gentle flavors – designed to deliver the comfort of eating without the overwhelming sensory intensity GLP-1 users can no longer tolerate.

Once the concept was confirmed, Claira™ produced a playbook: a single, behaviorally grounded reference document giving every team involved a unified direction. From the playbook, Claira™ generates tailored briefs for each team involved, translating the concept into actionable directions specific to product development, packaging, and marketing. Every brief speaks the same behavioral language, eliminating the misalignment that typically slows or derails innovation.

Impact – Behavioral rigor, at a pace to act boldly and decisively, is the new revenue model

What typically takes months of cross-functional effort: research synthesis, behavioral mapping, opportunity identification, and cross-team alignment, was completed with behavioral rigor intact, in under 48 hours of elapsed time and just seven hours each from IFF and InsightsNow.

Concept development moved just as quickly. From the selected moment of opportunity, the IFF and InsightsNow teams evolved the “Liquid Comfort Pearls” concept across two focused sessions in a single day – a decision that would previously have required weeks of research consolidation.

No human analyst, who also must be a behavioral science expert, could synthesize 17 proprietary research reports and 25,000+ social media posts without sacrificing either speed or rigor, the foundations of bold innovations. Claira™ preserved both – and delivered results in a form the team could immediately act on. Across Claira™ engagements, this approach, behavioral expertise applied at machine pace, translates to a 75% lift in innovation throughput, by giving teams behavioral evidence early enough to act on it decisively.

This means that IFF can now spot behaviors before they become trends, arrive at their clients with behavioral intelligence already synthesized, specific opportunities identified, moments mapped, and ideas grounded in evidence. They move from reactive supplier to proactive innovation partner.

IFF, together with Claira™, creates the conditions for a long-term commercial relationship: responsiveness builds trust, trust drives product adoption, and every product on the shelf represents an ongoing ingredient relationship. Behavioral evidence, delivered in time to act on it effectively, is what turns responsiveness into revenue.