Insights Unveiled - Innovation

This episode looks at how Market Research plays a critical role in answering business questions around innovation.  We discuss FMCG, Technology and Service sector innovation and consider some ‘hidden’ business considerations that researchers should be aware of.  Our guest speaker is Grainne Gilsenan, a veteran Innovator and now Innovation Consultant. 

Transcript

Judith: 0:02

Hello, market research friends, and welcome to the Insights Unveiled podcast. This is our podcast that tries to make sense of the Typical business issues that get thrown at market research, the market research department or at market research agency. And it's for anyone who wants to get a deeper insight into the real world of insights and not just the textbook perfect version that you might imagine happened. So follow us wherever you get your podcasts. So who are we and what is this all about?

Mandy: 0:34

Mandy, hi. Well, I'm Mandy, I'm a client side market researcher and have been for, for a number of years across many different companies. And Judith

Judith: 0:45

and I was an agency side researcher some, some time ago. And now I am a writer and content consultant and video maker and now podcaster as well. All for the insights sector. So Mandy and I have got together to bring our different perspectives to this podcast because what we want to do is take a critical look at how the market research industry tackles business questions and why market research projects don't always connect to great business decisions. Every episode takes a typical business issue and we're lifting the curtain on what really happens, which can look very, very different depending on your perspective, whether you're a client side, agency side, supplier. We try and understand what gets lost in translation along the way and why what happens in reality in the project isn't always the same as what's specified in the brief, proposed in the agenda, or agreed in the contract.

Mandy: 1:39

we want to give it some structure across the podcast series. So we're following a logical arc from spotting an opportunity through trends and foresights. through to innovating products against those, those opportunities, and finally marketing and selling them. And if you want to see what we've, we've covered previously, please look at our previous episodes or indeed some episodes to come. Just an important PS here. All of the opinions that we'll express in this podcast are our own, and they don't necessarily reflect those of the company we currently work for or have worked for

Judith: 2:11

previously. So thanks for that. Let's get

Mandy: 2:16

into it. So this is our third topic. And we're having a look at innovation. And in this sense, by innovation, we mean creation of new products and services very simply. If you like the, the solutions to the consumer needs, conscious or not, that we had discussed in our previous episode. Important, I think, to also remember that innovation can also imply to. Improving existing products and services or sometimes known as renovation. So that can obviously be anything from app upgrades to, to recipe improvements, for example. Now I'm very much an FMCG veteran. So I always need to remind myself that. Innovation is not just about putting a new product on a shelf or a product on the shelf in a bigger pack or a smaller pack. And I know that innovation and services is, it's very often at the forefront of delivering new value to consumers. And you've only got to look at what happens in places like Google or some of the, the web based retailers to see that. But Judith, I know You've got a lot more experience in the technology sector. What's your, what are your thoughts on on innovation in services?

Judith: 3:23

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think you know, we're such a service driven economy now, and I think so much of that is underpinned by tech. And tech has been where all these innovations in service innovation have come from, really, from from sort of the process of servitization. Which is you know, manufacturers realizing that you know, you're only going to buy one mainframe but there's potential to get a lot more money out of you with all the services that go with it moving into you know, models like software as a service and everything else as a service where, where ownership of an actual product you know, doesn't, doesn't exist anymore. It takes the ownership out of it and instead sells the service. Part which has led to things like, you know, the sharing economy, which has led to platforms like, you know, Airbnb and Lyft and that sort of thing, which have completely revolutionized really how, how we live our lives and it has been really where so much of the innovation has come from and it's, it's all driven by tech and now, of course, there's a whole new layer of innovation being driven by, you know AI and we've yet to see quite where that's going to go, but I'm sure it's lots of places. Yes, indeed. Some of, some of, some of which we probably don't want to follow.

Mandy: 4:35

Or even speculate on.

Judith: 4:36

Or even speculate about. Oh dear.

Mandy: 4:39

So what's the, what's the typical business question here? So coming back to the, the objective of this, of this series, what, what are the sort of things that business leaders want to know? What gets chucked at the market research industry, if you like? It's pretty simple, really. The typical question might be, which of my ideas are likely to be successful? In the market, or if you're further down the process which of my ideas are worth further development or, and how can I optimize them before I launch them? And I think there's less that's lost in translation here, but there are some things behind these questions that are really hidden. So it's more about the sort of uncommunicated concerns that the business leaders might have. And there are usually some very practical considerations that, As an industry, we need to take into account that aren't always made obvious. So think of things like production. There are quite often restrictions with R& D or manufacturing. There's just certain things that businesses cannot do and projects can get abandoned because there are technology gaps, for example. Cost is another important area. There are limits. to how much capital expenditure a business is really going to make in, in delivering a new product to the market. And of course there's things like the profit and loss, so the cost of making versus the price we can sell for. There are expectations there. And finally, timings, there are so many times when we're told we need this tomorrow or, you know, we need this in six months time, we need this faster than you went through the research process last time. And this is particularly true if we've seen lots of market movement or a competitor's gone out there with a product that we want to compete with, for example. And the point of all of these things, these things of production, cost and timings, that they all put constraints on the market research approach in terms of what we might present to a consumer but specifically in terms of which method we might choose, how sensitive is it, how agile, et cetera.

Judith: 6:40

I think a lot of the time, a lot of those things really are hidden from The agency side, and if that, you know, they're not made explicit in the brief, and they're not, they're not things that that you're necessarily aware of and so, you know, make it harder to kind of do the job that you're trying to do. I did wonder about, you know, a lot of the time we're asking what, what gets lost in translation and what are the hidden questions. And I wondered if sometimes the hidden question here is You know, please tell me that my idea is great, rather than please, you know, which of my ideas I'd like you to be successful in the market, actually, is tell me I'm right, tell me that everything I've spent my, my, my life bringing to the market is going to be the most fantastic product ever. So I wonder if that's the case.

Mandy: 7:21

That's so true. That's very insightful, Judith. I think that, that that sums up yes.

Judith: 7:27

So yeah. And I think that you know, talking about production and costs and the things that, you know, things that can't do, things that are too expensive and how those are quite often hidden from the agency. I think sort of the, the analogy in a service innovation world is, is sort of really understanding that whole service infrastructure and the, the customer journey through that new service innovation and where are the touch points in the company and how's that going to work and how all the other departments going to be involved to actually make this new service innovation happen. And again, I think that's something that, that is, is hard to think through from the agency side or, or there are elements that, that just aren't, aren't made clear or really understand.

Mandy: 8:08

Yeah, that's that's a really, really good, really good point to be aware of.

Judith: 8:12

So well, we've identified lots of, lots of issues and lots of, lots of Difficulty. So what's the best way that we can tackle these both as a sort of client side dissection and agency dissection? What have we learned about what to do and what not to do here?

Mandy: 8:25

Well, I think obviously with some, to some extent, production and cost issues are outside of our control, I think, as market research, but the one that strikes me as being really important is timings which are very relevant from the get go. Oh, yeah. And I've got a really, I've got a good example of a good, very recent example of that from, from my own business position, we, as a team were asked to deliver something, develop something very, very quickly because there'd been some movement in the market and a competitor had got out there. but as, Per most businesses, we have a very set specific market research process that we follow when we're doing innovation. It takes us through a series of steps and gates so that the business can make decisions. But in this case, we, we were really panicked because we just knew that if we followed that process, there's no way we'd be able to develop the concept and get it to market in the time that the business wanted us to get it there. So the only thing we had that we could do is to change the process. And we ended up accelerating the initial concept development by doing a sprint. And we used a, a less robust version of the final verification which got us to market on time, but you know, it was not without risk and quite a degree of pain. We did cut corners on it, honestly. And also had some, some quite difficult discussions with stakeholders because of that, but as I say, it meant that was the thing we had to do in order to get there in record quick

Judith: 9:57

time. Wow. And this is a question that perhaps you can't answer and perhaps you don't want to answer, but and was there an impact of that cutting corners on the product in the market? Ooh.

Mandy: 10:08

That's a great question. Well, I think because we didn't go through a very robust process of, of sizing the opportunity, it's very difficult to say whether what the total opportunity could have been if we'd been slower and taken a full robust process versus what we actually achieved. What I can say is the product is still in market. It's doing pretty well. And in this case, what we're really doing is optimizing whilst it's in the market. So it's not, it's not an incorrect way to do innovation to get it out there. And then when it's there, really learn from the actual sales and especially panel data as to how it's performing and then optimize when you're there. But yes, I think it was more than my reflection on the process was we were quite surprised at How the business had asked us to do it quickly. And then we're saying, Oh, goodness me. Why haven't we got data on this and why haven't we triple checked the design and why haven't we put the name into research, et cetera, et cetera. So yes, there was a gap between what the business wanted and actually what it thought it was signing up for.

Judith: 11:11

So, I mean, on that timing issue as well, another thing strikes me, and I wonder if this is, is, is sort of quite common, that you, you get asked too late, because market research is just, it is part of that gateway process, and it's sort of like an afterthought in the tick box, rather than fulfilling the role that it could really fill, which would be, you know, advisory and helping to, to sort of sort through ideas from a much earlier stage. Yeah, and certainly from an agency perspective. It can be very common to feel like an afterthought in the process and ask to do things quickly. Where you know that actually you wouldn't have had to do them quite so quickly had you been involved at an earlier stage. And I think, you know, some of the blood, bad blood around market research can come from exactly this.

Mandy: 11:53

Yes, yes, indeed. And I think the other thing to that point is that you know, it's not good enough to say we need this quickly. We want you to apply your usual wonderful process, but just do it quicker. Do it in half the time that you would normally take. We're not going to involve you early. We're just going to come to you when we need it and just give you four weeks to do it rather than eight weeks. And that can very often happen. So that would be one of my, my tips if you're ever asked to do things in an agile way. Make sure your stakeholders know where the trade offs are. Yeah.'cause they're not gonna get it quickly.

Judith: 12:23

Yeah. Or as you did, make sure that you cut corners everywhere so you can't actually mess wish whether you've or not.

Mandy: 12:33

Yes. Well, that actually does follow my, my second tip is, is set out a a very robust learning plan. So, you know, um-Huh? You know, what research you're going to do to meet which steps on that Steps and Gates process. Yeah, and ensure also that that gets signed off as well by your stakeholders and the rest of the team.

Judith: 12:51

Yeah, I think, I think it's important to say that agile doesn't necessarily mean so fast we can bring it in very late in the process.

Mandy: 12:58

Yes, indeed. Indeed. It's a completely different way of doing it, not just doing it, doing it speedily. Yeah, exactly. Okay. I also think another learning I had, though, was that Agile can also be very positive. It doesn't necessarily mean it's a compromise in the quality of the concepts and the concept development. One of the surprising learnings we had as a team was that by Progressing things at pace, we really kept that core consumer need front of mind. It didn't get lost in the, what can be quite a long and protracted process. It was, it was there front and center. And, and we knew what we were working to. We knew what people really wanted from this, this concept. So actually, yeah, doing it at pace can, can have payoffs too. Yeah, no,

Judith: 13:42

absolutely. And I think, you know, the true meaning of agile and, you know, coming from the software world it's not about cutting quality at all. It's just about processes, isn't it? So I think, you know, it's another one of those words that sort of become very lazily used to mean things that it doesn't really mean in a, in a not very helpful way. Mostly putting, putting the burden on the poor insights department and the agency they have to work with.

Mandy: 14:05

Yes, I would agree. I would agree. Shall we go to our guest? Yes! Yes, let's go to our guest.

14:15

So I'm here with Gronja, um, who's our guest today. Uh, Gronja, tell us a little bit about yourself and perhaps your experience with innovation. Hi, Mandy. Thanks. And it's lovely to be here. Um, so I'm an innovation specialist, you might say. So, um, I started my career brewing in Guinness in a little experimental brewery at Park Royal. And, um, I was on the receiving end of various innovation briefs coming up with new products. Um, and over the time I was there, I decided I'd rather be writing the briefs and receiving the brief. So I moved over into marketing and I wanted to interact more directly with consumers. And, you know, be a bit more on the, uh. Inside and you know, coming up with ideas and the creative piece. So, um, from then on, I've been doing various innovation leadership roles in the corporate world. And I'm now a consultant in innovation, but, um, I worked at Diageo for a long time on lots of different Diageo brands. Um, and at SAB where SAB Miller, where you and I met, and, um, I've also worked at Costa Coffee, McVitie's. So I've, I've been around the drinks, industry and also a bit of biscuits. Um, so, and now I'm consulting, so I'm, I'm, uh, indulging my curiosity by getting to work with lots of other products, brands and categories. Drinks and biscuits. Good, good combo. Just as a little aside, can you share with us an innovation, can be one that you've worked on or even haven't worked on that you find really interesting or exciting that's out there at the moment? Well, one that I've worked on, um, most recently was a cost of coffee. Um, and the reason it was interesting because it was such a total smash hit success. Um, but also it came out of tricky times around the time of the pandemic. So, I don't know if you ever saw the, Hot chocolate with Terry's, um, or the quality street purple one latte, or they after it, uh, mint hot chocolate. So, so that's Christmas campaign. I was at a cost at the time that Christmas campaign came out just after lockdown ended. And, uh, consumers were feeling very sorry for themselves and, uh, uh, very, very happy to be out and about and, uh, to have someone making a delicious drink for them. so the reason it's interesting was, um, I think there's lots of learnings in it, in that scenario for innovation, and how. We managed to pull out of a very, you know, a situation with so many constraints. Um, the most successful ever Christmas campaign at Costa. and, and, you know, there's lots of learnings, but just the way that people behave when They're constrained in different ways. It just it just unlocked a certain creativity and, uh, I can do attitude that, uh, that meant that everybody involved was just pulling rabbits out of the hat all over the place. And because we'd retained a very neat. Ambitious, uh, drive, if you like, um, or optimism about how we were going to need to succeed in quarter four of 2020. As you all remember, the, a lot of this, you know, the cost of stores were closed all year and they were going to reopen and we needed an absolute slam dunk. Um, yeah. So I think that was interesting. We, there were so many firsts involved with it. We had to reinvent all the rules, um, and do everything, 10 times faster than normal. You know, there was exponential differences in the way that we worked, which all of which. Without the crisis of the pandemic would have been considered to be impossible. Um, but it's really amazing what a crisis can do for your, energy levels, your level of focus and your, creativity, really. Um, so yeah, it was a lovely example, I think. That's a really rich example. And as you say, there's so many. Different forms of innovation that are cropping up there, including sort of innovating around that innovation process as well. So that's really, really rich and delicious sounding example. Um, fantastic. Um, one of the, one of the things that our listeners are really interested in, are where things can go wrong though, in the process. So from your perspective, what can go wrong in that, that innovation brief, um, uh, for example, maybe when a client didn't get what they wanted, what they were expecting, uh, from, from the innovation process. So one of my observations is that, I mean, Innovation is really tough. The front end of innovation in particular, because it's so intangible. Quite often clients, for lots of good reasons, don't really know what they want or what they're expecting. And a lot of the job of the consultant is trying to help them work out exactly what to expect and What is the output that you need for this particular opportunity or this particular problem? Um, I mean, one of the things I've observed over many years is just, it's just how tricky that front end can be creating the structure that you need to get decisions made and to get momentum behind the idea. People just, ideas get generated and they get lost, um, because people don't know how to. Bring them to life, how to get the project going. And so one of the things that makes me weep all the time and innovation is, is just the massive amount of energy that goes into ideation at the front end, where one, you haven't really aligned your business on the strategy behind the brief in the first place. So they're not going to buy into your ideas necessarily, or at least your work is a lot harder. Uh, when you come up with an idea, if you haven't got the strategic alignment, And one of the things as a consultant that I do and, is, you know, check for alignment and build into the front end. You know, I'm happy to have a conversation with your stakeholders, um, just to make sure everybody's super clear. What is the big bet that you're going after? What's the strategy, the opportunity? Are you sure everybody's up for this? Because without the business focus and energy, Once you come up with the idea, it'll be really, really hard to get it off the ground. So, so things that go wrong, strategic alignment, what it is you're trying to solve for, you know, what exactly is the opportunity? Um, and then the 2nd, 1 is knowing what to do with the ideas when you get them, um, and translating the output of an ideation process or program into. A project that has enough structure and momentum that it's going to go somewhere. so one of the things that, goes wrong is that ideas just die, they end up in PowerPoint graveyards and, you know, never to be seen again. And, and that makes me really sad. So one of the things I really focus on with, uh, clients is let's structure this front end so that. You have momentum at the end of it that you don't have this. Here's your PowerPoint with all these lovely visualized ideas. And maybe you've got some consumer feedback. Even then, it's really hard to make it land in the business sometimes. Um, so, yeah, those are kind of the things that go wrong. And I think everybody underestimates how hard it can be to translate a concept or an idea. into a project that's actually going somewhere. Um, there's a lot of skill involved there. I, I particularly, um, like your idea of, of doing stakeholder interviews with, with the business to really ask, is strategically they need. It's, it's a, it's a theme that's cropped up and many of our episodes that things can get lost in translation between what the business needs and what goes into that client brief. And then obviously what then goes into the brief to, to the research agency. But that's, of course, is, is one way to get around that is to go straight to the business and find out, um, so that. The absolute magic is focus. You know, one of the things, the underestimated, uh, elements of innovation is the business focus. What is it they're after? And let's go after a small number of really big opportunities. And, you know, the more challenging it is, the better as far as I'm concerned. But just let us know what it is you are after, um, and make sure everybody's aligned to it. That's, that's my favorite sort of brief, right? The whole business has this business. No idea how to solve it, but they know what their problem is. Then that's that's the ultimate. Um, because then once you come up with the solution, which you which you can, because almost once you've got the focus, the creative part is. is easier because there's lots of creativity out there. If you, if you just have the right creative brief, you know, you have a good chance of solving the problem, but if you don't have the focus, your solution will not help. Fantastic advice. Thank you very much for that. And then finally, what one piece of advice would you give to our listeners about developing successful innovation? Um, so one of my favorite pieces of advice that I give is to, is to look for the wow factor. Um, and so I always, when I'm running or facilitating ideation, you know, anything that isn't a, you know, that people are not responding with a, Oh, my goodness. That's amazing. Probably isn't going to get very far because there's so many hurdles to cross for an idea to, uh, to land. Um, if it's not amazing, you know, um, then I think you might struggle. So, I mean, in terms of the wow factor, if it's a product, the product experience or the overall idea or whatever, I would just say push for the, for the wow factor and then look for the. Anecdotal proof points. So for us, the, the wow factor on the Christmas co brand drinks was when we did get the, the brands to sign off the drinks, they were ecstatic. They were just like, Oh my God, this is the most amazing thing I've ever tried. At that point, we kind of thought, okay, this is going to be big, you know? So, um, so you want people around you to be saying, this is amazing. Um, That, just because any less than that, nobody's even going to notice it, you know, sometimes you can hype yourself into thinking this is an amazingly differentiated, exciting idea that consumers are going to go for. Most ideas consumers don't even care or see it, you know, so just try to push for the wow factor would be my, my one piece of advice. That's wonderful. thank you so much for that advice and some brilliant examples there. Thanks again. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Well, another great interview there with Grunya. That was, that was so interesting. Um, and I think, that, she, she gave us some really, really good advice there, as well. Um, you know, we were talking about the, um, you know, trying to think of innovation along the entire supply chain or the, the service customer journey, and, you know, the fact that that's not always, you know, the case. visible to everybody. Yeah, it's certainly not visible to the agency side, but it's, it's sometimes not very visible in the client side as well, I imagine. But, um, you know, she just said, well, you know, just do some stakeholder interviews. It's like, okay, of course, yeah, that's, that's an absolutely brilliant way of trying to get at that. So, whether you're the client and go and do them or whether the, you're the agency and you can propose doing them, I think getting that sort of immersion in, in, you know, The reality for the business, it's all very well making a recommendation, but if it can't be physically manufactured or, you know, there isn't the team to support the customer journey for it, then, then, then there's no point. They are well worth the investment because they really do help, help to nail that brief. And as you say, really uncover anything that's hidden that we might not otherwise know about. So yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, you know, again, we're, we're all about, um, you know, where there's a miscommunication and this is all about making that communication more effective. And the other thing that I absolutely loved was that she said, look for the wow factor, um, you know, talking about those lovely, delicious sounding, um, um, coffees, which I quite like one of those right now, actually, it sounds really lovely. But, yeah, the, the fact that they knew that they, they were onto something when the partner, uh, teams were like, wow, this is amazing. I can't wait to have this. I think it translates to insights in generally actually as well, because I was thinking about it and it's like, well, you know, what is an insight? Yeah. When is a finding really an insight? And I think perhaps, perhaps an insight is just a finding with the wow factor. You know, that's so interesting, Judith, because as we know, there are so many different definitions of what an insight is, but I absolutely agree without that well factor, it's the insights not going to land. So it's a really nice way of really nice way of putting it. Although actually, it's it's somewhat counter to one of the first rules of market research, which is, if it's interesting, it's probably wrong. I've not heard that one. Another good, another good pearl of wisdom. Another good aphorism to take away at the end of the day. So, I think that's it. I think we're done. Thank you so much for listening to our episode on innovation. We've loved making it. Absolutely. And listen again, um, for our next one, which will be on market sizing coming up. Market sizing. Indeed, indeed. Yeah, yeah. Words that strike fear into the heart of many a researcher. Thanks all. Thank you very much. Bye