Loading summary
Transcript75 lines
- [00:06]
A
David Gluckman, welcome to Uncensored cmo.
- [00:09]
B
Thank you very much. Delighted to be here.
- [00:11]
A
Now we sit here 50 years after the invention of Bailey's and I found out after reading your book that Bailey's was launched two months after my birthday.
- [00:21]
B
Well, we knew that at the time.
- [00:22]
A
Yes, indeed. To celebrate my birth. There we go. The Bailey's story is fascinating, isn't it? And I'd love to understand from you what, how you ended up working on the brand, how you invented it and what, what was it like at the time? Because I imagine like a cream liqueur was, was quite a wild idea back in the, you know, the Dark, 1974.
- [00:41]
B
Well, I have a very distinct memory. I mean, the brief came in on a Friday afternoon and from Tom Jago, who said the Irish are looking for a new brand for export. The Finance Minister has suggested that export would receive a 10 year tax holiday. So there's an incentive to do it. What sort of drink? Who are the people? I don't know. Just get on with it. So we didn't know who we were developing for. We didn't know what their competences were, what their preferences were. We had no idea. Move forward two days to Monday morning. I'm in the office at 8 o', clock, traveling 20 miles to work. My partner gets in at 20 to 10. I'm totally pissed off. And I said, what are we going to do about this Irish brief? To which he said, what Irish brief? Because he switched it off for the weekend. And then we chatted. I had worked in the 60s on the transformation of Irish butter from a commodity with no identity to a brand called Kerrygold, with an incredibly charismatic Irishman called Tony O'Reilly, who's sadly now dead. And he imbued me with a sense of Irishness and the importance of the dairy industry in Ireland. So fast forward 10 years and I'm talking to Hugh, my partner, and I say, is there anything in my Kerrygold experience which we can bring to bear on this drink? And Hugh said rather diffidently, what happens if you mix cream and Irish whiskey? So anxious to get him active, I drag him by the ear down to international stores at the bottom of Berwick Market where we buy some cream. We buy a small bottle of Jameson, persuading, I think the woman at the checkout that was 11 o' clock and go back to the office and make the two. The result is awful, truly awful. Well, cream and whiskey, if you can imagine, are not comfortable bedfellows. But I was convinced there was something there so we went down to the store again, bought some Cadbury, drinking chocolate, powdered chocolate, added some sugar, had no idea what proportions we'd mixed, but it tasted great. And there were three of us, two of us and secretary, assistant, we all tried it, tasted terrific. So I said, I'm going to IDV to Pitchett. Do you want to come to Hugh? But Hugh was an old Etonian, Oxford educated classicist. So he said, no, I don't think my suit's here, so I won't be able to go jump in the cab. Dreaming all the way to IDV about how we're going to position this. Meet Tom, who doesn't give me a chance to make any foreplay, grabs the scraps, screw top bottle, tastes it and says, hey, this looks good. Why don't we do it? And I think thereby. People always talk about having an idea making you a hero. Buying an idea if you're in a big company where you have the responsibility for using the resources and the capital of a company is probably a more heroic gesture, particularly when it's off the wall. But Tom said yes immediately. And that was one of the great moves of my working career. I think somebody said without arguing, let's do it.
- [04:32]
A
What amazing moment. I guess he didn't know then that that Bailey's would go on to become the world's best selling liqueur brand. And however many millions, you can't know internally, you can't, can you?
- [04:42]
B
But you know.
- [04:43]
A
So he had said yes, at this point. But what happened between that yes and it actually, you know, hitting the production lines and being.
- [04:51]
B
Well, the first thing he said was, we need a brand, so we needed a name. And I remembered a conversation I had in a bar with O'Reilly 10 years back. O'Reilly said, if you ever come up with a brand where you need an Irish family name, don't use one like his. O'Reilly's. I said, why haven't not? And he said, because O'Reilly's Irish Cream sounds whimsical, doesn't sound serious. And it stuck in my head. And the next day we moved from Dean street, where we had offices, to Creek street, and we were looking at a new office. And as we walked around the corner to the new office, there was a sign on a restaurant below the office called Bailey's Bistro. And it didn't have an apostrophe on the S. And I thought, that's it. I don't know why, but, I mean, sometimes there's a Croft ad that they ran about that time, which said, you instinctively know when something is right. And I knew then Bailey's was the perfect name. So I called up Tom and said, let's call it Bailey's. And he agreed. And the next thing we did was he took it up to Harlow, to the R and D people, and Mac macpherson, who was the guy who made the product. Eventually, I said to him, ten years later, what do you think of our original sample? He said, total crap, Undrinkable. But I knew what you were trying to do, and that made it much easier for me. So that's what we did. So then there were six months went by while they tried to optimize the product. And again, when I asked Mac 10 years later, if where we are now is 100, where were we when we launched 49? He said, but that's the way it went. And there were a couple of other things. We had the name. My secretary had a husband who was a designer living on a boat on the Thames at Kingston. So I briefed him on the phone and we got six designs back and we picked the one that we thought worked perfectly and that became it. I mean, we never did any more alternatives, no names. Then we did a couple of focus groups, but we got two responses again, this was where you threw an idea open to assessment, and the loudest mouth decides what the result's going to be. One guy got up and said, this is a girl's drink. I wouldn't be seen dead drinking at a pub. I drink pints and I drink vodka. But all the glasses in the room were drained. And in the women's group, one woman said it reminded her of kaolin and morphine, which is a diarrhea remedy. But we ignored that. In fact, we got the report on the day we went to Dublin to present, and we looked at it on the plane. I said, look, they're not going to understand this. It'll do nothing but bad, so leave it. And we also put a couple of bottles into a pub on Marybourne Road, off Marybourne Road, called the Allsop Arms, and kept going in and nothing happened. The bottle just sat there gathering dust. And then one day we came in, there was one bottle gone. And I said, oh, what happened? They said, two policemen came and consumed an entire bottle. So that was us. That was showtime.
- [08:26]
A
That was, you've got your evidence.
- [08:28]
B
We had the evidence, exactly. So I went to pitch it in Dublin. I'd never met the guys before and did the pitch. Oh. And one of the things that I felt was necessary with something as strange as a product was to actually go the whole hog and produce a bottle with a printed label on it. Not if he had loads of money so they could do that. We didn't want to go to the expense of a new bottle. Mold didn't seem necessary. We found one from Redbreast Whiskey and the pitch was a huge success. It was great. These guys had something that they could fondle in the meeting and look at and say, this is my brand. They took the word chocolate off. We had Irish chocolate creme liqueur and they took chocolate off, which probably was sensible because it took away the mystery of the formula. And that was it. And then between November 73 and November 74, they bought the plant. There's a lot of serendipity here because IDV was owned by Grand Met and Grand Met owned dairies in Ireland, Express Dairies. So vertical integration was something I learned by accident, if you like. The only other funny thing, because by then I was out of the picture, you know, it was all being done now. They were producing the labels and the bottles. And I had a call from David Dand, the CEO of Bailey's and one of the great heroes of Bailey's, because he gave his life to it, really. I think he died 10 years after launch from the sheer effort of doing it. But David called me up in, I remember early July. He said, we can't just call it Bailey's. We need initials. And I was looking at the sports page of the Guardian and there was something about the open being played. It had RNA rule and pin placements. So I said, let's call it R.N.A. bailey, two initials. And he said, why the hell not? And that's how it became RNA Bailey. But there are millions of stories. I mean, I've sat in meetings with people who claim to have invented it. I think success, as Kennedy said, has many, many fathers.
- [10:55]
A
Failure as an orphan is the other option.
- [10:57]
B
Exactly.
- [10:58]
A
So, I mean, today we'd call it bootstrapping, wouldn't we? Would be the kind of trendy word for it. But what I find fascinating about your story is that none of that sounds particularly expensive. You know, doing the research, mocking up the bottle, using something off the shelf, employing a designer, a single person. You're not going to a big agency. You're moving quite quickly to a year from idea to launch. And I think when you're small and nimble like that, you can move so much faster and get things to life, can't you?
- [11:28]
B
Well, that set a template for innovation in IDV. During the 36 years that I was there. And it even crept into Diageo in the sense that Ciroc and Tankray 10 were both single ideas, that they weren't based on options. And I think we saved an enormous amount of money by not testing options, never testing options, because you think of how much money you spend in a company looking at five different pack designs and stuff like that, and it creates an economy that isn't justified. We said, we're experts, we know what we do. By then, I'd been in the. Well, no one had a view of Bailey's except us. There was no objective view of what it should be because it was innovative.
- [12:19]
A
Let's move on to Purdey's. And the reason I wanted to ask you about Purdies is I've got a great connection to the brand because for three years back in about 2010-2012, I actually picked up ownership for it at Britvic. So I was at Britvic and I was a bit lost in terms of what to do with my career. And I had a real passion for innovation and particularly for the brands that had been overlooked. And we had this lovely little portfolio, ame, Aqua, Libra and Purdies, which I think Britvic had bought from Orchid Brands, which I think was then, before that.
- [12:49]
B
It was.
- [12:49]
A
Was grand met, wasn't it? But it had basically been neglected. The company hadn't done anything in the 10 years I'd been there. No promotions, nothing. So I. I put a little business case together and said, right, I want to manage. I want to manage Purdy's myself. I. I pulled together a few other brands like Lipton Iced Tea and Mountain Dew and a few. A few other things, and it was absolutely wonderful. I did refresh the packaging a little bit, just a little bit of, you know, a little bit of refreshment. But I was amazed that even then, after all those years, it was a top seller in Boots, it was a top seller in Holland and Barrett, it was a top seller in W.H. smith's. In food service, it was often the number one line that, you know, that we were selling, but it had just been neglected. It's one of those brands that I think, despite people's best efforts, you know, to neglect, it has astonishing value. So what's the backstory to Purdy's? How did it come to life?
- [13:39]
B
Well, Purdy's started with a new man taking over innovation in idv. He was a man called Tim Ambler. He was a brilliant guy. And Tim said, alcohol's gonna Come under attack. And we need to develop added value, non alcoholic drinks which can take the space. And I said, is that all? He said, yeah, you figure it out. And it was a very vague and difficult brief. And we started off with a sport to drink because quite a few of the team played games of one kind or another. Brands like Gatorade, Pocari Sweat and those brands were beginning to. And there was the whole revolution in the 80s, people joining sports clubs, the fitness revolution, things like trainers becoming fashionable and stuff like that. So we started with sport. We produced a drink called Dexter's, which was. I think that came into the package that Britvik bought, although they probably didn't use it. And Dexter's was. Puts back the minerals exercise takes out without the calories, so zero calories. And I always thought Dexter's was. There's an opportunity there, because I think if you walk into a pub and ask for a Diet Pepsi, people look across and say, well, putting on weight, are we? Whereas if you walked in and ordered a Dexter. Oh, had a game of squash, have you? Or something like that. And I still think that. I don't think that particular opportunity has ever really been exploited. But Dexter's in a way fell off the bus in terms of what the strategy for these brands became. We then moved to deciding that we were going to offer positive health. Most of the health products you see were caffeine free, salt free, sodium free, da da da, da. We were going to add stuff. And the first one we started with was, I read somewhere that in the Far east, diets were based on food that formed alkaline ash in the bloodstream, and that our Western diets were primarily based on acid ash. So we produce an alkaline drink called Aqualibra. And Aqualibra absolutely took. I remember Tim, we said, what's the brief, Tim? So Tim said, right, imagine me in among six top models at the trendiest bar in town. All of us will be drinking this drink. And that became Equalibra. And it became. I mean, we had the best piece of PR at no cost in the 80s, where Princess Diana included it amongst her three favorite drinks.
- [16:35]
A
Wow, that's impressive. Now, just describe what it looks like and what it tastes like for people, because a lot of people listening won't know the brand because we've got lots of international listeners. But even people in the UK may not be familiar because I think Britvic relaunched it maybe four or five years ago into a can. It's a sort of a sparkling flavor, sparkling water.
- [16:55]
B
The Vauxhall Viva version.
- [16:57]
A
But the original, but the original. It was like a triangular bottle, wasn't it? Very tall.
- [17:02]
B
Just a pretty straightforward bottle. Yeah, it was an upright bottle, 75 centiliter and 25 centiliter. People drank it as a replacement for wine. They drank it as a normal, just a normal drink. What it had, which I think would have scared off most marketing companies, it had a polarizing flavor, it had herbs in it. I remember I got the list out of a book and said thick in aqueous infusions of this, that and something else. It was the color of sort of white wine. And it was, I think you had to acquire the taste. It wasn't something that you'd immediately like. And I think it did polarize opinion. I remember Craig Brown in the Spectator describing it as liquid lipstick. But it was a very interesting, it was an interesting product and you had to learn about it.
- [17:57]
A
Well, I think what I liked about it is same for Purdies actually. If you started in soft drinks you would not invent this, right? No, but if you start in alcohol and go, what are the cues of a premium drink? Sophisticated glass bottle, you know, interesting flavor you discover and acquire over time, beautiful serve, et cetera, et cetera. I think it's the interesting thing about innovation is when you come from a different category and you go, how do I take the knowledge from this category? And what would it look like in this? Because like Purdy's, it's a, it's a, you know, 330 mil glass bottle, fully shrink wrapped, you know, very expensive looking, you know, it really doesn't make logistical or price sense, does it? But it works, you know, because it was, it was a stands out.
- [18:37]
B
And it's very different trendy drink. And it, I guess, I mean I had this sort of theory that if you sometimes they used to go to McDonald's and then order a glass of milk saying, well, I'm eating stuff that maybe isn't doing me huge amount of good, but the milk is canceling it out. And Aqua Libra was a bit like that. I think I coined the line, helps balance the foods you normally enjoy. And in fact I ended up writing the first ever ad campaign for it because the agency just couldn't come up with something and we were desperate. So £15,000 went on my campaign. So the next thing we went to was Purdey's and what we decided to do with Purdies was we wanted to avoid caffeine, taurine, high sugar. And I looked for a word. But one of My major sources of words ideas is Roger's thesaurus. I was looking for a word that meant energy but didn't use the word energy because the energy immediately said you've got sugar and stuff. And I found the word vitality. And so that was the word I put into Purdey's. And we used herbs and vitamins that promoted vitality. And then Tim had this interesting insight. He said let's sell it in places where people are going to buy it. Made sense. I mean not put Purdies in a supermarket, let's put it into entertainment business. So I wanted rock stars to buy it. I wanted film crews, you know, a thousand people you see at the end of a movie. I wanted all them to be drinking it and that would be our way in. And we did actually sell the first case to Abbey Road Studios.
- [20:33]
A
I'm not surprised actually because even when I was managing it in 2010, 2012, probably the stereotypical drinker would be somebody in London in the creative industries, like an art director. That's exactly what we had and that was still the case when I managed it. So the epicenter of sales would be high end cafes, delis, convenience stores in central London. That was typical buyer base.
- [20:57]
B
Yeah. Pleasing to see that Vik have made such a good fist of it and the brand's become important in their portfolio.
- [21:05]
A
Yeah, I'd probably say despite actually because I mean it had a bit of revival under me and I think a few other people have had a go at keeping it going. But it's like all things there's the innovators dilemma with all big companies is that big companies tend to focus on the big brands and that's where most their growth comes from. So you get these small brands within the portfolio that get overlooked. Yeah, Purdy's is a classic case and I mean, in fact I was telling you before I actually put an offer in to buy Purdies off Britbit got accepted and then unfortunately my timing sucked because the board meeting where it was being signed off was the same time that Fruit Shoot had a big product recall and 30% of the company value. Company value? Well, share price basically dropped 30% overnight. And they said my small offer to buy Bernie's was off the table unfortunately. So there was a, you know, moment in time where I might have ended up owning it.
- [21:57]
B
I wish I'd known you then because I mean we had other ideas. You know, we had a brand called Pfaffs. I love the name. It was the Belgian goalkeeper and it was Pffaffs.
- [22:09]
A
What A name.
- [22:10]
B
His name was Jean Marie Pfaff. And I just thought, let's do that. You see, IDV had guys who'd buy that kind of thing. You know, they saw it as unusual. No one would forget it. And I wanted people to go and write on walls. Fantastic. Was an upper Pfaffs was a deliberate downer. Yeah, you know, it helped you relax after a day trading and stuff.
- [22:35]
A
Yeah, Yeah, I love that idea. Yeah, you can see that going into common parlance about, you know, don't faff around and all the rest of it.
- [22:41]
B
Exactly.
- [22:42]
A
Could have done very well. Now, talking of idv, many of your ideas are in alcohol, but also premium spirits. And a couple that stood out. Well, a few stood out in the book, but Ciroc and Tanqueray. What was the story behind those?
- [22:55]
B
Well, we'll start with Tanqueray because it came first in 1997 when Diageo was formed. And when they bought Seagrams as well, the mergers and acquisitions people said that they had too many gins. And I think, reluctantly, the one they had to get rid of was Bombay Sapphire, which was a brand that was on the way up, was pushed by the. Carolyn's company in the States, who are fantastic at that kind of brand. And John McGrath, the CEO, said, well, we need another brand to occupy that space, but really quickly. And I remember we had the. Where the idea came. We were in Langdon, in the distilleries outside somewhere in Essex where Tanqueray was made. And we were sitting on sacks of juniper berries because they didn't have any chairs in the distillery. And we were playing around with junipers. You know, the way you rub them together and smell them. And I said to the guy, can you make gin out of fresh botanicals? This sounds like a good idea. And the guy said, yeah, might cost a bit, but we can do that. And my client was there, and I said, well, let's do that. And then we put together this whole story that we would dial down that heavy juniper coriander flavor that signifies hardcore gins, and we would produce a fresher, fruitier gin, which would. And then we would aim it at vodka drinkers because, you know, there's a huge potential market. And I think that that kind of approach comes from my P and G Unilever days in advertising, which were where you were constantly looking for a product benefit. And I think benefit's important. I mean, I've long had debates with people about benefit versus process. I don't think people give a toss about something being filtered through nuns. Underpants or being distilled 25 times. But I think if you say that this thing tastes different then you've got something going for you. But they never use that in advertising. And I could, I mean even to this day, Tanqueray 10 has got this 60 year old bald guy in a bar with a whole lot of good looking women. He says, I have a Tanqueray martini. The women all say, ooh, yes, so will we. And I, I mean I've got a thing in my head which is a kind of guide to developing brands. I'm in a bar, guy's sitting next to me, we're having a chat, he says, would you like a drink? And I say, yeah, I'll have a tanker 810. And then I imagine him saying, well, why are you having that? And I say, well, because I used to be a vodka drinker but I got bored with it and this is the only gin that doesn't taste. Now I don't think that's a bad story.
- [25:57]
A
It's a reasonable leap as well, isn't it? Because like vodka martini, gin martini, that's usually the option you get given. So get something that's a crossover between the two, you can switch people either way, really.
- [26:06]
B
Yeah. So I'm kind of making a sales pitch to you as the guy's just bought me the drink and I think it's quite important not because such and such a person drinks it. So that's the gin story.
- [26:19]
A
What about the bottle by the way? Because I think part of Tanqueray's appeal is in the beautiful design, isn't it?
- [26:24]
B
Well, the bottle actually has changed for the better I think, because we always wanted. This was incredibly difficult because this was a joint venture between a US marketing department, some guys in the UK and me, and I was always outnumbered. They're always going to put things through research, et cetera. So the first bottle I thought didn't work at all because it's the wrong color. I wanted to be that lemony look, refreshing. But you know, you can't win them all. You do what you do and hope that it goes further. Vodka is quite interesting though because vodka, as everybody knows is neutral. It doesn't have a taste, it doesn't smell of anything and it's white. That's pure vodka. So somebody comes to you and says, well, Smanoff was a great case, I'm going back before Ciroc, Smirnoff in America in 1990 was supermarket vodka. It's sitting on the gondola, end price cut to hell has no reputation at all. And the market changes. Absolut comes in as this brilliant, pristine Swedish vodka. One of the best brands. I mean, somebody said, is there any brand in the world you wish you'd invented? It was, that was just so perfect, the name, brilliantly done. Everything about it was fantastic. And how do you take. I mean, I said that doing a premium Smirnoff was like trying to get a Michelin star for Kentucky Fried Chicken. You know, it's tough. And I said, the only way we can do this is if we have a better product. You can't just do a sexy pack and expect people to buy that. You have to give them something in the bottle that's better. So Mac, my friend Mac macpherson, who now retired, he and I went to New York and I said to him, look Mac, we're going to do blind tastings at the beginning in every focus group. He did about four groups, I think, which most people would say was quantitative for us. And I want eight out of 10 people to say, I like our one better than absolute and to volunteer the word because it's smoother. I said with that brief, you have to make a smoother product. And I know what he did and I can't tell because it would be betraying a confidence, but he produced a product where we achieved that result. And we achieved it even to the point in groups where we told people hard nosed American marine sergeants of 40 who are dedicated absolute drinkers. We said, well, that comes from Smirnoff. What do you think? They said, I don't believe it, but if that's true, I'd buy it. Now that was a good story. Unfortunately for all of us, I think IDV had taken over management of Smirnoff from Hubelein in Hartford, Connecticut and they had spent the previous 20 years building up the Smirnoff brand. So what chance of a UK based idea being really made successful in the us? None. Great brand though.
- [29:48]
A
Funnily enough, I know this quite well because at the time you were doing this, I was the brand manager on Solitz Naya. And as part of my training I did some vodka education and vodka tasting. Now, I wasn't a drinker before and I remember my perception, my perception of vodka is it must all taste the same. So I was blown away by, we did this, we tried warm and cold and frozen, all different, different temperatures. The difference between a kind of supermarket owned brand vodka and something like Ciroc or Grey Goose or Stolich Nar Elite was Incredible. I mean, as you say, you're going from something that tastes like almost mouthwash through to something beautifully smooth. Not challenging at all, actually, although it's 40, sometimes 45, 48% because it's so smooth and distilled and refined, it just, you know, it beautifully kind of slips down the throat. But this is something people don't understand about vodka, is it looks the same, but it. It's not the same when you're drinking, you know, high quality versus low quality. And actually, you want to drink it as pure as you can to get to be able to see the differences in the taste. But this was a revelation for me as a young brand manager on Storage Nyer 25 years ago.
- [30:57]
B
Well, for me, the breakthrough was the word smooth. Suddenly, it's never been used in vodka before, and if you could deliver it, and that's my talk about benefit. It started off being pot still vodka, and I thought people would be really excited by pot still vodka, but in fact, smooth vodka is what they were looking for. I mean, nobody knows what a pot still is anyway. Or maybe they distill it with marijuana, who knows? Now, Ciroc is different in the sense that, again, compete with Grey Goose. We didn't have a brand in that sector. And my theory has always been, can you come up with something different, better as a matter of opinion, different as a matter of choice. And I had remembered that I'd been in Tbilisi in Georgia 10 years earlier, going around brandy factory. I said to a guy, what did you drink before you drank brandy? So he said, we drank vodka. I said, oh, well, what do you make it from? Because Tbilisi is about on a latitude with Barcelona, so it's far south, doesn't have those wintry grain harvests that you get further north in Ukraine. So I said, oh, we made our vodka out of grapes. It was cha cha. I thought, what a good idea. You know, what an interesting idea that's going into the memory box. I hope I have enough brain cells to bring it out one day. And so I said to the guys, why don't we do a grape vodka? The world's first branded grape vodka. I said, what I'd like to do is make it from California because Americans like American products, and let's make it grapes. And that's. And they didn't want to do that. They said, the American client said, we'd rather develop it our way in the US So they tested hundreds of options and spent about a million, million and a half dollars messing about trying to make decisions. And they Launched it, it was moderately successful. Anything you put through the Diageo network is going to work to a point. And then to give it real momentum, they got Diddy on board. And it became then a kind of creature of Diddy's ego.
- [33:26]
A
I wanted to move on to talk about the principles behind the innovation, the method in the madness as you call it in the book. Looking back and you know, over many years of successful innovation, what are some of the principles of make getting it right? Because I guess, you know, you've got the sort of bootstrapped, I'm just going to go and try and then you've got the kind of big global consultancies that sell you a two year program, you know, of huge stage gates to jump through to get it there. So innovation can happen in many, many different extremes. But in your experience, what are the key principles to getting it right?
- [33:59]
B
Well, it starts with the top management, I think, who you appoint to run the business. If you appoint a marketing manager, he hasn't got power. He hasn't got enough power to be able to take something to market without lots of checks and balances. So you'd pick people who were senior and who were. They had this champion system which came out of Tom Peters book In search of Excellence. So we would do things for sales directors, did one for a finance director, but they all had the power. And secondly, and that was very important, secondly, we didn't go down the classic marketing route. I think I learned, having done a huge amount of research myself over the years, what a terribly limited tool it was and how if you got two people in a focus group who were wildly enthusiastic about something and the other eight who thought it was crap, you had something to go on. But that doesn't work in the real world. Two out of eight, it doesn't compute. So that was. We never spent money on alternatives. And if you actually look at a marketing company and how much money they spent on testing brand names, pack colors, pack designs, liquid fills, et cetera, et cetera. Everything we did was based on the best possible knowledge of the protagonists. I think my having, I loved working with people where I couldn't do what they did and they couldn't do what I did. So I admired them hugely for their ability to produce great products. And they, I don't know if they admired me hugely but were suitably mystified by my ability to do so. The bringing together people with differences was important and being in advertising I think helped me a huge amount.
- [36:08]
A
I mean, but to your point about team as Well, I think having quite a small team is really, really important, isn't it? Because the bigger the teams get, the more cross functional, the more you're aligning people's diaries and availability.
- [36:20]
B
Absolutely.
- [36:20]
A
The whole thing slows down. So having the right functions represented but also keeping it super tight can make a massive difference.
- [36:27]
B
It was just small. And I failed in some things. I tried to get R and D guys to do groups but they never did. And I tried to get R and D guys to come up with one product. Sometimes they did, but most times they'd send you 12 things. And I think it's very important that you take the decisions, not other people. You take the. I mean I and Bailey's changed everything for me. Because there was an agency in the UK who we in the 60s all admired called CDP. Are you familiar with that? Yes. Yeah, very famous college. College was run by a very old friend of mine, Frank Lowe. But CDP only ever presented one idea. And working in agencies, more conservative agencies, as I did, we really admired them. You think, how the hell could they do that? When you transfer from being an account man to being a creative guy, you realize that there is only one answer. It may not be the perfect answer, but it's your best answer, that which you believe in. And this book is full of things that I really, really believed in.
- [37:43]
A
I like the one idea thing because it shows confidence, it shows that they've understood as well. Because if you're confident enough to present one idea, you have to know that you've answered the brief because otherwise you've got, that's your one shot gone, isn't it? And also when agencies come back and present 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ideas, you have this weird dance where they won't tell you which one they think you should do. It's almost like we're gonna see what your reaction is and suddenly we like option A. Oh no, we like option C now because you've reacted the way you do it. It's almost like a kind of focus group in a way. But I think there's a bit of confidence about one, one idea that's quite appealing.
- [38:21]
B
And I think we also ought to reduce brands back to being things that people buy in shops, not things that change your life. I mean, I know that things like trainers have images beyond their utility, but I think you ought to look at the utility also because that's very important. And I think that there's an over intellectualization of commerce which needs to pull back up from a bit. You know, why are you buying that product and advertising can't solve everything, you know, and you can actually come up with better products.
- [39:02]
A
Yeah, totally. Another thing you said, actually, that I want to pick up on as well, which is so important is do the research yourself, or at least be in the research yourself.
- [39:11]
B
No, no, don't be in.
- [39:12]
A
You know, you've got to experience it firsthand. I mean, when I was at Suntory for a couple of years, we used to call it the Gemba, which is basically the front line. Wherever the product or experience happens, you need to be there. You know, you can't rely on management reports and feedback. You've got to actually experience.
- [39:28]
B
Well, I tell you what.
- [39:29]
A
Yourself.
- [39:30]
B
One thing I learned about focus groups was that actually I wasn't the slightest bit interested in what people said to each other. I was only interested in what people said to me. So I ran my focus groups. Like at school, I gave everybody a. I always presented brands as real. In other words, I wasn't interested in whether they wanted to change the typeface or the color of the label or anything. I just wanted to know whether they liked it or not. And I wasn't interested in cosmetic. So I would hand everybody a piece of paper whenever I showed them anything. And I'd say, here's a brand that's out on the market. You may or may not have seen it. I want you to look at it closely and write down on this piece of paper, what do you think's good about it? What do you think's bad about it? And then give it a mark at a 10 to indicate whether you say, buy it in a bar. And I'd collect up their things. And so there was no way that one guy was going to say, this is a girl's drink, or this is a silly drink, or whatever. I had their individual comments, and they couldn't. If Guy said, I gave it zero. And everybody else says, wonderful. I said, well, hang on. You can't go along with them. You have to say what? And that's incredibly important. So I was doing individual interviews. What they said to each other was irrelevant.
- [40:57]
A
That's so key, actually, because you get this group thing, don't you? And you get one loud voice, and then suddenly the entire group changes their opinion.
- [41:03]
B
Absolutely.
- [41:04]
A
Whereas if everyone individually had scored it and told you what they thought, you might have a completely different outcome.
- [41:08]
B
I might get three guys who loved it and gave really good reasons for it.
- [41:12]
A
Yeah.
- [41:12]
B
So that was important.
- [41:13]
A
One other principle, I think that's really important, your book is you talk about the harder I try. The luckier I get. The old Gary Player.
- [41:19]
B
Gary Player?
- [41:20]
A
Yeah, the famous Gary Player quote. That's so, so true of innovation, isn't it? Because the odds are stacked against you and it's very easy to kind of have a couple of failures and then think, you know, give up. But there's something about innovation where you've just got to get the experience, try things out, get the feedback, improve them, keep going and definitely not give up because a lot of innovation takes a while before it kind of starts to work. And I think I see so many people giving up on innovation, you know, when they should keep going.
- [41:47]
B
Well, I've been doing it for 50 years, so.
- [41:49]
A
Well, there you go. You're the living proof.
- [41:51]
B
I think you have that feeling that there isn't a problem you can't solve as long as you've got somebody at the. I mean if you've got a bunch of dead eyed guys, brand managers looking at you across the table, that's tough. But if you knew that someone like Tim Ambler who traveled the world all the time, and I'd call him up and say, are you free? Can I come up and see you? I think I've worked out. But you have to have a wavelength with a person for whom you're preparing ideas. In other words, he has to respect you and understand you and things. You know, back in the old days it was what is the agency's viewpoint? It was very confrontational. I think my experiences have been working with people who rated me and that was encouraging as well as anything.
- [42:40]
A
So listen, thank you so much. I could talk to you for ages. The stories are fascinating behind some of these brands and well done and congratulations and I hope lots of people get the benefit of your considerable wisdom.
- [42:52]
B
Well, thank you very much. And the only other thing is one of the greatest fun I have at the moment is I made an offer that anyone who buys my book is entitled to a zoom call. So if you buy and read my book and you've got a new product that you're working on, I love getting involved in that kind of thing and I'm not very protective of my ideas.
- [43:14]
A
Well, there you go.
- [43:15]
B
So they're yours if you want them.
- [43:16]
A
You heard it here first. David, thank you so much.
- [43:19]
B
John, it's been a real pleasure meeting you.
- [43:21]
A
Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'D also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do I'm over on X censoredCMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.