Vitality the vision

Some years ago, I helped Unilever to develop a new “corporate mission”. In the end it all came down to one word – VITALITY.

Clarity about vitality as a way of being could create real new momentum for the multinational giant ‒ as the focus of all R&D and marketing efforts; on whom to promote and whom to recruit (and whom not); on which brands to acquire and which to sell.

I was so excited by the word and its obvious relevance and potential that I lobbied as many members of senior management as I knew ‒ and in due course it was adopted.

A little later I was disappointed to learn that it had not been taken up by the HR people in the company in any meaningful way. And the company went on owning the profitable but not very obviously vital Pot Noodle brand.

Now I see on the internet that the strategy has been reduced to a standard formula. This is it (above). Useful, no doubt, but unlikely to unleash much in the way of vitality. 

Ten reasons why good ideas get strangled at birth

1. Sounds too risky.
2. There’s little solid research support.
3. The “experts” in the field think it sounds a bit absurd.
4. The potential market seems too small.
5. The idea comes from R&D (and marketing says it’s not based on sound consumer insight).
6. It would be first to market.
7. It would be following a previous entrant that didn’t do so well.
8. It surfaced too early – not following corporate innovation process.
9. Top management demands breakthroughs, but draws short of funding them in practice (see reasons above).
10. Because it wasn’t my/our idea.

I’ve had each of these with my clients. Usually followed by a competitor taking the opportunity quite soon after.

Additions? Builds?

Risk and the financial meltdown

I’ve been developing new products with financial services organisations – banks, building societies, insurance companies, credit card operators etc – for several decades. Nearly all the majors, both in Britain and internationally.

In my early days (by which I mean the 1970s), there seemed to be a rather strict regime, where risk assessment and legal issues would be dominant in our thinking.

But some time along the way (in the mid-eighties, I think), the gung-ho marketing folk seemed to get the upper hand, and the risk and legal people were pushed back, discounted, assuming a much less intrusive presence.

I wonder if others share this perception? How widespread did it become in the industry? Was this shift a factor in the recent financial meltdown?

And what is the situation now? Have the risk managers reasserted themselves?

Helena Rubinstein and the Sheep of Australia

I have recently been discussing with Facebook friends the apparent shortage of women innovators. Among the many contributory factors, one is that so many of the trained engineers and scientists in the western world have always been men.

But innovation comes in many forms and one woman that I find fascinating is the legendary Helena Rubinstein.

Born in 1870 in Krakow, Poland, she moved to Australia in 1902. She had very little English and no money. But she did have family there – her uncle was a shopkeeper in Coleraine, a small town some 350 kilometres west of Melbourne. This was Big Sheep country and there was an unending supply of lanolin, the grease secreted by the sheep to keep their woolly coats in good condition. Rubinstein used the lanolin as the basis of her own skin creams, disguising its unpleasant odour with lavender and other fragrances.

Later she moved to set up business in Collins Street, still the smartest place for shopping in Melbourne, then Sydney, then London, Paris and New York. She was a brilliant marketer of her products, creating the whole concept of “problem skin” and discovering that, if sales were flagging, raising prices was a good way to get things moving again. Her pushy mantra was: “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.”

She was to become the first self-made female millionaire.

(I see that there’s a new book out by Ruth Brandon about Rubinstein and the founder of L’Oréal, Eugène Schueller, which I’ve not yet seen.)

Taking the MICL

Top priority, since I joined City University in London to set up their Centre for Creativity, has been the development of an interdisciplinary Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership – the MICL.

That’s done now and over the past two weeks we have started the marketing campaign for it. A real opportunity, it seemed to me, for the marketing communications folk in the university to strut their stuff with this unique new offering.

Not so fast!

Because the Centre itself is interdisciplinary, the marketing people in the School of Informatics, where we live, said, “Sorry, you’re not part of our School. Nothing to do with us, Guv.” And the people in the corporate team said, “We don’t market academic courses, that’s all done by the specialists in the Schools. Nothing to do with us, Guv.”

The consequence has been that we decided to hire a dynamic, hungry young team at Claremont, who helped us shape up a complete strategy and plan, and went on to develop a range of exciting and unusual marketing materials.

The one I like best is the video they created for us, which links a Big City Brainstorm we ran together with the new Masters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqVqU-c00lE

The MICL is designed to give innovation leaders all the tools to turn ideas into action. It’s a two-year programme for people with experience who are looking for accelerated career progression.

You can read more about it here: http://creativity.city.ac.uk/master/overview.html

Something for you? Or for a colleague?