A client friend, Kees Langerak, was appointed to be marketing director at Nestlé’s confectionery business in York.
After a couple of weeks, he called me: “This business seems scarcely to have innovated at all in years,” he said. “Fact is we are tremendously pushed for cash right now, so I really can’t afford to pay you. But would you do us a favour and advise me on what I might do about it?”
He knew that I had worked in the past extensively with what had been the Rowntree business and so knew the brands intimately. And he had always been an exemplary client!
“I’ll call you back in ten minutes,” I told him.
And this is what I advised: “Invite lots of people from around the business to come into one big room, and ask them to bring their favourite innovation idea that’s been rejected or ignored in recent years. Set the room up as a ‘street-market’ and enable everyone to display their nominations. And then pick out the biggest ideas that can be implemented quickly.”
Out of this simple exercise, in just a few months, came Chunky Kit-Kat. It doubled the size of that already massive brand.
Posts
