Sweet solutions

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In big companies, as well as start-ups, there is a lot of hyperactivity around innovation. But actually very little gets adopted, and the challenge is that people are inundated with choice,” says Christina Habib. As global vice-president of insights for Unilever’s food and refreshments division, she is focused on changing the way the FMCG giant approaches innovation.

With a vast array of products for consumers to choose from in a crowded marketplace, meeting people’s needs and desires in a sustainable way has become a difficult challenge for today’s FMCG companies, explains Habib. “We needed to innovate differently. We were just adding incremental value – a new ice cream flavour or new soap fragrance. That was just creating a proliferation of choice, with no significant value.There is a genuine need to change the way we innovate by putting the power in the hands of the people and not manufacturers.”

The company set up an internal organisation of insight leaders to change the way it obtains insight on innovation – shifting away from traditional question-based research towards a more behavioural, immersive model. “Within the traditional research process there is an assumption that you would ask consumers and customers quite a lot of restrictive questions and bring their responses down the path, and then design that into a business solution. That’s long gone. You need to stop asking people questions and invite them to come up with the ideas themselves.”

Unilever is no stranger to the start-up world; through its Foundry platform it partners with start-ups to work with its various companies. And its new approach to innovation is also borrowing from the start-up world, as it has required a shift in mindset. Rather than aiming for perfect new products, it increasingly trials small solutions that are co-developed with consumers.

This also means accepting that sometimes things don’t work – an experimental mindset means being ready to kill your darlings.

“In the old world, we took a lot of time to make sure all the nuts and bolts were good before we launched – now it’s a world that demands a lot more agility and experimentation. And if it doesn’t work, don’t get too emotionally attached to it and move on to the next thing.”

Habib also helped to create a machine-learning tool that is part-owned by Unilever and part start-up enterprise to free the team from the “grunt work”; it helps to identify the next emerging channels and types of innovation that would appeal to people. “You need to find creative solutions to getting insight that will give you some competitive commercial advantage – because everybody knows the same information, over time,” says Habib.

However, while building tools and technologies goes some way to map future pockets of innovation, companies still require the human touch, she adds. “You need the intelligence of the machine, but you also need the intelligence of the human being to design the business solution, and build that rapport and empathy with the end customer, which is something that no process or technique can replace.”

Co-conspirators

Moving from attitudinal to behavioural research has been another dimension for Unilever.

Habib says the company has uncovered more new segmentations and insights than if it had taken the conventional route of surveying consumers about, for example, what they’d had to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is increasingly deriving knowledge from data rather than surveys, in tandem with ethnographic approaches to understanding consumers.

The mindset change also has implications for insight agencies – and emphasises the need to act as business partners and advisers rather than simply research suppliers. This is especially pertinent in the crowded FMCG space, says Habib. “The way we work with our agencies is more in partnership, rather than a ‘vendor-supplier’ relationship; they’re so ingrained within our organisation that they’re almost an extension of our business.

“What we really need our agency partners to do is to immerse in the markets, really understand behaviour and give us business solutions that will drive commercial impact – and be co-conspirators and thought-leaders.”

As the pace of change is so rapid, what used to be termed ‘foresight’ or ‘trend mining’ has become more near-term, and the business takes more of a broad, multi-source, cross-disciplinary approach to analysing trend drivers, including culture and the other industries affecting people’s lives, as opposed to looking narrowly at just one sector.

“What’s informing trends in FMCG now is technology, not other FMCGs. For example, the Snapchats and the Amazons of the world are creating a sense of impatience and desire for immediacy,” she says.

Habib says her job will be done when her role becomes obsolete – when everyone in the company understands the consumer as well as an insight professional. “I’m in the business of creating an insightful organisation – not supplying insight. And that’s a very different approach.”