Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Uncensored Renegades. This is the 20-minute podcast where Kory Marchisotto and myself tackle one big question every week. I hope you enjoy this. Now, if you are enjoying it, I got one request to make. We're putting this out on the current Uncensored feed for a limited time only. So, if you're enjoying it, go over to Uncensored Renegades, hit subscribe, and never miss an episode. Anyway, without further ado, let's get into it. So, Kory, this is supposed to be a 15-minute podcast.
Oh, yeah. This is the thing we forget every time, isn't it? And so far, we have been a little over 20 and then last episode we were over 30. So, we're moving in the wrong direction.
We are moving in the wrong direction. Although, or the right direction, I don't know.
Yeah. To be fair, we had the most amazing poetry last time, didn't we? So, I think we'll allow ourselves a one-off, but we're going to try and do this in 15 is what you're saying.
I think we're always going to try to get to 15.
Okay, we're trying to. But we are picking I think my favorite marketing topic.
I am obsessed with innovation. I think in my career, I probably spent more time thinking about new products to launch than anything else.
It's like the fun bit. It's the imagining what could be in the world. It's also the scary bit, right? Because like I've failed more times than I've succeeded if I'm honest and the statistics out there play it out in terms of nine out of 10.
You've done some pretty cool innovation. Like what's worked for you and why?
Yeah, I think the first part of innovation maybe for us to talk about because I think it's actually critical and not talked about enough is creating the cultural conditions necessary for innovation to thrive. So, you can't put people in a room and say, 'Innovate. Here's a magic wand. Go.' You have to create the stimulation, the permission, the energy field, the excitement for people to want to flow ideas. So, everything has to start with the ideas. Now, the ideas can come from a multitude of places. They can come from inside the organization. They can come from an aha moment in the shower. They can come directly from your community. And then the work of the innovation teams is to figure out what actually gets on the roadmap. So then you have to pressure test and the pressure testing is triangulating the data points. Now there is something I like to talk about which is there are three things that need to be considered before something gets a no or a go or no go. Art, science, and gut instinct. All too often the only thing people rely on is data. Data is not enough. Right? So data points are important. What do we think the market value is? How much demand and desire is there for that? Is there an equivalent? We can do all the studies in the world, have all the spreadsheets, and we need that. That's important. Then you have the art which is really looking at the insight here. What problem am I solving? Is there a better way to solve it? How am I making your life better? How am I taking all this data and turning it into a narrative or a story? And you have the art form of it. How do I create it in a texture or a color? And then you have what I call gut instinct. And gut instinct is your manual override switch. For whatever reason, and you have a ladder of experiences that allows you to have a manual override switch. Even if the data says don't go, something is telling you go anyway or the opposite. And that is absolutely critical. So not every idea should go to market and there are some brilliant ideas that unfortunately don't go to market either because there's fear or the data doesn't say so or I can't justify it or whatever the case may be. So the first thing you have to do is create the cultural conditions necessary for innovation to thrive. Then you have to go get a multitude of ideas. Then you have to pressure test said ideas to figure out what's going to hit the roadmap. And then you've got to actually go make it happen. And you have to make it happen with excellence. The measuring stick that I use with the team, especially in the line of work we're in, is pride. A product does not go to market until you are personally proud of it. That you will personally stand in front of it, put it on your face, drink it, eat it, whatever business you're in, and be really proud of the work that you've done. What is that? What from a measuring stick? I mean, you've been in soda, you've been in beverage, like what's the measuring stick from the place that you think about innovation?
I love the pride thing actually because it's sort of the intuitive question that actually before I answer that question just come back to you on gut instinct. We tend to think gut instinct is something random, right? It's emotional, right? But your gut instinct is telling you things that you know, but it's often very informed. Your gut is almost telling you something that you can't articulate, right? And it's sometimes better than you can articulate. And yet we don't trust it because we go, 'Oh, gut instinct is wrong,' but actually gut instinct is telling you something you know is true, you just can't quite put it into words and it's, you know, over time becomes right.
Yardstick is a really good one. And I think one of the things I've learned as well is that the most important thing with innovation is to test it and prove the concept first before you go for it and to get the feedback really, really quickly. Because again, you can do all the kind of research in the process and then sometimes you've researched it really, really well and it fails and sometimes you haven't researched it at all and it's an amazing success. But the moment of truth is when it's in front of the customer and you get that reaction. And what I've noticed is with every bit of innovation I've done, I can tell you within days if it's working or not. You know what I mean? Like it's very rare that it doesn't work and then it does or it does work and then it doesn't. You know what I mean? You just know because it's the ability to take the feedback and immediately improve upon it and go again. And I think one of my biggest learnings as well is that we just don't give it time. Because if you think about it, something that's brand new to the world is like a little baby. It's brand new to the world. It needs to be supported. You know what I mean? And yet we tend to make decisions based on a week or a month or a year. And I did this project actually when I was working in beverages where I looked at the 20 most successful soft drink brands of the last decade. And I worked out on average it took seven years before you'd consider it to be a success. In other words, it had a level of rate of sale that you'd look at and go that's well established now. And yet most companies give maybe a quarter, maybe a year max kind of thing. And so I think there's definitely a case of getting the feedback and responding to it and then it's how much patience have you got to do it. But I think what most people get wrong is they go mass market straight away. And I've seen that so many times is you just go, you put all the resources behind it, you take a massive bet. Whereas you're much better off going, 'Right, we're going to test this with this audience, get the feedback, learn, and then we're going to go big.'
Well, the other thing in what you said, when you think about innovators and creators, they're sensitive, right? This is their creation. It's like somebody who writes a poem or paints a beautiful painting. This is a soul talking. And if you shoot down their creations too early, then you have to think about the impact that that's going to have on your innovators and creators because you have to again go back to those conditions necessary. They have to one be okay that things are going to fail. But they always have to try and they always have to try with head, heart, and soul in the game. And if the business becomes too shortsighted, 'Oh, we need instant gratification. It didn't work in 5 minutes,' you're going to start to deflate your innovation people. And when you start to deflate your creators, then you start to have a weak and lackluster pipeline. And when you have a weak and lackluster pipeline, then your brand starts to decay. So all of these things work together in very important ways. And I love what you said about iterating. So I'm going to take you on a journey through Power Grip Primer, which is a franchise that we created, which is now hundreds of millions of dollars in just a couple of years. So, first I'm going to start with what the elf is a primer because you're a dude and you don't wear makeup and you might not know. Okay. So, I'm going to put it in terms that you understand or at least I hope you understand. Have you ever gone to a Lowe's or a Home Depot or like a hardware store?
I've been to a hardware store.
