In the spectrum of innovation the technical advancement/consumer insight continuum is the hardest thing to crack, says Steve Gibbons
An article to write on innovation, a blank piece of paper and a daughter asking why I never elicit the help of my children in my articles. “I can tell you about beauty innovations” [this from a daughter currently applying to do an internship at L’Oréal – and at an age where she naturally assumes she knows everything]. “What about those new felt-tip lipsticks from Max Factor? Who’d ever want to use those, they’re rubbish”.
So not much help then to me, nor I suspect to Irwin Lee, Procter & Gamble’s UK general manager, who earlier this week said that the key to growth in a mature market is innovation. He went on to say that grocers are demanding more differentiation with uniquely packaged products and formulations citing hair colouring foam, a genuine technical innovation for applying hair colourant, introduced by three manufacturers including Procter & Gamble, that has boosted the hair colour market by 20% in the last three months.
Mature western markets are stagnating and in the UK and some other European markets trading is going to become increasingly tough until we’ve paid down our deficits. Therefore I predict that if (at best) consumers have less disposable money to spend on beauty products and (at worst) we tip back into recession, necessity will prove to be the mother of invention and we’re going to see all manner of innovation coming into the marketplace.
It seems to us that there’s been an acceleration in beauty innovation in the last 18 months. Take for example the speed at which mascara technology has been reinventing itself.
And there’s a historical context for this. Many of our major businesses have started in recessions. Did you know that before the great depression of the 1930s commercially available nail varnishes were all dye-based and consequently available in only one colour – red? Charles Lachmann, chemist and co-founder of Revlon, realised that he could introduce a far broader range of colours if he used pigments instead of dyes. And his business partner, Charles Revson, recognised that this would bring some much needed colour into the depression hit lives of women all over America. Furthermore he recognised that he could start to paint pictures in consumers’ imaginations by giving the colours evocative names like Kissing Pink or Fatal Apple, a commonplace idea now but at the time very new. Despite the depression he also resolutely refused to sell his products at reduced prices and within a few years they had a multimillion dollar business born from the very depths of that depression.
So for Revlon a technical innovation twinned with the recognition of a genuine consumer insight proved to hit the sweet spot for commercial success. And the pairing of these two is undoubtedly the pinnacle of innovative endeavour and something all our major beauty businesses determinedly pursue.
But the reality is that few innovations genuinely combine both technical advances and consumer insights. And to create them must seem daunting given the need to get all the disciplines within an organisation to work in concert to achieve it.
I’m not for a moment suggesting that every business shouldn’t strive for it, and we’ve been privileged to work with some of our clients to help them achieve it, but in the spectrum of innovation the technical advancement/consumer insight continuum is simply the hardest thing to crack.
And alongside trying to crack it there are some simpler things you should try as well. Mike Vance, the man who was once in charge of idea development for Walt Disney, said: “Innovation is the creation of something new… or the rearranging of the old in a new way.”
The former I would liken to the technical advancement/consumer insight continuum, but the latter is worth equal consideration for innovators.
When setting out to innovate it’s useful to pull your brand apart. Think about the product, think about the user and how they use it, and think about how it’s positioned in the marketplace. A new consumer need-state or usage occasion or the change of a delivery system can provide a trigger for innovation.
And it always helps to look outside your category and draw parallels elsewhere. A commercially brilliant example is when Vaseline first put its product in a small handbag-friendly tin and called it Lip Therapy. It was still the same otherwise unwanted byproduct of the petroleum industry; apparently it used to clog up miners drilling rigs and was regarded as a nuisance. Small tins themselves had been around for decades. So there’s nothing innovative about the constituent parts – it’s simply bringing the two together, renaming it and, crucially, recognising that it met a formerly unmet consumer need, ie not wanting to carry around a clonking great bottle of Vaseline in your handbag to keep your lips moist.
And this simple little tin engenders fierce loyalties – I could have spent my entire afternoon reading bloggers waxing lyrically on the subject to the point now where it’s considered a fashion essential.
Vaseline Lip Therapy is now the biggest lip brand in the UK – and all because someone thought to put it in a tiny tin.
So before, or at least alongside marshalling all the resources of your company in the quest for the holy grail of beauty innovation, have a cold hard look at what you’ve currently got and see if you can transform it with an adept twist or tweak. Or, as my daughter would say: “Duh dad! It’s a no-brainer.”