Yesterday, I had lunch with the man, Bob, who was affectionately dubbed “The Father of Lunchables” by admiring colleagues at the Oscar Mayer Division of Kraft Foods. I worked with and for him for a few years. Most of you won’t know this but his innovation, leadership, development and refinement of Lunchables launched a whole […]
In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, we found out P&G CEO Robert McDonald attended West Point and studied the war tactics of Napoleon Bonaparte. Now he’s using his considerable military training for two objectives: penetrate territory held by competitors in emerging markets and win back consumers, two-thirds of which have switched to […]
I’m excited about the possibilities for a company when they do customer experience mapping and link it to the business model. A customer experience map is when you lay out the path a customer takes from discovery of their need all the way through usage of your product or service; even the final stage where […]
In his book The Design of Business, Roger Martin describes how companies explore and then exploit new knowledge. It’s a terrific read on the subject of design thinking and I recommend it highly. Martin describes how new knowledge progresses through a funnel. It moves through phases from discovery (the exploration of mysteries) to heuristic (the […]
When I first saw this, I thought of the movie Minority Report. Not the Pre-Cogs, but the scene where Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise) walks through the mall and all the windows change to provide him with personalized “merchandising” when he walks by. EmSense uses state of the art neuroscience technology to “track feelings, measure […]
Competing in the food industry is tough business. Margins are slim, gaining a fraction of a share point costs big bucks, and innovation is… well, it’s the food industry. But there’s another type of innovation that drives competitive advantage: technical innovation. The Institute of Food Technologists just held its annual conference, IFT 2010, at McCormick […]
Very informative, interesting presentation today from Karen Gryson of Coca Cola. She spoke at the Shopper Insights in Action 2010 conference sponsored by IIR US. Her presentation focused on Coke’s research in improving POP effectiveness. That’s a very important topic of discussion considering the size of the P.O.P spend at CPG companies in aggregate. Coke […]
And the winner at Shopper Insights in Action 2010 sponsored by IIR US for the biggest dollar impact in their industry is… Bruce Vierck, RTC and Rebecca MacKay, Dairy Management, Inc.! At least that’s what I’m guessing. And, yes, the result of the action they took on key insights if fully rolled out would be […]
Abbey Dryden, P&G and Suzy Cox, Carlson Worldwide Marketing shared at the Shopper Insights in Action 2010 conference sponsored by IIR US how they built a loyalty program for the Pampers brand that was driven by some very smart insights. “Pampers Gifts to Grow” is a point loyalty program whose main goal is to create […]
Sometime in 2007, Kraft made a key decision regarding how they were going to resource in-market research. Instead of outsourcing the bulk of the work, they decided to create a small team called “In Market Testing for Growth” (IMTG) headed by Autumn Dawn McDonald who spoke today at Shopper Insights in Action 2010 sponsored by […]
