00;00;06;23 - 00;00;32;01
Speaker 1
Hi. Welcome to Dig in the podcast brought to you by Digg Insights. Every week we interview founders, marketers and researchers from innovative brands to learn how they're approaching their role and their category in a clever way. Good morning. Welcome back to this week's episode of Digg and I'm currently chatting with Fiona Stevenson, founder of The Idea Sweet Fiona, how are you doing?

00;00;32;13 - 00;00;33;28
Speaker 2
I'm great, thank you.

00;00;34;18 - 00;00;39;17
Speaker 1
So excited to have you here. You're also fellow Torontonian.

00;00;40;02 - 00;00;41;26
Speaker 2
Yes, I am. Love Toronto.

00;00;42;05 - 00;01;04;25
Speaker 1
Love it. Love it. And we're going to be talking a little bit about creativity and constraints and actually how being able to create some constraints actually often will lead to greater creativity. But before we dove into that, I did want to give the listeners a little bit of a background on who you are and what the ideas we readers.

00;01;04;29 - 00;01;06;11
Speaker 1
Would you mind kicking off with that?

00;01;06;25 - 00;01;31;03
Speaker 2
Absolutely. So I started my career in marketing at Procter and Gamble quite a while ago now. So I spent just over ten years there working in various brand management and innovation roles in Toronto mostly. But I also spent a few years in Geneva, Switzerland, and that's where I was designing innovation for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. And that really sparked my passion for innovation.

00;01;31;20 - 00;01;49;24
Speaker 2
So I was like, I found this, you know, part of the job that I absolutely love. And I was kind of always obsessed with creative pursuits, you know, as a child, like writing these great novels that never turned into anything but writing comedy, like, just always kind of creating. And I felt like this, this extension of creativity, right?

00;01;49;24 - 00;02;16;11
Speaker 2
It's kind of taking your creativity and challenging it into creating something that maybe the world can use in some way. So eventually I met my now business partner when I was back in Toronto and we founded the Idea Suite almost eight years ago. So it's almost our eighth birthday and we are a boutique strategy, an innovation agency. So our mission and really what guides us, it's all about unlocking the creative potential of people and businesses through innovation.

00;02;17;04 - 00;02;22;29
Speaker 2
And that kind of drives everything we do because you often see a lot of shiny objects as a startup, like, Oh, we could.

00;02;22;29 - 00;02;23;26
Speaker 1
Do this, we could do nothing, could.

00;02;23;26 - 00;02;41;23
Speaker 2
Do this. So that kind of keeps us grounded, but it really is unlocking that creative potential and what we do essentially because innovation can be a bit of a black box for people. So even my close friends are sometimes like, What do you actually do? Is it tactical innovation? Do you design apps or. So we really leverage a design thinking process.

00;02;41;29 - 00;02;59;04
Speaker 2
So we help our clients create new products, new brands and new services that are all about delighting their consumers or their customers. And we kind of work with them from that very beginning, opportunity spotting where they're like, Oh, we kind of want to grow in this area. We're interested in this area all the way through to concept development.

00;02;59;21 - 00;03;21;08
Speaker 2
And once we have worked with them to create these testable concepts, that's when we would typically hand off to an agency like Digg Insight. So that's actually how I know you guys, a lot of you, because we share a lot of clients. So what kind of hand over those concepts? They'll go through a concept testing process to determine their commercial potential, and then our clients will go out and implement the winners.

00;03;21;26 - 00;03;41;22
Speaker 2
So we tend to work with large multinationals, a lot of like big CPG companies or banks or clients like that. But more recently we're also starting to work with entrepreneurs and startups, which has been really exciting and we're learning a lot from them because they are very scrappy and they get super creative.

00;03;41;22 - 00;04;04;15
Speaker 1
That's so interesting. I yeah, I didn't realize that we shared a lot of clients and that we work together in that way because I guess I'm not one of the couple hundred consultants on our end. But no, it's very, very cool. I mean, before we get too far into the weeds on creativity, I did want to ask about design thinking because I know what it means to a certain extent, but a lot of people might not.

00;04;04;15 - 00;04;09;23
Speaker 1
So do you mind just saying telling people what you mean when you say you leverage a design thinking approach?

00;04;09;23 - 00;04;35;26
Speaker 2
Absolutely. So really design thinking approach is it's also called like a creative problem solving framework, but it's kind of like, let's say you have an ambition, you want to create something. It's a kind of discipline process that takes you through from kind of defining the problem. Certainly getting feedback from consumers or customer hours along the journey and then ultimately, you know, iterating a proposition and creating something that's testable.

00;04;36;09 - 00;05;01;16
Speaker 2
So there are four a step five step three step processes. We have a proprietary six step process. Our process every step begins with the letter I because we are the ideas we but really essentially they're all the same. It's really about truly understanding your consumer's pain points, their needs, their unmet needs and their desires, and designing something that will add value to them that ultimately they'll be willing to pay for or sign up for or whatever it is.

00;05;02;24 - 00;05;19;01
Speaker 2
And there's different ways of doing it. So our particular approach really, you know, we have kind of some secret sauce and there are some things that we think are really important to the process. And I'll talk about a few of them today, but we certainly are consumer led or customer led. So we think it's so, so important to get in touch with your customers.

00;05;19;01 - 00;05;38;27
Speaker 2
And there are so many cheap and scrappy and very creative ways to get close to your consumers or customers. Often you don't have to spend any money. You can kind of lurk in the grocery store and watch how they shop absolutely free on the weekend when you're doing your own grocery shopping or you know, you can look at reviews and comments on your website or or all kinds of things.

00;05;38;27 - 00;05;52;21
Speaker 2
So that's one thing that we think is so important and it's really understanding them up front, but all through the process, always touching back with consumers because they'll tell you where you're getting it right and where you're getting it wrong.

00;05;52;21 - 00;06;15;11
Speaker 1
Thanks for explaining that. Okay. I'm going to dove right in. Why does creativity love constraints or why is that something that because when we initially chatted, you kind of mentioned that that's something that you keep coming back to within your business and your business partner sort of again and again. So I'd love to hear from your perspective, like why is constraint really helpful when it comes to breeding great creative ideas?

00;06;15;26 - 00;06;42;05
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's one of the fundamental things we actually teach in any innovation training or even just in any project that we're doing with clients. We keep going back to that because it is a bit counterintuitive. I mean, I don't think I would have believed that as a child, as a 22 year old starting at P&G, you know, a lot of people talk about this idea of like brainstorming, you know, bring everyone together, have tons of ideas, blue sky thinking, all ideas are good ideas.

00;06;42;05 - 00;06;58;25
Speaker 2
You hear that a lot. And now, having worked in the space for so many years, we don't necessarily believe that. And that's hard to say. But, you know, not all ideas are good ideas. Some ideas need to be killed or some ideas maybe never should have been had in the first place, because ultimately ideas have to be grounded in reality.

00;06;59;04 - 00;07;22;07
Speaker 2
So the reality of your business, you know, the reality of the market conditions and the consumer you're serving, and that's super important. So as we judge ourselves, we're judging ourselves based on how we can come up with great ideas that we all love and the client loves. And that sounds fantastic. But ultimately we want them to test extremely well in quantitative testing and have a lot of commercial potential.

00;07;22;12 - 00;07;44;17
Speaker 2
And ultimately we want them to launch and to be huge. And so if we want them to work in real life, we have to make sure that we're thinking about reality from the very beginning. And so I talked about the six step design thinking process that we work through with clients, and the first step is identify so this is where we really get clear on identifying the problem.

00;07;44;25 - 00;08;04;12
Speaker 2
So what is the problem we're trying to solve? What are the goals and ambitions for the project? Why are we even starting an innovation project at all and what are the guardrails? And this can be really hard at times because people don't want to set guardrails, right? So they kind of want to put everything in scope and we really help them to do that, which again can be hard.

00;08;04;12 - 00;08;36;07
Speaker 2
And sometimes I'll say, Oh, I'll throw this in. Well, you know, we'll throw this brand in, we'll throw this consumer target in, and yet we can do anything. But you really have to be realistic. So if you want to create like a $100 million new product line, but you're not willing to build any new manufacturing capability at your plant or you're not willing to spend any money to support it when it ultimately launch, if it launches, if you have to launch in six months, but you really want breakthrough innovation and that takes 12 to 18 months to develop kind of the technical capability that goes with it.

00;08;36;13 - 00;08;58;28
Speaker 2
You just need to be realistic about that to ensure that your ideas are actually feasible, because what you don't want to do is spend money. You've got everyone together, everyone's coming up with these ideas and then ultimately none of them will actually meet the goals of your program. So that's really how we measure ourselves on commercial success. But the important thing is, you know, it's we always say it's the process, but it's the mindset.

00;08;58;28 - 00;09;23;17
Speaker 2
It's always the two together. So ultimately, if you put in those constraints and say, this is where we can play, this is the sandbox, this is where we can't. And the whole team sees them as barriers and is demotivated by them. You're not going to get far. So you really have to bring with it this creative energy and this optimism and this belief that, you know, we've got these smart constraints, but there's still a lot of room for us to play.

00;09;23;17 - 00;09;48;01
Speaker 2
And we can come up with amazing innovation even within the sandbox. If you don't have optimism and we'll talk about the pandemic, I'm sure, because there were tons of constraints there. But the people who didn't have belief in themselves, in their businesses, in their team, those were the ones that really struggled. And often the brands or companies who aren't with us anymore are with us in the same way.

00;09;48;01 - 00;10;08;09
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's super, super interesting. And I mean, I think what you said about the pandemic is very true, this idea that like and I think we were going to dove into it later, but you mentioned in an initial call, we had a couple of a couple of examples of like we probably wouldn't have seen this approach to new product development if we hadn't had the constraints of the pandemic.

00;10;08;09 - 00;10;23;14
Speaker 1
So thank you for pointing that out, because I do want to dove into that. But in terms of how creativity and constraints sort of inform the work that you do, is there anything else you wanted to add there?

00;10;23;14 - 00;10;48;22
Speaker 2
I think the best way probably is to talk about some real world examples to bring it to life. I mean, I can talk about an example way back at Procter and Gamble. So just this is something that any marketers, brand managers, directors listening to this podcast would probably relate to, which was if part of you are responsible or your main responsibility is managing an initiative pipeline, you know, sometimes things happen that you don't expect.

00;10;49;00 - 00;11;07;29
Speaker 2
So you have things slotted. You have your two or three year pipeline. You're going to launch this at this date and then six months later we launch this. Well, I recall when I was working in Europe, I was working on the pet food business. And we had a situation where I think it was about eight months before our huge launch, which was for, you know, all of Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

00;11;08;14 - 00;11;33;04
Speaker 2
It was you know, we were counting on a lot of growth behind this and something happened. You know, some kind of manufacturing issue or technical issue happened such that that launch was going to be delayed. And a lot like, I think it was at least a kind of 12 month delay. And so we had suddenly this massive gap where people were expecting this innovation, had sold it in, you know, we're counting on it to deliver the year and it wasn't going to be there.

00;11;33;19 - 00;11;51;01
Speaker 2
And so really, I and my team, I mean, we had like a couple of months, I think it was something like six weeks to come up with some kind of gap filling plan. And we had virtually no money to do it, you know, no time to come up with a new product initiative. So there was no way we were going to be able to change the product in any way or launch a new product.

00;11;51;12 - 00;12;10;28
Speaker 2
So we had to do what's now known as commercial innovation. There's other words that people sometimes use for it, but it's basically where you're talking about your products in a new way, or you're kind of framing your product benefit in a new way, but you're not touching it at all. So it's the exact same product, but you're talking about it in a different way.

00;12;10;28 - 00;12;27;27
Speaker 2
My absolute favorite example of this is Diamond Shreddies, which is such an old example. But you know, it was basically repositioning Shreddies as Diamond Shreddies simply by turning the square on its side, if you will. It's the exact same Shreddies So I knew we had to come up with something like that, like what's the new way we can talk about the product?

00;12;28;22 - 00;12;54;18
Speaker 2
And we always like to start with consumers. You know, Procter and Gamble also is a very consumer led, the consumer's boss used to say. And so starting with consumers like what are they thinking about the product where the pain points that were will find kind of some unmet needs that we can design something around. And so because we didn't have money for consumer research, we looked at the calls that we got to the one 800 line and probably the emails at that time were there was an email so small, but like a lot of it was phone calls.

00;12;54;18 - 00;13;14;04
Speaker 2
And that tends to be when consumers call up and they're complaining about some things, you can really get to, what are those pain points? And what we found is, in fact, the reason people are often calling the one 800 line was not to complain, but to say like, wow, I have to tell you, since switching to your pet food, we do more expensive pet food.

00;13;14;04 - 00;13;42;13
Speaker 2
True. But like since switching from my regular brands, I'm seeing these crazy like visible signs of change in my pet. Look, I'm seeing that their teeth actually look whiter or, you know, their joints are jumping higher, like, this is crazy. I can actually see the difference. And that's just kind of insane. And so this led to an idea for commercial innovation, which was all about, you know, feed this product to your pet for six weeks and you'll notice a visible difference in the health of your pet.

00;13;43;01 - 00;13;58;29
Speaker 2
And so we designed all this cool stuff. Basically, it was a whole toolkit that was sent to all the countries, which was like a checklist that people could do on their own to assess the six signs of their health. Your pet kind of the before and after there was a vet toolkit where vets could administer a more comprehensive test, a breeder tool kit.

00;13;58;29 - 00;14;16;27
Speaker 2
There was something in retail, there were beautiful. Like we did a photoshoot with beautiful images of like, you know, glowing white teeth, like dogs jumping in the air and shiny coats. And it was kind of dramatizing that before and after. It wasn't actual before and afterwards, but it was just showcasing how you could really see all these signs.

00;14;16;27 - 00;14;38;19
Speaker 2
And so it ended up being big enough to fill that gap. But it sort of also was a test, if you will, or a case study for, hey, this commercial innovation, it's a lot cheaper. You can get it done more quickly. And you are still really addressing a consumer need or desire, in this case, a healthier pet, a truly healthier pet.

00;14;38;19 - 00;14;54;19
Speaker 1
Very interesting. And I think you're probably right going into this example, it actually brings this idea of creativity and constraint to life. So why don't we dove into a few more? You'd mentioned one from the pen topic that I thought was super interesting was Rebecca minkoff.

00;14;54;26 - 00;15;13;08
Speaker 2
Yeah, I love I mean, I love the pandemic stories. Obviously, it's been a really difficult time. I know for us as an agency, we were an entirely in-person agency. We were flying every week. We were in Chicago and New York. We were all over the place delivering these in-person ideation sessions. We had to pivot like crazy really, really quickly.

00;15;13;08 - 00;15;45;23
Speaker 2
So I do know how hard it was, but it's amazing how the like the massive constraints and we're talking like market conditions, supply teams, budgets, like people being at home suddenly like massive changes to how people were living. These seemed insurmountable, I think, to any of us and many of us. And Rebecca minkoff, you know, early on, I don't know if you did this, but when we were all stuck at home and suddenly a lot of the big conferences like innovation conferences and things like that, they went virtual and they were often free or very little money to attend.

00;15;45;23 - 00;16;06;18
Speaker 2
So especially as a lot of our client projects got postponed a bit and I had more time, I was listening and going to all these virtual conferences and just loving people's stories and people were very raw and authentic as they were talking about their own struggle. And I did see I was at one particular conference, I can't actually remember which one it was, where Rebecca minkoff was talking.

00;16;06;26 - 00;16;27;26
Speaker 2
And I mean, she so that is like a fashion brand. So it's primarily at that time through department stores. So her brand lost I think it was over 70% of their business in March 2020 because all the department stores were closing. And of course, you know, initially they felt super defeated. They had to get really scrappy. They had to let go of a lot of people.

00;16;27;26 - 00;16;49;17
Speaker 2
They were down to a very small group. I think it was like 25 of them. And Rebecca minkoff as the CEO and co-founder, was kind of right down to like getting super, super scrappy. So we were getting in touch with consumers, talking to consumers. They'd always kind of relied on selling through department stores, but suddenly they had to kind of switch to, okay, we need to be a direct to consumer brand.

00;16;49;27 - 00;17;09;00
Speaker 2
And so they started really working on their social media presence. They had to build e-commerce capability, but at the same time, the problem was the product was no longer relevant or wasn't relevant in the same way because they kind of looked at each other and said, No one's dressing up for work anymore. And what they had to do was really reframe that question.

00;17;09;15 - 00;17;29;11
Speaker 2
So no one is dressing up for work anymore. Pretty much means, you know, we can pack up and go home. We're done. But they reframed it to a question, which was How are people dressing up for work? And it turns out they were still dressing up for work. They were just doing it in a really different way. So, you know, the classic joke that we all used was the whole tops only thing, right?

00;17;29;11 - 00;17;50;08
Speaker 2
Pajamas on the bottom or party on the bottom, but like more business casual on top. So people were still wearing tops and because they were only showing their tops, they kind of wanted them to look more interesting. Right. So tops, you know, this started to really inspire I think the creatives that Rebecca minkoff because hey, let's work with shoulders let's make shoulders more elaborate.

00;17;50;08 - 00;18;10;12
Speaker 2
Let's make them part. Let's make interesting necklines because that's all the people are seeing. Let's also get more into jewelry, accessible necklaces and things that are really on camera a lot. People can change up their necklaces every day and kind of have a different look but in a more, again, affordable way. So actually this became really inspiring for the design team.

00;18;10;22 - 00;18;34;03
Speaker 2
At the same time, people wanted comfort, so they were looking at softer fabrics. And even for those bottoms, like how can you create velour or like really soft cotton fabrics and things that will feel great to sit in. And so I just thought that was a fantastic example of through the pandemic, changing their strategy in terms of how consumers buy their product, but also the types of things they're offering to make them really relevant.

00;18;34;03 - 00;18;54;02
Speaker 2
And there are tons of examples from the pandemic. I mean, if you I was thinking other day, if you really wanted a masterclass in innovation, the best person to talk to would probably be anyone who owned a restaurant in Toronto. Right. Because we were so shut down. I mean, anyone who survived that, they were shut down thoroughly and they shut down again.

00;18;54;02 - 00;19;12;21
Speaker 2
Like suddenly they were pivoting to these, like, outdoor seating arrangements. And then that was kind of shut down at some point. But a lot of them, I mean, they're just selling scrappy, right, so close to their customer. And they came up with really interesting new lines of business, ways of operating that have stuck around in some cases. Right.

00;19;12;22 - 00;19;38;19
Speaker 2
Like contactless payment and contactless delivery, these kind of food boxes getting into that or subscription services you think of also things like telehealth is really growing through the pandemic, which I think is a great thing. Anyway, online education. I mean, I loved all those free webinars and things. I went to tons of them in the first year, but I think that there's more access to great online education for all of us, which is amazing, right?

00;19;38;19 - 00;19;58;17
Speaker 2
So things became more accessible and and even Spotify, you know, I thought actually Spotify would have been a brand that grew through the pandemic. What I hadn't thought about was, as all of these brands and businesses were cutting their ad revenue, they were certainly cutting it a lot from Spotify. And actually they faced real declines in ad revenue in the pandemic.

00;19;58;24 - 00;20;22;12
Speaker 2
So their response was actually to start offering original content kind of in the Netflix model of, you know, Netflix started off, I think, which is House of Cards and now they've got so much original content and Spotify, their podcasts, it's now something that, you know, they own. They sign these really exciting exclusive podcast deals. And so they've been able to flourish and I think they will thrive because of that.

00;20;22;12 - 00;20;42;26
Speaker 1
You are like a wealth of information on that. This is so interesting. I hadn't heard of or thought about a lot of these a lot of the sort of routes that you're taking a sound. But one thing that I am now thinking about, based on what you've said, is, like you said, you work with some really large CPG companies, global businesses, and then you've also started working more with startups.

00;20;44;17 - 00;21;05;13
Speaker 1
And that makes me think about often startups are under more constraints, right? Just from a budget purely from like a fiscal or budgetary perspective. And they've also got less people. There's less process set up. How would you describe sort of the difference in the way that you work with those types of businesses based on size or based on, you know, tenure?

00;21;06;06 - 00;21;15;14
Speaker 1
Do you see that creativity and constraint framing or approach to do you have to take a different tact with them? Like, I'm just curious what that looks like.

00;21;15;19 - 00;21;38;24
Speaker 2
Yeah, a great, great question. I mean, I have loved learning more about entrepreneurs and startups in the past few years and there are so many fascinating podcasts on them. And if you listen to them kind of obsessively, I've also started training for a half marathon, so I'm running a half marathon in a week and a half. So what I do is I listen to a lot of podcasts on track speed all the time, so I can listen to like three or four in a long run.

00;21;39;04 - 00;21;59;10
Speaker 2
And but just hearing your stories, so many of these, you know, now hugely successful entrepreneurs are serial entrepreneurs. They started with nothing, right? So they started where they were bootstrapping. They had like three or four credit cards that were maxed out and they had to be super creative, like they were just forced to write and they were super lean.

00;21;59;15 - 00;22;17;11
Speaker 2
They were kind of working with a family member or it's just themselves. And so it really does. I mean, we're just more creative with a small budget and when every dollar hurts, then you really want to max what you get out of that dollar. And I think sometimes you know that the big budget thing, it feels great and feels like, Oh, we can do anything.

00;22;17;16 - 00;22;34;23
Speaker 2
But you start to almost like just go, Yeah, we'll do that. Or We've done that for ten years, so let's just keep doing it. And you're not really looking for, you know, what is that thing that's going to give me the tax return now? Yes, like a tax return is pretty good, but like there is like little entrepreneurs when they're starting are working for the tax return.

00;22;34;23 - 00;22;53;00
Speaker 2
They're looking for something that's going to bring in a ton of money that they can actually start to invest and grow behind. So I love the scrappiness. I love the creativity. I think the biggest challenge sometimes with entrepreneurs is that they started off kind of just them, and they often came up with that original idea for the business.

00;22;53;04 - 00;23;14;17
Speaker 2
And even as they started to innovate, they often came up with a lot of those ideas. And so it's really about pushing that innovation down to the people, because suddenly they turn around and they've grown into, you know, they've got 200 people or 300 people or whatever it is. They've got this huge team, but they might still feel that that innovation lies with them, that pressure to always be coming up with the next idea.

00;23;14;26 - 00;23;45;28
Speaker 2
So a lot of the work we do with time is actually about innovation, capability. So it's helping to teach them our design thinking framework or any framework. It could be a kind of proprietary one for them that they want to, you know, that's really bespoke for their company and then helping them build this innovation culture where the mindsets, the behaviors, all these things that create a really innovative culture where ideas can just come from anywhere, where anyone at any level of the company, and it could be the person who drives your product out to wherever they're seeing pain points.

00;23;46;05 - 00;24;05;26
Speaker 2
They're coming up with potential solutions and they're bringing them back to head office or whatever it is. And those ideas are being nurtured and supported. So you want to create that and that takes huge pressure off that entrepreneur, especially as they kind of are, you know, higher up and kind of focused on other things and not really down in the details of the business.

00;24;05;26 - 00;24;30;08
Speaker 2
And so that's what we really, really love doing. It's not a small job, but building those innovation culture is helping create those frameworks and processes that enable innovation. And, you know, back to our story, that's what kind of saved us as an agency because we teach innovation, we have an innovation process. So as we had to quickly pivot and innovate ourselves, we kind of could do it more quickly because we already had it in place.

00;24;30;24 - 00;24;50;20
Speaker 2
So, you know, in terms of advice for other people, it's like you can't wait for that next crisis and then quickly mobilize. You want to, especially now things are good again. You want to start thinking about do we have a culture that encourages the creation of ideas, that nourishes ideas? Do we have a process for creating innovation or is it a bit haphazard?

00;24;51;07 - 00;25;04;10
Speaker 2
So it's something to think about, you know, kind of in the good times versus in crisis, it can be difficult, especially when morale is down. And, you know, a lot of us are homeschooling or other things in the pandemic case, it can be hard.

00;25;04;10 - 00;25;33;27
Speaker 1
So that's a really, really good point and it brings something else up for me. So we talked about how some really creative stuff has come out of the constraints of the pandemic or some really good creative work has come out of the constraints of, you know, being an entrepreneur or being a startup. How do you sort of create constraints to help breed that creativity within, say, a large business is up through the design thinking framework or is there anything else at play there?

00;25;34;06 - 00;25;53;22
Speaker 2
Yeah, great question. Well, thinking about like product innovation, so often when we're beginning a journey with a client, we spend a lot of time on this problem definition. And I know I've talked a lot about this, but it's not the most exciting step. It's actually like the least exciting, right? It feels like innovation is supposed to be fun and creative and then it's like a problem definition, right?

00;25;54;00 - 00;26;15;03
Speaker 2
People want to jump right to ideation, right to having ideas. And so what we really do is we find when you ask people why they're going on a product innovation journey, why they want to create new products or come up with new ideas, it's really because they have big ambitions. So we want to double sales, want to grow sales at lunchtime, we want to increase our profits, and they're usually about money.

00;26;15;21 - 00;26;37;25
Speaker 2
And so what we try to do is help them boil it down to what is the behavior you want to change? Because that's what's going to get you to something really exciting and breakthrough that's going to create value that people will be willing to pay for. And at the same time. So that's one problem where it's kind of just they're focused more on the ambition, which again is usually about making money versus what is that behavior they want to solve.

00;26;38;12 - 00;26;59;25
Speaker 2
And also they're doing an innovation project and it's really tempting to throw the kitchen sink in. So it's like, Oh, we were just going to do it on this particular brand. But actually, you know, let's bring in this brand, this brand and this brand as well or we were just going to do it on this distinct category. But actually, you know, let's say it's skincare, but actually, you know, the people from hair care really found out that we're doing this and they want in.

00;27;00;02 - 00;27;19;14
Speaker 2
So let's ideate on hair care and skin care and body care because there's a lot of excitement around it. But the bigger you make it, the it's kind of like watering everything down, right? So again, we can we can do innovate, like let's do innovation for haircare. Absolutely. But let's separate it. Let's see whether synergies or efficiencies in the process.

00;27;19;14 - 00;27;38;14
Speaker 2
But let's do an innovation project just for skin care and just for hair care, because we're going to have a different consumer. There's going to be different problems and unmet needs and desires. And so we try to have those conversations at the beginning, you know, even when we're maybe like still pitching just to say, hey, we want to be really clear.

00;27;38;14 - 00;27;56;00
Speaker 2
This is our philosophy on innovation. Are you with us on this? And then we always have a kick off session with the whole multi-functional team at the very beginning of that innovation journey. To get clear on that. And we use just a really simple framework. So it's the who, the what and the so that so it's like, who are we targeting?

00;27;56;00 - 00;28;17;07
Speaker 2
Because that's another thing. Sometimes it's like, oh, well, we're, you know, innovating for everyone or it's really for women. 18 to 54, right? So it's getting really clear on. But who really who is that prime prospect that's really going to unlock growth for us? And then once you've identified that person, you know, it could be millennial males, it could be much more psychographic driven.

00;28;17;23 - 00;28;35;06
Speaker 2
But then what is the behavior that we want to change? You know, what is it that we want them to do with us, with our brands? And then finally, we'll get to the so that and the so that that's the business outcome. So yeah, so that we can double sales at lunch time, so that we can, you know, grow our revenue by this much.

00;28;35;13 - 00;28;56;01
Speaker 2
But you really want to start with the consumer and that behavior that you want to change and you want to start with understanding that consumer. So we always insist after identify the next is insight. We always insist that we get some insight on the consumer. Ideally, we do a little bit of work, so like some qualitative research or some kind of work to talk with them, to understand them.

00;28;56;09 - 00;29;13;29
Speaker 2
But it might just even be about going back to all that you already know about your consumer. It could be from past research studies or your hypotheses, and just out of that, try to come up with, you know, what are the really important insights that we need to know. Again, pain, points and desire, those are always going to get you the farthest.

00;29;14;18 - 00;29;35;10
Speaker 2
And then how do you address those and things that, like I will say, it's magic happens. It's like that's the type of work that can be where there's a healthy tension. But then you get to that and you're so clear on what we're trying to do, who we're designing for, you know, stuff about the consumer, it all just flows from there.

00;29;35;10 - 00;29;43;04
Speaker 2
You go into ideation and people are just bursting with ideas because they're clear on that.

00;29;43;04 - 00;30;02;25
Speaker 1
That's really helpful, actually. I know we did dove into the design thinking framework before, but just like getting into the weeds on, you know, how do you actually develop constraints, I think that's going to be so valuable for the listeners. So thank you for explaining that. I'm conscious of time. We've only got a little bit little bit of time left.

00;30;02;25 - 00;30;31;09
Speaker 1
But I did want to talk about something that we touched on last time we chatted about this episode. We were talking about, you know, we often talk about product innovation on our end because we dig we do a lot of work on sort of renovation or innovation in the CPG space, something that I'm less familiar with is innovation and sort of the customer experience, the customer experience space or anything else that you guys might do at the idea suite.

00;30;31;09 - 00;30;44;21
Speaker 1
So do you guys use sort of the same process when it comes to customer experience innovation as you might with product innovation or renovation? Or does it differ? I just love to touch on any other sort of work that you do.

00;30;45;09 - 00;31;17;17
Speaker 2
Yeah, great question. So we do customer experience innovation as well. And it is similar and different in a way. So I think, you know, again, going back to the pitfalls sometimes with customer experience, innovation and I think this is how I would have understood it before I worked in the space is, you know, you want to kind of look at those really amazing examples of customer service like Zappos and the Disney is, you know, those those ones that are known for those brands that create those huge wows and it's almost okay, like how do I how do I apply that wow.

00;31;17;17 - 00;31;38;02
Speaker 2
To my business? How do I bring in some of those best in class wow moments that those companies use and kind of do them for my customers. But again, you really want to get very narrow about what's going on with your particular customer. And so what's really important at the start of a customer experience innovation project is getting clear on that customer journey.

00;31;38;12 - 00;31;58;02
Speaker 2
And that's, you know, from the very, very beginning of realizing they have, you know, a problem that they want to solve or a desire that they kind of want met and they don't even know about your product or brand at that point, all the way to the very end, where they're using your products regularly and they're getting that outcome that they wanted.

00;31;58;08 - 00;32;18;20
Speaker 2
And you want to really go through and mark out that journey very, very specifically. And again, you would do that through getting close to your consumer. Ideally, you'd be following them along that journey. So, you know, we've done work where it's like experience innovation around the process of getting a credit card, for example, that I just went through.

00;32;18;20 - 00;32;36;25
Speaker 2
So at the beginning, like a shadowing or watching a consumer as they kind of research different cars or trying to understand the benefits of different cards. And you want to as you go through each piece of that journey, understand what are the pain points? And there always are some. And what are the black holes? The black holes is where someone just falls out.

00;32;37;08 - 00;32;52;00
Speaker 2
And I've done this a ton because I've shopped a lot online through the pandemic where I've gone all the way to put something in my current and then I just leave it in my car. And that's kind of it. I sort of abandoned it, right? So that would be a black hole where they've lost me and I end up going somewhere else.

00;32;52;04 - 00;33;12;15
Speaker 2
Occasionally I do come back, right. And if there is this good customer experience kind of journey where actually it's like, hey, we noticed you left this and can we tell you about this and stuff that might get me back or I might see some other communication that gets me back? You really again, you want to get very clear on what are those pain points or black holes along the journey?

00;33;12;20 - 00;33;40;07
Speaker 2
And then you want to ideate very narrowly around those particular problems. And that's where absolutely go to the Zappos and the Disney is and all those amazing companies. We love bringing inspiration in so case studies. But then you can get very specific with your case study, like an abandoned product in the cart, you know, what are the best in class and ways that other companies have really solve this problem or done really innovative things created really innovative solutions to solve that.

00;33;40;16 - 00;33;56;12
Speaker 2
That will be that case study that's very specific around that particular problem will be much more useful to you than just very general, big, loud things that these companies seem to do from the outside.

00;33;56;12 - 00;34;14;29
Speaker 1
Thank you, Fiona. Okay. With the last few minutes, we are going to move into what I like to call the Rapid Fire question portion. So I've got a few questions for you that I ask everyone who comes on. If you gained two times your budget tomorrow, what would you spend it on?

00;34;14;29 - 00;34;21;08
Speaker 2
Well, that's a good one. I would say I'm working on. Absolutely.

00;34;21;08 - 00;34;22;16
Speaker 1
What would the people be doing?

00;34;23;08 - 00;34;43;21
Speaker 2
I think just in general, I mean, for innovation to really, you know, to thrive, to build a real innovation culture, it really depends on the people. It's unlocking their potential. And that's what our mission is all about. So you want a diverse team with diverse perspectives. You never know where your next idea will come from. It's always exciting when you're dating with a client.

00;34;43;28 - 00;35;02;09
Speaker 2
Ultimately, you know, one person had the spark of an idea or they saw something and it kind of sparked something. And then everyone kind of comes in and builds and stuff, but you never know where that idea will come from. But it does always start with a human being. So absolutely. I would say more people. I think, see this that energy of like people together.

00;35;02;25 - 00;35;15;04
Speaker 2
It's it's been so amazing, you know, through coming back to more of a hybrid situation, seeing people together and that energy that's created in person, that's magic, you know, that can create the next hundred million or anything for sure.

00;35;16;13 - 00;35;24;12
Speaker 1
Amazing. And the the inverse, I guess, is this question is if you lost half of your budget tomorrow, what would have to go?

00;35;25;26 - 00;35;42;20
Speaker 2
I would say you know, I would say getting rid of office space and only because we've developed such amazing virtual tools and ways of connecting virtually. I mean, I'll have team members that they'll be on Microsoft teams with each other literally for 4 hours in a day like Wrath and joking, working together, getting each other unstuck. It's amazing.

00;35;43;10 - 00;36;13;20
Speaker 2
But I would still look for ways for us to come together, you know, even like a couple of times a month for just like in-person play activity, just for those, like, in-person fireworks that I just talked about. But I would say that, you know, and I think that's something as an agency owner, I think for my clients, if I were sitting back at Proctor and Gamble or back in the client seeing it and I had to half my budget, I think that's that's the point I made before I would at my marketing budget and look at, you know, other things in my brand budget that I've just kind of been doing for years.

00;36;13;25 - 00;36;40;22
Speaker 2
And I just don't even question them and like, how do I just cut those out now and in favor of just like those not expensive at all tiny little experiments, those test and learn experiments where, you know, I'm gonna try something in one city or, one retail outlet or whatever it is, like one tiny thing. And I'm really going to be bored with that because that could turn into something incredible that if applied across my whole business or all of Canada or all of North America could be absolutely huge.

00;36;41;00 - 00;36;49;15
Speaker 2
So I think that's the discipline that I would bring, you know, in hindsight is 2020. But when you now switch over to the other side. Oh, I do. I was a client again.

00;36;49;29 - 00;37;05;23
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. And it's awesome. You have the both of those perspectives. So as someone who's a business owner working with those people now, um, okay, any brands that you want to point to that are doing anything truly unique or innovative in the market right now?

00;37;06;29 - 00;37;27;10
Speaker 2
Actually, I would say one brand that I discovered through one of those many webinar pieces that I attended on a couple of years ago was Cheekbone Beauty. I don't know if you've heard of them. They're an indigenous owned beauty brand and they are doing incredibly thing, incredible things just in terms of paving the way for a truly sustainable business.

00;37;27;29 - 00;37;51;19
Speaker 2
They like have massively high standards around sustainability and it's really incredible to see and their mission is really also super inspiring. So they want to help every indigenous youth see and feel their enormous value in the world while developing a sustainable cosmetics business. And again, if you look at that from the outside, I mean, super, super inspiring and they give back a ton.

00;37;51;26 - 00;37;54;04
Speaker 2
But these are constraints, right? If you want to.

00;37;54;10 - 00;37;55;06
Speaker 1
Yeah. Okay.

00;37;55;06 - 00;38;22;27
Speaker 2
We're trying to through our business, through our cosmetics business, make every indigenous youth shine and feel their value. And we're holding ourselves to these super high sustainability standards. Those could be looked at as constraints, but I think what they lead to are just beautiful innovation and beautiful work. I, you know, I follow them on LinkedIn. I'm always checking in on their website whenever I see Jennifer, the CEO, speaking, like I always want to listen because I just think they're fantastic and such an inspiration.

00;38;22;27 - 00;38;43;29
Speaker 2
If you think about years ago, years and years ago, thankfully, but sustainability was kind of an afterthought or it's like something we have to do. But to actually build your whole business with that at the core, you know, Patagonia, obviously another great and recent example is they're doing incredible things. That is just super inspiring. I just love that our world has shifted so much in that direction.

00;38;44;24 - 00;39;04;27
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. We did touch on Patagonia, I think in a previous chat we had and they're doing such amazing things. It's so cool to see. Okay, final question is what do you want to leave the listeners with? So either a piece of advice or, you know, a resource that they should check out. Yeah, let us know.

00;39;05;19 - 00;39;27;28
Speaker 2
Yeah, this one's a bit different, but we actually I mean, we're super passionate, obviously, about everyone kind of unlocking their creativity and realizing the potential they have to create amazing things. And we're realizing so we're parents, Kelly and I ourselves, that, you know, kids need to be empowered with this stuff. And I don't think it's taught in school.

00;39;27;28 - 00;39;48;09
Speaker 2
I don't know now, but it certainly wasn't when I was younger. But like, why are we teaching design thinking actually to our youngest kids from the very beginning of school and fostering those innovation behaviors, those innovation mindsets and giving them those tools because that would empower them. I mean, as I said at the beginning, design thinking is really a creative problem solving process.

00;39;48;19 - 00;40;08;06
Speaker 2
And they will, just like all of us, encounter a lot of problems in their life. And if they are skilled at really identifying a problem and then know how to, you know, ultimately develop a solution that is feasible, that could work, and that could be, you know, a personal problem, that could be a school problem, that could be a, you know, some of the world problem.

00;40;08;06 - 00;40;26;06
Speaker 2
I mean, we've seen extraordinary kids do extraordinary things at very young ages that have had global impact. And so a couple of months ago, we actually wrote a kid's book and it's it's called The Greatest Helmet of All Time. So it's coming out in just a few weeks. November 1st, it will be available on Amazon. Oh, my gosh.

00;40;26;16 - 00;40;28;13
Speaker 1
It's so cool. It's a.

00;40;28;13 - 00;40;56;16
Speaker 2
Fun. I'm going to kind of flexed our creativity. It's just a fun kind of humor. So we tried to make it your first story about this group of animals who noticed that their friends with horns can't participate safely in sports that require head protection because helmets designed for horns, so they identify this problem and they go through this six step creative innovation process to come up with ultimately the greatest helmet of all time, which is this universal helmet that fits every kind of horn head.

00;40;56;24 - 00;41;15;02
Speaker 2
So there's lots of, you know, jokes and silliness in it, and it's kind of engaging in here a story. But through it, they're exposed to really those design thinking skills and frameworks that we use with some of the most innovative companies in the world. So it's just kind of the start of, hey, like how do we broaden our impact?

00;41;15;10 - 00;41;31;01
Speaker 2
Let's start empowering children with some of these tools as well. So we're kind of excited about it. It's a fun little creative projects. I think we should all do creative projects kind of on the side sometimes it helps us in work and in life, so we'll see how it goes. But that will be available on Amazon beginning November 1st.

00;41;32;02 - 00;41;36;00
Speaker 1
Oh, my gosh. We will definitely. Is there a link that we can share for people to preorder?

00;41;36;00 - 00;41;41;27
Speaker 2
I can definitely share that with you. I don't think it's appropriate for preorder, but I will actually share that with you and thank you.

00;41;42;08 - 00;42;01;10
Speaker 1
Yeah, of course. That's so cool. This has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for taking everyone through all of this. I feel like it's going to be super helpful in their day to day. And thank you for sticking with me. My voice is a little bit fragile. I think it's called season, so everyone is getting over calls. But I know.

00;42;01;10 - 00;42;04;07
Speaker 2
I'm sorry I've been there so many times.

00;42;04;07 - 00;42;04;20
Speaker 1
No, it's.

00;42;04;20 - 00;42;11;15
Speaker 2
Okay so much. And it's like, oh, so we're going to go. But thank you. Thank you for doing it despite not feeling.

00;42;11;27 - 00;42;28;09
Speaker 1
No, of course. I was really, really excited for this job. So we will definitely share a link to to preorder that book and to visit your website. And also I would love to share that brand that you mentioned, the Indigenous front. So yes, I will tell you what I'm.

00;42;28;10 - 00;42;29;07
Speaker 2
Saying for sure.

00;42;29;25 - 00;42;31;14
Speaker 1
Okay. Thank you so much, Fiona.

00;42;32;03 - 00;42;33;18
Speaker 2
Thank you. Have a great.

00;42;34;17 - 00;42;45;29
Speaker 1
Firefly. Thanks for tuning in this week. Find us on LinkedIn at Digg Insights. And don't forget to hit subscribe for a weekly dose of fresh content.