Episode 135 / Benni Lickfett / Diageo / Global Head of Digital Innovation
Using the Hive Mind to Improve Brands, Products and Services
Benni Lickfett is the Global Head of Digital Innovation at Diageo, where he brings a varied experience in start-ups to work with global brands and push the envelope when it comes to creating new and exciting campaigns. His Shiny New Object is the unfulfilled promise of crowd wisdom and crowdsourcing, which was hailed as a way to collaborate more widely and create better brands, but is falling short of its initial potential.
One of Benni’s worst advice he has ever received around innovation is that failure is great, or the so-called glorification of failure in start-ups and new ventures. Instead, he thinks that brands should be open to experimenting and trying new things in a start-up mentality regardless of their size, but that this should be done “in a smart way.” Rather than approaching a failed project as a failure, the learnings from it can be focused on as winnings.
This interest in experimentation and innovation has led to Benni focusing on empathy in marketing. He believes that brands really need to put themselves in the shoes of the consumer, listen to feedback and open up to diversity in order to create great campaigns. This involves A/B testing and hands-on testing with consumers, but also having a diverse organisation, open to taking on feedback and adapting to new knowledge.
This is why Benni’s Shiny New Object is the unfulfilled promise of crowd wisdom and crowdsourcing. While this movement towards listening to the “hive mind” appeared to foster collaboration and co-creation when projects like Wikipedia and Waze took off, its potential hasn’t been truly fulfilled. Mostly, this can be explained by brands not wanting to take enough risks, open themselves to criticism or be as transparent as they could be.
Ultimately, being open to crowd wisdom could risk their marketing strategy being exposed too early, but Benni thinks it’s a risk worth taking. We see it done well by the likes of Lego or Xbox and it can be an approach fostered in-house using open source innovation with the companies’ own employees. The key, however, is to never “lead the witness” trying to validate their own biases, and to be brutally honest with themselves.
To find out more about Benni’s advice on co-creation, his top marketing tips and how his beliefs and work philosophy have changed over the years, listen to the podcast.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:03
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated crave. And this is a podcast about the future of marketing. every week or so I have the pleasure and the privilege of interviewing one of our industry's leaders, and this week is no different whatsoever, I want to call with Benni Lickfett, who is Global Head of digital innovation at Diageo. Benni, a few years ago, when I met him in a coffee shop and said I've got this idea for a business called automated creative. "What do you think?" and Benni said, "Yeah, I'd buy that". So I think if you hadn't said that, in some ways, I may may, or may not even be an entrepreneur or startup guy. So it's a real treat to have me on the podcast. But for those in the audience who don't know who you are, and what you do, can you give them a bit of background?
Benni Lickfett 1:57
Sure. Hi, Tom. Thanks for having me. Always good to hear that story. Especially because that actually ended up buying the service, not just talking about it. So it's good, good litmus test. And yes, a bit bit about myself. So I am based in London. I'm currently the Global Head of digital innovation at Diageo. So those of you who don't know Diageo, we're a premium spirits company with over 200 brands around the world, including brands like Johnnie Walker, Bailey's, Guinness, and lots of other premium brands. But as most people I didn't start out my career there, I actually went way back, went to university in Boston, with a big, big ambition of going into international relations and politics. And then after that one internship at the UN, I realized that's a very frustrating way to make a living. So I had the interesting opportunity straight out of university to join a startup in Stockholm. I was literally employee number one just joining as co founder and a very good developer, back then the heyday of search engine optimization and aggregators, like Calco, and others in Europe. So we built a great, great business around comparing first media products, and then financial services. So a real startup environment where you sort of day one, drive to IKEA, buy a desk, build it and figure out what to do the rest of the day. But what I really realized what I had a big passion for is building the community building the brand that communications. So then in that company and realized, while it was brilliant learning, it was also very much self taught. So then I went into bit more structured learning joined a company called profit that based in New York, that was founded by David Darker and Scott Galloway, who some of you might know, but brilliant, can be that looks at innovation strategy, brand strategy, and was really back then one of the first that could talk about, you know, the power of a brand to a CFO, and still managed to sound credible. So I worked with these guys for numerous years on on big corporates, helping a lot on innovation and strategy.
But at some point, I wanted to do something entrepreneurial again. So I actually started a company with one of my brothers, which is one of those things that every management book tells you not to do. But we still had a very good run, my brother is still running that business, which is a specialist econ player. And then I went on to actually do an MBA because I think if we would have both continued working together probably would have been a bit challenging, and then an MBA after the MBA. I dabbled a bit more in innovation, consulting, design, consulting, and then started another company which was more of a passion project, and was a social impact company. Which was an exciting right but bit of an impact. But after that, I was sort of licking my wounds and actually did some work with Diageo first as a consultant, because I had worked in the startup position with Diageo a bit. And they brought me in to look at their marketing, innovation, marketing tech pipelines, how do you identify interesting martec? How do you bring it into the organization? How do you make it easier to really get to have constant experimentation, test and learn and all that? And I was able to build a bit of a team around that and the function process first in Europe. And now I do that globally. And as I said, has been five years doing that, and here I am.
Tom Ollerton 5:48
That is quite the story. And so what I'm curious to know, what is the most useful thing that you learnt in a startup that you apply in large corporate?
Benni Lickfett 6:00
I think the most important element is just context. And I think once you've been through startup in a startup environment, where you literally never know how long the cash is gonna last, and really have that existential threat constantly, it brings real clarity and urgency. And I think it's something in a corporate environment that helps you a lot to prioritize focus on the big stuff, get more confident in saying no, and cutting out some of the clutter. But it also really helps to just manage stress levels, right? Because you you can put things into perspective. And I remember even when I was working in sort of brand consulting, in New York, there was a big thing on the wall. That just said "Brands don't kill", right. And I think I never really fully got it back then because you were up till two, you know, working on some client deliverable deadline. But as I think with adding different experiences, you get to a point where take a really important essential things, but there are a lot of things that cause stress, even though they don't, they have no relation to the actual output. So I think that the ability to keep perspective and context in mind is a pretty key one to to manage that pressure.
Tom Ollerton 7:18
I don't understand that brands don't kill point. What was that? What was that was that Scott Galloway wrote that in...
Benni Lickfett 7:23
That might very well be I think the idea was just like, guys, remember, we're here to have fun. And with clients, you know why we put ourselves in the pressure, we might say, Okay, oh, my God, that you know, this, the font on slide 14, for this big CMO presentation is wrong. You know, what are we going to do about it? It's just the ability to step back and say, okay, there's a) it's not, it's not just about brands, it's about business. It's about people. It's about society and look at the big picture, and it is a job, right, and you can be passionate about and do great work, but don't kill yourself over.
Tom Ollerton 7:57
So what new belief or behaviors have you subscribed to in the last few years since your startup period?
Benni Lickfett 8:07
Yeah, I think since then, sort of, I guess, building on what I was saying before, I think I've gotten a lot better at focusing on the essentials, and being a lot more honest and transparent with the people around me stakeholders around me around what my goals are, what I want to achieve what I think we should collectively focus on. But I think it's really that behavior, being able to have that focus and full accountability and trying to do you know, one thing, right, rather than a lot of things half baked. And I think that's especially difficult in corporate environments, where you just have so many different stakeholders with different interests. So I think that's something where I've matured a lot. And it's also things like, clarity in what you say and how you say it. Right? And again, nothing to my career, or you often find yourself in a situation where you're where you kind of try to make things complex to impress somebody or showcase your your knowledge in the area. Right. And I mean, we all know what in marketing and obviously, big corporate very guilty of that, so people just so acronym, well, qualified bullshit, a lot of bullshit terminology that almost sets barriers for others not to understand right? And where you're only in a small circle of marketing insiders will understand what you're talking talking about, and nobody else and what that really does, it puts up barriers to bridge silos to connect with others to bring in different opinions. And I would hope I've gotten a lot better that even though I'm sure I'm still guilty of that sometimes.
Tom Ollerton 9:52
So that's good advice. But what is the bad advice that you hear in the innovation game that you wish wasn't there? or the bad recommendations?
Benni Lickfett 10:01
Yeah, I find it slightly irritating, how often I will sit in a presentation by an agency or in you know, innovation company and they, they talk to you about how great failure is and how you know, must fail. And that's, I get the sentiment, what they're trying to do, but, you know, never great. And it's really about the insights and the learning behind it. And while you should have the ability to experiment and to try things, it is about doing that in a very lean, and, and smart way. But it also only makes sense if you're, if you're learning in the process, and if you're actually chasing a goal worth chasing. And sometimes that idea that, you know, you have to go through failure to get to success, I think it's a bit glorified. And understanding that, you know, in a corporate environment where the majority of people in the organization, their job is to reduce risk, and to take that out and optimize profit. You know, it takes a lot to be the person who writes on the fact that they're purposefully failing, right? And it's probably a certain environment, it's okay, but a lot of them it's not. So it just seems like one of those slogans to me, that very few people actually live up to it. Right?
Tom Ollerton 11:22
Yeah, I always struggle with that, when I was my role as an innovation role is that he saw got pumped up on Californian failure porn, basically, where you're like, right, we need to, you know, just play loads of time to do labor at this crazy speed and move fast and break things is the Facebook thing that seems to stick around. But if you're failing nine times out of 10, that absolutely crushing pain of that is so bewildering, that by the time you get to the one win everyone, all anyone can remember is the nine things that didn't go very well. So I like your idea of learning being the win. So even if something doesn't work out, or hit the metric, or the target, as long as you as a user, person and the organization has learned, then it's not a failure. Right. And so I think that that's what I take from that point.
But as you move on, I'd love to know, what is that best marketing tip? What is that kind of golden nugget of advice that you've heard either recently, or through the years that you find yourself sharing, or repeating, most often
Benni Lickfett 12:25
One piece of advice that I really, really like, which has gotten long time ago, and that was actually by a guy. So I grew up in Frankfurt, Germany, and there was a guy called [...], who was a bit the, the father of German Communications and Public Relations of foreigners are the first first PR agency really, but he really got communications, fascinating guy who grew up as a skiing instructor in Switzerland and went to the army and started this communication company, just because he had such a good understanding of, you know, the basics of communication and how, you know, when when A sends a message to B, how is that being perceived? And how can you work with that. But one of the pieces of advice he gave me was, that empathy is the foundation of all good marketing. Right. And I always thought that was a really interesting one, because it's quite a broad concept. But the idea of that good marketeers can put themselves into the shoes of others and see something from different perspectives, and what it takes to actually build that skill, right. And if you if you look at how often decisions are being made about, you know, a product targeted at senior citizens with a bunch of, you know, hipsters sitting in Soho brainstorming around it, well, then their main source of insight will be an insight group where you pay a bunch of people that sit around the table, and give you the answers they think you want to hear. If you quite quickly getting the idea actually empathy, translated into real understanding and stretching your own point of views and opening up to diversity is such a fundamental key thing that you need to do as a marketeer. And quite frankly, I think a lot of marketers out there that are arrogant, which is probably the exact opposite of empathy in some ways.
Tom Ollerton 14:15
And so assuming that's correct, you know, you know that I have a business built on on that premise. But what are what are the ways that brands can be more empathetic?Other than not just hiring six hipsters, there's having a coffee in Soho.
Benni Lickfett 14:36
I think there are lots of ways. I think diversity within an organization is a key way to do that, to actually ensure that you have a breadth of opinion and different perspectives, right. I think actually ensuring that you're not to remove in an ivory tower but that you go out and meet consumers and that you make that part of your, of your of your training and understanding, just getting as close to the customer or consumer as as possible is really important. But I think your point around sources of research, how do you broaden that set to not just use traditional research? How do you use A/B testing as much as possible, right get things in front of consumers in a real life environment and understand how they react to different propositions to different things. And not doing that in a theoretical way, but really getting hands on and getting getting stuck in it. And much, again, if we take the basis of how a lot of startups do, where you throw your product out there, you have your minimum viable product, and you learn from that you build on that, and you use the life data and reaction to to evolve it. I think that too many organizations are just too far away from their from their consumers or customers.
Tom Ollerton 15:58
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So we're at the halfway stage now. And we're gonna talk about your shiny new object, which is the unfulfilled promise of crowd wisdom and crowdsourcing. So I think I know what that is. But can you explain to the audience, what do you mean by that? And why you think it represents the future of the industry?
Benni Lickfett 16:48
Yeah, let's, let's, let's hope I know what that is actually what I'm talking about here. But so this comes a bit from my experiences and the social impact startup I was in which unfortunately, did not go as we had envisioned, but still the idea that was the heyday of technology, enabling that wisdom of the crowd, right, and you have some brilliant examples of it, and probably leading something like Wikipedia, also Waze, right, that helps you navigate through it, or you had a Kickstarter and the Pebble watch and was sort of the idea, if you actually use sort of the the hive mind and all that knowledge, but also crowd that we can create better brands, better services, a better world, right. And that seems like looking back at that now, it seems to never have fully lived up to that potential. Right. So while you have certain examples of people doing that it didn't impact I think things like business model innovation, and real big, far reaching concepts as much as it could have. And if you think about how rare it is, I know that building on what we talked about before, right, opening up democratizing your brand. And having really sort of powerful mechanisms, there's so few brands that do that. So examples are somebody like Lego who actually allowed their consumers to create toys, and then get revenue off the concepts and being sold, or you have the Xbox labs, where people can create their own Xbox designer, and Xbox, sorry, controller designs and sell that or get a kickback from that. But mostly what's happening is, you know, the crowd picking crisp flavors, rather than driving real change, and you see some nuggets, I think, if you go but outside of the brand world, intoareas like now in the fight against COVID, where, you know, scientists would put all sorts of information out there to collaborate on it together, we get a glimpse of what's possible. And you know, I would just hope and love to see a lot more of that person from brands opening up as well as in society to tackle problems.
Tom Ollerton 19:00
So why isn't it working? Why has the dream not been realized? The Lego example. And Xbox is fantastic. So why aren't brands? Why isn't marketing using the collective wisdom of the crowd?
Benni Lickfett 19:15
Yeah, I think part of it is probably organizations not wanting to be as transparent or as open. But I think a big part of it is not being able to drive the engagement necessary to really, you know, trigger that change. And when you see examples of companies who do it well, I think those are examples who really examples of companies who really managed to build a strong community and have that constant dialogue. I mean, there's some fashion companies who do that too, who sent before they actually release a new collection where they have a very core community of real strong brand ambassadors, I guess, or people who are really involved in a category who will give them that initial read or feedback. And so some companies get it right. But it requires you to, to have that real connection with a core community that's linked to your brand and have that passion point that they're willing to collaborate with you and co create out of their passion for the category and for the brand, rather than being paid for it.
Tom Ollerton 20:25
And do you think it's only a certain type of business that can do I mean, a company that springs to mind is Giffgaff, you know, the incredible community where the, you know, the product is defined, even marketed by them to a degree. But just surprises me. But that seems to be a very high interest category. Lego, obviously, there's just this huge, huge community of crazy Lego users all, you know, from kids all the way to, you know, seniors, and obviously, gaming, high interest, high passion. But so is it really only those kind of sectors where this could work or, or is there like a toothpaste community out there that should really be helping toothpaste brands define what their marketing isn't, their messaging is?
Benni Lickfett 21:13
Well, I think that's, you know, the wonderful and, and scary side to the internet, you can find a nice audience, and those people that are really obsessed with their, you know, toothpaste, texture. Actually, if you do that, globally, you probably have a community big enough to really be keen to have their voice heard and get involved. And I think that's almost true for every category. And even I would love to see, you know, financial service organizations to open up to actually invite that type of collaboration. So I think it can be done in all categories, I think about pretty much all categories. I think sometimes it might have to work through collaboration, right? And obviously, if you're, let's saying, if you're a company that wants to develop a product for the gaming community, it's probably a lot easier to partner with Twitch and collaborate with their community to achieve that than then trying to build your own credibility within that community. So I think sometimes the answer is more in collaboration and tapping into existing networks, what you still need is, I think, the agility and the ability to really take that into account, co create, and move at speed to to keep that momentum. And we listen to those communities, which is a tough skill for a lot of organizations, especially CPGs who would look at, you know, certain manufacturing cycles, a way of producing things, you're really, you're really disrupting the way you think about creating products or validating them?
Tom Ollerton 22:54
If someone's listening to this. And they're like, but he's got a point here. Why? Why we just relying on our agency to come up with all the ideas, why don't we go into the crowd? or Why is r&d always just come from the same group of people in the same building, or the same team? What's the best way to get started with using crowd wisdom or crowdsourcing?
Benni Lickfett 23:13
I think for a lot of organizations, a good way to start first is internally to actually really try these methodologies with your own employees. Right. And that's sort of classic open source innovation, open innovation internally, there are lots of different providers out there that enable you to to have a platform where people can post ideas where you can collaborate that scale, I think that's probably a first good step to understand the dynamics of little bit more, and then reach out to to existing communities and use these learnings to start exploring in it. And I think it's not from a technological side, that solutions are all out there. It's more comfortable, cultural shift to be open towards it. And then obviously, the resource dedication to really to listen and be committed to actually give it a try. And to learn as part of that experience.
Tom Ollerton 24:09
And tell me who you think of the leaders from a technology perspective, who, who was really enabling brands, businesses to use crowdsourcing?
Benni Lickfett 24:19
Well there. I mean, there are lots of different innovation platforms out there, probably don't want to call out one specifically. But if you look at the open innovation platforms, there are some really widely used some more tailored at smaller organizations or big organizations. So it's a really mature market out there. Interestingly, often they they might enable this kind of thing in in software companies in tech companies, where that way of working is a lot more established. But increasingly, I think we see them the big, big cpgs and other organizations as well. And then I mean, beyond that, even having a look at you know, Your your Kickstarter as your Indiegogos, all the big crowdfunding platforms out there to understand the dynamics of these campaigns and what makes them succeed or fail and what the crowd reacts to and how they participate, I think is really, really valuable learning as well.
Tom Ollerton 25:16
So when does it go wrong? What are the watch outs? And when when you've tried it or observed other people trying it? What? What goes wrong when there's a good intention from a brand or a team? That is somehow when they when the idea meets the crowd, it doesn't produce the outcome that they're after?
Benni Lickfett 25:36
Yeah, I think I think the answer is a bit the way you phrased that question, too. And this, and I think there are a lot of organizations who try to lead the witness, right. So they want to use the crowd to validate something that they think would be a great idea. And that obviously, defeating the purpose and the crowd, you know, that they're smart, that's the whole point is the hive mind, they will call you out on it. And so I think it's really being brutally honest with yourself, that you're doing this to really get input. And not just as a as a marketing tool, or to validate something that you want to do. I think that's the first step, and then also having that commitment that you're gonna really follow through on it, right? Because they have some been some examples where brands invite the crowd to say something. And then if they didn't like the answer, they didn't manage that well. And they're really struggled with it. So I think it's, it's getting the right buy in commitment to do it and being honest about really listening to the answers you're getting.
Tom Ollerton 26:38
One of the criticisms that I've heard about crowdsourcing in a marketing context, is the understanding of a brand. For example, everyone's heard of Domino's, for example, quite famous, innovative marketing brands. And lots of people could easily come up with ideas for Domino's, but they if they don't actually fully understand the values of the brand, and some of that, in some of the time, the the information around those values is confidential. And if you're putting out a brief to millions of people, you're also showing your hand a little bit. So how, how do you think brands can get around the challenge of briefing a massive group of people without giving away strategic information or convert confidential data? Yeah, and again, I think that different ways doing that.
Benni Lickfett 27:33
So I think, when we talk about crowdsourcing, it doesn't need to be sort of CO creation, or completely new product, right? It could be the validation of the value proposition or the CO developing and, or a new service element or something else. But even if it's really sensitive, there's only sometimes way to test things without, without involving the brand, right? Especially media testing, where you just strip it off the brand. Sometimes the communities that are that are small, beta communities, but that function more like a community, like a actual community, rather than a focus group. There are organizations or company like [...], right, who allow you to test or get research and insights in the in the field to do that. So I think it is pretty complex stage because you have so many different variations of how you can do it. So like most things, right, it needs to start, I think with a very good brief being clear on on, what is it you're trying to achieve. And then looking at that full portfolio of different crowdsourcing account validations options that you have, that you can use, but there are definitely some out there. And I've used those in the past before where you can either mask the brand, or make it in a very confidential way. So you don't don't get into hot water. They're small risk, you know, you can even those have been this has happened before luckily not to me, but seen other brands where somebody takes a screenshot or can deduct which brand it is. So that's a risk, you need to be willing to take to some degree.
Tom Ollerton 29:09
So we're gonna have to leave it there, because we're at the end of the podcast, although I feel we should be talking about this for a good few hours. And it's been a really good conversation for me, because I pretty much forgotten all about that approach. So it's, hopefully this will reignite that as a possibility for the marketers listening to this show. But Benni, difficult question, if someone wants to get in touch with you, how would you want them to do that? And what makes a great outreach to you?
Benni Lickfett 29:39
Yeah, so I mean, LinkedIn is quite good for that. That being said, I get quite a lot of messages. So generally, I mean, if there's any connection reference point, somebody that you can interview or that we have in common or even them we met that's always great. really helpful, what doesn't tend to work is if you just copy and paste out of my bio and tell me, you know, since you're in charge of doing this and that we thought you'd be interested in our enterprise tech solution. So the more and more targeted, obviously, the better and just take a bit of that effort to just make it relevant. And I look at all of them, right. And it's my job. So I'm always happy for relevant inbound leads coming in. But yeah, just just make it relevant. And it does help if you don't have business development and your title.
Tom Ollerton 30:38
So, Benni, we're gonna have to leave it there. Thank you so much.
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