Joanne Smith on bridging marketing and innovation at Blackmores
Joanne Smith, Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer at Blackmores Group, sits down with Mark Jones to discuss unlocking consumer insights and bringing together marketing, innovation and product development.
Marketing and innovation can often feel like two completely polar ideas with a golden thread tying them together: data and insights.
However, making sense of data and finding the insights that matter to consumers is a challenge marketers grapple with every day.
Joanne Smith, Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer at Blackmores Group is uniquely positioned in her role to bring together marketing, innovation and product development.
By tracking insights on international trends at their conception, Blackmores have been able to create globally innovative products.
"The Blackmores Institute has been a major project which looked at how we innovate as an organisation, and where our competitive advantage was," Joanne says. "What we were able to unlock through that process was the ability to connect consumer insight and ideation with phenomenal research and science."
"When we're bringing our brand into multiple markets, we really want consumers to understand the purpose of the brand and what we stand for and then deliver it in the most powerful, consistent way," Joanne says.
"We did the homework of really understanding where consumers were coming from across multiple markets. We really worked hard to uncover a universal insight so that when we've then gone into the development and execution of the work, it's resonating incredibly powerfully," she says.
Since its inception by Morris Blackmore in the early 1930s, Blackmores has become a prime example of a market champion in the supplement sector. Joanne explains the Blackmores Institute works with the marketing team and then with the product development team, and three teams coming together to build an innovation pipeline for Blackmores Group.
Through collaboration across the three departments, Blackmores were able accelerate innovation across all of their markets and focus on understanding what insights are most valuable to their consumers.
"I think the challenge for the marketer is to really understand how to take that big, powerful concept but bring the insight into how we bring it to life for the consumer so that it's meaningful," Joanne says. "Because unless you understand and connect the science and the efficacy of the product to a real consumer health need and understand how that impacts on a daily basis, then it becomes meaningless, and it can become commoditised."
"So that's really the magic that the marketer brings in terms of really understanding the benefit to the consumer, and then how to tell that story in a really powerful way."
Resources
CMO.com - Blackmores CMO shares why she's tackling a masterbrand refresh
CMO.com - Blackmores chief marketing and innovation officer on leading the growth agenda
You might also like…
####
The CMO Show production team
Producers – Candice Witton & Charlotte Woodford
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
Got an idea for an upcoming episode or want to be a guest on The CMO Show? We’d love to hear from you: cmoshow@impactinstitute.com.au.
####
Participants:
Host: Mark Jones
Guest: Joanne Smith
Mark Jones:
When we think about marketing and innovation, they can feel like two completely different ideas.
Marketers and storytellers work away on brand and creative campaigns, while innovators, product designers and R&D folks develop the products and services that will sustain the organisation into the future.
But they do have one thing in common – a healthy appetite for customer data.
So how are you using that data as a powerful form of internal collaboration. How can you best serve the development of your brand and its products or services?
Hello friends! Mark Jones here. So great you can join us on another episode of The CMO Show.
Now today we’ve got a really great conversation for you.
We’re talking with Joanne Smith, Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer at Blackmores Group.
Now, that marketing and innovation focus means she is a CMIO.
In this role, she brings together of course, marketing with innovation, and product design across 13 international markets served by Blackmores.
And Joanne brings into that role, a really interesting background overseas. She spent 14 years at Unilever, eight of which were based in New York in a global role focusing on the Dove brand.
In our conversation, we spoke about the lessons she’s learned about really understanding customer insights and using data, and collaborating with innovation and product development teams to drive the business.
So let’s go to my conversation with Joanne Smith.
Mark Jones:
Joining me today is Joanne Smith, Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer at Blackmores Group. Joanne, it's so great to have you with us today.
Joanne Smith:
Thanks a lot, Mark, it's great to be here.
Mark Jones:
Now, I have really been looking to forward to our conversation because Blackmores is a brand that has fascinated me for many, many years, obviously an incredible Australian story. I also want to talk a bit about that and some of the origin stuff that really has informed the growth of this interesting organisation. But first, I don't meet too many chief marketing and innovation officers. Is that a CMIO?
Joanne Smith:
It is. It is, Mark.
Mark Jones:
Yeah, so tell me about that. What's the I bit do?
Joanne Smith:
Well, the I bit in Blackmores is innovation. And essentially, what that is, is the bringing together of marketing and product development. In Blackmores, we are so incredibly fortunate because we've got an incredible product development team of really experienced scientists, formulators, and naturopaths working on the business. And so, part of my responsibility is to work with that team to bring innovation to market. I just feel so fortunate in this role. It's the first role that I've had where I've had responsibility for both marketing and product development. What that's enabled me to do is to really join the dots and really build those connections. So while our marketers might be working on great concepts, they're now really partnering with product development to bring those to market in the best possible way for Blackmores.
Mark Jones:
Blackmores, of course is, as I said, an incredible story from the very early days in the thirties, launched by Morris Blackmore of course, and has really come to define what it means to be a successful organisation in the health supplements market. What interested me was I didn't realise Blackmores had an institute, so the Blackmores Institute. But to connect that to your point, there's this idea of development, innovation, product design, testing, a whole number of things that go on. It's interesting that you are looking for the connection points between what's coming in the future and then how we can position it. Now, just give us a bit of a window into how you think about bringing together the innovation and the marketing side of your roles.
Joanne Smith:
Yeah, well, I think one of the great benefits that Blackmores has is the Blackmores Institute. Blackmores Institute really brings the credibility in research and education to what we do. We're incredibly fortunate to be able to work together, and we've just done actually a really major piece of work through the last 12 months where we looked at how we innovate as an organisation and where our competitive advantage was. What we were able to unlock through that process and through that piece of work was the ability to connect consumer insight and ideation with phenomenal research and science. So the Blackmores Institute working with the marketers and then working with product development and those three teams coming together to build an innovation pipeline for Blackmores Group.
Joanne Smith:
And we were able to do that. It was a really big project, really interesting for the organisation, we had to end up doing it through lockdown. We had such a big ambition for this piece of work. It was a global piece of work where we were seeking insights from our local markets, the sort of 13 markets that we operate in. We were planning to bring that together through face-to-face ideation starting with macro trends, and then looking at where the innovation spaces could be for our industry and our organisation, and then working cross-functionally. We had it all planned out, and it was a perfect plan, and then, of course, we went into lockdown.
Joanne Smith:
We knew that we had such a great opportunity through doing this work to accelerate innovation across all of our markets, but then doing it in a situation where we're all remote was really challenging. But we didn't let it stop us. And I think the reason that we were able to complete that work and to really start to see some really big outcomes from it is because we had deep expertise, both in research and education through the Blackmores Institute. But we were able to really bring those three together. So product development, research, and education through the Blackmores Institute and the marketing teams. And because we had the three of them together connected on this mission, we were really able to accelerate the outcomes from that work, and even doing it remotely didn't get in the way. We started with empty innovation funnels, and we ended up with really commercially valuable three-year innovation pipelines of very strong concepts that we'll launch into the markets over the coming years. So it's a great advantage for Blackmores.
Mark Jones:
I'm just thinking of all of our listeners, the people in the CMO community who are probably green with envy right now thinking about all the data you've got your hands on, the customer insights, this great dream of, "If only I could spend a bit more time to really dig into understand our customers and the trends and so on." One of the dilemmas though, of course, is again, this innovation piece. Do we put the cart before the horse? There's always a temptation in marketing. Obviously, you're an ASX-listed company, you've got targets, you've got commercial demands, and then you've got the realities of research and all of that. So what's the filter that you use for decision-making?
Joanne Smith:
It's a great question. One of our big challenges was to shift the organisation from smaller innovations that we're launching at a small scale across 13 markets to really understanding what the driving insights were, looking for universal trends, and then being able to scale global innovation across the 13 markets and really get the biggest bang for our buck. Of course, the first filter is, does it serve the consumer? So what consumer health needed solving, and is it really going to make a difference? And that's where the product development expertise and education comes into it. But we went through a really structured process where we started with quite broad and very creative ideation, where we had about 200 ideas. We then put them through what we would call an idea screener. So we put them in front of about 8,000 consumers across Australia, China, Thailand, and Indonesia. And that really helped us understand the appeal of the idea and the relevance of the problem we were trying to solve from a health perspective.
Joanne Smith:
And then from that, we were able to really take that data, it was quite significant, to then funnel even further down into, well, what are the top concepts in that top right box of both it's an appealing idea, but it's also solving a major healthcare need. And then from there, we developed really robust concepts that had the hard work behind them in terms of the consumer insight, the functional discriminator, the really deep thinking around formulation and efficacy. And then we put those in front of the consumer again. So we went from 200 to about 80 down to 60 or 70 ideas. And we then tested them with 6,000 consumers across Indonesia, China, and Australia.
Joanne Smith:
We were then able to develop a really robust matrix that showed us which ideas resonated the most powerfully across those big critical markets, and then dedicate the time to commercialise them and bring them to market. So we got down to about 26. And those are really big global ideas that will launch in the coming years across all of those markets. But it's a pretty robust process of validation that we go through to get to that. And that's been a really important shift through our business, is to really get that data behind how we make decisions around what launches.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. And from the sounds of it, you've got a pretty repeatable framework there that allows all the stakeholders to come together. It maybe lifts some of the burden off you in terms of having to make any final calls in terms of how those two pieces come together. I was also interested because I think when we think about these big global programmes, I think a lot of organisations like yourselves that have incredible data, it's very hard to get that story across.
Joanne Smith:
Yep.
Mark Jones:
So we're really dealing with very surface level ideas at the end of the day, a supplement, and health food. I mean, this is a big narrative. How do you go through that whole process you've just been through and then still have to connect to some sort of major trend? An example of this is our take on medicinal cannabis, for example, which is another emerging trend, in the health food space. It's not quite fashion, but these things really do go in and out of vogue, right?
Joanne Smith:
Yep.
Mark Jones:
And so there still a sense of, well, how do we match the output of what we've done, and it's probably scientifically, legitimately great, but yet, still the market is, I don't know, maybe they're still just drinking more kombucha than they need to.
Joanne Smith:
Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Jones:
Does all that make sense?
Joanne Smith:
No, it definitely does, and I think it's probably the challenge for the marketer then, is to really understand how to take that big, powerful concept but bring the insight into how we bring it to life for the consumer so that it's meaningful. Because unless you understand and connect the science and the efficacy of the product to a real consumer health need and understand how that impacts on a daily basis, then it becomes meaningless, and it can become commoditized. So that's really the magic that the marketer brings in terms of really understanding the benefit to the consumer, and then how to tell that story in a really powerful way.
Mark Jones:
Is there something in there that's one of the favourite parts of your job?
Joanne Smith:
Yeah. I mean, I love all of it, but I really love the ability to tell the story and to really understand how to communicate the benefit in an emotionally powerful way.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. What I love about that idea is that there is something within marketers that in pretty common ways that the thrill of the pursuit of that big idea, and then sharing it with the world, there's something in there that really resonates well. How much of a thread has that been through your career if we just start connecting it to some of the other interesting things that you've done? DevOps is obviously a big part of your career. I should just say by the way as part of a big setup for this question, you spent a long time in America, and I don't hear an accent. How did you do that?
Joanne Smith:
I honestly don't know. I don't think I got a hint of an accent the whole time I was there, and it probably would've helped me if I did because there were so many meetings that I was in, particularly when I first moved to New York, and I can still remember my first big meeting where I was presenting for the first time. I finished the presentation and stopped and said, "Does anyone have any questions?" And I just got this look of complete amusement. And then it wasn't until we walked out of the room that my new boss said to me, "They didn't understand the word you said, you spoke too quickly. You spoke too quickly, and your accent is too strong."
Mark Jones:
There's an interesting accent thing happening there.
Joanne Smith:
Yeah, that's right.
Mark Jones:
Yeah, so what's been that thread, but what's been that driving force through your career?
Joanne Smith:
Well, I think I've been really fortunate. I started at Unilever in Australia, so that was my first job out of university, and I had six years just really learning. Unilever in Australia at the time was, and it still is, highly disciplined in terms of teaching the skills and competencies around marketing, but the discipline around managing a business. So if you were a brand manager, you were really accountable for the profitability of that brand. So that for me, I think, was a really great basis from which to then develop other skills in marketing, because it wasn't really just about the communication or the content you were developing. You couldn't make a decision on your brand if there wasn't going to be a good commercial outcome from it.
Joanne Smith:
So that was six years of grounding here in Australia. And then I was just extremely fortunate to then be transferred to the US where I worked in New York for the next eight years. And then during that time, it was a time of transformation for Unilever, so it was through that era of when they moved from being very decentralised multinational organisation to highly centralised and really focusing on building global brands. I think that being almost at the frontline of that happening in the US was really a powerful experience to go through as a business person and also as a marketer, because I got to see firsthand what that meant in terms of starting to sell brands off from the business to really focus that portfolio on fewer brands and then really making the hard decisions around building investment around how to build those brands globally.
Joanne Smith:
And that was probably one of the most influential experiences I had, because at the time I was given the opportunity to work on the Dove brand. So that was at that critical time where they were really focusing on building Dove out into a global brand.
Mark Jones:
Look, I think Dove is still used pretty universally in marketing. Certainly the last few years, the Dove campaign, my goodness, and the multiple iterations of the Dove campaign, enormous power. I mean, I'm sure with great commercial success, but in terms of a resonance in the community, I think still to this day. What was it like for you?
Joanne Smith:
Yep. It was an incredible experience and probably one that I'll never forget. It would definitely be one of the highlights of my career. I was just one person working on that campaign. You can probably imagine, there was a cast of thousands on it. But my role was to work with the vice president of the Dove brand globally, as well as the senior vice president of the US organisation. We then brought the team together, and we worked with the agency at the time, which was Ogilvy. It was a time of transformation for the brand because historically, the Dove brand in the US had very set guidelines around a stereotypical version of beauty. It was a very conservative, you could only show women in a particular way, you can imagine almost the cardigan over the jumper with the pearls, a particular hairstyle, it was so defined in terms of what you could do on that brand.
Joanne Smith:
And then it was through the process of really unlocking what beauty meant to women at the time, looking at the competitive framework, and then really looking at the essence of the Dove brand and what it stood for. And then thinking about how to unlock that in a new creative platform that really represented women. And then what was ultimately born from that, which was the Real Beauty campaign. It was at a time in the early nineties when everything was airbrushed. You can imagine trying to convince the board at the time that it was okay to put these images up on billboards in Times Square. Yeah, it was an incredible journey to be on.
Joanne Smith:
But we knew that we were onto something because when we started to talk to consumers about how brands were presented, including the Dove brand, which was a loved brand at the time, and then how we wanted to present the brand, there was such incredible universal appeal to it. It was distinctive, it was something that hadn't been done before, but it really fit with the heart of the Dove brand and the essence of the brand.
Mark Jones:
There's a connection here with the Blackmores, obviously, with just the research and the insight. This thread, you went to Johnson & Johnson, and you've spent some time in Singapore, and then now here. So what's that ongoing journey like for you? What were the next steps in the unfolding chapters as it were?
Joanne Smith:
For me, it's always about challenge. If I look back at some of the opportunities I've had, I think it's been just being really open to things that might be difficult. So yeah, anytime there's a challenge. I think the biggest one was working on Dove and then being part of shaping the future of Dove as a global brand. Moving back to Australia, I think for me I then had about 16 years of global marketing and business experience, but there weren't a lot of global roles in Australia, and it was something that I really loved. It was something that I wanted to continue pursuing if I could. I was really fortunate that I was given an opportunity to work in Dulux Group, and I worked on the Selleys brand. It was completely different. So going from beauty to going into home improvement and DIY, it was so different.
Mark Jones:
Mind you, tradies probably think their work is beautiful.
Joanne Smith:
They do, and their work is beautiful. It is. But the challenge there in that business, again, it was a really old, iconic, incredibly successful Australian brand that they were taking into other markets. And so to be able to be part of that journey and that challenge, I think, was just such a privilege, and I really loved my time there. I was really excited about the work that they were doing looking at how that brand translated into new markets like Indonesia and China.
Joanne Smith:
Again, what we did there was we started with the consumer. So the one of the first things that I was able to do in that business was take a team of people to Indonesia. We pretty much did an infographic piece of work around how builders were using the products in Indonesia. It was completely different. They were working in really dangerous situations, very dangerous building sites. And just having that experience of watching them through their day and getting very detailed on how they used the products meant that we could come back and then redesign our products differently with different packaging, thinking about one-handed application. A lot of the time these guys were wearing thongs on a ladder. Many, many stories of holding onto scaffolding while they were using the product with one hand, or trying to use the product with two hands. There was so much danger on those sites. So redesigning the packaging so it was simpler, easy to use, one-handed application, and then going to market with a completely different approach. It was just an incredible experience and really successful for the Selleys brand and for Dulux Group.
Mark Jones:
Again, another incredible experience or set of experiences to going into markets like that. I wonder, if I think about a lot of the work that we see today by all sorts of brands, how much time do we give ourselves as marketers for the research where we can fly to Indonesia? Let's just pretend COVID doesn't exist for a second. We can go to Indonesia or we can do these big focus groups where we can actually maybe spend a bit more time than intuitively you think is necessary. What pressure are we under there now?
Joanne Smith:
I think now the pressure is, and maybe it's always been there, but I think the temptation is that we sometimes need to jump to solutions and think about, how do we solve this? And what's the activity plan around solving? We might not be able to go to another market to do a hands-on piece of work, but whenever we're able to take the time in diagnosis, it's always worth it. I think particularly in the area of consumer understanding, getting as close to the consumer as possible, it always pays off. It doesn't often feel like there's the time, but I think the time not spent there is often time lost later in a project, or it impacts the outcome because we didn't really understand where the consumer was coming from or what we were trying to solve for. So that sort of piece of diagnosis and consumer understanding, I think, is always worth it. The closer we can be to our consumer, the better.
Mark Jones:
For the CMO, CMO/head of innovation as well, right, I mean, you're telling a story. You were there watching some guy up on some bamboo in the sky trying to paint. I mean, there's probably no substitute for that sort of experience, right?
Joanne Smith:
Yeah. For me, there isn't, so I value it. I value it enormously. I think seeing things firsthand or hearing it firsthand is incredibly important because when it comes to then creating a campaign around it, for example, or knowing what to do with that insight, there's nothing like being on the frontline and really experiencing it yourself.
Mark Jones:
I do think that's one of the challenges with digital and with research in general, is that we actually can look at the abstract, if you like, or consolidated responses and insights from that, but you've not felt it. And yet in storytelling and in the creative space, it's actually 70% or more an emotive or emotional experience, right? So if we don't have that heart connection, it's what I'm driving to, we've actually missed something. I wonder whether in the broader CMO executive space we've lost a little bit of a get-your-hands-dirty feeling.
Joanne Smith:
Yeah. I mean, I think you're right. I think particularly with the access to data that we have now, it's easy to everything just rolls up, and it's easy to lose the connection. But I think that's where anytime we're close to the customer, just being in stores, listening to consumers, for us, talking to pharmacists, talking to our naturopaths... I think one of the great, beautiful things about Blackmores is that we have a history of naturopathy, but we've allowed that to continue and thrive in the organisation by making sure that we have naturopaths in the business. So when consumers ring to ask a question, they're talking to a naturopath. So for us, even if we can't be out doing research, we can go downstairs or we can pick up the phone and talk to naturopaths and ask them what they're hearing from consumers. So finding ways to connect and to get those connections as close as possible to the frontline of the customer and the consumer is really important.
Mark Jones:
I love that, that's great. Now it would be remise of me not to ask about how your campaign's going at the moment. There's the Good Health Changes Everything campaign. Tell me about how the organization's emerging from the COVID lockdowns and you started thinking about how you're going to engage with consumers, again, right across all these markets around the world. But firstly, just tell us about this campaign.
Joanne Smith:
Yeah, well, I guess it starts with... And again, this was a long term piece of work. As a business, we have an aspiration, and that aspiration is to connect a billion consumers on earth to the healing power of nature. But we have a really clear purpose for our brand which connects to that, and that's to empower the best of health in everyone naturally. It's really about empowering individuals to achieve their health goals no matter where they are on their journey. We had an aspiration as an organisation, we had a really strong purpose, and we saw a really exciting opportunity to return to brand-building support for the Blackmores brand, to really impact and strengthen the health of the brand, to develop a creative platform that was grounded in a universal insight that would really enable us to further build the connection that we have with our consumers across our 13 markets.
Joanne Smith:
And this was something that we'd never done before. We'd had very individual campaigns across the various markets, but we really wanted to bring that brand messaging together into a consistent and powerful global creative platform. And again, we started at the beginning, we started in diagnosis. We started to look at what was driving our brand performance across our markets. We spent quite a bit of time understanding our history and our really rich, beautiful heritage as a brand and the drivers of success and what got us to where we are today. We were in lockdown, so again, we couldn't do the work the way we normally would, so we used things like social listening to get real-time insights into what was going on for our consumers across the markets through the pandemic.
Joanne Smith:
As I mentioned, we talked to our naturopaths, we got our agency to talk to our naturopaths to really understand what they were hearing. We brought the Blackmores Institute in. We talked to them about what they were learning through their education programmes, and we started to really piece all of those data points together. And then the tension that we started to uncover in terms of the insight was that we had consumers across our markets where their awareness of their health was reaching new heights that had probably never been as at the forefront of their consciousness as it was right now. Yet at the same time, they had less power than ever to do something about it. And that was really the tension that they were feeling, and it was universal, that increased consciousness that my health is so important to me and to my family. But at the same time, I've got restricted freedoms, there's a pandemic that's frightening me and that I don't understand. I can't access the gym, the pool, the fitness classes. I'm experiencing isolation. I'm dealing with homeschooling and work. For many people, they couldn't work. And then we saw that rapidly increasing incidents of mental health concerns.
Joanne Smith:
So we had that real tension coming together, and at the same time that intersection of the brand and where the brand plays in supporting people through that and really helping them to create that empowerment around what they can do to improve their health naturally.
Joanne Smith:
And that's where the campaign was born.
Mark Jones:
I think there's that human truth that too much Netflix in lockdown is not good for you. I think that's probably a way of summarising all of that. I'm laughing, but I've got small people and went through the whole thing. You know in January when all the health food New Year's resolutions kickoff and everyone's back at the gym and buying health... It was kind of like that but sort of turbocharged. Is that fair to say?
Joanne Smith:
That is very fair to say. Yeah, exactly like that. And so, as we're emerging from that, we're really seeing now that people are coming out of it. And so, we timed this in Australia in particular to go to air on what was Freedom weekend, where people were really able to finally get out and do something about their health, reconnect with nature, connect with people again.
Mark Jones:
Tell me about the brand challenge though, because you made reference to the fact that you really needed to make this a core brand, campaign obviously.
Joanne Smith:
Yep.
Mark Jones:
What was the issue?
Joanne Smith:
We probably haven't had a consistent unifying brand creative platform before. So the issue there is that when we're bringing our brand into multiple markets, we really want consumers to understand the purpose of the brand and what we stand for and then deliver it in the most powerful, consistent way. We saw a real opportunity there. The great thing about this work is because we did the homework of really understanding where consumers were coming from across multiple markets, really worked hard to uncover a universal insight so that when we've then gone into the development and execution of the work, it's resonating incredibly powerfully in this market where we've had it first, but with our employees. And so our teams across our multiple markets are now working on the adaptation of that and how that'll go into their markets in 2022.
Mark Jones:
Is that another way of thinking about from, if you like, a perspective outside of your own industry?
Joanne Smith:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think Good Health Changes Everything is really bringing to life the purpose of the brand and really bringing to life creatively the insight, which is that good health has the power to unlock the best that life has to offer. No matter where you are on the health journey, it's not about unattainable perfection and looking a particular way. It's about being able to play soccer with your kids and run around the park and feel like you can participate in life in the way that you want to.
Joanne Smith:
I think one of the things that Blackmores does incredibly well is the prioritisation of quality, safety, and trust in the brand. One of the key pillars of the Blackmores brand is trust, that 90 years of heritage, of doing the right thing is incredibly important to maintain and sustain into the future. So whenever we're developing a product, for example, we have really rigorous standards around quality, safety, meeting our regulatory obligations, going above and beyond. And we put the highest standards against all of those, all the way through the product development process. So we would never launch a product that hadn't met those standards and exceeded them. I think that's a key pillar for our organisation. It's why sometimes we might take a little bit longer to bring something to market, but we will make sure that what we bring to market is in the best interest of the consumer.
Mark Jones:
So what's next? What's your ambition in your role, and what are you working on now? You've got a campaign in market. Thinking about 2022, what's on your agenda?
Joanne Smith:
There's a couple of things. I think the campaign that went to air in October is really the first step. So the next step from that is taking that into our product stories. So really starting to tell very powerful stories to the consumer around the key product pillars that we operate in, connecting it to consumers that way, bringing it into a full 360 campaign across all of the touchpoints along the consumer journey, and then launching it into our other markets in F22. So that's a really big piece of work around how we amplify that campaign and really make sure that we are connecting with consumers along the consumer journey.
Joanne Smith:
The innovation that I spoke about, so that big piece of work that was done around innovation framework and really building those innovation pipelines, the focus now is on bringing those to market. So bringing those ideas to market in the most powerful way and making sure that we're telling the stories around those innovations that consumers connect with. And then the next area for us, and this is more of something that we're working on ourselves, is what are the next frontiers? How do we continue to play a really meaningful role in the consumer's life as it relates to healthcare coming out of the pandemic?
Joanne Smith:
And there's a couple of things that we know. We know that three out of four consumers are going to continue to focus on healthcare and really want to be developing their immunity systems going from that focus on curing something to preventing it. Building a really strong protection for immunity going forward is a really big one. And then I think mental health as well. We saw the increase in incidents in mental wellbeing concerns, and that'll continue into the future as well. So we're really looking at the role that we play in that and how we can best serve consumers going forward.
Mark Jones:
No shortage of things to do. Well, it's been fascinating to get a bit of an insight into your world. I particularly love that thread of really getting as close as possible to the consumer. It's quite clearly been something you've enjoyed through all the different roles you've had and plenty more to come at Blackmores. So Joanne Smith, Chief Marketing Innovation Officer at Blackmores Group, thank you so much for joining us on The CMO Show.
Joanne Smith:
Thanks a lot, Mark, it's great to meet you. Thanks for having me.
Mark Jones:
Pleasure.
That was my conversation with Joanne Smith.
Joanne’s got a great story, I just loved hearing about how she’s bringing marketing and innovation together.
And how she brings the Blackmores brand into multiple markets. In particular, I liked the ideas-testing to really funnel down and connect to customers and major trends.
I also enjoyed hearing Joanne highlight Blackmores’ key pillar of brand trust - that 90 plus years of heritage - and ensuring they are doing the right thing now and into the future.
Now before I go - make sure to “subscribe” to The CMO Show on your favourite podcast app.
And if you want to hear more from us, follow both The CMO Show and ImpactInstitute on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Thank you for joining us on The CMO Show. As always, it’s been a pleasure.
Until next time