We live in a world full of volatility and uncertainty, so how do insights teams at the biggest brands go about trying to predict the types of products we might be buying in the future?

It’s no easy task and yet, Fenny Léautier, Global Senior Director of Consumer Insights in the Personal Health division at Philips, believes now is a “golden age” for insights teams.

In this episode of The Persuasion Game podcast, she says it’s no longer about trying to predict the future, but instead it’s about understanding the drivers for future opportunities.

Fenny talks about the evolving role of insights teams, the impact of generative AI on the work they do, and why the human-factor still has a major role to play.

Further Reading: Shaping the future: seven questions to help make your next trends strategy project a success

Episodes are released bi-weekly. Follow us on LinkedIn for updates.

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Want to know more about us? Visit our website here: thisistheforge.com

This is an 18Sixty production for The Forge.

CHAPTERS:

(00:00) Introduction

(03:44) Shifting Dynamics in Health and Wellbeing

(08:13) Exploring Emerging Needs and Future Opportunities

(09:53) Mapping the Future with Generative AI

(14:52) The Human Connection in Insights

(16:43) Cross-Functional Collaboration and Leadership Commitment

(19:28) Embracing Generative AI for Strategic Growth

The Persuasion Game is available on all your favourite podcast apps: https://link.chtbl.com/PersuasionGame

Episode transcript:

Fenny: I think as an insights function, this is the golden age. Gen AI gives us the opportunity to become more of that knowledge partner.

Adam: Welcome to the Persuasion Game, The Forge’s podcast, all about growing brands and influencing consumers in the modern age. Well, this week it’s just me. There’s no Laura. So I’m Adam Rowles from the Forge. And we’re gonna be listening today to an interview that Laura and I had with one of our guests a couple of weeks ago.

And we are really excited about this interview for a couple of reasons. So firstly, our guest is responsible at their organisation for helping to understand and predict the future. Now, obviously, that’s becoming increasingly difficult in the volatile world in which we live, whether that’s environmental, health, economic, political.

We seem to be living in a world full of turbulence and our guest’s role is helping her organisation to understand the potential possible future scenarios that her organisation might find itself in. And the second reason we were really excited about this interview is because our guest is really at the forefront in bringing in new AI tools and new AI methodologies to helping understand and predict those future scenarios.

So today we’re welcoming Fenny Léautier from Phillips. Fenny is the head of Consumer Insights and Analytics. She’s a visionary insights leader who is passionate about the value of insights as a driver for transformational growth. And most recently, she’s been championing the potential of AI to transform the impact of insights teams and when we spoke to her, she’d just got back from Cannes giving a talk on that subject.

And just before we hear from our guest, a quick ask from us. We’d love it if you can tell one person about this podcast in the office or on a call today, or leave us a five star review in a rating wherever you listen to your podcasts. Okay, here’s the interview.

So welcome Fenny. How are you doing?

Fenny: Very well. Still a bit hot here in Amsterdam, but we shouldn’t complain, right?

Laura: Don’t worry. It’ll be gone soon!

Adam: We are having quite the summer, aren’t we in Northern Europe? It’s been very, very warm.

Fenny, look we’re so pleased to have you today on the podcast. I know we’ve been talking about this one for a while. Before we get into it, would you mind just sharing a bit of context and background about what you’re working on currently at Philips?

Fenny: What are we working on? I mean, plenty of topics as you can imagine. I mean, we’re living in a world that is changing fast, and of course as any company we’re looking for where are the opportunities and how to drive consumer led growth. And it means that we are heavily investing in really understanding where the opportunities are, what human needs people have, right? And how can we tap into that to really bring meaningful innovations, propositions into their lives to improve their lives.

In personal health we’re talking about, let’s say B2C solutions, like shavers, toothbrushes, modern childcare, so bottles, breast pads for example. That’s what we’re working on. And I’m working actually in the Marketing Centre of Excellence, responsible for consumer insights, so raising the bar in consumer insights across all kinds of activities, working super closely with these BUs – business units – as well as all the regions to really drive excellence in the way we collect consumer insights, but also help in ideation and of course bringing strong winning propositions to the market.

Laura: It’s very interesting your world of health and wellbeing because I think you know, 10 years ago saying the word wellbeing would’ve seemed a bit sort of woo woo and hard to relate to for some people. And now it’s incredibly conflated. And, and you know, actually what we’re seeing is consumer needs around health and wellbeing are really changing. Could we talk about some of the shifting dynamics?

Fenny: What we see, there’s more and more pressure, people are feeling more and more pressure to perform at work, to perform at home.

If you think about modern childcare, mums being there, spending all their time on raising their babies in the best way, feeling that pressure. Also being that, let’s say, role model as a working mum, and that’s a lot of pressure that comes to you as a mum, right?

In that case, for example, we see that there’s a tendency and we are really saying that as well, if she had a care, if you as a mom take better care of yourself you would be a better mom for your baby, right? And that means it’s not selfish actually to take care of yourself, because that’s a bit of the guilt feeling that every mum has. You know, you’re going out with your friends for you know, a drink or going to the gym maybe, and you leave your baby behind. Is that selfish? No. I think it’s super important to take care of yourself in order to be a better version of yourself, to raise your kids. And you know, that’s always what they tell you on the plane, right?

Adam: Yeah.

Fenny: To just put on the mask yourself before you help others. And I think we realise that in the world that we’re living in today, you better really take care of yourself. And health is more and more important. We’re ageing. We’re getting older. We’ve lived through the COVID periods as well, where we suddenly realised that we’re quite vulnerable.

Not only physical health, but also mental health is super important in this complex world that we’re living in with lots of things going on with your phone, with your, you know, anything, any kind of device that you have, and you feel that you need to be on your toes all the time to know what was going on. And actually, do you need that?

Laura: I think what’s so interesting with what you are saying there is perhaps, you know, 10, 15 years ago we would’ve gone in with a lens of saying, yes, people have high aspirations and therefore we’ve got this technology, or we’ve got this added benefit from a functional point of view.

And instead you are really going in with a wider understanding of people’s emotional needs and the context they’re operating in, and sort of taking that empathy as a way to drive the approach you have towards innovation. Do you think that’s fair?

Fenny: Of course! We should be doing that. We’re progressing on it as well. We’re an innovation company so you can imagine there are many engineers that come up with great ideas. But we also realise it’s not only in the products, you know, it is about the full solution and the experience you give to people. And ultimately it’s about what it really delivers to them not only at a functional level but really how they feel. And that’s during the experience, but even before that. You know, we can have the greatest kind of solutions out there, but if people don’t know about it how can we make an emotional connection so that people really think, oh, that they care about it?

And that means that a product solution should not only do it 10 times better, it’s like, you know, the detergents, whiter, whiter, whitest, that doesn’t do the trick anymore. Right? It’s about how can you really make a meaningful impact in people’s lives rather than only in the category. I talked about mother and childcare, and I think it’s a great, great example with the campaign that we have now on share the care, for example. If you do that, then you would be a better version of yourself to raise the kids.

But it means as well our solutions are helping there. So we really thought about with the next generation of breast pumps, how can we help the mum actually to share the care? Or with the next generation, or even our current ranges in bottles, it’s a much more natural response of the baby on the kind of drinking.

So these are examples on how you can really make a difference in people’s lives. And people care about your brands because you’re touching something that is meaningful in their lives.

Adam: It’s really interesting, a lot of the examples you’ve spoken about, these needs have been around for ages, but you’re finding new and innovative ways to better help people deliver on those needs or find solutions to those needs.

Do you find any opportunities where new needs are emerging? Are you seeing any? Where are the new needs and new spaces opening up in the health and wellness wider area?

Fenny: I think there are still a lot of hidden needs. People are not even aware that they could have this need.

If you think about oral healthcare, plenty of people still have a manual toothbrush, right? We know, and it’s proven as well, by brushing better it will have an impact on your oral healthcare. It will also have an impact on your overall health even. You don’t know what you don’t know. Of course, we think about needs that could, and let’s say, evolve further into the future, but there’s also still a lot of opportunity to make people more conscious about how to take care and how they can easier live a healthier life.

And I think that’s something that we also should not forget because it’s not only about the fancy new things, the connected devices, you know, you can see your baby or a toothbrush that you know detects exactly when you have to go to the dentist or whatever. It’s even about the small things about if more people would use a kind of a power toothbrush their overall health would be better. And yes, of course there are emerging needs. I think there are differences as well across the regions.

If you think about developing market, emerging markets. If you think about access to, let’s say simple solutions, breast pads, or a bottle or a soother, there’s a lot to do. But in a mature markets, I mean, we know that there’s more and more need actually to get better kind of experience out of what you’re using.

Laura: You’ve talked a little bit about needs that aren’t met, and obviously we’re also going to talk today about future needs, and one of the things that we all acknowledge in our industry is so difficult is just how volatile and how many unexpected events can be coming in and changing the trajectory of things in ways that we hadn’t foreseen.

How do you go about mapping what the potential future might be and the areas that you should be exploring as a team?

Fenny: We have never lived in a period where there was so much volatility and uncertainty. It’s not about predicting the future right because any forecast or any prediction, I think will be wrong. Right? So it’s much more about understanding the drivers for future opportunities.

So what are potential scenarios and what are the hypothesis that you have that makes those opportunities appear? Yes or no? And can you pick them up? And that’s more important. I mean, ageing population for example, is one. Sustainability is one. There are big, big kind of macro trends out there. I think, yeah, health and wellbeing is one. Also to focus on health and wellbeing. So you can imagine what that would that look like in 10 years from now? Where there’s more and more pressure on care systems, it will be so much more difficult. So what can we do to prevent people from getting ill? So what are the solutions out there if we talk about oral healthcare or to talk about women and beauty or about personal health?

So we are looking at what are those drivers in different regions because care systems are different in different regions. Insurance is different, right? Also demographics are evolving differently. Polarisation is different. So there’s so many factors that influence that that we should, that we are looking at.

Let’s say, what are the biggest drivers actually for this? And that create those opportunities? And how can we be prepared for that? And how can we calculate back what that means for the biggest opportunities that we should tap into with the solutions and the technologies of course that we have?

I think it’s about finding those opportunities. That’s also where generative AI will help us enormously because there’s so much information out there. We are sitting also on so much information. How can you get the right insights out of it? How can you get the right foresight out of it? And how, based on that, can we already ideate for, you know, maybe ideas that come to market in 10 years, but calculate back what does that mean already? What we could do in the next three years, for example?

So to really think much longer ahead, to be more prepared for the future. But also to think more out of the box. Because we always have the tendency to ideate based upon what you know now, and then it stays much more closer to home than when you think about how the world could look like in 10 years from now. And if you ideate on that, you get suddenly to completely different potential solutions based upon the opportunities that you see.

Laura: That’s so so interesting, isn’t it?

Fenny: It’s not easy!

Laura: Yeah.

Fenny: Yeah. And it’s not easy. It’s super complex and difficult because yeah, nobody knows how the future will look like

Laura:  It’s very different from like the human brain and how we’ve been taught to process data, isn’t it? Because I think what we’ve tended to is think about a trajectory, you know? So we’re like, well this is the path that we’re on, so let’s just assume that path is continuing and then through all sorts of different ways we’ve seen like massive breaks in those systems and kind of, you know, whether that’s politically, socially, you know, there’s been sort of huge disruptors.

So I think what you are talking about rather than trajectories, is almost different scenarios and you know, having a source outside your own bias or outside your own sort of linear way of thinking to go, what about this? What about that? These are potential plausible worlds that you could be experiencing.

Fenny: Yeah exactly. And it’s really going beyond, let’s say, what feels comfortable as well, eh? Because it’s so- you cannot imagine that you live in that world. So for people to ideate, that’s why we need Gen AI to help us to think, let’s say, much longer ahead because can we do that? Are we creative enough?

Yes, we are very creative, but I think we’re there also to say, is this really something that is plausible or could happen? Or is this too far-fetched? So the human brain is still there to judge and to critically look at, okay, what is Gen AI giving us as solutions? So what do we think? And then we also need to, of course, forecast those scenarios to see, okay, what could it look like? How big would this opportunity be? What are the signals that we should continue to watch in order to see is it picking up yes or no? So is this an area to invest in or not? But it’s better to be, you know, aware of those opportunities that could appear in 3 years or in 5 years, or in 10 years from now to be prepared for the future.

Laura: So we’ve talked a lot about the potential of Gen AI and how exciting it is, but of course there is still a world which involves the human connection. Can you tell us your thoughts on how those two things interrelate?

Fenny: The human, understanding the human is still super critical to really go under the skin on what really motivates people. And I think Gen AI is a great tool to do that and to uncover it. But the real human connection, hearing the voice of a consumer or of what people telling their life stories, telling their worries is super critical.

And maybe even, we need to identify where we have the insight gaps. And that means that maybe you do a little bit more ethnographics in the future because we lost that a little bit. So can we invest more in that to really understand that deeper human connection?

But also we have a consumer connect program in the company where any marketeer, any insight professional, can just book an interview with a consumer and you can talk about any topic, that you think is relevant. Just hearing somebody talking about their lives, their, you know, the context, the city they’re living in, the conditions they have, the children need to go to school in the morning and there’s a rush hour and they still need to brush. You know, just hearing that voice and what people are worried about is so powerful. Understanding that real need of people. We shouldn’t underestimate that. I think that that is still super important in parallel as well.

Adam: One of the biggest challenges when doing this ‘future of’ type of work, especially when it’s a longer term horizon and the change is so different to what you’re experiencing today is taking people along that journey and explaining to them that this is where we’re heading.

Like what, I guess, challenges or ways have you used to overcome some of these tensions that might exist, where some people are in one place and you’re trying to take them to another?

Fenny: This is not work that you do in isolation as insights.

This is really cross-functional. So there needs to be leadership commitments that we should do this initiative. And then you need to have the right people from the different functions to join with strong commitments of our marketing leaders in the business units to really do this together.

So it’s together with R&D, with marketing, but even, you know, the regions or design and also marketing communication. So we really have a cross-functional team that works on this together and goes through the journey together because it’s about immersing yourself in those worlds and thinking together in the future and to believe in it.

And of course we do objective evaluation of the opportunities. We all have these strategic criteria to judge to what extent this is an opportunity we should go for. Yes or no? You need to believe in it as well that this could be a future opportunity that we should tap into.

So it’s together with, uh, r and d with marketing, but even, uh, you know, the regions or design and also marketing communication. So we really have a cross-functional team that works on this together and goes through the journey together because it’s about. Immersing yourself in those worlds and thinking together in the future and to believe in it.

And of course we do objective evaluation of the opportunities. We all have these, uh, strategic criteria to judge to what extent this is an opportunity we should go for. Yes or no, you need to believe in it as well that this could be a, a, a future opportunity that we should tap into.

Adam: I think that’s brilliant what you’re saying there.

I think a lot of organisations listening to this or people working at other organisations will really admire what you’re saying here because I think the reality can be different in some places.

Fenny: Sometimes you need to invest three months to get the key stakeholders, senior leaders into it.

So to get the buy-in, you better wait three months to have the right kind of commitments of leadership to do it, rather than starting under the radar and saying, Hey, here we are. This is beautiful. Right? Because then it’s much more difficult to get to land it, and I think it should also be a way of working almost, that you do that on a yearly level and with different lenses.

Sometimes you do it broadly to identify the opportunities really broadly, and then maybe the next year you say, okay, we know now because it doesn’t change every year. Right? If you have the foundations in place, then you can also zoom into a specific area and you go deeper there so that you don’t lose the capability or the way of working on how to do it. You still have them, people within the teams that know how to run it because I think it should become a habit.

Laura: I think you raise a really interesting point there, Fenny, which is AI is a shared capability that everybody comes to the table aligned behind, but you’ve also said there’s a kind of need for continuity and building on knowledge.

And I think in the past you’ve mentioned that’s actually a real strength of insight teams is, they tend to be a bit more of a point of continuity in teams. There’s not always the churn that you might see in other functions, and so you can have that iterative knowledge building. You can be a sort of ambassador for what’s worked before and how it should be evolved.

It feels quite exciting for insight teams from that perspective.

Fenny: I think as an insights function, this is the golden age because suddenly, you know, we were working project by project. We are trying to get the knowledge there. And as you say, the insights, people usually are longer in the roles than marketeers. They rotate a little bit more often, and that means that Gen AI gives us the opportunity to become more of that knowledge partner. So you know what people need, right? Because the needs are not changing day by day or year by year. It’s the way you can solve them and the way you connect to people that’s changing, basically. Making it culturally relevant, being on top of, okay, what is driving that need?

And that means the Gen AI will help us, of course, to step away from project by projects. Like there’s a brief coming, there’s a new proposition developed, there’s a brief, and now we need to brief an agency, get work done, do a deployment, and we go to the next. But now what will happen is if you apply a Gen AI first mindset, it is about what do we know already? You know, in terms of insights. And we will have our Gen AI tools, either internally, either with a supplier, to really mine everything that we have, get the right insights, the human insights, the functional insights. So how to start it even.

And that means that you will be that partner with the marketeer to uncover those insights rather than briefing an agency, they come back and they say, no, this is the insight. So it’s really crafting it to be the critical thinker, be also much more future focused because you can be the person to challenge it to say, well, maybe this is good today, but did you think about these developments and maybe it would evolve like this in the future?

But also the ideation of course, or even thinking about claims in the developing claims for propositions, for example. Or understanding the bigger context of the category, that you operate in and how competitors are evolving, semiotics, all of that. So really be that strategic kind of consumer growth partner, you know, consumer led growth almost, to ideate together to be that partner in crime to really solve the puzzle or the mystery even, right?

Because sometimes you don’t know it. And that was nice I heard Tony Costella at Heineken saying two weeks ago, “Are we there to solve puzzles or are we there to solve mysteries?” Because probably the puzzles are the easier ones, but we are there for the mysteries. The ones that you don’t have a right or wrong answer fully, but it’s like intriguing and you try to find the best kind of solution that solves the mystery, right?

But you’re not always 100% sure so I really love that comparison.

Laura: It’s a world beyond a sort of report of what has happened. It’s much more about exploring what is and why it is and and where it’s going to go, which, as you say, is just much more exciting and yes, you are almost the navigator through the mist.

Fenny: And Gen AI is a tool, it’s something that we should embrace because you can apply it in different ways, in different contexts for different problems or questions or initiatives that you have. And I think we don’t know the answer everywhere, and we don’t know how good it is, but it’s faster, anyway, it’s cheaper as well.

We know as well that the quality, we have experiences with it and we see that the quality of concepts is really improving significantly. I mean, is there a reason not to embrace it?

I mean, it’s scary because people don’t know it. It’s a different way of operating, ways of working are different, right? We’re not used to do that as insights people. We need to also apply that lifelong learner kind of mindset because it will change. Because one year ago I couldn’t have imagined on where we are today with the application of Gen AI. So one year from now, it will be different again from what we are expecting today.

Adam: So obviously as you say this, this is going to take a mindset shift and the teams within insight, but also in the wider organisation are gonna have to, you know, learn this new operating model, this new way of doing things.

How are you helping everybody in the team to change their mindset here?

Fenny: It starts, of course, with the foundation, eh? So it’s about data that you need because your proprietary data will make your algorithms better so that means as well that we need to be disciplined and getting the data in the right place and everybody needs to store reports. We need to get also kind of scripts, et cetera. So there’s a lot actually that we’re doing connecting sources. But also if we do it with a partner outside it means that we need to have our proprietary data and reports available to really use that. So that’s one thing.

Second is then the algorithms or the technology. How can we make sure that we use the best algorithms so that we progress with speed there, that we use also our tested knowledge. And as BCG then says it’s, you know, you can have the fun, most fantastic tools available with the best data, but 70% is actually into processes and people. Because if people continue to use what they’re comfortable with and they don’t embrace it, nothing will happen. So I think that’s what we need to do.

At the same time I think we need to think about what are the accelerators for implementation. And that means of course you need to do training and you need to identify who are the key people in the organisation that will accelerate the implementation. These people will be your ambassadors, that also will help you to drive that change.

So then, yeah, the ways of working, because the processes will not change that dramatically, I think. But the way of working will be changing and also the timeframe that you do to come up with new ideas. Usually we take eight weeks, for example. Now we will do it in a couple of days maybe.

So that means the ways of working for marketeers will drastically change. Also the ways of working for insight professionals because how do you support them, the marketing team, in that whole journey, in that way of working, which is accelerated? But you have those moments where the critical thinking is super important to really make the right choices, to its rate in the right way and to go for where really that’s the opportunity is.

So I think it’s really embracing Gen AI and promote it where you see there’s traction. And really focus on, let’s say, creating a pool, a pool in the organisation by showcasing the learnings and the best practices.

Laura: Love it. Thank you so much, fan. That was really interesting and a great ambassador for the potential that it can bring to a business.

Adam: Yeah. It’s such a fascinating interview there. I think you’ve really, really kinda shone a light on some really, really good developments that you guys are clearly making.

Adam: So it’s normally at this point I ask Laura what she thought of the interview, but without Laura here you’re just gonna be hearing from me for the next minute or so. I really enjoyed that interview. I’m really interested in the subject. I think we are seeing, you know, probably one of the biggest changes to our industry that we’ve ever seen before.

You know, it’s, in some ways it’s really scary. Are our jobs gonna exist in five years, is probably something that everyone’s asking. But I just think coming outta that interview, I actually find it really exciting. I think that yes, there are gonna be big changes. But there’s always gonna be the role for the human in all of that to discern and make decisions and plot and think and challenge and doubt.

But we’re just gonna be supercharged with tools that enable us to do these things really quickly. It’s almost like a bit of a cliche now, to hear that you’re not gonna lose your job to AI, you’ll lose your job to someone working with AI. I’d go one step further, you know you’re gonna lose your job to an organisation that’s thinking really holistically about how to bring AI in and it sounds like what Fenny is doing at Phillips is putting them, you know, really in the kind of driving seat. And it’s really exciting to hear.

If you are interested in this subject we’ve been writing a bit about this at The Forge. We’ve got some more articles coming out over the next couple of months. We’ve been thinking a lot about the future and, and what AI means in all of this and how it’s going to affect the industry. The article, I’ll drop it into the show notes that we’ve written already, it’s called, Shaping the Future: Seven questions you might want to consider before considering your next trend strategy project.

So, yeah, I mean, really interesting. We’re gonna do a few more of these. I think we’ve got an interview lined up with a guest who runs their own agency, helping large organisations to adopt AI. We’re also gonna be speaking to some AI specific marketing agencies. So, I think there’s a lot, lot more coming in this theme. Stay tuned if you’ve enjoyed this and keep an eye out on The Forge’s thinking page for the future articles. If you want to keep up to date with any of this stuff, you can simply just sign up to The Forges newsletter where most of our latest content goes first.

So yeah, that’s all from me. Next time we’ll be back with Laura and just a final ask from me. It looks like The Persuasion Game is starting to pick up some real pace on Apple and Spotify. And the thing that could help to really drive that is if everybody listening to this, were to like and subscribe. So please, if you’ve got your phone in front of you now, your laptop in front of you now, just click the button.