Product Innovation: Better, Or Just New?
A BBC podcast examining how companies across different sectors approach product innovation, featuring executives from P&G, Mars, and Amazon Ring discussing their strategies for continuously improving products. The discussion explores whether constant innovation truly benefits consumers or creates unnecessary product cycling driven by psychological obsolescence.
Summary
This BBC Bottom Line podcast episode explores product innovation across three major consumer sectors through interviews with executives from Procter & Gamble, Mars, and Amazon Ring. Host Evan Davis begins by referencing Alfred Sloan's introduction of annual model changes at General Motors, establishing the historical context for planned obsolescence and continuous product updates. Tom Moody from P&G discusses how washing detergent innovation responds to changing consumer habits like larger washing drums, shorter cycle times, and synthetic gym fabrics. He emphasizes P&G's obsessive consumer research, including daily shaving observations at their Reading facility that led to discovering men miss spots under their noses, not jawlines. Gary Moppet from Mars explains their 90-year innovation journey with Maltesers, including seasonal products like the Billy bunny and recent white Maltesers relaunch. He describes their five-year innovation pipelines focused on desirability, viability, and feasibility. Dave Ward from Amazon Ring recounts how founder Jamie's garage problem of missing deliveries evolved into a security-focused company, and discusses their controversial AI-powered missing pet detection service. All three executives acknowledge innovation failures - P&G's COVID-era Microban cleaner, Mars's misbranded Mars Delight, and Ring's floodlight installation issues. The discussion reveals that companies invest billions in R&D, conduct continuous consumer research, and view innovation as essential for brand survival. Davis challenges whether this creates a 'rat race' of psychological obsolescence, but the executives maintain that genuine consumer needs drive their innovation cycles, not artificial product cycling.
Key Insights
- Alfred Sloan at General Motors pioneered the concept of annual model changes to create psychological obsolescence in older car models
- P&G discovered through daily shaving research that men most commonly miss spots under their noses, not along jawlines as assumed
- Mars operates on five-year innovation pipelines evaluating products on three criteria: desirability, viability, and feasibility
- Amazon Ring's founder still personally answers customer emails sent to his address printed on every product box
- Companies use 'deprivation studies' where they give consumers products then take them away to measure genuine attachment versus politeness
- Modern 16-year-olds in the UK are more likely to start with body shaving than facial hair shaving, driving razor innovation
- Mars maintains 90-year-old brands like Maltesers through continuous innovation while keeping core products essentially unchanged
- P&G sells 23 items per second in the UK, creating constant real-time feedback on product acceptance or rejection
Topics
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