424. Mastering Project Scoping with Questions: Insights from Mars w/ Beatrix Daros (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 424 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. Today's episode is all about using questions to scope projects with Beatrix Darros at Mars. Ready? Let's get started. You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer. Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about the power of questions. I'm joined by Beatrix Darros, who was at the time with Mars, who shares about some work we did together in 2019 for Mars and Kind, which leveraged the power of behavioral economics and powerful questions to scope projects. While this episode originally aired in 2022, a revisited session from the one we did at IEX Europe live in Amsterdam earlier that year, it is perhaps even more relevant today. One of the things Beatrix shares about is why she thinks it's useful and important to rely on and properly leverage technology. And in this case, she talks about finding a balance between technology and deep human connections at Mars. As you listen today, consider the clarity in which Beatrix is able to articulate their value proposition and approach to projects. How does this line up with your own approach? Not necessarily in the exact areas of focus, but more in how clearly she can state it to know what is in line with their work and what isn't a fit. It's a great lesson and there's always an opportunity for each of us to get just a little more clear on on these value propositions to make it easier for people to do business with us. Don't forget there are links for everything, including my top related past episodes and books waiting for you in the show Notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 424 all right, let's talk about using questions for effective projects. Beatrix Darros, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.

Hi Melina. Very happy to be here with you today.

Absolutely. I always love chatting with you and it's been nice that we've been able to connect so much recently. We had a bit of a hiatus and had really only connected I think one other time all that much before when I came out for the project. We're going to be talking a little bit about today, but before we jump into kind of what brought us back together, which I know, I talked about a little bit in the intro. Can you talk share with everyone who you are and the work that you do?

Yes, absolutely. So I'm working for Mars consumer goods company that is producing a lot of delicious bars, Mars snickers, M&M's Maltesers, I'm sure you've heard about them. And I'm looking after consumer intelligence globally for one of our latest products which is called Kind. And that's what we will talk a little bit in our conversation today.

Yeah, absolutely. And I know for the US population, of which a bulk of the listeners are in that space, Kind is likely a brand that they have heard of. But for everyone else, you know what is Kind and can you tell a little bit about how it's different from the more traditional brands of Mars Wrigley, like you said, having Snickers, M and Ms. Milky Way, those sorts of brands?

Yes, absolutely. And very good question, of course, for everyone outside the us where the product is still in its inventory state. So Kind is a healthy snack bar and healthy means it has very low sugar levels, it has a high content of nuts and the product is very little processed. And that makes it very, very special and an outstanding product on the market. And the name Kind also has meaning in English. It is pretty obvious. The idea is about bringing more kindness to the world, being kind to the body. That's one of our principles we will talk a little bit about later. But that's actually what it is. Kindness and health united in one fantastic bar.

Yeah. And for you yourself, I know you mentioned that you do work in Insights. Can you share a little bit about your history and your background? You know, how did you get to the role you are in today?

Yeah, absolutely. So I've been working in consumer goods for nearly 20 years. I started my career in Procter and Gamble. I've done a lot of work in the beauty care industry and then I moved to Mars nearly 12 years ago and have worked on different segments in pet care and confectionery and not always in consumer. My Insights, I have a broader background. It's a marketing category, management and sales. And around seven years ago I was brought into the Insights world and it's my curiosity probably that naturally brought me there. I'm very much interested in understanding deeper why I love to connect with people and that's a little bit where I found a very nice home in this territory of consumer intelligence, how we call it in Mars. And I had the to work on the Kind venture very early when Mars engaged with Kine, that was end 2018 when I started and I was part of a very small team that was supposed to bring this wonderful healthy and tasty bar as we talked before outside to the US into 30 plus other countries and just trying to help to understand what consumers want in the different parts of the world, what they expect from healthy snacking, what does it mean for them? So lots of interesting questions with a big agenda and lots of learnings after three years. That's a little bit neat.

Yeah. And so with healthy snacking, is, is it the same around the world? You know, what does that really mean to people? What are some of the insights that you found? And how did you, how did you get at the question? Right. So like you said that curiosity is important and I know all the listeners have that. A shared love of curiosity, I'm assuming, because that's sort of part of everything that I do and talk about. So is there a special tip or trick in the way that you learn to ask questions or anything like that?

I think the most important thing is really to connect with people from the countries. Right. You start always with the assumption with their own frame of reference where you are and what you, you know, that is the truth. I think that's the natural human way of thinking we have and we need a little bit of a reference frame. But then it is very important to push oneself outside that. How we are doing it or how I have been doing it in our team is that I was connecting with people from the country. So we have team members from Mars, in Japan, in China, in Germany, in France. And we start inside firstly and ask just some simple question. What is the way snacking works in your country? What are some things that you might think are different, are special? And kick off the conversation via that. And that's where the first hypothesis start and some first kind of ideas come up, I wouldn't call it yet insights. And what we did then is really running a big ethnography study. So we were engaging with people from countries on different continents, so as such, China, Europe, then we really were spending time together with people not doing a lot of interviewing because that's going into rationalization, really trying to observe them being together with them when they do the shopping, when they go into a cafe, when they are at home, and trying to understand what does snacking mean for them. And yes to your question, we found lots of differences. Firstly, it is the role of snacking. So we found that in some countries, for example, the Anglo Saxon countries, snacking is very established. It's something that is considered very normal routine within the culture. In Japan, it is something that is seen as negative. In Japan, if you are opening some food in the tube or if you are eating on the street, that is a negative habit. That's where people are looking at you and staring at you if you are doing that. In France, snacking is also something you would do maybe in school, maybe at work. But in general, French culture is also quite traditionally linked to three established meals per day. So sitting at a table together with the family, having some social conversations and then having proper meals, how they call it, is strong, strongly anchored in that culture. And snacking on the go. Eating is also a bit of a negative thing. It's changing with the younger generation with Gen Z, of course, but it requires some sensitivity. So all these kind of learnings were of course shaping how we launch the product. So that is the snacking thing and the other thing is also the role of health. So how people take decisions related to health is also very different across countries. So is it the education that is kind of impacting how people consider healthy choices or is it the media or is it some kind of trends like sports activities that are influencing. So there are different levels and age decodified it and came up with some segments which was super interesting. But it took us, I think half a year to really dig deep and to understand that and to get really our head around. Especially coming from a place where we were focusing purely on indulgence and temptation over 50 plus years since Mars exists. So we are quite an old and established legacy company. And that was a big jump then to really go into the health territory and to try to understand what matters there. And we are still at the beginning of the journey, I have to say.

Yeah, definitely. And with this, just to clarify, so you say Kind was an established brand, they have the bars. So you weren't doing the research to come up with a new product. It was more about how to talk about and market and launch that product in different parts of the world.

Absolutely. We are doing research in the US and in Canada where the product has been around for 17 years now. It has a very high brand awareness. So that's where we are stepping into new territories. For example, ice cream, you might have seen that in the US already. Or even indulgence with some chocolate. We did some experimentation. So in that place we are looking into new products. But in the rest of the world we just want to establish the bar and to make it as successful as it is in the US also outside, definitely.

So external learnings about what's out there, how to be talking about this. But bringing in, like you said with Mars Wrigley legacy brand that has this indulgent product line and then if you're bringing in something healthy, it seems like, you know, the trends around we're going toward healthy. Which of course I'm assuming is why Mars started looking at a brand like Kind. You know, is there any uncertainty or things needing to be done internally to help when you're bringing in another brand like that that may feel like there's concern that it's going to be cannibalizing the legacy product lines?

Yes, of course, I have to say so we also made learnings on that side. It was the first time Mars made an acquisition in that space. Right. And generally kind was really welcomed in the family of the Mars products. However, there was a lot of unknowns. Right. So as you said, there were people sinking. Maybe the health trend goes super fast. And if Kind is sitting on the shelf next to our traditional, really best selling products like Snickers or Twix, we would observe cannibalization and people would jump much more into health and neglect a little bit our traditional portfolio. And there was skepticism. And that's why we were actually also doing lots of research and trying to learn about how consumers take their choices. And after three years, we are pretty calm and we can see that there is a place for both and that the products can coexist nicely next to each other. But it requires internal cultural transformation as well. Not only understanding the outside world. That is an important learning, I think.

Yeah. And so you mentioned them coexisting next to each other, which in the grocery store, that of course can happen, or convenience store or, you know, wherever else. And so looking at that consumer behavior, the way that someone is going to be buying, if we're thinking about mindset, getting into this sort of brainy behavioral science stuff, you know, it's not the same in every area of the store. You know, Snickers isn't a Snickers. A Kind isn't a Kind in every place. It's not always the same because, you know, when you go down the candy aisle, the decision making isn't the same as when they're in checkout. And you know, those impulse buys matter a lot for the Mars legacy brands. And you had maybe some conversations, you know, leading in about what was going to be happening if, if Kind was at checkout and just kind of some regulatory stuff happening with checkouts in general that led into the work we did together. Can you share a little bit about that whole process?

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I mean, it's no secret that bars, no matter if they're indulgent or healthy, are very often bought impulsively. Right. So people are somewhere at the petrol station or in the grocery store, in the dwelling, time before they get to the cashier, and then you have a little bit of hunger and the bar is a perfect filler. Right. And so that is a very important space in the store for us as a company. And at the same time, there is a lot of change going on, indeed from a regulatory and governmental area. So I'm not sure how familiar the US audience is with it. In Europe, it is a big topic which is called hfss, so that stands for. For High Fat, Salt and Sugar. And it's a regulation which the British government brought out and it will get live in October this year. And what it does is actually that it forbids brands that are exceeding certain thresholds on fat, salt or sugar to advertise on TV or on digital. I think as well, it forbids them to be in the checkout zone, it forbids them to be in highly promoted areas in the store. So that means consumers shouldn't get an incentive or a kind of trigger to buy the products through special activation. And that, of course, had a big impact how retailers will design their checkout or cash zone portfolio. And we saw that in Great Britain, where the legislation will go live in October, as said. However, we also see it in other European countries. So in the Netherlands, there is a retailer that is doing exactly the same just by themselves, company Essex, not the. The Dutch government. We also see some deaths in France going in the same direction. So our expectation is that in the next five years, very likely, other governments will follow what the UK has been doing and these health regulations to save the population for obesity and for other negative health impact. For example, diabetes will happen also across the globe. And that's a little bit what we are watching and we are reacting to it as a company with our choices and with the offers we give to consumers.

Yeah, and so reacting, yes. And sort of some proactive conversations, of course. So it's 2022 that we are talking now. 2019 is when I came out for the project that we worked on and I would love if you can talk a little about why it was determined that behavioral science was important in the conversation at the time and kind of the work that we did there. So that was 2019 that we were talking about this. Of course, you know, pandemic Made some differences, I'm sure, as far as when that regulatory stuff was expected to happen and when it's actually happening. But you know, can you talk a little bit about why felt behavioral science was the answer and how that all came in or part of the answer and how we started working together? Yeah.

So our goal was to really provide an idea to our retail partners how a balanced checkout of the future should look like. And balanced meaning having the right dose of an indulgent portfolio and having the right dose of a healthy portfolio and knowing also which kind of products should be part of that. And we started with that ambition, balanced checkout. And after the ambition there were very fast coming, lots of opinions. Right. We have different people in the company who are working in the indulgence area. We have a fantastic kind team. We have some experts and everyone had an opinion. And the natural tendency was, okay, we collect opinions and those which we like to the most or we believe the most in those we will just test and we will see what consumers do and how to react. That was where we pulled the brake and we deliberately made a step back and we said no, we don't start with our internal opinions and see how consumers react. But we really try to understand what goes on in the brain of consumers, what motivates them, what are priming factors when they are in the dwelling space, what is the role of the mood that is really influencing what they are craving for and how they take their purchase decision and how conscious is the purchase decision? Is it a lot of consciousness or is it mainly subconscious? And that's a little bit where we took the discipline and prevented ourselves from jumping too fast into testing and learning what we love to do. And it is part of our agile ways of working. But it's not always the right thing to do. And I think in that space it was good that we brought in an expert like you and you grounded us really in this behavioral science space. It was fantastic to get a basic education for the whole internal team. What is behavioral science and how could we apply it? And then using some of your tools, which I'm sure you will talk about, to really get into a structured approach and guiding us into a truly consumer led and behavioral led research instead of starting with opinions. I think that was the biggest benefit we got out of it and why we would do it again and also recommend to anyone else doing it.

Oh, thank you for that. I really appreciate it. And you know, I think the audience knows. Anyone who's been here for very long knows I love question Storming and doing this sort of educating on behavioral science. It really is important for me. I, I want everyone to know how valuable this can be for businesses and that's, you know, why the podcast is here and whatnot and love being able to do that with teams, you know, a little bit more like you said about the workshop. So we had a full day together and there were multiple members of the team, some who were fully on board, some who were maybe a little on the fence and I was and you know, maybe about behavioral science but also about, I think like we talked about with you know, kind coming in and not sure what that's going to mean for their brands and everything. And so I, we started off the day where I introduced behavioral economics, how the brain works and some specific consultants concepts like loss aversion, nudging, priming, anchoring and relativity. And just so everyone knows, I'll be linking to those past episodes in the show notes as well. And then we went to question storming which as we know is my favorite, favorite favorite and so chose this to ensure that we were working on the right problem. Like you said, not jumping in with opinions but taking a moment and say, is this where we should be? Is this the thing that really matters to people? Also really helps with scoping a project like in this case. So coming in, I love to be brought in early on in a project because we're able to look at everything that could be coming up. There's lots of questions asked. We had many, many, many post its going all over the room and you know, sticking them up on glass walls and things. But in that process that to say wow, this is a great question but we can't answer this yet. Like this is a phase three question and we have to figure out this thing first and we have to do this at the very beginning. This is the most important, you know, you get to kind of move things around for the project. And then it's also nice, you know, where someone will ask, you know, down the line, well, did you think about, you know, inevitably someone always asks a question like that, right? Did you think about this? You can say yes, we did talk about that and we put that into phase three or we determined that's not part of this project because xyz but it's tabled, we have a pin in it to look at that, you know, in three years or whatever else. Right. There's you know, some opportunity there and you know, really lastly, the benefit with question storming for the point I want to make here is some of that IKEA effect, where everyone gets to be part of the process, even if their idea doesn't ultimately get selected for that first step in the project. You're part of shaping everything in a way that you just don't get with brainstorming. And so, you know, I really think that that is an important part there. So do you want to expand at all on. I know you talked a little bit and thank you already about, you know, what that workshop was like and some of that question storming, but, you know, can you share a little bit more about that experience, what it was like for you and what some of maybe the outcomes were?

Yeah, I think for us the most important thing was really that it shifted the engagement and it really united those people who were skeptical about Kind getting into the checkout area, coming from the really strong, indulgent heritage space. And on the other side, the protagonist for Kind, right, who was super convinced that this is a great product for consumers and it needs to be on the checkout. And it was these two goals. And usually in brainstorming, what we experienced before is that we jump very fast to solutions and then you have positions and people start to discuss the pros and the cons. And often there is no solution in this kind of, of difficult discussions. And the question storming was much more inclusive. Every question found a place, as you said, either in the first phase or in the second phase, or in the third phase, or even later. And that gave everyone the opportunity to feel considered, to feel important. And it opened up and really brought people together. And it was then not a question about what is the right solution for now and what do we do? It was more really aligning on a roadmap and how do we close knowledge gaps in a meaningful way. And I think that's the only add or build I would give to your explanation. The inclusivity and the impact on engagement of people.

Wonderful, thank you, I appreciate that. And if we look more at the project itself, we talked a little bit about how Covid changed the plan for some of the regulatory impacts themselves. But also, you know, original plan was to be doing some testing, I believe in the spring of 2020 that was going to be in stores, which got shut down and wasn't an option. So how did technology come into play play for this project and you know, what did you end up doing in those learnings?

We always try to experiment with technology in kind. So that's part of our agile ways of working. And we had planned initially already to do some virtual testing and the Pandemic was then really reinforcing us to make that the main approach and not only a test and learn approach. And what we did after the behavioral science outcome of the workshop was that we put some of the most important questions we needed to ask in test scenarios and we sent people in virtual reality and tested different things there. So we were really in store intercepting people when they were in the healthy snack bars area or when they were in this checkout zone and asked them, do you have five minutes for us? And then they got some goggles and we sent them on purchase missions and just saw what happened. And technology is wonderful because you can learn very fast. However, we also combined it with some qualitative interviews. We had some conversations and tried to learn more out of that. And that was really, really very fruitful. It led us to super clear outcomes. So we tested it in two to three different markets and the results were pretty consistent. It helped us to shape then the idea how this balanced checkout of the future should look like and to have conversations with retailers. And in some countries there are very progressive retailers, like in Ireland, who said immediately, yes, we believe in that and who were executing it straight away. So we didn't do a lot of in store testing. Then we took the results from the virtual reality and we were counting on our great partnerships that retailers started to put it in place. It works pretty well and it's a bit of a ripple effect. Right. If one is starting, the others are watching and observing each other and then it is following. In some countries it goes faster, in others it goes at a bit of a lower base. That's natural. But we are super happy that we could bring our partners on the journey.

Yeah. When you look at, you were talking about, you know, how things adjusted because you had to, as everyone did. But if we were to say, you know, hopefully this is the truth, but who knows what's going to happen in the next few five minutes, let alone over the next few years. But let's say if you had the opportunity to always do in store testing, again, you know, to go back to the way that maybe you were doing it before, like you said, you're already looking at some technology, but you didn't have to do it then either. And so even if you had that, you know, magic wand, you can always test in person. Are there any learnings from technology in the pandemic and, and whatever else that you know, that you want to keep into your processes or tips for people as they're looking for doing their own research?

Yes, Very good question. And the answer is we will not go back to the way we did research before. It was much more time consuming. I think that is the biggest learning, right? Technology can help you to speed up, to get results in one week or in maximum two weeks and to have some early learnings. When you do a proper in store testing, you need minimum 12 weeks or three months to really see changes and things happening. It's much more complex. If you really change shelves in store, the retailers need to really rearrange all the stuff. You need a lot of salespeople supporting. It's cost intensive, it's complex and it takes long time. Right. So that's why the new way we are doing things is that we firstly do really an online assessment based on the learnings we have and then maybe we test it in one or two stores for four to six weeks, kind of for validation and that's it. And that's what I would also recommend others to do. So rely on the clinical. It is pretty good and it is very reliable nowadays. So the pandemic helped to really increase the accuracy level of what we can get out of virtual research and we should use it, we really should take advantage of it and combine it in a smart way with the real in store reality. So that's a bit what works super well for us. It might not work for every industry, I have to say. So everyone needs to assess its own landscape. Right. But as a guidance I would encourage people to think about that.

Yeah, it's really amazing that process of, you know, wearing the goggles and like you're walking through the store and you look and see, did you notice the ad? Did you see this or that? What'd you pick up? If you're having to be budgeting and doing things with prices or whatever else that it's, it's amazing what can be done with the, the virtual and another technologies. So it's, I think better than what most people might expect that it would be. And on a brand side, like you said, you can swap out and say well let's look with the other labels, whoosh and just ta da. It's basically done. Maybe not quite that easy but you know, there it's, it's pretty cool to see how much you can test so quickly and things like that. So while I could talk about this project all day long, I do want to go ahead and talk a little bit about Kind and its focus on deep human connection. Just a little bit more about the brand before we close out the episode. And looking at you know, fulfilling and understanding the conscious and subconscious needs of consumers like you talked about was a big motivation for the project. So can you talk about that deep human connection approach from Kind and what that means?

Yes. So the deep human connection goes really back to the roots of the brand when Daniel Lubecki, the founder, was really himself going on a backpack through the streets of New York and was just handing out the bar he created together with his first product developers on the street and ask people, how do you like it? What should we do differently? So really being always in touch with the end consumer in a very natural way, not in a super high research driven and modeled way. And so even if kind become part of a big corporation like Mars, we try to keep that human connection approach. And there are three layers where we try to create deep human connection with our consumers. And that's coming back to our purpose. So our purpose has three layers. The first layer is be kind to the body, what I mentioned already before. So that means our mission is to really support consumers to have healthy choices, to have a healthy food intake, not only through bars, but in general. The second layer is around be kind to the community. So that is the whole kindness element with the mission to support consumers in spreading kindness in the world, starting with their own community and then expanding it out there. And the third layer is be kind to the planet. So that is the whole sustainability agenda, which is very important, important for Mars and especially for Kind. So we are, for example, supporting the bees association because we use a lot of honey in our products instead of sugar. We have an energy blend where we want to get carbon nutrient free by 2025 and so on. So that are the three layers. And we are constantly trying to connect on these three topics with our consumers in a very natural and easy way.

Yeah, I love that. Of course, it's so important to be standing for something that you can have be a touchstone. And not everyone has to have that, you know, kind mission in the same way, you know, you want to own what makes sense for your brand, but it's something that the people who find you will get it and they appreciate it. And like you said, supporting bees makes sense. And it's something that the internal team can rally behind. You know, there's just so much goodness there. I really love that. Can you tell a little bit about starting with the staff, understanding customers more, you know, and how you were able to leverage technology and do interviews in a different way and helping not just, you know, a few people get to know the customer, but how that can be again something that goes deeper into the team.

Sure. We were launching a program which we call Consumer Closeness Program. And the Consumer Closeness program has two streams. One stream is technology driven, it's a mobile first approach. So what we did there is that in our biggest market outside the US which is the United Kingdom, we created our own consumer panel. It's a digital panel. We have a D2C business there. And we were just recruiting people who are purchasing kind, who love kind into our panel. And we call them kind insiders. And these consumers are very proud to be insiders. And we are regularly, meaning every two weeks connecting with them. So not with all 1500, but with part of the group. And we are asking them questions on different things. They have the opportunity to share with us an opinion on a new back design or on a new campaign which we are for example, launching what they like, what they don't like. And it's in a very natural way. It's like chatting on WhatsApp or on Signal with your friend and just sharing what you like, uploading videos, sending over some pictures. And then we get very fast, in five days, kind of consolidated outcome what people think about it. And that helps us really to feed into our daily decision taking. Right. So it's not a big research, it's kind of enriching what we are doing by listening to the consumers. We also speak with them over zoom and have some conversations which is very light touch and people really like it to get in touch with our team. Our team loves it as well. And so that is the first piece which is this technology LED angle. And then we have a second stream within this consumer closeness program which is called Consumer, to associate, connect. And what we are trying to do there is that we have the ambition that every team member of the KIND team, not only in UK but in all our big markets around the world are connecting every six to eight weeks directly with the consumer. Are really speaking to a consumer either in real life or via zoom and trying to understand what matters for them. It is not research on certain topics where we are trying to ask or find out things. It's really connecting. Sometimes we have some questions which come out of daily work and it's not reporting, it's really getting inspirations and that can be going with consumer into a shop and go with them through the aisle and accompany them and they do their usual store visit and trying to understand how they purchase it can be visiting them at home and trying to understand where do they store our products, when do they consume them. Or it can be just that. They come to the office and we have a chat. We have trained our associates also how to interact with consumers, how to speak non marketing language, how to really build rapport, how to understand body language and how to have a really natural connection to get to the essence of it. And that was a bit of a journey, but people are enjoying it a lot, lot. And it is extremely powerful. So we were a bit pioneering within Mars with that. So our other segment colleagues in confectionary and in bed care are trying to adopt the model now as well. And yeah, it is engaging, it is insightful and again, it is fast.

Yeah. And so important, you know, like you said, stepping away from that mindset where when you're in your own space, you know, we start to use jargon, we start to think about customers, consumers, members, whatever term whomever's listening is using. You know, you see them as this just like blob of entity that you're trying to attract, right? You're trying to just pull as much as possible and forget that at the end of the day they're human people, you know, it's people you're talking to. And just like you could sit down and have a conversation with a human at a coffee shop or whatever else, you know, to just sit and have a normal conversation and ask them interesting questions, just be genuinely interested in what they have to say. And it happens to be about something you work on. It's funny that we would need to be trained on that, but really, you know, that is kind of how that works. So as we close out and you know, I could talk to you forever as we kind of have. And it was so amazing to spend time with you in Amsterdam. We got to spend, I would say even half a day together and it was not enough. So we'll have another get together here soon. But looking to the future, what do you see on the horizon of insights? You talked a little bit about what you're going to be keeping in mind, but what do you think people should be looking out for and what are you excited for, you know, coming up in the next five years?

Let's say I'm very excited about the change of the role of food for human beings. So we are expecting lots of changes. So I think plant based is something everyone has heard of and we don't consider it as a trend anymore. It's reality. But there are lots of other things going on and we are excited. What will be the next thing? Will it be cell based food? Will it be other stuff. So that is something that really, really excites me. And I'm curious in which direction we will head for. And I think also from a research point of view, it will be the healthy balance of leveraging technology. So as said, we are using now virtual reality. In future there will be much more we can do with artificial intelligence. So that is now a little bit the test and learn that probably in five years when we will meet again. Melina. This will be the normality, I think, and it cannot be used for everything but for many areas. And nevertheless, there needs to be a healthy balance by using technology and keeping the human connection, the deepness I was talking about. So making sure we have that kind of end culture. That's what we use a lot in kind. Not the but but the end. And I think technology and deep human connection is one that needs to be united and go together. That's what excites me. And I think there are lots of opportunities because people are opening up. They are living a much more, more conscious life now. I think the pandemic also helped in that area. It was a pain in many areas. Right. Not allowing personal connections, loneliness and lots of side effects. We all heard about mental health issues, but I think health in general benefit because people became more conscious. And we can see that the relation to food, to eating really changed in a positive way. And that's what I'm excited about, that we as a company can support people on that journey.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for all of that. Hopefully it's not five years before we get to see each other again. But appreciate that maybe being on a.

Podcast in five years again. But we will see each other for sure before.

I love it. And so for everyone who does want to learn more about you, about kind Mars, what's the best sort of next step? Where should they go for some of that?

I'm on LinkedIn personally, Beatrix Bogdaros, so that's very easy. And otherwise Mars has a fantastic website. We are also regularly posting on LinkedIn and you can also just go on kind of snacks.com to find out more about the activities we are doing there.

Wonderful. Well, thank you again, Beatrix, for joining me here and in Amsterdam for the iiex Europe conference. It was wonderful to chat with you and have a different but similar conversation a second time.

Thanks for having me, Melina.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned from Beatrix Daros today? For me, as I said in the introduction and throughout the episode, I really loved this project with Mars. It was a fun thought experiment to consider something as ingrained as the checkout experience and how it could so fundamentally change and the impact it would have on an established business like this. I mean, can you imagine what it would be like if you had something like this happen for your business? What might you do? How could you pivot? Where are the opportunities to come out stronger on the other side? For those of us in the public speaking business, we really felt this in the pandemic. If the bulk of your work was focused on keynotes and live events. Like many of us, we had to quickly pivot to a world where that wasn't possible anymore. For those who didn't have other revenue streams, this was a really difficult adjustment to do in the the moment. So it is important to think about this even when you don't have to. Perhaps especially when you don't have to. If your main line of revenue, whether it was a channel like grocery store checkout or a specific product or a main client, was to go away overnight. Do you have a plan? What can you do to mentally prepare for this now? I know role playing is one of those things. It's easy to write roll your eyes at pun most definitely intended, but it is really helpful in being prepared and diversifying your business so you're ready if you ever need to question Storming is a great tool to help with this. If you start with a statement like we have to do X or our customers only want to be buying from us in Y way, you can attack it with questions to show why that isn't true and start to plan for new opportunities before you need them. This can help you to adapt before you need to, perhaps putting you ahead of your competition at an advantage or making you ready to jump if and when that critical moment arises. Also an advantage and so much more. What about you? What stuck out most for you when listening to today's episode? Come share it with me on social media. I'd love to hear about it. You can find me as the brainy biz pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. You'll find links in the show notes to make it easy, along with ways to connect with Beatrix. Like I said, she isn't with Mars anymore, so you can connect with her on LinkedIn to learn more about the exciting work she's doing these days at Trivium with Lego Serious Play. In those show notes, you'll also find links to my top related past episodes and books and more. It's all waiting for you in the app. You're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 424 and just like that, episode 424 with Beatrix Daros is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Christopher Frank, co author of Decisions Over Decimals. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful. Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.