Reckitt’s Nick Horan on Global Brands, Culture & Meaningful Engagement

Up today on the Speed of Culture podcast, we're thrilled to be joined by Nick Horan, the global brand experience lead at Wreck-It Laundry in London, focusing on their Vanish laundry cleaning brand. Nick has transformed brands focusing on sustainability, design, and cultural relevance with a career spanning continents. He led innovation and built impactful brand experiences, which we're excited to talk about today. Nick, how are you?

Yeah, very good. Thank you for having me today.

Absolutely. And where does this podcast find you?

Uh, I'm just, uh, outside of Oxford, um, in a place called the Cotswolds in the UK.

Has your entire career spanned in Western Europe or have you kind of bounced around a lot?

No, I've definitely bounced about a bit. So, um, I spent quite a bit of time, uh, in agency land, um, in London, um, where I had the opportunity to work on, on brands with P&G. Um, and then I had a very nice opportunity to head out to Singapore for 2 and a half years where I worked with varying clients. In Asia, which was fantastic fun. And then yes, also in the Netherlands with a company called Van Berlo in Eindhoven, working with the likes of Unilever. So a real mixed bag, to be honest.

That type of experience is kind of twofold greatness because on one hand you get to work with the P&Gs and Unilevers and world-class CPG house of brands that obviously have mastered the art of brand building, and you've had the ability to have vast global experience. So let's kind of unpack both of those because as somebody who's never worked anywhere but here in the United States, what are some of the advantages that somebody like you has gotten through working in so many different cultures and, and countries along the way?

Yeah, I, I mean, I think what I've learned in my career is no matter where you are in the world or, or whatever culture you're from, anyone engaging with a brand is looking for the same thing, which is, do I see value in engaging with your brand? Um, and frankly, at a global level, it's kind of our job as, as brand builders, if you like, to, to demonstrate the value of that. Um, and it's, it's kind of never focusing on, on the small piece of the pie, but it's looking at that in the round for a, for a kind of a, a global mega brand, as something like Vanish is.

But in terms of the cultural nuances in somewhere like Singapore versus the Netherlands or the UK, what are some of the distinctions that you've noticed over time that maybe has made you slightly alter or customize your, your go-to-market strategy or brand building approach?

Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question. I think, as we said, okay, sure, people are looking for that same value exchange, but the kind of conversational relevance you've got to, to look at to kind of untap those different markets obviously changes. So being able to adjust your tone of voice to be relevant in different markets is super important. I think one of the, one of my favorite projects, if I may, was with Grant's Whiskey. Really nice example. It's a fantastic brand. It's known the world over, but they saw an opportunity to untap Chinese New Year in Asia. It's a huge gifting occasion. It, it's, it's one of the largest mass migration events, I think, in the world, believe it or not. Um, and, you know, Grant's Whisky have some fantastic brands. For example, they have Monkey Shoulder. So they were able to start thinking about the Year of the Monkey in Asia, and how can you then communicate with relevance in a mom-and-pop shop in Malaysia, as an example. So, you know, knowing kind of what your core assets are that make you distinct globally, but then actually being able to adapt your tone of voice to work to the Year of the Monkey within a kind of small store environment in an island in Malaysia, that becomes really crucial to be able to unlock sales purchases, etc., for your audiences for sure.

And you'd mentioned working at places, you know, like Unilever and or working with places like Unilever and P&G and of course now Wreck-It. Um, you know, well-established companies that have proven time and time again to be able to create powerful brands. Do you think brand is still relevant here? Um, in 2025, uh, given the fact that the barriers to entry are so much lower for anyone to create a brand, like a lot of the most prolific brands that we see in culture were built during the golden age of television, as you know, because they were able to capture consumers' attention. Um, you know, in heavy rotation in a limited amount of media channels where today it's quite the opposite, right? Where this proliferation is low barriers. So how do you look at the role of brand heading forward? What still remains the same and what is different?

I'm glad you picked up on that, because someone once told me that, um, the average person is exposed to something like 5,000 brands a day. Yeah. Compared to the 1950s when it was just 500.

Yep.

So I mean, with that much noise, uh, I mean, it's crucial that every interaction a consumer has with our brands, whether they're seeing a billboard on a bus or, or using a product or, or engaging with a brand online, it must feel really meaningful and really consequential.

When, when a brand interaction feels meaningful, what do you feel is usually the case? Is it just about a value exchange? Is it about moving them emotionally? I guess, you know, more often than not when a brand is successful, what have you seen be the case?

Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about this, uh, before we sort of entered into the room together, but I saw an example quite recently from the food brand Maggi. Now, I think they're in a super competitive space, like they use fairly traditional TV ads. Tactics like discounts are pretty prevalent in that whole category for driving trial, but frankly, I think A brand will commoditise themselves if they— that sort of one tactic becomes their sole strategy. But Maggi, I think, did something quite different. They created this free cooking curriculum. It was entirely on WhatsApp, and they personally connected through audience, through cookery classes. Yeah, I noted down some of the results before this chat, but they received 200,000 messages in their first 8 weeks. Wow. WhatsApp, they had a 4-point lift in ad recall, they had a 3-point lift in campaign awareness. And for me, I think this is a perfect example of meaningful engagement. They're not just relying on ads, they're not just relying on discounts, they're understanding and engaging with their audiences. And when a brand really offers something that gives value to people, that's when they start to build these lasting connections in my mind.

Yeah, and I think that's really the core distinction between advertising and content, right? Like, advertising is what's my unique selling proposition, and content is what does my consumer really care about? Where does my brand fit in? How can I deliver upon those unmet needs? And in the case of a cooking class, obviously they identified the insight that their consumers needed that— those cooking classes needed that education. And connect— to connect your brand to it, you're driving deep engagement, clearly, as evidenced by the messaging. And that is the new way to build, I would, I think, brand equity versus just plastering the same message over and over again like we saw in the '50s and '60s in the heyday of TV.

Yeah. And it becomes more about conversation than just broadcast alone.

Yep, absolutely. So you are working, um, on Vanish right now, which is a, a laundry, um, you know, home care brand. Obviously the category you play in is what I would call like a low, low engagement but heavy usage category. In other words, like people don't define themselves by their laundry detergent, but they buy it every day and it's a huge market share, et cetera. So it's up to you to make, you know, what is an unsexy category sexy. And I just like, even by looking at the branding, it's fun, it's different. I can see why you've had success with it. But when you, when you're working on a category, you know, like, like home care and particularly within the brand Vanish, like what are some of the considerations that you put into play when making sure that you're creating something truly differentiated and, and something that's built to break through?

I mean, it's a good question, and I— it's kind of interesting, isn't it? Because you, you sort of say maybe low engagement, but I, I, I spent a bit— involvement, sorry.

Yeah, but maybe that's wrong as well.

No, and it— I— the reason why I say it's interesting is I, I once spent some time calculating how many interactions Vanish might have per second, and I got to something like 12 interactions per second. Um, that's based on the 70 or so different markets in, uh, what do you mean by that interaction per second? So this is what I mean. So we're 12 interactions per second based on how many markets we're in, based on product costs, sales volumes, media exposure, how many, uh, uses are the products having in someone's, in someone's day-to-day So, I mean, 12 interactions a second is a lot, right? So, um, so I think to your point, to nail a brand's distinctiveness, we first need to define how we want people to experience it. And that's across a labyrinth of different touchpoints, both online and offline today. You know, as we were discussing earlier, it's not just TV advertising, it's not just a supermarket. We're talking e-commerce, we're talking social, we're potentially talking in varying different social channels and WhatsApp messaging platforms, and so on. So starting to identify every touchpoint in that journey from a user's first exposure with a brand all the way through to repurchase— once we know those touchpoints, I think we can start to figure out which message, which piece of creative will resonate most at each of those stages. And for us, as you said, it's not just about pushing out content. It's about providing the right creative direction and pretty awesome assets across the, the 70 or so different markets we operate in. And frankly, it's working. Um, Vanish is fortunate enough to be, I think, in the top 4% of the most recognizable brands in the world now. So it's running through that and being quite forensic about that.

Is that easy to do in this market, to build a brand with that type of awareness? I mean, That's quite an accomplishment.

And for what is actually quite a young brand as well. I mean, that's right. Less than 40 years old.

So yeah, it's not like Tie, which is kind of as much deeper history. Yeah. What's interesting being on the website of Vanish and one thing that stuck out is this big tagline, clothes live longer with Vanish. And when you talk about like unique selling propositions in your category, often I just see about how well it is in terms of the efficacy of its cleaning power. But this is the first time I can recall really being highlighted the ability that it doesn't damage your clothes. Where did that come from?

So Vanish was founded on the, on the sort of purpose, if you like, of safe yet effective stain removal. A lot of competitive brands with things like bleaches that might dye your clothes or, you know, the other route might be very, very heavy rubbing and mechanical action to remove a stain, literally kind of rubbing clothes together. Which, you know, ultimately damage the fabric. So this, this whole sort of notion of safe yet effective stain removal is very important to the brand, and that delivers a certain degree of convenience. But ultimately, that allows you to keep your clothes in your wardrobe for as long as possible, which has a really strong benefit on the, on the person's pocket as well.

In terms of innovation in your space, and I think for you guys to be able to continually innovate, you need to think about new challenges. You need to think about consumer trends. How do you and somebody in your position have your finger on the pulse of these consumer trends? And how, how do you spend your time making sure that you're in the know in a world that's changing so quickly?

Yeah, as I said, we have proliferated, I think, as in varying different markets, the sheer volume of individual touchpoints and the individual places that creativity can, can in essence play. And as you rightly point out, that could be very different in China as it might be from where you're sat, um, or from where I am in the UK. And the ways of engaging with those different, um, with those different mediums, um, frankly, they can change almost overnight. I think we saw now that TikTok's the biggest search engine in the world next to Google, if I'm, if I'm not wrong, if not bigger. And I think for, for me as a sort of creative professional, actually these just give us even more opportunities to, to do something quite inspirational on. Yeah, Vanish, for example, is, is working a lot on creative content around trying to get people to engage with its products and show the results. Now that's quite fun. That can be a really interesting creative start point. Sure. Um, for things like user-generated content, for things like influencer content. Now keeping abreast of it in a global position is a challenge. And I think, you know, from the way Reckitt is structured, we have a very strong link with our key markets. So Reckitt's largest market is Brazil, in Latin America. We have very good links with our Brazilian team in order to kind of understand how people are shopping and engaging with the brand out there. We do a lot of work on audience media segmentation, how people are consuming certain types of media. And that allows us just to start to think about what that journey is we were discussing earlier. What message do I want to surface at those key points? But in my mind, I think that the key part of all this is to make sure that everything remains conversational. That engagement must be two-way. And that's something I think as brand owners, if we are, you know, let's say, not linked to the markets well enough, if we're not sure about how those mediums are consumed properly, then it, we, we're in danger of becoming a broadcast-based brand, which I'm very clear that we shouldn't be as part of, of, of my work on Vanish.

Sure. And I think the antidote to not being a broadcast-based brand is what you identified is playing in the creator culture because, you know, Gen Z is, is now they're not kids anymore. They are becoming the core household buyer and Gen Z was the first generation to grow up with the iPhone and they, um, you know, the iPhone is their primary place of media consumption. And when they're on the phone, not just iPhone, Android, the smartphone itself, they are more often than not consuming content not from traditional broadcast channels, but from other people. So your ability to tap into the creator culture, you know, is very much connected to your ability to capture mindshare with this audience. How involved are you in, in these kind of creator programs and where do you see that space evolving over time in terms of its importance and relevance to a brand like yours?

I mean, I think it almost comes back to the evolution of design, full stop. I mean, design, previously in the industry was very focused on the craft of making stuff look better. And now, right, that's still important, don't get me wrong, but, but today brands are, are constantly innovating and expanding beyond physical products. Yeah. So you take companies, Apple, Amazon, Tesla, they're the obvious ones, sure, but they've evolved into service-driven models. The Apple Watch, as we know, is nothing without that ecosystem of apps to support it., and all that has to be designed too. So, you know, a lot of our work at Wreck-It is, is around trying to shape the business beyond just the product, whether that's designing a brand's assets, packaging, or tackling larger business challenges. We're still applying the same principle of design thinking, and frankly, the goal of that is to make sure we're not just creating better looking products, but better products that kind of a more holistic, resonate with people, and frankly keeps evolving as the business grows.

Let's shift gears a little bit to you and your career, Nick, because obviously you've had, um, a great run and you've worked with some of the most prolific brands. One question I meant to ask you earlier is you mentioned you had a lot of experience working, um, for agencies, and the agency model obviously is becoming quite disrupted. Um, but at the same time, you know, we all know some of the most brilliant designers, strategists, creatives reside or have resided in agencies. What did you gain from your time working in the agency landscape that you were able to take with you to your current role today?

Yeah, I think it's almost a balanced diet of projects depending on the type of agency you're in. But I mean, my last agency, Van Berlo, which is part of Accenture, you could be going from designing the next sustainable deodorant with Unilever to starting to talk about human-machine interfaces on tugboats.

Yeah.

Um, which, you know, may sound completely random, but actually I think that, that sort of balanced diet allows you to take inspiration from one category and almost apply it and reskin it for another category. And I think that's where innovation starts to happen. It's that sort of cross-pollination synthesis of different ideas. Um, and I think, look, as you say, agency landscape is changing. Absolutely it is, but there is still a, a very important role, I think, to have that sort of partnership with people who are working on all kinds of different industries and places. And, um, that partnership allows us to really start to create unexpected creativity, um, left-field ideas that traditionally might not reside in our category, um, but can be borrowed from elsewhere, right?

Yeah. There's tremendous value in going cross-category because, you know, we think business is so different, but ultimately I think, and what I found in running an agency for, for, you know, 15 years is that a lot of the problems that exist in one industry that basically exist in all the industries. How do I capture mindshare? How do I differentiate? You know, how, how can I make sure I, I keep the value of my brand such as to be able to protect my margins, all those things. So you're right, you know, you can pick up an idea from one category that's very translatable to another, especially in a world where, as we mentioned earlier, content is king. And ultimately you're still talking to the same consumer that buys cars and laundry detergent, et cetera.

But I also think beyond agencies as well, uh, what we're seeing is, is far more, um, network between, uh, different businesses as well to solve problems. And I think these collaborations are really helping us to innovate in new areas, um, and kind of unlocking some quite interesting new products that are actually good for the world as well.

Yeah, absolutely. So when you look back at your career in terms of the decisions you made along the way to kind of prepare you for a role in brand management at the highest level, what are some of the decisions that you made right in retrospect? That gave you the skill set and expertise to be able to thrive in this challenging environment?

Oh, that's a good question. I think one of the, the sort of early skills I learned to hone, if you like, is this thing around resourcefulness— trying not to be limited by the resources that we have around us. You know, if you want to create radical ideas, you almost need to build the selling case for those radical ideas. So You know, that might be as simple as, okay, well, I can't afford a photo shoot. Well, pick up a camera, take a picture. Yeah, do it yourself, sell it in. And as part of that startup, startup mindset, which kind of has always allowed me to start thinking about how you might scale an idea, and that might be, okay, well, we've got a really nice idea for a new innovation. I can't afford to launch it at scale. Well, how do we maybe start to test the waters on a digital environment to test initial appetite from people on those ideas. So yeah, I think certainly working as well in agency culture, that resourcefulness and that startup mindset in order to try and sell things in to get that next bit of budget in order to scale that thing and iteratively build something out was certainly important to me as I started my career. Yeah, something I still do now.

Absolutely. I think so many of our— I just, in being an employer, like so many of our best Employees are exactly that. They're resourceful because there's always a reason to say no. There's always a reason to say, oh, I need to hire somebody or some company to get this done before people actually really take the time to try to figure it out on their own. And especially now with all the tools at our disposal, growing amount of powerful tools. I mean, um, OpenAI, if they just announced Sora, which is like a text-to-video AI platform where you can create Hollywood-style footage just with a simple prompt. I mean, we literally have the power of Hollywood, the power of Silicon Valley in our pockets to be able to create and power Madison Avenue, really to create anything right now. And I think to say you can't do it really, I think is the worst thing before actually really trying and being resourceful. So I think that's a great point.

Yeah. I also think, and maybe just an additional point, but brands are quite flexible things. They are adaptable. So I don't think we need to be afraid to push the boundaries to try radical things. But I think the other thing is to note is with that, you've got to be really tuned into the signals. I mean, if something's working, run with it, scale it 100%. But if it's not, cut losses quickly, learn from it. I think that's your next thing.

So many companies I've worked with, so many big companies where they'll spend millions of dollars or tens of millions of dollars on a huge campaign, and then when it's over, they'll just do something completely different. And it's like, well, hold on, like, what did we learn from this? Is there not anything that we can take from this? And sometimes it does great. And instead of trying to make a sequel that is, that is even better than the first one. Again, they'll just create a completely new brief and do completely something different. I think what we've seen with certain brands, like just say Red Bull, what they've done well, they've created a platform and they've just made it better and better and better, and they've carved out a niche for themselves. Because in a world where there's so much choice, you really have to be the very best at whatever it is that you focus on versus just trying to be something new every single planning cycle.

Yeah, I agree.

Absolutely. So to wrap it up, Nikhil, and it's been a great discussion, and I wish I knew all the things you couldn't tell me, but I guess we'll have to see what innovation you'll conceive in years ahead. Is there a mantra or saying that you guide your career by that comes to mind?

It's an old one, I think, from the RAF, the Royal Air Force in the UK, which just says, rules are for the guidance of the wise and the blind obedience of others. And I think that resonates in the world of branding. Like, the landscape is always shifting. Yeah. So we do need to stay adaptable. And we can't just blindly follow old playbooks. We've got to be willing to break a few of those rules. And if we want to stay relevant.

Yeah. Well, you heard it from Nick, guys. Everybody, don't be afraid to break the rules. Don't be afraid to innovate, you know, color outside the lines, so to speak, because that's where all the, the opportunity is. So, Nick, thank you so much for taking the time today. Cannot wait to see again what's up your sleeve and what's coming from you next with the Vanish brand, everything you work on. So thanks so much for taking the time to join us today.

Thank you, Matt. A real pleasure.

On behalf of Suzie and everybody on the team, thanks again to the great Nick Horan, the Global Brand Experience Lead for Wreck-It Laundry, for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the Speed of Culture podcast on your favorite podcast platform. So next time, see you soon, everyone.

Take care.