Innovation Insiders podcast ep. 1 - Delivering better every day health with Nick Tate from Haleon

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Welcome to the Innovation Insiders Podcast. In this series we'll offer you a peek behind the curtains of some of the world's largest organizations. We'll dive into the heart of innovation and AI and in about 20 minutes we'll uncover the strategies and stories that drive these industry giants forward. Tap into the brains of innovation leaders. Welcome everyone. I'm here with Nick Tate. Nick is the VP of and head of Next, Helion's innovation venturing arm and part of the global marketing leadership team at Helion. He launched multiple new health brands and partnered with billion dollar brands with the ambition to change everyday health. Helion is one of the largest consumer healthcare businesses in the world and and with brands including like Sensodin toothpaste and Advil painkillers and Nick has worked in innovation for the past two decades or more in agency and corporate side and you truly bring an intriguing blend between brand marketing and innovation leadership. So I'm excited to have you here Nick. And yeah, curious to know whether there's anything that I've missed.

Nah, great to be here. Thank you Vincent. And no, I think you did a great job. Always feel a bit funny when people do intros like that. But yeah, I think it's been an interesting, it's such an interesting time for innovation and I think the last 20 years I've seen these sorts of problems and solving different problems with different solutions from the sides of a creative agency or startup or a big consultancy or five years as a client. So you tend to see similar problems or opportunities but you see it from different perspectives, which I think is really, it's kind of been really interesting, but good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Awesome. You actually recently shared an interesting article from the founders of DeepMind on AI ethics and the move from generative to interactive AI. What's your take on the future of AI for big brands?

Yeah, I think that generative AI and interactive AI are going to change all brands and all businesses, not necessarily just big brands. Although I think that will affect them really profoundly. I think that when it comes to kind of enterprise thinking, it'll impact roles of brands for consumers and the enterprise. So I think AI will impact how brands are experienced by consumers. They'll need to be more responsive, it will make them more personalized, it will make brands need to be more built around consumers worlds, not just a brand world, a fixed brand world. And I think if you look further out and if you believe the promise of Web3 and truly decentralized technologies, then you start to see more consumer Ownership versus brand ownership. And I think that large brands, which have spent hundreds of years, you know, being relatively fixed and protected, are going to have to deal with this really interesting paradox of giving up control whilst also being really trusted. I think that's really interesting. And then I think from an enterprise perspective, what I'm incredibly excited about for generative AI and interactive AI and AI in general is just the role that brands can play across the enterprise. So from the data that they collect, the insight that they leverage, the strategic value that they create, the fact that they can be a focal point and an organizing principle around a brand, solving problems versus just delivering a brand promise. So I think there's so much change which can happen with the onset of generative AI for large brands, but people need to get out there and start experimenting because it's going to happen slowly and then really quickly. So I think there is an incredible future, but it's one that we need to get ahead of really quickly.

Yeah, absolutely. And you've been leading next for a while now. First when it was still part of GSK and now at Helium. What are some of the ways that you feel like, like that Helion actually incubates and scales Newhall brands and products. And do you use any AI in that sense?

Yeah, I mean, I think like everybody else, we're experimenting at pace and I think that there are two ways. I mean, the application of AI has to start with first principles, which is data. What data do you have? And then you're trying to understand based on the data you have, the data that you need. I think an awful lot of companies are jumping in, which is great, but you need to set some, you need to do some thinking, you need to take a step back before you, before you kind of, you know, speed forward. And my dad always used to tell me that when you're, you know, when you're driving at 80 miles an hour on the motorway, you move your steering wheel very, very slowly. Maybe so driving than, than anything more profound. But I think that, you know, when we've, when we've started to experiment, we've been asking those questions around. Does the use of AI in this space help us solve problems in the right way? Does it help us understand people in the right way? Does it ultimately move us towards our goal of getting closer to this, this opportunity space? So there are the kind of, the really perfunctory stuff, you know, there's the back office stuff of understanding audiences, data data analytics, market mapping, opportunity space mapping, all of, all of that good stuff. There's also some really profound ways in which, particularly in the healthcare space, generative AI and AI in general can support things like legal, medical and regulatory and review processes and copy clearance processes, which are typically very labor intensive for people. And actually, I think that the most profound thing that AI can do is help creative people be way more creative and spend their time doing the things that they really love doing. Probably we automate the stuff which, you know, quite frankly takes longer and with, with intelligence can just be, can be shortened. So we've been looking at it from a perfunctory standpoint. We've also been looking at it obviously in terms of the products that we develop and the experiences we're creating for people. So, you know, a really good example would be how do you make the experience journey to find your product as delightful as possible? How do you make the onboarding process as delightful as possible? How do you make the content and experience more personalized? How do you actually use it as a mark of trust? How do you say to consumers, we're gathering data and this is how we're using it in the right way to differentiate. Because particularly within healthcare, there's so much right concern about the use of people's personal health data and how companies are going to be using that. So I think it's across the board, it's another tool in an innovator's handbook or toolbox to use. But we've got to really understand the right places to apply it.

I think you've told me before that you believe that AI is some sort of an art and a science. And how do you see actually the role of humans in that sense and how humans versus AI are shaping the future of innovation?

Yeah, I think innovation is always going to be a mix of inspiration and perspiration. And I think anybody thinking that innovation will be replaced by the robots, truly replaced, is probably in the wrong place. I think that at least a bit more thinking, I think that great technology helps humans become more human. In fact, the more technically enabled we are, the more human I think we must and we can become. And the notion of kind of copilot, you know, kind of copilot, I think is really interesting as a way to help teams, product teams and innovation leaders more broadly test our most critical assumptions, make our work better, get our, get our insights more quickly, help us model out risk in a different way. So I think that there is this blend of, of kind of pin and data and beautiful human brains working kind of side by side. But I think that the way we should be thinking about it is what aspects of the creative innovation process do we just think can be more connected and more automated? And then let's let the machines run at that and let's free up our time as innovators to get our sense of really understand kind of the human condition, really understand the human problem and reinforce and double down on these incredible skill sets humans have like empathy and creativity to solve those problems. I think it's just, we're just in such an interesting time at the moment where we're really. And that article that you talked about talks that generative AI is the first instance really of where AI is moving towards and that things becoming more iterative and more interactive. It's probably where it's going to come. So the question I think when it comes to inspiration and perspiration, creativity and AI and humans working together side by side, this notion of human machine symbiosis, somebody Bryce to me once said, is that enables humans to be more human. And I think it allows us to see further and question more deeply the signals that we see today. So how do we create those sorts of products which we think are going to be meaningful and continue to be meaningful in another 5, another 10, another 15 years time based on the signals that we see and how do we get people around those problems today to think really deeply, really deeply about it?

I love that, I love that the idea of enabling us to be more human centered and to make better products really oriented at humans in a better way. I think it's like I've put some thought into that as well. And I think the idea of the fact that we have so much data points readily available for us, so consumer research and data points of previous sales, etc. Allows us to do I think a bit much better job in actually making products that are just really connected to what consumers want, rather than the new ideas that maybe come up from a different direction.

I think that's right. I think there's a watch out there, isn't there? Which is if you can get access to data, you're pretty sure your competitor can as, as well. And I think there's a bit of a warning sign just in terms of the ability and over reliance on, on AI applications to deliver creative work, to think creatively and it'll be quick and easy and now. And who doesn't love quick and easy and now, like as a proposition, that sounds great, you know, it's kind of what prime is based on, I guess. But I think there's a danger in that if everybody is asking the same sorts of questions, the same sort of data, you're going to end up with this sea of homogeneity, really, across the creative landscape. You're going to start to see some brands occupying this very thick and deep middle section of just marketing stuff. And I think that creative marketers and innovators have been working very hard for the last 200 years and more probably to drive distinctiveness into their brands, to drive premiumization into their brands, to drive trust into their products by standing out in a different way. So there's this, watch out that whilst there will be an overview, you can have access to these data points. Everybody will do. So the questions, I think businesses and a brand is really just a very thin veil on a business, right? That's all it. It's a set of values and creative constructs and a, a promise set across a business. So I think that when we think about the use of AI in innovation, we think about, you know, this access that everyone will have, this ubiquity that everyone will have with to the same data points. Businesses need to be considering and innovators need to be charged with, okay, how are we going to put something into market which is going to truly engage people in a meaningful way, which is truly going to differentiate ourselves against the sea of homogeneity which is going to get us access to different differentiated data points, which we can then build into our own data lake, which we can then subvert and use with other data points to drive this data flywheel, to make ourselves more unique and to drive our premium proposition. And I think if brands aren't doing that and businesses aren't doing that, they're really in danger of being dragged down into this kind of sea of the middle. You know, particularly within creative industries, people are talking an awful lot about how AI will take away an awful lot of roles, or at least augment them, which I think it will. And for those sorts of brands and businesses which have got incredibly high turnover of creative product. Let's think about a retailer, for instance, who has just the need to just smash out ads, really, ads with prices and to kind of stay competitive. You can totally see the role of AI. There's do that like it just makes, it makes complete sense that you're going to have a machine which is going to take a product, it's going to select it in the right way, it's going to do, it's going to put the offer in it, it's going to have all the legals on it and it's going to spit it out in the right way. Loads of sense at one end of the funnel, but the other bit of the funnel where we see it kind of driving differentiation and the reason a consumer would go and trust a brand and the reason someone would walk through the door or click onto a website or whatever it might be that use an application of AI at that point, the type of creative product and service that you're going to drive at that point in the funnel, the way you're going to engage people on a longer term basis at that point. Very different use of AI, very different use of intelligence, very different use of people, different sorts of teams, different sorts of mentalities, different routes to market, different models. And that's what's so exciting about it is this application across the funnel of creativity and innovation in business.

Awesome. I can really see the passion for creating innovation. So no, it's been super interesting this talk and actually maybe with that I would love to know or end up with the idea of how did you end up in innovation and what made you come in this space.

Yeah, it's weird. I remember being at university and a student and we were sat around telly, my housemates and there was just this disproportionate amount of chat about ads. I was like, what? And I did, I did English language linguistics as a degree and I always loved how language changes people and it's so expressive and tells us so much about people, the language that they use. I remember thinking, wow, like this is cool. Like people like talking about advertising and brands and I think I quite like talking about brands and advertising. But what I liked was the notion of creativity solving business problems. And you know, I was a royal LEGO head when I was younger and I like making things and dismantling them and building new things. And when I learned music, I could never understand why you'd want to sound like somebody else or play the notes that you're in front of. You used to drive my parents and my piano teacher insane. I'd be like, I don't want to play that, I want to play this. And I'm making my own stuff and I make up my own songs and stuff. And then when you get into business you go, I don't really like the fact that that's kind of the solution. We should go and should go and change that. And I've loved. And that's kind of evolved, I think more into, you know, white space. White space. Thinking where someone asked me the other day, which I thought was such a Great question. It's Monday morning, you're on your way to work. What's the meeting you're most looking forward to this week? I was like, oh, such a great question. I asked myself that every week now. And I said it was. It's the, it's the meeting with the biggest problem and the biggest whiteboard and the most motivated people to solve that problem and the ability to actually deliver it. Like I'm knowing walking into that room that there's a big problem, but we're going to decompose it, we're going to recompose it in a much better way and then we're going to go and do something about it. And so that's kind of been that thread through my career, I guess, of every place I've worked, whether it was 12 or 13 years in agencies, which was a lot of it was new business and with clients coming to us and saying, we've got this problem, can you help us solve it? Whether it's in two startups going, we need to find product, market fit and get to market in different ways and how do we change our product and experience and how do we think about our salesman? All this stuff in consultancies where you're in with incredibly smart people and with clients who have got a genuine future vision as to why they're moving towards you working on really meaningful things. Or as a client myself, where I was so excited, particularly within healthcare at the time, for a couple of different personal reasons, like I lost my dad to pancreatic cancer and we lost a daughter really late on in pregnancy. And that was really meaningful for me to kind of go, this seems like such a big problem place, like, how can we change that? How can we make it more human? But it's always been this drive of somebody showing me a problem and going, we think we can do it differently. And I'm like, okay, let's go after that. And that's been the exciting thing. And it can express itself in so many different ways and it gets you in touch with just the most amazing people, just the most inspiring people. And I think your job as a leader in this space, in a business or in any context, as everyone leads something, even if it's just themselves, which is often the most important thing before you do anything else, is enabling other people to go after those problem spaces as well, you know, which I think has been so cool. So, yeah, I feel very lucky.

Awesome, thanks. Super interesting chat and I definitely love to continue to follow your work. And yeah, I hope I don't know if you. You like the talk I did.

I think that these are all, like, super provocative and interesting questions that any leader and any business needs to be getting their head around. What is generative or. What is generative or interactive or iterative AI to us? Are we set up for success to capitalize on it? What are the big problems we're trying to solve and what value ultimately we're trying to create? And how are we organized to do that? Innovation takes a village. You know, it's a lesson in corporate sociology and psychology more than anything else. It's barely got anything to do with technology. It's always about aligning people around the same problem and motivating against the same tasks, you know, to solve problems in a really determined way. And I think that these sorts of questions that you're asking around where the role of brands, how innovators can can capitalize on this and continue to learn through these technological changes, which are going to go so quickly, like, so quickly. I feel every time, every week I'm more dumb than I was last weekend because just so much change is happening and then you have to work out what's true and what's not true and what's preview and all that sort of stuff. But I think these are the sorts of questions, the questions that you're asking, the work you're doing. The board of Innovation, like, is critical for people to, you know, to kind of, to accelerate them. So. But I've really enjoyed the time and thank you very much.

Love it. Thank you, Nick.

No worries. Thanks, Mitson.