Yes you read that right!
Earlier this year Martin Oxley was joined by Gabriela Gaut (Goodyear, Mondelez, Reckitt Benckiser, P&G) and David Cousino (Cynosure, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Newell Brands, Unilever), who kindly spared some time to chat and share experiences, lessons, and the inspiration from their careers.
It was a lively session and I thought I’d share a couple of personal highlights.
The dating game in China
Asked about favourite insights they’d worked on in their careers, David talked about the need to really understand dating culture in China for the launch of Axe / Lynx there. A huge undertaking that saw the team send someone in to spend 3 or 4 months on the ground to get close and embed themselves in the culture.
He shared fascinating learnings about how boys in China wanted to stand out, but not too much, and how girls were talking about them.
When weighing up their options, they were segmenting potential boyfriends into 3 types – the white horse, the black horse and the brown horse.
- White horse = ideal, perfect, parent pleasing material
- Black horse = the one they wanted to be with most, but weren’t sure if their parents would like them
- Brown horse = the safe option
I think I might be more of a donkey!
Deep human truths
On a piece of insights work that our guests admire and would love to have worked on, Gaby replied that she is interested in work that uncovers deep, human, truths because they are hard to achieve but appear obvious with hindsight.
As someone who has spent a lot of time working in the chocolate category, she revealed that she is a big fan of the Snickers campaign ‘You’re not you when you’re hangry’ for its simplicity and the fundamental truth that we are not quite ourselves when we are hungry.
It reminded me of how much I loved the ad with Joan Collins in the football changing room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsQBrbJ9T3M
These are just a couple snippets of what David and Gabriela shared and I recommend you watch the webinar in full
