My Story #19 [P&G] How to make decisions with limited data

My Story #19 [P&G] How to make decisions with limited data

Desi Jagger's Blog

My Story #19 [P&G] How to make decisions with limited data

I wanted to implement some new in-store claims for our brand. The effectiveness of these claims was supported with internal data. I created a mockup shelf and brought it to the next team meeting for feedback.

The beauty of working in multi-functional teams was having access to experts and getting a variety of perspectives. I took the team’s feedback onboard and, at the next team meeting, presented what I believed would be the final version of the shelf claims. Easy, right?

 

Not quite, as it turned out. Everyone was excited about these new shelf claims. They wanted them to be perfect. Perfect meant proven to grow sales. Proven meant backed by data. We already had some data from the claim tests, but this was deemed insufficient. Insufficiency led to insecurity, which opened the door to a myriad of suggestions: “What if we change this color?”, “What if we change the wording?”, “I have seen data supporting another set of claims. Let’s dig into which data is more reliable…”

I was curious at first – it wouldn’t hurt to explore a few more options. I proposed another version, and then another… soon I couldn’t keep track of the latest file. The discussion spilled out of our team and crept into senior management reviews, where even more experts contributed even more opinions. We even had a vice president weighing in. It was a catch-22: we needed data proof before implementing the claims but we could only get this data after the claims were implemented in-store. Whilst we were stuck in this theoretical debate, the consumer was stuck with the old shelf claims.

 

Six painful months and no conclusive proof of the superiority of any of the versions, we simply chose one and rolled it out across stores. The following week, our competitors followed. Apparently they trusted us more than we trusted ourselves.

 

Get unstuck by choosing one option and moving forward. It may not be perfect but most times you can learn (from real data) and adapt along the way.

 

Are you stuck for lack of data? Coaching can help you explore different ways of qualifying ideas so you can move forward. Discover how by booking your free consultation now.

 

 

My P&G Story #5: When I drowned in data

My P&G Story #5: When I drowned in data

Desi Jagger's Blog

My P&G Story #5: When I drowned in data

In my first month at P&G, I was asked to do a business analysis. I had no idea what that meant but I enthusiastically took it on.

I locked myself in the quiet room, I opened all the data files (and in P&G there were a lot!) and I soon found myself drowning in information. Sales figures by month, by product by retailer for the past 3 years. Financials. Awareness for each campaign. My gaze jumped frantically from number to number in a temptation to deep dive into every angle and correlate every metric. I felt like Alice in Wonderland, stuck in the rabbit hole – out of control, falling fast through the dark.

 

Two weeks passed and I had all the data and graphs I could ever dream of, but absolutely no clue what I was going to present. I panicked. I was clearly rubbish at data analysis and now my manager would find out…

I finally came out of the quiet room and asked our commercial manager for help. She had a knack for simplifying things.

 

“So what’s the story you’re trying to tell?”

 

Story? I thought I was supposed to update senior management, not entertain kindergarteners.

She led me through a funnel of questions, each building on the previous one instead of my scatter-gun approach. “In one sentence, how is the business doing? What is driving that? Which particular retailers, products or time periods are involved?”… We had started to peel the onion.

 

In 15 minutes I made more progress on my business analysis than I had in a month. I realized I had been stuck in the trees and so I couldn’t see the whole forest.

 

Get unstuck by looking at the big picture. What’s the story you want to tell?

 

Where in your life do you get distracted by details? Coaching can help you see the bigger picture. Start your own story by booking your free consultation now.