How do leading companies turn market insights into innovative products that resonate with consumers and drive long-term success?

In this edition of the Greenbook Podcast we join you live from IIEX North America, host Karen Lynch welcomes Tulika Chikersal, the global lead for innovation insights at Post. Tulika shares her journey from agency roles at Kantar to leading innovation pipelines at Post, emphasizing the importance of forward-looking, strategic insights in driving long-term business strategies. She discusses the challenges and successes in identifying market white spaces, integrating insights with product development and marketing teams, and the critical lessons learned from failures. This episode offers a deep dive into the role of innovation insights in shaping consumer-centric product innovations and strategic business decisions.

You can reach out to Tulika on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Tulika for being our guest. Thanks also to our producer, Natalie Pusch; and our editor, Big Bad Audio.

Transcript

Karen: Hello, everybody. Welcome to a live edition of the Greenbook Podcast. We are onsite at IIEX North America, and I’m so excited to be hosting today. It’s Karen Lynch. And our guest is an amazing woman that’s going to talk to us about some really fantastic and inspirational innovation stories from successes to failures. She is the global lead for innovation insights at Post. Tulika Chikersal, it’s so great to have you here. Thank you for joining us. 

Tulika: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Karen: It’s my pleasure. It’s my pleasure. So, for the audience, we have some live listeners, but we will also be releasing this on our podcast platform shortly. Give us just a little bit about your role and kind of tell the world what it is you are involved in on the day-to-day at Post.

Tulika: Absolutely. So at Post, I’m the global lead for innovation, where I help them build the innovation pipeline across their brands, right, as well as I’m the insights guardian for their immerging brands. When I say “immerging brands,” we have a portfolio of brands other than cereals, and they’re trying to revamp their positioning and brand architecture. So that’s what I’m looking after.

Karen: I don’t I’ve ever heard the phrase “insights guardian,” and I like it. Can you tell me more about that?

Tulika: Yeah. So it’s basically for brands which have kind of low focus. When you say you’re an insights guardian, you are helping brands to make sure that they are not taking decisions or, you know, doing anything that impacts their brands in an adverse manner. You’re making sure that they are going in the right direction. Usually you’re doing nothing, so your brand is on the shelf, selling on itself. But, when you step out and say that now I’m going to change something about my brand, either I’m going to launch communication or innovate or do something else, you know, your insights guardian comes into play and is talking about what you can and cannot do.

Karen: Yeah. I love that. Thank you. That’s a great analogy to think about and I think a lot of insights professionals can probably learn just from that alone. So thank you so much for sharing that. You know, in your current role, obviously where you’re at—this major CPG company, but you haven’t always been in CPG. You have a background that has been on the vendor side that has spanned financial research. So talk to a little bit us about your career journey and then what brought you to where you are now.

Tulika: Absolutely. So I have been doing insights, analytics, and innovation for about 14 years now. Right? And I started off on the agency side. So I started my career at Kantar. I was there for about two years, and I serviced Fortune 500 clients, like PepsiCo, Coke, Nestlé, Haleon, which was formerly known as GSK. I did a lot of communication testing, innovation work, brand-health tracking, pricing, research. And after a while, I felt like I wanted to go to client side, and that’s when I moved to a financial institution, which was Fidelity Investment Bank. I was there for about three years. Different work because of the nature of the industry. I mean, technically, your work as a market researcher doesn’t change. You’re still writing surveys, interviewing consumers, and going about that, but it changes in scope because you’ve moved from CPG or product-based insights to a service-based insights. And I realized maybe I just had fallen in love with CPG while I was there for a while. And I was like, “No. I want to go back to CPG.” And then I went back to consulting for a few boutique research firms, and also did a small stint at Exsource, and serviced clients like Uber, Google, Nestlé, again, Haleon, Mondelēz, so all of these clients, which was a mix of technology and CPG clients. And from there, I think my world again changed, and I went on to work even client side. So I worked at Haleon. I worked at Kraft Heinz. And from there, I moved to Post Consumer Brands, and I’ve been with them for the last two and a half years now.

Karen: And have you been in the same role the whole time you’ve been at Post, or did you start somewhere else?

Tulika: Pretty much in the same role, I would say. Like, innovation was always part of it. It has enhanced in the last one year. I am definitely—when I started, I was looking after everything, like looking after innovation research as well as brand-health tracking or communication development and testing, also brand position. Because I’ve been doing all kinds of research, as you can see. Like, I’ve worked across brands, across agencies, which give me this huge scope to experiment and do different kids of researches. But I think, yes, I’ve somewhat have fallen in love with innovation. And when I had the option to choose, I said I would like to lead the innovation process for Post.

Karen: So those people that know me know I’m also a big fan of innovation, and I love—whether it’s super-fuzzy front end innovation or whether it’s just innovating something that’s been around a while and we just need to shake things up a little bit, disrupt even the brand itself. So talk to me about—in your opinion, what is it that is so intriguing about innovation work, especially in the world of insights?

Tulika: It’s the curiosity that drives me towards this work. So, when I was on the agency side, I was only one piece of the puzzle. Right? It was always very intriguing for me to understand what did the client do with this research? How did it help them to actually launch the product? Eventually, I understood this was just one research. They are doing multiple researches to answer the one question or ensure that they launch the product in the market. So I think it was interesting, and that drove more interest in it. And I think—there’s this whole spectrum, okay, which we will eventually talk about. And I realize it’s not just testing. It's also keep improving the testing that you do. So it’s a loop that you build, you improve, you learn, and then you execute. So you keep in that loop and keep improving what you’re doing to innovate.

Karen: Yeah. One of the things that I wanted to talk you about is—you know, and I—previous to Greenbook, I was a researcher, and I spent a lot of time in innovation. And people used to say to me, when I would say things like, “Well, I kind of take insights into innovation,” and they’d be like, “But how? I really want to know how you do that. How do you go from insights to innovation?” And I had a process that I did do to sort of help brands along. But the reality is, is that traditional insights are different from the insights that inform innovation. So, in your opinion, how do you see sort of traditional insights work differing from innovation insights work? Because you do it all.

Tulika: I love that question.

Karen: [laugh].

Tulika: Yes. And I have done it all. I almost do it all. And I think, before I even answer that question, I would love to say that both traditional insights and innovation insights are equally important, just that the need is different for the business. Right? So it’s important to understand when to use traditional insights and when to use innovation insights. Traditional insights is with a short-term vision, and your innovation insights is for a long-term strategy. So think of it, when I say “short-term vision,” it is primarily saying that it is more reactive, more point in time, more backward looking, answering what is happening today or what happened yesterday and how it impacts my business. Whereas, when we are talking about innovation insights, and I say it’s a—it’s for long-term, what I’m trying to say it’s more proactive versus reactive. It’s more strategic, and it’s forward looking. That’s how the two are different. And just to cite a quick example, brand-health tracking would be traditional insights. You’re seeing how did you perform in the previous month and what you need to do to rectify it. Whereas, innovation insights is forward looking maybe one year, two year, three years pipeline. What can we do? What are the trends? Is something a fad or a trend? How do I go about improving my product, innovating it, and changing—as for changing consumer mindset.

Karen: And, if I may, what are some of the methodologies that might support the latter? Right? Support this work in innovation work—different from, like, brand-tracking studies. You know, what are some of the tools of the trade, if you will, for people that are focused on the innovation insights side of it?

Tulika: I would say a lot of qualitative research, a lot of consumer emotions, understanding the pulse of the consumer. You need to keep meeting them, understanding how their mindset or their behavior—what is changing? A lot of five C’s work, where we talk about climate, the competition, your customer, consumer, and your channel; like how everything is changing around you. That is what you need to delve into.

Karen: Yeah. And while you’re doing that delving, there are challenges that are unique to this space. So what are some of the challenges that you think are unique to insight innovation work?

Tulika: So there are two key challenges. One is the expiration phase, where you have to identify the white spaces. And the second I would say is the continuity of that iterative process to generate innovation insights. So I think these are two very critical parts of generating insights for innovation work.

Karen: Yeah. And I’m sure—we talked a little bit, and I’d love to invite you to kind of share some of the successes. We’ll be talking about—spoiler alert to those listening—we’ll be talking about some successes and some not so successful launches as well that—that has informed the work. But talk to us about some of the early successes when started in this role, you know, innovations that, you know, went well for you and for your company.

Tulika: Actually, I’ll go back in time. So very early on in my career, the first year at Kantar, we were doing research for PepsiCo, and they wanted to launch Quaker Oats in India. Now—okay, this was back in 2010, and they’d already launched Quaker Oats in India in 2006—the plain version, okay, which all of us are familiar with. But it was doing okay. It’s been four years, and it’s kind of going fine. And they wanted to understand what’s not working. Why people are not kind of really accepting oats in the market? Then, they did a breakfast U and A to understand breakfast occasions, how Indians consume their breakfast, what’s important to them. And I’ll highlight two findings from that research because I was part of that research, and it’s very close to my heart. One was that Indians like to have savory breakfast, and the second one was they like something filling. And I think salt also makes you feel a little fuller. So, from there, they realized that they will have to change the face of Quaker Oats for the consumers in India, and that is when they launched savory oats in the market. It is called Masala Oats; still available. It has been 14 years, and there are other player who have come into the market and have launched different masala oats under different brand names, and that is one of those interesting studies. And a successful product which is in the market for 14 years, and you can even get it in North America today on Amazon. So I think that one makes me proud, and I feel very—that it was one good success story.

Karen: There is just nothing like seeing a project—you know, something that you worked on, like, happening and taking off, and I know that I used to feel that way as well. Like, if I was doing packing work and I would see the packing was on shelves, like, it’s just a—it’s a feeling that only if you’re in this industry do you understand that, “Oh, yes. I worked on that.” It’s really fantastic. So kudos to you. And, you know, it also brought to mind—and we didn’t really plan to talk about this—but you are working at a global level, and are there differences in doing kind of this innovation work across the globe? And there must be unique challenges, as well, to having a global mindset when it comes to innovation.

Tulika: Yes. That’s right. At times, what we do is we try to learn from other regions. And it might not apply to your country always. Right? And you have to understand that the consumers are different in each region: how they behave, what they like, what they would accept, and what they would reject is very different. At times, you might say that, “Oh, no, consumers behave the same way everywhere.” Not really. There is a difference on how they would react to a product in Country A versus Country B, and I have seen that happening. Like a product which might sell very well in North America might not do very well in Asia. And for that matter, even if I give you the example of North America itself, Canada versus U.S., I have seen a lot of difference. Like, we have a product, like Shredded Wheat, which is our top selling SKU in Canada. It doesn’t do that well in the U.S. Right? So, yeah, there are differences and different products that we sell in the two markets as well.

Karen: Is there anything about your role and how you interact with, like, the different units? You know, I’m thinking here, as you’re talking about product development, and I’m thinking about R&D teams, and I’m thinking about the other kind of parties that are stakeholders in the process leading up to a product launch. Are there any unique challenges that you have to deal with, in working with those different stakeholders internally, that you can give advice for—how people overcome any challenges that that poses?

Tulika: In terms of advice, I would say it’s very important to triangulate data. That’s one. Also, leverage multiple sources of data to inform a decision. And also, democratize insights. So it’s very important because there are so many different groups working together to launch that one product that you, as an innovation insights lead, have to wear multiple hats. You can’t just say that “oh, I’m human centric, and I will bring all the good consumer insights, and let’s build a product.” No. That’s not the case. You literally have to become or step into the shoes of the sales person, the [unintelligible 00:13:41] man, the R&D person, brand manager, so everyone comes in together. So you have to make sure that we are core team working towards one goal and keeping everyone together. So that’s why I say maybe democratize insights. Make everyone aware this is what we are doing. What can we do better? So it’s a process. Where, you know, if you remember, I mentioned a little while ago that it’s about that continuous process and that iterative process, which is important within the core team. You can’t iterate alone, and I can’t do anything alone. I need to understand “oh, this is what consumer is saying.” I go back to PR meeting. They would say, “Okay. Let me see what—how can I formulate this?” And then I go back, maybe do some prototyping testing, and then go back again to the consumer, and then go back again to R&D and iterate a bit more. So I think you can do that concept stage and then a product stage too.

Karen: Yeah. And then, at some point, you’re looping in marketing teams, and I’m sure those are very diverse as well based on where you are at.

Tulika: Yes. Marketing teams come into play. Like, they are part of the whole process. I would say they are literally the drivers [laugh]. Right? And we are the supporting elements of the car. Someone is an engine. Someone is the back seat. Someone is the tires. But they are—at the driving seat, and it’s very important while—whatever you’re developing benefits reasons to believe, claims, how the product will go to the consumer. All of that should be—like, we’re feeding it. Insights is helping feed all of that information. They have to be the drivers.

Karen: Yeah. It’s really interesting. And some of the work that I did with some R&D teams in my previous life, they didn’t necessarily operate efficiently with the marketing teams. Right? So we would be doing, maybe, sensory testing at a very early stage, and then there would be different researchers working with the marketing team. And there was a bit of a divide for many companies—and I’m not going to share names, but they might surprise you. So I think it's great. Is there any kind of corporate ethos or anything that makes it so that there is kind of this working in tandem collaboration spirit at the organization, just curious about Post itself?

Tulika: Interesting questions. What we’ve done is we are trying to build a process around it. And what we’re trying to do is have a core team, a dedicated team that—so that you know today that this person from marketing, this person from R&D, and this person from sensory, this person from insight—they are responsible for this work. And also trying to set up a cadence that they meet monthly or quarterly to discuss results, and that’s how we’re working towards it.

Karen: Yeah. Thank you. By the way, just again, for the listeners that are out there, when I’m interviewing, I’m often very curious, and I start asking questions that we didn’t align on ahead of time. So, thank you. You’re [laugh] rolling with me beautifully. I sincerely appreciate that. So let’s get back to what we did plan to talk about, which is some of these innovation stories. So there is some great successes at Post that are involved in, and there’s also some things to learn from. So I’ll let you take a choice at this point. Do we want to learn from failure at this moment, or do we want to start with some success stories?

Tulika: I love success stories [laugh]. 

Karen: Let’s start there. Let’s start there. 

Tulika: All right. One good example is Premier Protein cereal. We launched it in 2021. It’s that—your typical story: consumer speaks, and we hear it. And that’s what happened here. So consumers were seeking a cereal which can offer them more protein. We saw this as an opportunity, and Premier Protein—we had a bunch with them. We said let’s go ahead and let’s build this product. And honestly, it’s a successful product. Yes, it is catering to a niche segment but still doing wonderfully at the sales end. Now, we have to understand how did we measure that it’s successful. It’s very important to understand, even with average distribution, we had above average trial and repeat rate. And that’s what told us that, yes, this is working, and with a niche segment but is doing wonders. So we continue to produce is. 

Karen: That’s great. And do you think there was anything along the way towards that product lunch that you did or that your team did that made it successful? Like, are there lessons that can be learned from this success story?

Tulika: I think, in this case, because it was catering away a particular need, we followed the simple process, which is—which you will see everywhere online. Right? That you build the idea. You build the concept. You test idea. You test the concept. Then, you build the prototype. You figure out which are the popular flavors that consumers like because you don’t want to be very experimental here. You’re launching not a new flavor. You’re not trying to experiment in that space. You’re catering to a very specific need, so we wanted to go with more obvious flavors here, like a chocolate and berry, and say that, okay, that’s not [audio gap 00:18:17]. So we followed the simple process of idea testing, concept testing, product testing, making sure that it’s a good concept product fit, consumers like it, and then launch the product.

Karen: Yeah. So you mentioned this kind of other thing about, like, we don’t want to be too experimental. Like, when is that appropriate? When would it be more appropriate to take that other approach and be a little more risky?

Tulika: I don’t know if I have a straightforward answer for that. I think it is what you learn on the job. Like, you know how it’s one of those milestones in your insights career that you kind of understand that—when do I commence research and what type of research. It’s not—it cannot be taught. You just kind of learn it on your own that “Oh, this is—I’m listening to a business question, and this is what I need to do.” So I think, as we were discussing, you know, multiple internal meetings, then you realize that “Okay. This is how we need to go about it. This becomes priority. This becomes not so important for us to discuss at this point in time.”

Karen: I love that. And sidebar, we won’t spend too much time on this because it’s really off topic. But I love that pinnacle moment in a career when you’re like, “Oh, yeah. I got this.” Like, it all makes sense to you, and you—all the connections are being made in your brain, and you can take those business questions and turn them into research questions and get the answers, and you just have that confidence in what you do. So I’m glad that you have that, and I wish that for everybody, too, to reach that milestone because it is a great feeling. Right?

Tulika: Yeah. And there’s so many such moments. I think, while in my career, if I have to think of those smaller milestones—these are perhaps not big ones, but you realize that you’re growing in your career, understanding your job better is when—for me, it was more like when I was able to understand that I need to develop both quantitative and qualitative skills. One would not take me further out. Right? So developing those skills in your career. One I talked about is knowing when to recommend and why to recommend and what type of research to recommend. The third one, I would say, is you have that understanding, too, that you have to gather data to decode insights. Right? So having that understanding that one is answering the “what” when you’re gathering data. And the other one, decoding insights, is answering the “why” part of the equation. So I think that’s very important. And I think the other part is multiple sources, you know, leveraging information from multiple sources on the client side, I would say. Agency side, at times, you’re only working with—on one project, so you have limited scope. But on the client side, you will realize there’s ton of information from everywhere. You are looking at syndicated data. You’re looking at qualitative research, quantitative research, online reviews. So there’s a ton of data, and then you have to triangulate and build one story.

 Karen: Yeah. I think that’s really a great sidebar, and it’s great career advice for people. Because as a, you know, kind of career qualitative researcher, I didn’t really have a lot of quant expertise. I wasn’t hired for it. I wasn’t on the client side. But I think it’s great advice for anybody who would like to be on the client side, the importance of meeting that duality of mindsets. And I don't know if you were here—and for those of you who are not at IIEX North America, you missed a interview I had with the team from Bose this morning, and they were basically saying, you know, the importance of doing quantitative data and how important that is at the same you’re doing qualitative data, and you must absolutely do both. And that’s internally a demand of that career path. So, for anybody looking to get onto the client side or the brand side, develop those skills. It’s great advice.

Tulika: Absolutely.

Karen: Yeah. Very cool. How might I suggest people go about that, or how would you suggest people go about getting those skills? Because I—it might be challenging for people if they didn’t have an education. 

Tulika: So there are two ways. One is you might be fortunate enough that the projects that you’re working on have a quant leg as well as a qual leg. Right? So you can kind of learn from that phase. If not, I would encourage you to proactively reach out to your teams and say that “Hey... I also want to do some qualitative work along with quantitative.” I myself started off as a quantitative researcher. But I think, in my case, I just happened to get projects which required both quant and qual. Well, I was a qualitative researcher, but you were always collaborating. And then more and more, I kept working. I was like, “Oh, I can do this. I can, you know, summarize the report—what are your learnings.” I took that lead, and that kind of helped me, and I started going for focus group discussions and attending those because I had to incorporate those learnings or input them into a quant survey. So I think it happened more organically for me, not necessarily that would be the case for everyone. And in that case, be proactive.

Karen: Yeah. Proactive is really key. Right? You are in charge of your own career path in the organization, and you can seize the opportunities that are there. So thank you. Excellent advice. Okay. Back on task again. Let’s dig into the concept of failure in the world of innovation. It’s a huge concept. So before we dig into some examples, tell me how you perceive failure within your role and, you know, kind of the pluses and the cons, you know, the things that it can benefit you with and the things that, of course, it can detract from you.

Tulika: How we perceive failure. So I think when any product launch fails, it is simply because it did not do well with the consumers. You’re not able to sell enough of that product. Right? So when I gave you the example of Premier Protein, even with average distribution, we were seeing above average trial rate and repeat rate. When a product fails, that’s what you’re not seeing. It might at times generate a good trial rate. But eventually, if the repeat rate is low, that means the product is not working with the consumers. They are not coming back to it. Right? So that is—like, when you’re marketers, your finance guys would come, they’ll say, “Where is the profit [laugh]? Why is my product not selling?” So that’s how we look at it. But, from an insights point of view, I would look at different aspects. I mean, learning that it has failed in the market—what happened from the consumer lens? So now I go back, deep dive a little more into my products. At times, the product might be great. You know? It might taste very well, and that’s why you had the trial. But why was repeat not there? It wasn’t meeting their needs. What in the “need” did we miss out on? So I think that’s where you need to go back and understand why it did not work. And also, it helps you understand that maybe some products are not meant for a permanent launch. Maybe they are more suited for a limited time offer or a limited edition. So I think there are learnings on the go that help you understand. Now be more cautious, and we would try and ensure and cover that is it for—should we launch it as an LTO, or should we launch it as a permanent innovation? But I think not always. Like, there are some learnings, and you have to also understand some things in retrospect that “Oh, this could have happened this way, and maybe this is not fulfilling some desire or need.” 

Karen: And we’re going to—again, spoiler alert for everybody listening, we are going to dig into some of those, you know, seasonal offerings in just a moment because trend work plays a big part of that. But let’s just stay with lessons learned from failures for a few minutes. Because we’ve discussed, and she’s got permission to share [laugh]. So let’s just talk about an example of a failure that came out of some insight innovation work and what were the lessons learned from it? Because that propels you forward.

Tulika: Absolutely. So I think, while I talked about our 2021 launch, Premier Protein, which was a success, we had another launch in 2021, which was Dunkin’ cereals in the U.S. market, which did not do as well. Right? We launched two flavors, two coffee flavors. One was mocha latte, and one was caramel macchiato. And despite having average distribution, it did generate a decent trial rate. But we did not garner a good repeat rate. So our learning here was that perhaps this was an exciting product, which probably could have done well as an LTO, but it did not really cater to the daily consumption need of consumers. Also, coffee flavors, I don’t know, in my head, it contradicts with my daily coffee consumption. If I’m having coffee, and then later, I want to have a bowl a cereal, then it’s too much coffee flavor for me [laugh]. 

Karen: Oh, I don’t know if there’s ever such a thing as too much coffee flavor. Anyway... it’s all good. Well, which brings to—I’m a big coffee fan, so I’m sitting here thinking I’ve never heard of these cereals. I don’t know if I’d eat them because I’m not really a big breakfast eater. Not important. What is important, though, is this idea that—did you go back and do research to kind of have a retrospective on what was going on after the fact? Like, how did you know? How did you learn that it was maybe, you know, experimental, temporary usage and not sustainable? I’m just curious about that part.

Tulika: So I think one answer you get is from the consumer behavior, and let’s not ignore that even if we want to go deeper and understand more from the consumers themselves. If they are not buying it despite a good distribution in the market, you understand that it’s not working for them. It is not what is relevant for their everyday needs. Right? So I think that was a very clear answer. But then you go back to the research that you did. What did we hear, why it didn’t work? Because you would launch a product only when you know that it is meeting the consumer requirements and the benchmarks of a good concept test and a product test. It passed all of those. So there was no issue with the product in terms of taste or quality and all those aspects. But the issue was the need, that it wasn’t—and we did have a good trial rate, as I’m saying. So people picked it once, but they did not go back to it, maybe because it was new news. It generated excitement, but it wasn’t something they would consume every day for breakfast.

Karen: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I love that answer. And let’s shift into that work, then, that you also do, which is staying on top of trends and figuring out what would make kind of a temporary or a seasonal offering and share with me how some of that work comes about. Because working with trends is a little different from some of this other work and being on top of that. Talk to me about that aspect of your job.

Tulika: So as part of innovation insights, there is this whole process where you go from consumer insights to product launch. And if I may, I will just share those three phases. There’s also a fourth phase, which I can just touch base a little bit. So the first phase is your exploration phase, right, where you are actually doing all the research, is trying to understand consumer trends, what’s happening or what’s going on in the industry in the category, how your competitions are launching different things. Then, you kind of do an ideation workshop, and then you would tend to do an idea testing. Right? After you’ve done the ideation workshop, you generate ideas—of course keeping all those trends in mind—and then you would do your idea screening. From those idea screenings, you then go to the next phase, which is your optimize phase. Now you have these ideas. Let’s say you have ten ideas, rank ordered. You want to further do some incremental research to understand which would get you more reach in the market. You also want to do a further qualitative deep dive to understand what are consumers thinking about this idea. What is their version of this idea versus mine, and what do they expect from it? And then, from that iterative process of refining that idea, you go towards building your concept, so this is your optimize phase. And now we get into phase three, which is validation. We all know about it. Right? So you build your concept after listening to consumers, short-listed those ideas. Now, this concept would be tested, and then you will build your prototype. That’ll be tested. You’ll do your concept product [unintelligible 00:29:50] test. You will do some [unintelligible 00:29:51] projections, and then launch the product in the market. And your phase four is just your post-market evaluation. So within this, we—it is very important to understand that the explore phase, phase one, is very, very important in terms of setting the context because that’s literally the foundation that you’re setting up for the work that will be doing. Right? So, if you do that correctly, if you have identified the right spaces where you want to ideate, consider your job as halfway done. So it's very important to keep those trends in mind and understand what is guiding you and how you can leverage them for different types of innovation, renovation, or whatever you’re doing. So, within innovation, as you mentioned, there is permanent innovation and seasonal innovation. And how we tackle those, we try and understand what is a fad, what is a trend. How far can we go to still make it interesting? So within the space, we have done a few seasonal offerings to consumers. We not only keep seasons in mind, we also keep different occasions in mind. That could be Halloween, Christmas, Women’s Day, and, of course, different seasons, what goes with the season. Flavors come and go. I think one of the best examples I give is the pumpkin spice coffee at Starbucks, which is my favorite. So I’m not a coffee drinker. It could be a surprise for a lot of people, but I don’t drink coffee, but I’m a regular, fall season, Starbucks customer. 

Karen: Interesting. Yeah.

Tulika: And why I say that is because pumpkin spice was so different. I’m like, I don’t mind having coffee. It’s just not my go-to beverage every day. So I’m one of the light buyers because of this LT offering that they give. I definitely want to go there, like, weekly or at least three to four times in that season. I consume that. So I think that is very interesting how you can lure light buyers into the business who are not even your category buyers. Right? 

Karen: Yeah. Yeah.

Tulika: So how it’s important for the business. And while talking about—has PCB done something interesting? Yes. We launched Berry Pebbles last year in March, which was within the fruity spectrum. So everyone knows Fruity Pebbles, and we just did not want to be too experimental, so it was berry within the fruit space, and we launched Berry Pebbles in March during the Women’s Day celebration. So we wanted to make sure that we celebrated women who rock, and also changed the packaging, and we had the women from the Flintstone family on the pack, and we leveraged that.

Karen: I love that. I read that, and I just thought—I’m like, that just makes me happy, and I’m sorry that I’m not in that category, where I would have seen it. Talk to me about how you make those decisions, then, to bring back seasonal launches.

Tulika: There’s this whole strategy that we would sit down and work towards it, that what is important. Where do we see it’s going to garner us the maximum usage of that brand? And brand keeps strategizing. So LTOs give you that opportunity to do something new and different. Right? It’s exciting for the brand managers as well. So I would say that space, we collaborate. And right now I can’t reveal anything [laugh] to you, but, yeah, we continue working on that and saying it could be Christmas, back to school, Halloween, and all of these. We did Halloween and Christmas offerings last year, so we might as well do it this year. So all of that continues. And I think, within the category, a lot of players are doing that. And pumpkin spice, like, there are some flavors that could be over used. You might—they might be a right fit seasonally, but at times, you feel that “oh, my God,” it’s overdone, and you don’t want to do it.

Karen: Yeah. Yeah. And probably just keeping, you know, an eye on the pulse or a hand on the pulse of what kind of—just all of consumerville is telling us. Right? We all know that, that pumpkin spice can get oversaturated, and you probably don’t want any part of that. So... 

Tulika: Yeah. 

Karen: Very interesting. Super cool stuff. So now, just kind of looking—you know, I’m looking at the clock, and I’m like here we are. We, you know, plowing through our time. We have just a few minutes left, and I’m sitting here thinking is there something that I didn’t ask you that you wish I had? 

Tulika: Hmm... I think we covered most of it. We talked about the team interaction, how we work together, and, yeah... I think we covered most of it.

Karen: Yeah. Well, anything on the horizon for you personally? Anything that is, you know, down the road that you can share? Right? Anything that you’re looking forward to in your work world for the rest of 2024 thinking about your future?

Tulika: I think I’m very excited about the AI into market research space. Everyone is talking about it. I think that’s what I’m excited about, even personally. I feel that’s where I want to kind of go and also learn a bit more because that’s completely new. So even for me to grow in my career and adapt a new technology that’s coming into market research, that would be exceptional to incorporate AI into innovation. So I think maybe even to your first question that you asked me: where do you see insights and innovation? I think there is hope for it grow further. You know, you can use a lot of data at a very fast pace to answer a lot of innovation questions. Whereas, we spend a lot of time ideating and then trying to build concepts, AI is giving you all those images, all those ideas with one click. And it’ll just give you 40 ideas. My brain would think only 3 ideas in maybe an hour.

Karen: I know...

Tulika: But yeah, you just as AI to give me some cool ideas to launch a new beverage. 

Karen: And use it as a stimuli so—you know, background—you know, also do plenty of ideation sessions in my time, and I have thought many times about the application to just use it as stimuli for further thinking. Use it as a springboard to what comes next. So I think that’s a great thing to bring up. What is the use case for AI in just innovative thinking work and ideation? So, yeah, really cool. It’s going to be fun to watch. Right? It’s going to be fun to see it all unfold.

Tulika: Yeah. And not just ideating. I think even for analysis. AI is definitely going to be an enabler to do things at a very fast speed. It’s just going to be an entire way of working going forward. That’s how I see it.

Karen: Yeah. Yeah. Super cool. Well, look, this has been such a pleasure to speak with you. I am just so grateful. Thank you so, so much for joining us on the show.

Tulika: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I loved chatting with you. And yeah... looking forward to the rest of the IIEX conference.

Karen: I am so glad. I am so glad. So many thanks to everybody listening. Thanks to Natalie Pusch, our producer; to our audio editor, who will be, you know, taking this on and cleaning stuff before we launch it live. So thank you so much. Thank you, everybody, for turning in.