The Hothouse Years

The problem with marketing is you can know a lot and a little at the same time.? I discovered this 13 years into my career.? The trigger was something called “Hothouse”.??

“Hothouse” was the bold idea of a former Best Foods guy named Sandy Ogg.? Unilever’s Vice President of HR, Sandy wanted to build a hub in South Africa from which he could export marketing talent.? The task fell to me and 5 other marketing directors to design and implement it.

Early in 2006, we gathered to digest Sandy’s mandate.? It was a lively meeting.? Our new Dutch VP of marketing was especially fired up. “We can be the shi77est, hottest marketing team in Unilever!” he said.? The linguistic gaffe aside, this was no exaggeration.? We had permission to reinvent, to purge old mindsets and cultivate new ones.? It was an invitation to invigorate the culture, make marketing more collaborative and inject a bit of fun into things.?

But it also had to produce better marketers.? We had to get quicker at responding to consumer needs.? We had to get better at spotting and reacting to emerging opportunities.? Hothouse had to show in the quality of our planning, the effectiveness of our ads and the way we executed in-store.

But changing behaviour is tough.? Sometimes the biggest barrier to excellence is the assumption that you already have what it takes to excel.? In retrospect, Unilever’s reputation as a “University of Marketing'' was our biggest obstacle.?

"Sometimes the biggest barrier to excellence is the assumption that you already have what it takes to excel"

So we had to do things differently.? Hothouse could not be another battery of training courses, another overhead.? While no one could “own” Hothouse, everyone needed a stake in it.? We envisaged a movement, a revival.??

Here are some things we did and learned along the way.

From idea to place

Our seating plan was the biggest barrier to collaboration.? We dismantled it.? In its place, a matrix of cloverleaves, coffee stations and gold-fish bowls sprang up.? Hothouse was no longer an idea, it was a place too.??

The payoff was swift.? Working cheek-by-jowl with three other category directors was a rich learning curve.? I eavesdropped as they gave feedback to their agencies.? I watched them coach and counsel their teams.? We huddled to discuss upcoming board meetings and helped with each other's presentations.? As King Solomon wrote, “Iron sharpens Iron.”???

We installed a Hothouse Bell.? Anyone could ring it so long as it was Friday and you wanted feedback or help.? The bell broke down barriers, it got people out of their shells.? Bell check-ins revealed blindspots, reminded us that none of us was as good as all of us.??

Finally, an indoor garden feature gave way to a stocked supermarket aisle.? This kept the retailer and shopper uppermost in our minds.??

Rethinking productivity

Most marketing departments operate like hospital emergency rooms. There’s nothing wrong with this.? But on a long enough timeline, you get tunnel vision.? Important questions go unanswered.? We had to unlock the “OR”, make it easier for people to do “deep work” on issues we’d long ignored.

Every quarter we dispatched knowledge workers to investigate “beautiful questions”.? Three months later, they returned with actionable insights.? Beautiful questions are costly questions.? They take time to frame.? Beautiful questions are complex.? They call for curious minds, intellectual humility and teamwork.? In due course, our beautiful questions yielded beautiful answers.?

Of course, deep work was only possible with outside help.? Hothouses thrive on cognitive diversity and new ideas.

Building a network of thought partners

We needed input from experts, leaders and practitioners.? The kind of people you don’t find in company training rooms.? Here’s a glimpse of the personalities we enlisted and the lively wisdom they shared:

Justin Letschert, Union Swiss:??

Bio-Oil is a case study in cutting the long tail.? It is a triumph of a single, powerful insight. It is a tale of ruthless focus and consistency.? It's about the grit you need to get 10x growth on a tiny budget.

GG Alcock, Muzi Khuzwayo:

Muzi and GG shattered countless outdated paradigms about the bottom of the pyramid.? They enriched our understanding of the distributive trade.?

Rob Fleming (SAB Miller) and Kim Reid (Power Sponsorship Australia):

Most marketers don't get sponsorship.? Kim and Rob cut through the lazy egotism of logo slapping.? They showed how to put the fan at the centre of things.

David Taylor, The Brandgym:

Ideas like “fresh consistency” and “growing the core” invaded our vocabulary and practice.? David’s weekly blog was a perennial talking point at the water cooler…

James Hier, Mindshare:

James is the feistiest and most skilled facilitator I know.? He de-fogged media planning as no one has before or since.? McLuhan's notion that the “medium is the message” is meaningless until you’ve spent time with James.

Alistair King, (King James) Robyn Putter, (WPP), Benny Du Plessis (Ogilvy):

Who better to school you on the creative process than three Cannes award winners?? They expanded our appreciation of briefing, shared the secrets of great copywriting.??

Andy Rice (Yellowood) Geoff Whyte (SABMiller/Nandos).??

They say those who can’t, teach.? Apart from architecting some of the world’s biggest brands, Geoff and Andy were inspiring teachers. Myth busted.??

Reviving our processes

At first, Hothouse unleashed boundless energy and creativity.? Deep work on beautiful questions caused many to rediscover marketing as a craft.? But for all the energy Hothouse unleashed, strategy was still a weakness.? An internal audit revealed that our brand, customer and category plans were not up to scratch.??

I became a facilitator in the basic frameworks of brand and category planning.? This was a major but timely pivot - for me and for Hothouse.?

To date, the program had invigorated marketing’s circulatory system.?

From now on, it would work on the connective tissue.

Closing Thoughts

If you were part of Hothouse your landmark “aha” moment may not feature here.? This, indeed, attests to its uniqueness.? Hothouse was like an unruly horse.? You could not reduce it to a single, climactic event, seminar or workshop.? Hothouse was a movement, a journey of twists, turns, starts and stops.? It did different things for different people and grew each one of us in different ways.

Did it deliver?? Though excellent talent emerged in that era, Hothouse was hardly the “City on a Hill'' that Sandy Ogg had in mind. ? Soon - too soon -? new leaders, new structures and small thinking would diminish it.?

Above all, Hothouse taught me two important lessons:

• ?Marketing is the most abused word in business.? Scott Bedbury of Nike and Starbucks fame speaks of “The dreaded ‘M’ word.”? “Marketing is not a department”, says Bedbury, “though you probably need one.? It’s not a person…though you probably need a really good one.? Marketing is a process.? It's a series of interconnected disciplines that creates value for people.”? It’s up to all of us to tell a better story about marketing.
• There is a difference between know-what and know-how.? Put another way, Unilever training taught us the rules.? Hothouse showed us how to play the game.

As someone has said, "Content might be king but context is kingdom".

“Marketing is not a department though you probably need one.? It’s not a person…though you probably need a really good one.? Marketing is a process.? It's a series of interconnected disciplines that creates value for people.”