Phil Duncan, Chief Design Officer, Procter & Gamble
Ioana Matei, Head of Emerging/Immersive Technologies, Procter & Gamble

Brainstorm Design 2022 - Designing Our Digital Futures

Conferences

let us cross into the digital realm. Uh some might think of the metaverse as the economic opportunity of tomorrow, but it has already spawned a thriving business according to Jpmorgan over $54 billion dollars is spent on virtual goods every year. That's almost as much as it's almost twice as much as the amount spent on buying music, consumer goods, titan. Procter and Gamble is not holding back their developing immersive virtual experiences to build lasting connections between younger consumers and they're leading brands earlier this year at C. E. S. P. N. G. Showcased their life lab metaverse like attraction developed by its design team in collaboration with the firms immersive technologies unit to share a PNG strategy for the metaverse and how they believe virtual experiences could drive real profits. Please welcome to the stage in real life not metaverse. Uh Phil Duncan, chief design officer at Procter and Gamble. And you wanna multi head of emerging immersive technologies at Procter and Gamble? Hi how are you? Thank you for being here. Thanks for having us. Okay so we're going to talk metaverse which is something we've all been hearing lots and lots about these days. But um I'm gonna gamble and say that probably Not everyone would expect, I believe 184 year old consumer goods company to be at the forefront of this new technology. So you know from a high level like why do you think the metaverse makes sense for PNG. Um Well um first and foremost I think anytime that there's a place where consumers are kind of gravitating towards, you know PNG has a terminology we like to use called constructive disruption, which is about, you know, frankly looking at the categories in which we compete and try to, you know, grow our businesses and and obviously win the hearts and minds of consumers where and how they're they're connecting with brands and learning about them is a natural place for us to go and learn about. So the metaverse, there's obviously a lot of buzz about it, um but we're clearly in a learning journey to understand again, what does engagement look like? How do we storytelling this space and ultimately, you know, how do we create value value for the consumer value for our retail partners? Um so it's a fantastic, you know, um opportunity to kind of keep our curiosity high and learn and create and do coming up with some of the themes over the course of the past day and a half or so, you want to, from the technical side, um did you kind of have to push for this or do you feel like, you know, people were ready to jump into this space? Well, I think, I mean if we think about the metaverse, it's a it's a very new concept that has been there for a while because the gaming industry has been there for a while, a RVR is there for a while, so we we experiment this at PNG for a long time, but the covid and the pandemic situation made it a bit more real for us to put it in practice and we had a bit more of an open mind and opportunity to to try it on and it really give ourselves the freedom to be like we want to learn with this and learn to see how what that gives us for our consumers and the people out there. Okay. Um I think we should look at, we have a video now which I think will help give people a little bit more of a sense of what you guys are doing. So it's it's hard to talk about the metaverse um without showing it right? Yeah. So you know if you guys want to give us some sense of what we're looking at, this was our physical installation at C. E. S going back about four or five years. So you can see how we built in things like engagement, showcasing our innovation and now we're stepping into our life lab virtually which we did for the first time two years ago, again showcasing the history of our company and the portfolio of the brands that we have um again, romancing individual innovation that our business teams were wanting to continue to showcase to consumers, to influencers even in the middle of the pandemic. And we had some gaming mechanics, so you could you could write are exploiting barge, let's for example and give points so we try to implement and make it attractive for for the young generation out there, but also showcasing the products. We had a collaboration with Bugatti which showcased the design of our Bugatti Gillette Razor and also you could talk with King C. Gillette from 100 more years ago in the space. We revived him as an avatar. So that was interesting for our viewers to have a chat with him. Ah and also we brought back the cavity creeps so I'm not sure people know about them in the child. So we redesigned them as a super heroes and give them a fresh new backstories and behind each of the hero, you have a mini game that was showcasing really oral health and engaging with the young generation in terms of teaching them what good oral health care is by playing these games. And uh and we we made the like little interactive interactive games that they could play in. We also brought together our citizenship efforts across sustainability. Um we also brought our olympics experience as covid, just absolutely ravaged particularly Tokyo olympics. We brought our customer partners to our engagement in Tokyo. So we brought Tokyo to them virtually to see how they could build collectively our business with them in and around the olympics. And then we just recently launched responsible beauty strategy as part of our total beauty portfolio in our beauty sphere, which is also a big part of what we launched um at and with the es so again we're stepping into this, you know, environment to learn and understand how to engage and what really matters with consumers and ultimately to create value. Um there's, I have so many questions, so that video, okay, first of all I want to, you can kind of tell in that that you have created a very different feelings for the different brands um which makes sense, you know, PNG is a company with, you know, dozens and dozens of brands with really distinct personalities. So how did you think about, you know, bringing that unique sort of brand look and feel to the different? I'm so confused about the terminology I should be using, it was interesting to step into this space and I have to, you know, give a lot of kudos to you wanna um she was my reverse mentor, which is also really funny to use even the word reverse, which is like, no, you were my mentor in this space, you know, you really taught me because as a designer, I kind of stepped into the space and I thought, gosh, how do you, you know, design in three dimensions to infinity. Um but then you really started, you know, thinking about what's the story I want to tell, What is the consumer attention that we're trying to solve? How do we bring to life the innovation that is unique within each of the ones that brands as you mentioned and then really frankly tried to um both celebrate the individual innovation yet rapid in a total experience which was the PNG life lab. So it's kind of a combination of working with our brand teams on what was that innovation and what would be unique to bring to life and to visualize and or storyteller around. But then also keep the equities of the physical PNG life lab as we moved into the virtual as well. So um you wanna the gaming part of it also really jumps out like you know the the teeth that we just saw talk a little bit like do you have a background in gaming? How did you think about approaching gaming in this context? So I think um for me and my team as well so we're kind of mixed. I'm coming as well for a background which I'm both I. T. And creative. I'm a professional filmmaker also have an NGO called woman in immersive technology. So I see a lot of creative content out there and I built my team to be both. So we have the game designers in the team but we also have a bit of not creating and storytelling because this is a new space. So nobody is really an expert and we need to bring this new generation uh to create. So that's that's a bit of background for for for myself. Um and also coming back on like how do we show the brands and how what changed that made when when I work with Phil and the team. Um we also thought like how, how a brand can be authentic in this space because we see that a lot of gaming platforms out there and a lot of executions. So what does it mean for us to be authentic? And I remember we're asking ourselves the questions because most of the characters, I mean you've seen cavity creeps, but if you think of ph and we have 180 plus years history, right? We have only two brands that have actually characters, which is Lenny, the bear, the charming bear and Mr Clean. So when you're talking to a brand, like how do you want to be represented in this space as a character? Like what does it mean? So even that question is really like, oh, how do I show up in this space is in a meaningful and interesting way. It's like almost like um you know, it's probably a good brand building exercise anyway, right? Like if you're brand we're a character, you know, who would they be? Um One of the stats I saw that I thought was interesting and you guys can correct me if I have, if I'm wrong about this, I believe you said that the average amount of time people spent in the life lab was something like around 20 minutes? Um I can't remember the last time I sent website, so I think that there's some obvious opportunity, they're like, what do you see that unlocking for PNG. Yeah, I mean it's it's it was maybe more overly surprised about it, but 2028 minutes um year on year as we went from year one to year two of executing this, people stayed even longer. So um that was a bit of a shock to us and a lot of our business teams were looking at this thing to your point. You know, our consumers would maybe spend five minutes on a brand website, but suddenly you're enveloping them in the story. Um those avatars were real people and innovators. So one of the dynamics that we did from a design standpoint was built on a gaming engine, so we could have that interaction. So you could literally talk to the innovators who developed the oral B io or the Gillette exfoliating razor, which at first people, when you started talking to them in the metaverse, people were like, are you a bot? Like, you know, I'm sitting in my basement in Cincinnati Ohio, I've been talking to you or I'm sitting in Portugal with, you know, until our people's accents came through and their ethnicities and diversity of our company really came through in this space. So I think it just provided a really rich engagement that went well beyond us pitching the product proposition into teach me about this, but why were you so passionate about this space when you develop it? I mean the articles that were written coming off this from a press standpoint, whatever, because we had our authentic innovators, the people that were really behind the products was incredibly rich. So um I'm gonna see if we have any questions in a minute, but consider whether you have some metaverse questions to ask, but um I'm also thinking about you know, how this helps you guys engage with the younger generation um of people that maybe didn't grow up with your products or obviously there's a lot of competition in your space um these days, so you know, you wanna, were you, did you think specifically of how younger people are going to engage with this and you know, our things sort of targeted towards a younger demographic. So I think whenever we we look at execution in the metaverse, we really need to start with the audience in mind. So the one you saw is really designed for a CS event where we showcase our brands, We're working as well on executions for young generation and what we want to do and and there's been a lot of talk as well as this conference about co creation and community, right? So for us to be able to be relevant in that space, we need to create the community or be part of the young generation community, which is a very new space as well in this gaming, the gaming is doing this very well, right? So we do that and we we also try to as much as we can now and it's it's evolving and I think that there is a change in the industry as well create with young generation, so we have that in mind but we need to be where they are and think how they think for this to be relevant for them, that makes sense. Um let's see, do we have any questions in the room? I see a hand back here. Yeah, quarters into the metaverse about six different platforms and we settled on Mozilla hubs. Okay, um I love the cinematography and everything that you had in your demo, what gaming platform are you using? That is unreal engine, game platform and its web stream. So we also sort of accessibility because we can also play it in the gear and all close gears and so on but that will not be accessible to everybody. So this is a web based streaming or real game engine and we chose this as well because of the graphics quality. It was important for our brands being like the company we are and looking at our ads and our marketing execution was important for our brands to be showcased in that graphics quality that was relevant for us and we could express the full brand narrative. So you have the choice of the platform. Thank you. Welcome. Um I have a question about metaverse skeptics um there might be some in the room, any any any like self declared metaverse skeptics out there. I am sometimes, so I'm just curious like using people that are like oh the metaverse, I'm already spending so much time in virtual world, like do you think like do they have a point? Do they not understand something about the metaverse? Is there some some disconnect or some way you would say? Like here's why the metaverse is worth your time, I'll start, I'll be curious to see how you and I answer this was great. Um Again I think this is a space where the unknown around value creation, I mean we have a we have a saying of PNG around being a force for growth and a force for good. Um and so the very first part of that is intentional about we can't be a force for good if we aren't growing, so can the metaverse help us do just that. Um to be determined right? I think the value is like the value building aspect of this, a lot of noise, A lot of you know, talk about it right now on a on a number of impressions probably way higher than the actual, you know, value that's being extracted out of it. But again um we see this as another transformative platform that's going to really change the way consumers engage with brands eventually, so we're in to learn. Yeah, yeah, you wanna you have thoughts on that one. Sure, I think the the minutes to the end, so what we're trying to do here is to learn and these technologies allows us really to learn and there are three things for me that we can learn, right? One is the fact that is a creator economy, right? So we see on generation creating out there, we see them operating in the community. So how do we learn how to do that regardless if we all have a fully immersive experience, tiktok, whatever like this is something that we need to learn and put ourselves out there. We also, what this technology provides is really putting the consumer at the center because if you're looking at the two D executions like to the film flat, you are directing, right? So you as a director, you're directing the viewer how they're seeing here, you're creating a world and they interact the way they want to and that puts them in the center of the experience and that, that connection with your brand and what you're showing them is so much more powerful and that's the skill that we still need to learn, what does it mean? And how do we create for that being with this technology or any other that come? I think that's kind of this design principles and the way we design the user journey is so different. Um, I would think we have time for one more question and we have one over there just hit the santos with signified lighting. Um I'm also probably like many other, a little bit critical about metaverse, but suddenly something you said, I wanted to ask if this makes sense. The food designers, We keep on having this sometimes difficulty in reaching out to users and customers and do proper user research and all that you talked about from five minutes to 28 minutes of engagement. Could designers look at metaverse is just the next frontier and next platform for doing user and customer research a place where you can go play and learn in a direct access. I mean does that make any sense at all? I think it absolutely does. I mean as you want to mention, I mean I think part of it is acknowledging that it's a community based world out there. I mean our brand teams I think are really kind of learning, whereas before we used to build like brand guidelines and we were the stewards know suddenly the community becomes the steward of the experience, so tapping them with understanding what would be a relevant way to intercept them I think is a fabulous way to use the metaverse from a learning standpoint. So I would, I would unequivocally answer yes. Um that is, I think a great place to end, especially given this room full of designers, so hopefully we'll get a lot more designers in the metaverse, Thank you both, thank you so much