Teman Evans, Chief of Global Design, General Mills, In conversation with Tony Chambers, Studio TC & Friends
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00Thank you, Clay. This one's gonna be fun. Yeah, we're gonna have to.
00:07Thank you for joining us again, Tamman, with the latest of your design redesigns,
00:13tweaks of iconic brands and big brands. So, our Pillsbury Doughboy, there he is
00:21in his new incarnation. Yes. Before we dig into him and poke him in the belly a
00:27bit, tell us again a little more about where General Mills and your
00:32department, the design thinking, and the number of brands you have, how many
00:37you're working on at any time, and your brand values which are here.
00:41Oh, absolutely. I think I'll start by saying woe beyond to any chief design
00:46officer who sits on a stage like this and makes the mistake of presenting the
00:52work as if they're the singular owner. So, the very first thing I want to do is
00:57extend a thank you to our agency partners, JKR and Made Music Studio, our
01:02Sonic partner. But I also want to turn those thanks to my team. I have a very
01:09talented duo of brand managers who saw the day-to-day of this work, and their
01:15names are Jocelyn Olsen and Amanda Lee. And we have 100 brands in the stable, and
01:20I have to have my eyes on all of them. So, it means I can't be in all the rooms all
01:25the time. So, I need that team to be able to do it, and they are a great team to
01:29make that happen. And so, this is about collaboration, but Jocelyn and Amanda and
01:33I, and even our agency partners, we have to translate, innovate, and ultimately
01:38design for the aim of driving growth. And when we think about that growth, it is
01:45very, very explicit at General Mills. My boss is our CMO, Doug Martin, and he made
01:50a declaration that our job, our legacy at General Mills is going to be to build
01:54iconic brands. And you may wonder what he means by iconic brands. What he really
02:00means is brands that are distinct, and brands that are enduring. And we can
02:04probably even show that in the next slide. And what's interesting about
02:08enduring brands is that they are brands that stand the test of time. They're here
02:13for the long run. They're inherently human. They're also inherently authentic,
02:18and they're experience-driven. And what's great about them is that they
02:21participate in culture, but they also evolve with culture. And then if we shift
02:25and think about those brands that are distinct, the greatest brands that are
02:29distinct have a strong sense of identity. That means that they know who they are.
02:34They're unique, but they also are rooted in their origins and their history, and
02:39they understand that they are showing up for a particular consumer. They
02:42understand who they serve, and they also understand, and it's simple, enduring
02:47human truth. And that distinctness is important, because it's about growth. One
02:52of the strange things about the category that I'm in, in CPG, or as my European
02:57friends would say, FMCG, fast-moving goods, is that we have what we call a
03:01leaky bucket. Our brands lose about 40% of their consumers every year. So we have
03:08to recruit those people to bring them back to the brand. And if we just recruit
03:11that 40%, we'll stay flat. To grow, we actually have to recruit beyond that 40%.
03:16And flat is not acceptable. Flat is not acceptable. If flat is here, then a new
03:20guy will be sitting in this chair next year. So distinctness is part of how we
03:24generate that growth, and it's very, very important. And so, if we tell this
03:30Pillsbury story, we can get into it. I'm gonna steal your first question, because I know
03:35what you're going to ask me, or I'm going to guess. And probably one of the
03:39things you're wondering is, why the hell would you touch this brand now? Does
03:44that sound about right? It sounds about right. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
03:49Well, Tony, you're right. This is a brand that is known around the world. It's the
03:53category leader. But then beyond that, it's also 150 years old. And it is one of
04:00a special group of brands we call our billion-dollar brands. And those are the
04:04jewels in the crown. And they live with brands like Cheerios, and Old El Paso,
04:09and Betty Crocker. And there are nine of them. But the number one rule that I've
04:16been given as chief design officer is that you don't break the billion-dollar
04:19brand. So the question becomes, why would I touch it? So let's get into that story
04:25of exactly why. Because the answer is growth. And I remember sitting with my
04:29boss and saying, well, if you're serious about building iconic brands, then I need
04:33to have some very uncomfortable conversations with you and with
04:37leadership. So with our CEO and the presidents of our segments and the
04:41presidents of our operating units. We'll say, if we're serious about this,
04:44we've got to actually rewrite the rules of brand identity. Those traditional
04:48guidelines that cover Pantones and type, that won't work. We need to think about
04:53multi-dimensional brand worlds that are based in experience. What it also means is
04:57that some of that old sense of just serving up content to our consumers,
05:02they have to participate with us. And our assets need to be dynamic and flexible.
05:06And when I say brand world, that's really the sort of the root of experience.
05:09I mean beyond the assets that are on packaging. These are dynamic assets that
05:14are things that you can touch. Assets might be to the smell, you might be able
05:18to also hear. So sonic is a part of that as well as taste. And so when we started
05:24this Pillsbury work, we first took an audit of the Pillsbury brand at that
05:29brand world. And we identified the existing assets and we knew we needed
05:33to evolve them. This you do internally? This internally. And it's very important.
05:37I think part of it is that I lived a life where I was on the agency side and
05:40I got served many a terrible brief. And so I said, when I move to the client side,
05:45I'm going to make sure I do my agency partners a bit of a favor by bringing
05:48clear briefs. So we're very clear on the business solution or the business
05:52problem that we need to solve. And we also are very clear on the design
05:56challenge that we need those agencies to be able to speak to. So in this case, we
06:00looked at the existing assets. We knew there were assets that existed. We'd
06:04evolved those. But then there were ones that didn't at all. And then all that has
06:08to lead to an idea. Now at different times of my career, I'm the strange
06:12strategist-designer hybrid. So what that really means is that at different
06:16times of my career, I've led design, I've led strategy, and sometimes I've led
06:21both at the same time. And it means for me I can never imagine design starting
06:25without strategy first. It is like walking through the wilderness with no
06:29compass or North Star. It is anathema to me. So we started with the idea. And we
06:34said, if we're going to be an iconic brand that shows up in a human way, let's
06:38think about what that actually means. And so our big idea was roll with the
06:42real. And what that means is, for all of it, every day is messy. It's unexpected. So
06:46we need to roll with it. But also, who are you spending that time with? Who are
06:50you rolling with? And then you need to be ready for anything at any time. So
06:53we're going to be ready to roll. And it was important for Pillsbury because if
06:56you think about this brand, we show up in the holidays, Christmas and
07:00Thanksgiving. But if we were going to grow, we knew we needed to be a part of
07:03every day. So a random Tuesday after school, the weekends, roll with the real
07:08was how we were going to do that. So this is a mantra that's internal as well as
07:13manifested externally. Exactly. Because you then have this part of the graphics
07:17later. So what are we looking at here? And so all design work at General Mills
07:22starts in the archives. It is my favorite place in the company. If I could have
07:27any other job besides the one I have, I'd have to take a pay cut. But I would
07:30be an archivist. And this is where the history of our brands live. And so every
07:35single project, we start by flying our agency partners in and we spend a day in
07:40the archives. And it's important because suddenly we're being infused with the
07:44150 year history of this brand and you can touch it. And it does important
07:49things because some of the things we realize is that when we start to dig into
07:52that 150 year history, we're dealing with things that generations have
07:58touched. But we also have to be very clear about those things that we need to
08:03keep and things we have permission to evolve. And so the archives are really
08:07part of the way that we do that, rooting ourselves in that history. And is it
08:10still nature's best laxative? You know, we've moved to some other spaces since
08:14then, but to think 1924, like that's incredible. And to be able to hold that,
08:19to know that someone oversaw that and that I'm the next generation, it's
08:22incredible. Really amazing. And so let's get into some of the design changes. And
08:27so if we make one more click, we'll see the evolutions of the wordmark. Let's
08:31do a bit of typographic. I am a type nerd, so I'll restrain myself. I could talk
08:37about this for the next hour. But you'll see some of what we did. There was a
08:40shift from that stark white to a warmer, doughier white that shifted across all
08:45of the letters. But we also started to round out those serifs. So they
08:49were like those soft baking rolls that consumers love, that we make. But then
08:54we're also doing things like that L. Those two L's now melt together. It's
08:57called a ligature. It's like the melting together of cinnamon rolls. So we
09:02want the wordmark to do more than just tell you Pillsbury. It's also
09:06communicating the ethos of the brand. Type is magical. So I could literally, I
09:11could go on and on. So that's just a few of the highlights there. But let's take
09:14you through the rest of the world. So you've been hearing that little sort of
09:19sound piece. That's our new Sonic logo. But I'll start with the barrel head. That
09:24barrel head is rooted in Pillsbury's history. It was a mark of excellence and
09:28quality. But we wanted to make sure that we were now making it updated. So those
09:33dots now also speak to the timer of a baking clock. We're also going to roll
09:39out merchandising that's based on it. But this is now a 3D form. Look, there's a
09:42shadow down there. It's no longer flat. And then beyond that, we also have
09:46introduced that sound piece. Now I love Sonic because any media that has Sonic
09:51attached to it performs eight and a half times better than media
09:55that doesn't. It is sticky. It lives in memory structure. I've been playing it in
10:01my mind for the last 24 hours. It's going to live with you for a while.
10:05But then even beyond that, the primary logo is there. But also we wanted to
10:09introduce responsive logos for different contexts, all the way down to a
10:13favicon that might exist in a social media header. We have to think about that
10:17in the modern version of how Pillsbury's going to show up in the world.
10:20There's our little boy. This guy. Let's spend a little bit of time here because this was
10:24the most precarious moment of the rebrand. Now the dough boy is special. You
10:30know, as Clay was just saying, his name, his government name is Poppin' Fresh. And
10:34he is about to turn 60 years old. So he's a boomer. But he's young at heart.
10:42And what's interesting about him is when we first launched him in 1965, his name
10:49Poppin' Fresh comes from the fact that he was literally popping out of a can of
10:52fresh refrigerated dough. But we also, we would animate him through
10:56claymation. So you would have sort of this bit of a stiff way of interacting.
10:59And since then, we've evolved him to be a 3D model. But we knew there was a chance
11:04to introduce state-of-the-art technology and rebuild that 3D model so
11:07that we could add more fluid movements. And it was a chance to make some updates.
11:11So you see them here. First thing, that doughier change from stark white to
11:15baking dough white. You see that in the Pillsbury dough boy on the right. But
11:19we've also now gone in his handkerchief, which used to just blend. Most people
11:23didn't even know he had one. It was sort of blending in. So we introduced a modern blue
11:27and contrast there. Maybe it faded in the sun over the years. But then those eyes, we
11:32wanted them to be very human and very approachable. There were 50 meetings I
11:37sat in about those eyes. We wanted to get them right. And then his proportions.
11:41Some say we put him on a diet. We just sort of stretched him out a bit.
11:45He has longer legs now. But that's how he's going to show up in a dynamic way so
11:50that he's ready to be a part of modern conversation.
11:52He's lovely. He's a little happier as well, I think.
11:55I think so too. We'll see it. And when you start to bring him to life, I think he's
11:58happy with the updates. But part of what that also meant was now he could show up
12:02in interesting, engaging ways, like social media stickers. Now we can start to have
12:06him. He's returned to that can that he popped out of in 1965. But now he's doing
12:11it in a much more engaging way. So those stickers allow us to have interesting
12:15experiential moments in the social dimension as well, which is something the
12:18brand could never do before. And we always said from the outset that there are two
12:22heroes in the Pillsbury experience, the food and the consumer.
12:27And so we wanted to make sure that the doughboy could now engage that food, not
12:30just stand next to it the way he used to in the past and sort of be like, ta-da, he's
12:34touching it, he's engaging it, he is in it.
12:37He's eating himself.
12:38He's grabbing that cooking and I want to take it and munch on it as a snack.
12:42He's proudly displaying that cinnamon roll.
12:45So we wanted to make sure that food was hero, but that the doughboy can now be a
12:47part of that.
12:49Clever thinking.
12:50And then, of course, I'm a designer, so I have to talk about color.
12:54I'm obsessed with it. And everyone knows the traditional Pillsbury blue.
12:58It speaks to heritage.
12:59It speaks to trust.
13:00We decided to also modernize that.
13:02So there's a new primary blue that we call Fresh Blue that we're introducing as well
13:06that's a bit more modern, allows us to introduce contrast.
13:09But then we have these secondary and tertiary colors.
13:11So dough cream becomes a way to nod to that baking and dough experience.
13:15So we use that strategically, I've talked about in a few places.
13:18And then that baked pastry orange, you can almost smell that color.
13:22That orange is completely new.
13:24Completely new. But that's about the buttery flakiness of so many of our rolls that now
13:29becomes a part of the world of color.
13:32And we, because of distinctness, had to make that investment.
13:36This can be expensive, but we made the investment in a custom typeface because we want to
13:40make sure, like I said, iconic brands are distinct.
13:43They are unique. And so Poppin' Fresh, of course, is the name of this typeface.
13:47We had to, you know, of course, use the doughboy and to bestow his grace.
13:51And you have regular type designers you collaborate with?
13:55We do. We do. Yeah.
13:56But I, like I said, I'm a type nerd.
13:58So they hate me when I come in the room because I get very nippy.
14:02I can imagine. But then you can see how that all starts to come to life, even in this
14:06out-of-home advertising where we have the type.
14:09We have now the new barrel head with the new word mark that's showing up.
14:14We also have its interaction with the food.
14:16All these things come together as a part of that new modern Pillsbury experience.
14:20So we'll let the, let's let the commercial do the work for us here.
14:25It was great.
14:26We made this taco crescent ring.
14:28I saw a weird bird.
14:29You came home. You came home.
14:31I wrote the vacuum.
14:33And now we're eating dinner.
14:37A few things are happening there.
14:38First, he saw that how fluid that doughboy was, how he's interacting, right?
14:42But then think about the time of day.
14:44This wasn't Christmas. It wasn't Thanksgiving.
14:46It was a regular day after school and after work.
14:50That's what we're celebrating now is that those days are magical and special as well.
14:54This is about that sense of rolling with the reel.
14:56And you start to see it here in this new Pillsbury brand world
15:00where you see now the animated logo, that color, the typography,
15:04the photography that's celebrating that barrel head.
15:07We want to make sure that we feel like we're capturing real moments.
15:10So no one's sort of posed and staged.
15:14These are real moments.
15:15Now the doughboy interacts with the type and he interacts with the food.
15:19We even have icons.
15:20The two blues are fabulous together, I must say.
15:22I am in love with them.
15:25But it's important that we don't just sort of land here,
15:27but also if you go into the next slide, you'll see the executions
15:31of this work in terms of all these traditional out of home.
15:35We now can show up there in powerful ways, but also in digital spaces,
15:39in web and in social, even banner ads, which was just sort of this thing
15:43that was purely functional, now can show up in this very delightful,
15:46emotional way to surprise and delight consumers.
15:48And I'm very excited about that merch.
15:50I'm going to be first in line for those Pillsbury plates.
15:53But even things like this timer that celebrates the dots in the barrel head,
15:57all of that is possible because of this new and dynamic brand world.
16:00And new and dynamic platforms for your brand to appear.
16:05In your time working in this field, PepsiCo before, now General Mills.
16:10I mean, you must have seen a massive change in what is possible.
16:14The platforms, the increasing platforms that you can present your new design,
16:18which then probably makes it a reason to rethink the brand.
16:23Absolutely. You see there's so much potential.
16:26And we want to when you're wanting to make sure that you continue
16:29a growth trajectory, you can't leave anything on the table.
16:32You cannot stand still for a minute. Absolutely not.
16:35Otherwise you're out.
16:36And so who could who could not do a good before and after?
16:40So what you see on the left is the Pillsbury of yesterday.
16:43But what you see on the right is this new dynamic brand world
16:47that's full of motion, allows us to show up in different forms of media,
16:51has reinvigorated the doughboy to be relevant for the future.
16:54This is what that work was about.
16:56It was a long time in the making, but I am very proud of how this work
17:00stands today and sets up this brand for a continued growth trajectory.
17:06And we'll before we click, I'll leave you here.
17:09What's interesting about the future of that experience, this is
17:12you'll see this work.
17:13It lives on the Jumbotron at Los Angeles Dodger Stadium.
17:17So you'll get to see how the doughboy shows up in surprises and delights
17:20baseball fans.
17:21But this is the future of that Pillsbury experience.
17:24Go right ahead.
17:35Right.
17:39Take some dance classes from
17:42you, the choreographer.
17:44Oh, I wish I wish I could claim that.
17:47Oh, that is wonderful.
17:49Is there one more slide here?
17:50There's just a thank you.
17:52So before that, I mean, we are.
17:53Wow. This is clay.
17:55You can learn a thing from us.
17:57We are on time.
18:00I did a bit of research
18:05and I hinted this to you before.
18:07Some people will be aware of this and clay nudged me towards it.
18:10And I think you've prevented this happening.
18:13But over the years, there have been many false reports
18:17of our doughboy's death.
18:19Scandalous headline.
18:20Yeah, exactly.
18:22Including this rather charming one.
18:25The Pillsbury doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection
18:31and traumatic complications from repeated pokes to the belly.
18:37He was 71 years old.
18:39OK, so they got that wrong.
18:40They've aged him up a bit.
18:41Yeah, they have.
18:42Doughboy is survived by his wife, Play-Doh.
18:47His three children, John-Doh, Jane-Doh and Dill-Doh.
18:53Plus, very sadly, they had one in the oven.
18:56Oh, services were held at 3.50 for 20 minutes.
19:03You know, I will say it's hilarious, but the doughboy actually does have a wife.
19:08Her name is Happy Fresh.
19:11He actually has two kids.
19:13The boy's name is Popper.
19:14The girl's name is Bun-Bun.
19:16And he even has a dog and a cat.
19:17The dog's name is Flapjack and the cat's name is Biscuit.
19:21So now, you know.
19:22So has he always had those?
19:23Oh, when they launched, they're in the archives.
19:26I finally got to see them.
19:27I think these names were better.
19:28I think so, too.
19:30Oh, Taman, that is absolutely joyful.
19:33You've brought, I think, so much more joy to this lovely character.
19:37And I hope it grows.
19:39The brand grows.
19:39Oh, I guarantee you.
19:40Otherwise, you won't be here next year.
19:41This is true.
19:43Ladies and gentlemen, Taman Evans and the Playboys.