Today’s interview is with Adrian Collins, the MD of Ziggurat Brands. Adrian joins me today to talk about innovation and a business and set of products (bac<) that they have developed that aims to transform back-care in the UK.

This interview follows on from my recent interview: Customer engagement and lessons from the Scottish poet, Robert Burns – Interview with Jamie Anderson of SAP – and is number 116 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, helping businesses innovate, become more social and deliver better service.

Highlights of my interview with Adrian:

• Innovation is a serendipitous thing.
• Adrian has suffered from a bad back for most of his adult life. That lead him to think about how to better treat back pain.
• His best friend, John Sutcliffe, runs London Spine Clinic and is a globally renowned neurosurgeon and one of the few that specialises in back care.
• Traditionally, treatment for back problems in the medical profession has been very bad.
• However, if hospitals admitted all of the people that had bad backs to hospital then the system would grind to a halt.
• Boots in the UK estimates that 20 million people in the UK (around a third of all people) have suffered from a bad back. Other statistics say that 85% of all people will suffer from a back pain at some point in their life.
• It is also the 2nd biggest cause of loss of days at work.
• There are lots of remedies available at the pharmacy….Deep Heat, Ralgex, Deep Cold, Nurofen etc etc. However, there is generally nothing around these products in these stores that allow the customer to understand their predicament and choose the right things to help themselves dependent on their condition.
• However, there are professional products available but they are not available to the consumer market and doctors don’t, generally, prescribe them as they don’t know what to prescribe.
• After talking about the opportunity to develop a range of back care products, Adrian and John realised that they couldn’t do this alone so they brought in another friend of Adrian’s (Mark) formerly of specialist manufacturer of healthcare products, SSL, to help with the manufacturing and product development.
• Adrian knows branding, John knows back problems and how to help address them but Mark brought another key piece to the puzzle as he brought large scale commercial credibility, connections and knowledge of how to scale the business.
• The final partner was Seymour Powell, the industrial product designers, who they brought on-board to design their product range.
• Together they came up with a product, plan and approach that best addressed where they thought the market was currently at.
• Key to this was realising that helping the customer understand their own predicament was the best approach.
• One of the most significant things they have tried to do is to include some diagnostic help and guidance on their packaging so that their customers know what they are buying and if it is right for them.
• This is not revolutionary in it’s own right but is different for an industry that suffers from a surfeit of technical language and jargon that many consumers don’t understand.
• All of this is supplemented by their website, www.backpainhelp.com, which is a resource to help their consumers understand their problems and self-diagnose.
• bac<’s philosophy is ‘don’t just look for the knife’, there are other ways.
• The range is now available in selected Boots stores nationwide and on www.boots.com.
• This all seems a bit obvious. However, firms have got so used to the idea that NPD and innovation has to be linked to a massive breakthrough in technology.
• bad<’s view is that making their range of products accessible in a way they haven’t been before is innovative.
• Reflecting on the experience of Honest Tea, Adrian believes that great brands polarise people. Not everyone will like or agree with what you are doing.
• You can do as much homework and research as you like and surround yourself with the right people but, at some point, with any new initiative you just have to commit.
• When in a start-up, if you haven’t got any money or you are cash-strapped, be careful not to spend your time talking about how much money you haven’t got. That won’t change the situation. Concentrate on the task at hand…..creating a great product or service.
• Moreover, too much money does not guarantee success as there have been a lot of expensive failures.
• The problem with many innovation departments is that people are looking for linear solutions to problems that aren’t linear.
• The perception in some corporates is that brightly coloured offices, table football, bean bags and fluffy toys is what innovation is all about. But, that’s not the reality.
• Good ideas take time to develop and many corporates would do well to develop some patience and let their ideas develop.
• Many corporates, therefore, are not very good at innovation and so resort to M&A to grow their businesses as they are are good at scaling businesses.

About Adrian (adapted from his LinkedIn bio)

Adrian is the Managing Director of Ziggurat, a London-based brand design agency and a founder Director of Handsome Ltd, a pharmaceutical venture.

Adrian has over 30 years experience gained in both agency and client side roles on global, national and entrepreneurial brand creation and development.

He has led teams on commercially successful projects, gaining 7 DBA Commercial Effectiveness awards in the last 6 years.

For 25 years at Ziggurat he has been fortunate to have worked with a diverse range of clients and brands and has grown to love brands. The challenges of attracting and retaining consumers for his clients’ brands have kept him wonderfully busy. For the global players such as Pepsico, Unilever and GSK to the upstarts such as Higgidy, the startups such as bac< and the property players such as Berkeley he has had a significant commercial impact on many companies and brands.

The Handsome business is that one that all marketeers want to do; our own brand.The bac< brand he created has set out with the ambition of becoming the beacon brand in the area of spinal care. Launched in September 2013 with significant venture financing the ‘bac<‘ brand is growing distribution ahead of expectations. Love it.

You can check out the bac< range of products at www.backpainhelp.com and connect with Adrian here on LinkedIn.