In a business world infatuated by short-term results and the need to please and get constant great feedback, it’s become apparent that most of us are driven by fear – of failure and of being seen to operate in anything other than a highly Photoshopped, retouched reality. This fear sucks the life out of true innovation and business potential, and takes the humanity out of how we operate day to day.
Innovation has always been at its best when we are imaginative, brave and fearless. That’s why we at Multiply decided to put our minds and money where our mouth is to inspire performance in both our employees and clients by launching our own product, Naturelly Jelly Juice, a gelatin-free jelly drink that’s fun for children to enjoy. Its mission is to encourage families to live a healthier lifestyle.
We have always talked about getting better by doing good. We thought: could we create a product that’s good for kids and good for our spirit? Could we make a small difference to the world and make our agency shinier?
We never set ourselves any success criteria; for us the success is the journey and conquering our fears of bringing our ideas to life. We wanted to walk in the shoes of our clients, understand the process of invention and appreciate the real life complexities of new product development. To really live, breathe and feel every aspect of our client’s enterprise seems like an impossible task. For many agencies like ours, this thinking marks unchartered territory, but we have the tools, the passion and the know-how, so why not?
The process to date has been really uplifting; the project has been embraced by all of our employees, who love the idea of collaboratively having a go. Amazingly, we got to stage one: getting the product in the hands of kids. And they love it. Our list of stockists continues to grow and Naturelly Jelly Juice was recently chosen as a finalist in the World Beverage Innovation Awards.
Will this Multiply experiment be a massive commercial success? Only time and effort will tell, but in the meantime we’ve got a hunger for innovation. So if you want to feel alive and energised in 2015, go forth and have no fear.
David Bradley-Bird, Dean Dempsey, Kate Fenton, Andrew Murchie and Dr Mark Fowlestone are partners at Multiply
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