Happy Healthy Humans Episode 1: Otrivin Nasal Mist

Hosts: Louise Pyman & Paul Collins
Episode 1: Otrivin Nasal Mist

[00:00:00]

Louise: Hello, and welcome to Happy, Healthy Humans, the podcast that explores the latest research and insights on living a happier and healthier life. I'm Louise Pyman, and I'm joined by my co-host, Paul Collins. Paul, how are you today?

Paul: Hi, Louise. I'm feeling great, thanks. I'm really excited to be here at the launch of this new podcast with you. We have a lot of interesting topics and guests lined up for our listeners, don’t we?

Louise: We do! We are quite lucky in that regard. Packed with experts, we have the privilege of meeting them and learning a lot.

Paul: Indeed. In each episode, we’ll interview experts on a different aspect of health, such as nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, and mindfulness. We’ll ask them to share their knowledge and unpack how some of the health products sold around the world are created.

[00:01:00]

Louise: Yes, exactly. Today, we’re exploring nasal sprays and what it takes to innovate within that space. Our first guest is Russell Mackey, R&D Director of Consumer Innovation.

Paul: Welcome, Russell, to the podcast studio here in Nyon, just outside Geneva in Switzerland. How are you today?

Russell: Hi, Paul. Hi, Louise. Great to be here. Thanks for this. To answer the question, I think I’m happy and healthy, and last time I checked, I was still human, so I suppose that fits the title!

Louise: [Laughs] You have quite a fancy job title, but what does it actually mean? Tell me what you do.

[00:02:00]

Russell: Yeah, there’s a lot packed in there. My function is called CSPX, which stands for Consumer Science and Product Experience. In short, my team and I work with our R&D colleagues to bring the consumer into the middle of our innovation, ideation, and development process to deliver a superior product experience.

So essentially, that means three things: helping to identify meaningful innovations, ideas, and value propositions; helping our R&D colleagues shape those into innovations that consumers appreciate, focusing mainly on the sensory aspects of the product—the taste, the smell, the feel, etc., using the five senses. The efficacy of the medical part, obviously, is taken care of by the medical division. Finally, we develop all of that into a narrative, into a story, to bring it to life. So, those are the three areas where we work in the innovation space.

Louise: That sounds really interesting, but how did you get into that? What’s your background?

[00:03:00]

Russell: Like most things in life, not much is planned, right? It just kind of happened. I was born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, originally trained as a schoolteacher. My first job was teaching mathematics to a class of high school boys. After a period, I decided to do something different and thought, well, let me join P&G, who were re-entering South Africa post-apartheid, and I joined a function there called Market Research.

What started as a six-month experiment ended up being 20-plus years at P&G, evolving from South Africa to Sub-Saharan Africa, then moving to Belgium, where I worked on fabric and home care for the Middle East and Africa. Eventually, I moved here to Switzerland, took on a corporate role looking at innovation success and failures, and then was asked to backfill in the role of sensory science in the respiratory category. From there, it evolved to where I am today at CSPX, leading a great team in the over-the-counter (OTC) division.

Louise: With that, what do you do on a day-to-day basis?

[00:04:00]

Russell: Day-to-day, it’s pretty varied. We’re either designing tests to evaluate products, spending time with consumers alongside our R&D or commercial colleagues, watching and listening to them use our products, or writing reports and interpreting what all of this means. Another significant part of what we do is building capabilities, because Haleon is a new company, and there are many capabilities we need to establish as we aim to do things differently than before. So, we split our time between consumers, capabilities, and testing.

Paul: Russell, it sounds like you have quite an extensive wealth of experience in this field. But what motivates you to come to work?

[00:05:00]

Russell: What really drives me is being part of something bigger than myself. Where Haleon is at the moment—this formation of a new company, growing, and establishing something new—is really appealing to me. I enjoy that. Secondly, we’ve got some great, exciting projects that are meaningful and tangible. And the third thing is the people. We have great people, and I love the global interaction, whether it be here in Nyon or with colleagues in Richmond, U.S., Singapore, and beyond. It’s a diverse experience, and I’m always learning, which is really important to me. That’s probably the bonus—learning. If I wasn’t learning, I wouldn’t be here.

Paul: It’s quite comprehensive, isn’t it? Especially since Haleon is still so new, there are always avenues to learn and develop, even within established roles. I suppose one of the other questions is, what’s the latest product innovation you’ve worked on?

[00:06:00]

Russell: The exciting one at the moment is the Otrivin Mist, which we’ve just launched into Europe. I’ve been working on that since I joined the company five years ago, and it was in the works even before I arrived. It’s great to finally see it in the market, and it’s truly a superior and tangibly different product, so that’s really exciting to work on.

Louise: Describe the concept to us. Tell me how it works. What’s different about this product?

Russell: So, the way this is different is that it’s for people who have nasal congestion but don’t like using nasal sprays because they’re uncomfortable, scary, or whatever the reason. There’s often resistance. This packaging change transforms the nasal spray experience into something much more pleasant and approachable.

It does this through a one-button mechanism, which you activate using your thumb, and there’s a shorter nozzle as well. Unlike other pumps where you need three fingers to activate it, this one-button design is more user-friendly. It also delivers a fine mist spray instead of a jet, making the experience of using a nasal spray much gentler and more comfortable.

[00:07:00]

Paul: Oh, yeah, I can agree. It’s not something that’s been particularly pleasant for me in the past, but certainly, having something like a mist sounds a lot more comfortable, doesn’t it? That’s the point—you look at the sensory science, so that’s the experience you and I have when we pick up a nasal spray. But I’d like to hear more about what that involves and how it was used in the development of the one-button mist nasal spray.

Russell: For me, getting into sensory science was a new discipline. This wasn’t something I’d done before. I really learned and picked it up when joining GSK, or now Haleon. It’s about the science of the five senses and how to measure the human experience around those senses. Depending on which sense you’re working with, there are various scientific techniques to measure human responses, like the level of sweetness or the texture of a product.

It involves placing a product with consumers, having them use it, and measuring their responses. This can be done in a very controlled, scientific way, or more naturally in an uncontrolled environment, which reflects reality. Then, we try to decipher the consumer response, which is both a science and an art, because you need to understand not just what people are saying, but often what they’re not saying. You learn a lot by watching people as well.

[00:08:00]

For example, when we were doing research in Sweden, running a focus group particularly among non-users of nasal sprays—those typically resistant to using them—we noticed that in the research, they carried on the whole conversation with the new product bottle in their hand, playing with it like a bead or a toy. It was strange behaviour for people resistant to a certain object, so we got the hunch that something deeper was going on. We decided to run a neuropsychological test, a neuroscience test, which measures the subconscious, just to really understand what was happening.

[00:09:00]

Yes, so you’re wired up, but it’s measuring the micro-movements in the face, tension in the facial muscles, heart rates, slight perspiration—very, very sensitive. You can pick up variations. We took the consumers through the entire experience of the new product as well as the old one, to see where the differences were and interpret what that meant. That gave us quite some insights—things we weren’t aware of based on the normal cognitive response when you ask a question and get an answer. That aspect gave us a very interesting angle to explore.

Louise: You can do it within a focus group, or you can actually place the product within the customer’s own environment. Can you tell me a little about that part? How do you do that? Do you place it into people's homes to see if they use it? How does it work? 

[00:11:00]

Russel: So, yeah. So there's a whole industry on its own. But generally, yes, we have a research agency and we describe exactly what is the profile of the consumers that we want. Their job is to find those people and then to place a product with them. We leave them with a survey or we make contact, etc., and get those candid responses back from them.

In fact, we've just run a study here in Nyon last month, actually this month, where we ran the same thing using employees as well. So we do some type of employee testing as well because we're really trying to drive that connection between Haleon employees and the products that we make. We feel a sense of ownership and pride in what we're working on, getting that response back as well. So that’s been a great experience in terms of bringing the employees and the product development experience together into the same place.

Louise: So you look at your colleagues as guinea pigs?

Russel: Uh, yeah, well, I mean, of sorts, I suppose. I'm going to be very careful—

Paul: —of that—

Russel: —answer as well.

[00:12:00]

Louise: Because no, but I think, um, it's interesting, right? Talking about the kind of the length and the time that it takes really to get something, you know, to a shelf effectively. So people like you and I can go and buy these in-store. Surely it must be very hard to know when you're actually finished with a new piece of innovation. At what point do you actually put the pen down and say, that's it, we've cracked it, this is it?

Russel: Okay, yeah, you're right, because you could keep iterating and making it better and better. But what we're very clear on now is that when we start the process of saying, what are the must-haves that we have to have, and then what are the should-haves and the could-haves. And then we make sure that the must-haves are there and are clearly delivered with a clear success criteria.

The other aspects, you know, those are the should-haves, which would be nice. You know, if we have them, that's great. If we don't, it's not critical. And then obviously we're driven by the timelines to get into the marketplace, because when you have seasonal products like nasal sprays, delaying one week means you can miss a year. It's kind of like missing the train in Switzerland, right? You know, if you arrive a minute late, you end up being an hour late.

It's the same thing. So if you want to hit the windows, you need to move quickly. And you need to know what your minimum requirements are to get there, and then what comes on top.

Louise: So—

Russel: We have that very, very clear.

[00:13:00]

Louise: Describe that feeling when you say, this is it, we're done.

Russel: It's a massive feeling of relief when a product is locked, and we say, right, that's it, that's done. This is what we’re going with. There's a sense of relief, but there's a massive sense of pride, but not so much... Yeah, on one aspect, yes, wow, I'm proud I've worked on this. But really, what strikes me is pride in the multifunctional input, because these projects are massive, right?

So this nasal spray project, really, I mean, it’s the design and packaging and production teams that are really making the decisions to design something incredible like this. And just to realize that you're part of this massive team that is really talented, that is really pulling this together well. And that, for me, is a sense of pride. You know, there are people around me that are able to do and produce something way beyond what I’m able to do. I don’t see myself as playing a significant part in this. This played a significant part in my life, right? But there are people in the organization who have made a much bigger impact in design in terms of this.

I've really just done the feedback to the consumers to help them do their magic. So yeah, it really is a sense of team effort as opposed to an individualistic aspect.

Louise: Do you ever feel a void? You know, you've closed the project. Technically it's done. Does it feel a bit empty?

Russel: No, no, because it's always going. So you need to be thinking about the next generation. What is going to be the improvement? What's going to be next? Where can you take it further? Even if those improvements are incremental, you need to be continually working. You can’t be complacent.

But then you also need to be looking to say, well, what's the next big thing that's coming in the pipeline?

[00:15:00]

Paul: Now, with all of these sorts of things, you can imagine that the process probably isn't plain sailing. What sorts of challenges or obstacles have you had to overcome in this process?

Russel: Yeah, many. So there's a reason it took a while to get there. But yeah, you face surprises. For example, as I mentioned earlier, we’re dealing with medicated products here. So this means that when you're going to test in a country, you face regulatory or legal aspects.

On one of the tests, because the formulation we wanted to test wasn't registered in Germany, we had to move the test to the UK. So you need to find proxy countries to get around that, to enable the same business decision that you need to make, but in a way that you still end up making the right decision.

You do get surprises along the way. In one of the tests, we learned that the pump, the button was sticking. And that wasn't meant to happen. And that's not what we were testing. We were trying to test consumer reaction to the spray, but what was happening, the button was sticking. So that meant we had to go back and figure out why the button was sticking, put a delay, and some rework needed to be done.

So yeah, those are the types of things, but you test to learn. The point is that we'd rather learn about those things in the testing period, rather than, you know, the first thing that you learn about it is on an Amazon review. At least we can react.

Paul: Yeah, that's right. That's why we do it.

Russel: Yeah. It gives you the time to be able to react, doesn't it? To the actual product.

[00:16:00]

Louise: Surely there must be an inclusivity point to this as well.

Russel: Correct. So from an inclusivity point, because the way you activate this is just by squeezing between your thumb and your hand, where you have much stronger force in that direction than having to use the thumb and three fingers. We ran a test with people that are suffering from either arthritis or other hand dexterity challenges, and for them, it's unanimous. I would say this is a game changer for them in terms of that. It just makes it more accessible for them to be able to use a nasal spray more easily than what they had before.

Paul: So there are at least two things here, wasn’t there? So it’s the pump itself, but also the mist as well in the same sort of design and packaging.

[00:17:00]

Louise: Moving to a slightly different topic. Well, you know, within innovation, there's a certain level of creativity that you have to do, but what actually inspires you, Russel? I look particularly out at the absolutely gorgeous scenery of Nyon that we have outside the window. Tell me, where do you find your inspiration?

Russel: I get my inspiration from other people. I really get inspired by seeing other people push themselves beyond their normal boundaries. And that can be in whatever form, whether it be in the arts, dance, music, comedy, whatever, or in sports, etc. Really just seeing humans take up the challenge to push themselves and express themselves, and be themselves. That I really find inspiring. And that also then comes into innovation and creativity. You know, putting together two things that don't normally belong together and then seeing what happens, I think, is a big birthplace of innovation. So I kind of enjoy doing that—putting stuff together that shouldn’t be together—just because I'm curious in that way, just to see what happens.

[00:18:00]

Russel: Um, so yeah, I think as a kid, I was often—my family will tell you—that, you know, the slide projector is no more because that was taken apart. I would take apart everything, and I was just curious to see what was inside, you know? So whenever something new comes along, I'm inspired to understand what makes it work and then always the, "What if?"

Paul: Yeah, I mean, that’s sort of natural curiosity, isn’t it? I suppose just sort of taking it apart to almost break it and put it back together again.

Louise: I feel like we've all been there in one shape or form.

Paul: I think so, yeah.

Louise: Yeah.

Paul: And when you see the product on the shelf yourself, how do you feel? What does that make you feel when you see the actual product itself?

Russel: Oh yeah. I say, well, yeah, yeah, I did that. You know, I had a part in that, so it gives a sense of purpose that actually, you know, the years of effort paid off and then you see something tangibly there. Look, it’s not the biggest thing in the world, let's be honest, but it’s meaningful, right? And it makes a difference to somebody somewhere. And that’s what counts.

[00:19:00]

Louise: So for the next bit, we play a little game with our guests who come to the podcast. It’s called "Guess the Product." So I will play you an audio clip, and I would like you, Russel, and you, Paul—because you don’t know what I have recorded, very exciting—I will play you an audio clip, and I would like you to tell me what the product is. And that is our first product. Any guesses?

Paul: Um, clicking. It sounds like tablets of some sort, maybe. Russel, help me out.

Russel: I would have thought at the beginning the clicking sounded like opening the pack of Panadol, but that end is very distinctive. I’ve got to know that sound from the Otrivin Mist spray.

Louise: You are very much correct, Russel. It is your very own innovation. It’s the Otrivin Mist. So, one point to Russel. There we are. Any guesses for product number two?

[00:20:00]

Paul: No, uh, you see, I’m tempted to think the second sound sounded a bit like when you break the foil seal on a bottle. I want to say Centrum tablets.

Louise: Okay, Centrum tablets. Russel, any final guesses?

Russel: It’s out there, but the end again sounds similar to where we came from with our current nasal spray. Interestingly, that’s one of the aspects when we talk about the sensory part—that even the nasal spray, the sound of the nasal spray, actually has a sensory aspect to it.

Louise: I think you are made for this game, Russel. You are 100 percent right.

Paul: That’s incredible.

Louise: I’m not picking that up at all.

Paul: Oh, absolutely.

Louise: Oh, yeah.

Paul: Yeah.

[00:21:00]

Russel: So that could be anything from a pack of Panadol pills, or it could be, uh, you know, Centrum vitamins, as you said earlier. Yeah, I'd say Centrum.

Louise: You are both correct. It is a Centrum vitamin. Wow, Russel, congratulations. Three out of three. Paul, you need to go home and practice ahead of our next episode, I feel.

Paul: Yes, I do. Yeah, I'll have to rip open a few boxes and just—well done, Russel.

Russel: Thanks, Paul.

Paul: Russel, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you here with us today, to hear about your career journey and some of the stories that went into building this particular innovation and delivering it. Of course, thanks so much for being our very first guest, and we hope that you'll come back and speak to us again soon.

Russel: Uh, well, thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure. This has been great.

Louise: Thank you, Russel. We want this podcast to be interactive, so we encourage you to send us questions, comments, and feedback on Haleon's Instagram at Haleon. Thank you so much for listening.

Paul: Until next time, take care of yourselves.

Louise: Bye.

[00:23:00]

Paul: Bye.