James Sallows – GSK

James Sallows is the Global Head of Transformation & Capability, Consumer & Business Insights & Analytics (CBIA) at GSK. GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK) is a multinational pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare company headquartered in London, England. James is on the Leadership Team for a global team of 130 people, who are responsible for making the business future-fit from an insight perspective. As the GSK consumer healthcare business spins off into a new business, their focus is on delivering consumer insights as one of the key capabilities in the new business and equally growing individually in the right areas.

James comments on this transformation: “As is common knowledge, Consumer Health is becoming a separate business to the pharmacy business. There are therefore a lot of things we need to rescope, but also the freedom to redesign. This has given us a huge opportunity to think differently. We started with a crack team of 5 who were responsible for scoping what the future insights ecosystem needed to look like. We worked a lot on fleshing out what the underlying attributes are that drive a business founded on deeper human understanding, that in turn is maybe data-fuelled, but above all insights-driven’’.

Main ingredients for growth

James shares how GSK tries to stay clear of short-term measures: “A lot of the standard KPI’s are already embedded in the business so the work we do is measured by its action. We have laid those foundations, so our measure of success is about how many are now being actioned? For example, we have identified capability gaps and now have a programme that specifically looks at filling those gaps. We have built the CBIA academy where our insights people became more analytical, and analytics people more insight-led. It’s also about looking at how we integrate advanced analytics and creating a more balanced culture of curiosity and critical thinking into the business. For me, human capital is the added value in insights, and that is where I have an issue with data-driven per se. Data-driven leads you to AI and machine learning, but what it doesn’t necessarily lead you to is informed decision making. What we are equipping people with is a clear understanding of what true insights are, how you turn them into action. Also, how you can leverage storytelling internally and externally to earn understanding, advocacy and support. If you have got a fantastic insight, but are faced with a seasoned marketeer in front of you, how are you going to break through? Those are the kind of skills we are focusing on. Insights as a strategic function, and strategic capability, meaning you must be able to operate at the top table as an equal partner. Too often insights within a client organisation is reduced to being an internal supplier or cost centre, instead of being an equal strategic partner. One of the things we fought for is to establish insights as to the start of our processes, and our innovations now start with weeks and weeks of deeper human understanding before we even get to start an event. Insights are partnering on multiple initiatives across Marketing and R&D to go deeper in our human understanding before we even think of solutions”.

“Human capital is the added value in insights. Data-driven leads you to AI and machine learning, but it doesn’t necessarily lead you to informed decision making.”

role of data & Insights

“When we started working towards the new business 2 years ago, insights was selected as one of the key attributes”, James continues. “However, what that meant on a day-to-day and how that becomes actionable, was not fully fleshed out for obvious reasons in the early days. We have taken the lead on defining what that deeper human understanding means by looking at how successful other businesses are with it, but also understanding we are not them. It is interesting because you must shift a lot of people’s beliefs that it has to be new. In a lot of cases, deeper human understanding involves more listening, more ethnography, and broader thinking rather than what may be considered data-driven work. It is hard to shake because you get the feeling people would rather see a shiny new tool or methodology rather than approaches that get you where you need to be. During the depths of COVID-19 in 2020, we did some amazing ethnographic work in multiple countries that was extremely powerful. We also did a significant in-depth curation exercise that cut through the noise of all the data and coverage. Neither are new, but the application of them and where they sat within our thinking is what changed. We went from just talking about how bad it was everywhere and what we might be seeing in the data, to in the end talking about COVID-19 in the context of the economic crisis and black lives matter. We also focused on the differences as to what that looked like, for example, in the US versus Asia. In the past, we have all seen millions of pounds being spent on research project segmentations that are beautiful but often not actionable, and our focus is on making things tangible and actionable. We are not just building capability among our marketing and insights teams, we are showing it is about the outputs through insights created and actions taken.”

James explains how GSK’s Art and Science of Insights programme is getting everybody (from their marketers, R&D, and CBI people) to understand that insight is not merely data points and observations. James: “It is about the white space in between and the joining and linking up of those pieces. Finding where the tension or the deep human truth is and where the opportunity for GSK lies. We are training the whole organisation on what a true insight is and creating that common definition and understanding. Without that common understanding, how can an insight function ever be elevated to a strategic partner, if you believe that something like a stream of data from Google is an insight in itself? It is an interesting tension between the new and the old. As a business, we have a strong belief in the returning strength of qualitative methods. As a business in the Wellness area, bringing humanity into the equation gives us that view of our well-being as well as the well-being of people beyond the business. Everything starts from the individual, not from our view of them as a consumer.”

earlier discussions

James: “The balance between short-term and brand building is always a tension . You need to show people the proof points that sit along the theory to give people the reassurance that they can do it. It is also engaging in earlier discussions. Quite often these discussions happen when it is too late. There is no point arguing with someone about early-stage consumer testing when you already have a final ad that is not great. You need to work with your agencies on how they can get involved earlier on. It helps that our CMO, Tamara Rogers, is a huge advocate of this. One of the biggest challenges that many businesses have is research being primarily used as a validation tool. One of our big pushes has been to bring our work further upstream and we have seen multiple examples of a payoff from that in the last 12 months.”

Making an impact

When it comes to James’ outlook on future trends in data and brand growth, he believes there will be more integration to use qualitative data at scale: “We need to get further value out of it, and use AI and machine learning to do it. If you would ask us this question five years ago, the answer would be let’s bang all our data sets together and see what happens. Today, it is let’s find the places where the data can be of the most value, and then let’s go and build it. Where things become too data-heavy, you end up with reactive answers. You need to step back from that to see the bigger strategic picture. Of course, you use that data as part of your feed, but bringing in more of the human behavioural elements to understand the why, is where it becomes really valuable. I think there will also be an increase in how we apply behavioural science with an impact on the business. A lot of the older ways of doing things have their role to play, it is just now working on that overall tapestry and deciding which ones become less of a focus. As I said in terms of copy testing, it is a shift from our focus being on testing the final copy, to now be working more upstream to make sure that copy has an impact early on. Copy testing is too often merely a seatbelt or airbag for a campaign, and that needs to change.”

investing in the added value

A big part of the positive changes we are seeing in our business and function are linked to us visibly and tangible turning our attention back to the people”, James continues, “you can’t be that ‘added value’ insights layer, that strategic partner, at the top table, unless you are attracting and retaining the best people in insights. The existence of my function and team is a testament itself to the business commitment to the scale of transformation and capability building that needs to happen to enable this. We have created a department-wide ‘Academy’ that provides curated self-serve learning, and bespoke capability builds for our teams. These are focused on the key enablers of our transformation and raising our collective and individual capabilities. ‘The Art & Science of Insights’ is a step into a true democratisation of insight, where we have insights, analytics, R&D, Marketers, Medical all learning what our common definition of an insight is (and how to spot a strong one) and also creating their own insights within our Innovation process. Our next steps have been into Storytelling (with a focus on virtual) and Whole-Brain Thinking, where we look at how we all can play different roles in problem-solving and creative processes. I mention this because it is not a one-off, this is a continuous programme with new builds already planned for next year – every one of them tailored to our people and business and delivered with impact by my team and our partners.”

“However, we also wanted to take on the challenge of career progression in our industry and how tough it can be, given that structures tend to be very flat and not everyone wishes to be, or can be, a manager – becoming an expert is also a viable career path. We have created a unique programme (within GSK, and I suspect in the broader industry) which is taking 15 of our best people, nominated by their managers, and taking them through a year-long focused personal development programme called IGNITE. Where they get to identify and pursue their personal areas of growth, and also give back value to the business throughout. We supply mentoring, coaching, a support network and a 12-month plan for their development – recognising and nurturing talent is key and we already have a high level of interest in nominations for our next cohort, which is still six months away, so we are doing something right!”