Powering a Healthier Tomorrow: Inside Reckitt’s Mission with Nick Horan

[00:00:00] I think what I've learned in my career is no matter where you are in the world, whatever culture you're from, anyone engaging with a brand is looking for the same thing, which is, do I see value in engaging with your brand? To thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape, brands must move at an ever-increasing pace. I'm Matt Britton, founder and CEO of Suzy. Join me and key industry leaders as we dive deep into the shifting consumer trends within their industry, why it matters now, and how you can keep up.

[00:00:30] Welcome to the Speed of Culture. Up today on the Speed of Culture Podcast, we're thrilled to be joined by Nick Horan, the Global Brand Experience Lead at Reckitts, focusing on their Vanish Laundry Cleaning brand. Nick has transformed brands, focusing on sustainability, design and cultural relevance. With a career spanning continents, he led innovation and built impactful brand experiences, which we're excited to talk about today. Nick, how are you? Nick Horan Yeah, very good. Thank you for having me today. Nick Horan Absolutely. And where does the podcast find you?

[00:00:59] Nick Horan I'm just outside of Oxford in a place called the Cotswolds in the UK. Nick Horan And has your entire career spanned in Western Europe or have you kind of bounced around a lot?

[00:01:08] Nick Horan No, I've definitely bounced about a bit. So I spent quite a bit of time in agency land in London, where I had the opportunity to work on brands with P&G. And then I had a very nice opportunity to head out to Singapore for two and a half years where I worked with varying clients in Asia, which was fantastic fun. And then yes, also in the Netherlands with a company called Van Beren. Nick Horan Nick Horan Nick Horan Working with the likes of Unilever. So a real mixed bag, to be honest.

[00:01:38] Nick Horan And that type of experience is kind of twofold greatness, because on one hand, you get to work with the P&Gs and Unilevers and world class CPG house of brands that obviously have mastered the art of brand building. And you've had the ability to have vast global experience. So let's kind of unpack both of those, because as somebody who's never worked anywhere but here in the United States, what are some of the advantages that somebody like you has gotten through what you've been doing? Nick Horan Nick Horan Nick Horan

[00:02:35] something like vanish is but in terms of the cultural nuances somewhere like singapore versus the netherlands or the uk what are some of the distinctions that you've noticed over time that maybe has made you slightly alter or customize your go-to-market strategy or brand building approach yeah i mean that's a really good question i think you know that as we said okay sure people are looking for that same value exchange but the kind of conversational relevance you've got to look at

[00:03:03] to kind of untap those different markets obviously changes so being able to adjust your tone of voice to be relevant in different markets is super important i think one of my favorite projects if i may was with grant's whiskey really nice example it's a fantastic brand it's known the world over but they saw an opportunity to untap chinese new year in asia it's a huge gifting occasion

[00:03:30] is one of the largest mass migration events i think in the world believe it or not and grant's whiskey have some fantastic brands for example they have monkey shoulder so they were able to start thinking about the year of the monkey in asia and how can you then communicate with relevance in a mom and pop shop in malaysia as an example so knowing kind of what your core assets are that make

[00:03:55] you distinct globally but then actually being able to adapt your tone of voice to work to the year of the monkey within a kind of small store environment in an island in malaysia that becomes really crucial to be able to unlock sales purchases etc for your audiences for sure and you mentioned working with places like unilever and png and of course now record well-established companies that have proven time and time again to be able to create

[00:04:23] powerful brands do you think brand is still relevant here in 2025 given the fact that the barriers to entry are so much lower for anyone to create a brand like a lot of the most prolific brands that we see in culture were built during the golden age of television as you know because they were able to capture consumers attention on heavy rotation and eliminate them out of media channels where today it's quite the opposite where this proliferation is low barriers so how do you look at the role of brand

[00:04:51] heading forward what still remains the same and what is different i'm glad you picked up on that because someone once told me that the average person is exposed to something like 5 000 brands a day compared to the 1950s when it was just 500 so i mean with that much noise i mean it's crucial that every interaction a consumer has with our brands whether they're seeing a billboard on a bus or

[00:05:16] or using a product or engaging with a brand online it must feel really meaningful and really consequential so when a brand interaction feels meaningful what do you feel is usually the case is it just about a value exchange is it about moving them emotionally i guess more often than not when a brand is successful what have you seen be the case yeah i mean i was thinking about this before we sort of entered into

[00:05:43] the room together but i saw an example quite recently from the food brand maggie now i think they're in a super competitive space like they use fairly traditional tv ads tactics like discounts are pretty prevalent in that whole category for driving trial but frankly i think a brand will can monetize themselves if that sort of one tactic becomes their sole strategy but maggie i think did something

[00:06:09] quite different they created this free cooking curriculum it was entirely on whatsapp and they personally connected through audience through cookery classes and i noted down some of the results before this chat but they received 200 000 messages in their first eight weeks on whatsapp they had a four point lift in ad recall they had a three point lift in campaign awareness and for me i think this is

[00:06:34] a perfect example of meaningful engagement they're not just relying on ads they're not just relying on discounts they're understanding and engaging with their audiences and when a brand really offers something that gives value to people that's when they start to build these lasting connections in my mind yeah and i think that's really the core distinction between advertising and content right like advertising is what's my unique selling proposition and content is what my consumer really care about where does my brand fit in

[00:07:03] how can i deliver upon those unmet needs and in the case of a cooking class obviously they identified the insight that the consumers needed those cooking classes needed that education and to connect your brand to it you're driving deep engagement clearly as evidenced by the messaging and that is the new way to build i think brand equity versus just plastering the same message over and over again like we saw on the 50s and 60s in the heyday tv yeah and it becomes more about conversation than just broadcast alone

[00:07:32] absolutely so you're working on vanish right now which is a laundry home care brand obviously the category you play in is what i would call like a low engagement but heavy usage category in other words like people don't define themselves by their laundry attorney but they buy it every day and it's a huge market share etc so it's up to you to make what is an unsexy category sexy and i just even by looking at the branding it's fun it's different i can see why you've had success with it but when you're

[00:08:00] working on a category like home care and particularly within the brand vanish like what are some of the considerations that you put into play when making sure that you're creating something truly differentiated and sign up to build the breakthrough i mean it's a good question and it's kind of interesting isn't it because you sort of say maybe low engagement but the reason why i say it's interesting is i once spent some time calculating how many interactions vanish might have per second

[00:08:26] and i got to something like 12 interactions per second that's based on the 70 or so different markets in what do you mean by that interaction per second so this is what i mean so 12 interactions per second based on how many markets we're in based on product costs sales volumes media exposure how many uses of the products having in someone's day-to-day so 12 interactions a second is a lot

[00:08:52] so i think to your point to nail a brand's distinctiveness we first need to define how we want people to experience it and that's across a labyrinth of different touch points both online and offline today as we were discussing earlier it's not just tv advertising it's not just a supermarket we're talking e-commerce we're talking social we're potentially talking and varying different social channels and whatsapp messaging platforms and so on so starting to identify every touch point

[00:09:22] in that journey from a user's first exposure with a brand all the way through to repurchase once we know those touch points i think we can start to figure out which message which piece of creative will resonate most at each of those stages and for us as you said it's not just about pushing out content it's about providing the right creative direction and pretty awesome assets across the 70 or so different markets we operate in and frankly it's working vanish is fortunate enough to be i think

[00:09:51] in the top four percent of the most recognizable brands in the world now so it's running through that and being quite forensic about what that total journey is that's not easy to do in this market to build a brand with that type of awareness i mean that's quite an accomplishment and for what it's actually quite a young brand as well i mean we're less than 14 years old yeah it's not like tie which is kind of has much deeper history what's interesting being on the website of vanishing and one thing that

[00:10:18] stuck out is this big tagline clothes live longer with vanish and when you talk about like unique selling propositions in your category often i just see about how well it is in terms of the efficacy of its cleaning power but this is the first time i can recall really being highlighted the ability that it doesn't damage your clothes where did that come from so vanish was founded on the sort of purpose if you like of safe yet effective stain removal a lot of competitive brands with things

[00:10:48] like bleaches that might dye your clothes or the other route might be very very heavy rubbing and mechanical action to remove a stain literally kind of rubbing clothes together which ultimately damage the fabric so this whole sort of notion of safe yet effective stain removal is very important to the brand and that delivers a certain degree of convenience but ultimately that allows you to keep your clothes in your wardrobe for as long as possible which has a really strong benefit on the person's

[00:11:16] pocket as well we'll be right back with the speed of culture after a few words from our sponsors it turns to innovation your space and i think for you guys to be able to continually innovate you need to think about new challenge you need to think about consumer trends how do you and somebody in your position have your finger on the pulse of these consumer trends and how do you spend your time making sure that you're in the know in a world that's changing so quickly yeah and i think that's a really

[00:11:39] again a very important one as i said we have proliferated i think as in varying different markets the sheer volume of individual touch points and the individual places that creativity can in essence play and as you rightly point out that could be very different in china as it might be from where you're sat or from where i am in the uk and the ways i'm engaging with those different mediums

[00:12:06] frankly they can change almost overnight i think we saw now that tiktok's the biggest search engine in the world next to google if i'm not wrong if not bigger and i think for me as sort of creative professional actually these just give us even more opportunities to do something quite inspirational on vanish for example is working a lot on creative content around trying to get people to engage with its products and show the results now that's quite fun that can be a really interesting creative start

[00:12:35] point for things like user generated content for things like influencer content now keeping abreast of it in a global position is a challenge and i think from the way rekit is structured we have a very strong link with our key markets so rekit's largest market is brazil in latin america we have very good links with our brazilian team in order to kind of understand how people are shopping and engaging

[00:13:00] with the brand out there we do a lot of work on audience media segmentation how people are consuming certain types of media and that allows us to start to think about what that journey is we were discussing earlier what message do i want to surface at those key points but in my mind i think that the key part of all this is to make sure that everything remains conversational that engagement must be two

[00:13:24] way and that's something i think as brand owners if we are let's say not linked to the markets well enough if we're not sure about how those mediums are consumed properly then it we're in danger of becoming a broadcast based brand which i'm very clear that we shouldn't be as part of my work on vanish sure and i think the antidote to not being a broadcast based brand is what you identified is playing in the creator culture because gen z is now they're not kids anymore they are becoming

[00:13:52] the core household buyer and gen z was the first generation grew up with the iphone and the iphone is their primary place of media consumption and when they're on the phone not just iphone android the smartphone itself they are more often than not consuming content not from traditional broadcast channels but from other people so your ability to tap into the creator culture was very much connected to your ability to capture mind share with this audience how involved are you in these kind of creator programs and where do you see that space evolving over time in terms of its importance

[00:14:21] and relevance to a brand like yours i think it almost comes back to the evolution of design full stop i mean design previously in the industry was very focused on the craft of making stuff look better and now that's still important i don't get me wrong but today brands are constantly innovating and expanding beyond physical products so you take companies apple amazon tesla they're the obvious one sure

[00:14:47] that they've evolved into service driven models the apple watch as we know is nothing without that ecosystem of apps to support it and all that has to be designed too so a lot of our work at racket is around trying to shape the business beyond just the product whether that's designing a brand's assets packaging or tackling larger business challenges we're still applying the same principle of design thinking

[00:15:13] and frankly the goal of that is to make sure we're not just creating better looking products but better products that kind of are more holistic resonate with people and frankly keeps evolving as the business grows yeah what shift gears a little bit to you and your career now because obviously you've had a great run and you've worked with some of the most prolific brands one question i meant to ask you earlier is you mentioned you had a lot of experience working for agencies and the agency model obviously is becoming

[00:15:41] quite disrupted but at the same time we all know some of the most brilliant designers strategists creatives reside or have resided in agencies what did you gain from your time of working in the agency landscape that you were able to take with you to your current role today i think it's almost a balanced diet of projects i think depending on the type of agency you're in but i mean my last agency van berlo which is part of accenture you could be going from designing the next sustainable

[00:16:10] deodorant with unilever to starting to talk about human machine interfaces on tugboats which may sound completely random but actually i think that sort of balanced diet allows you to take inspiration from one category and almost apply it and reskin it for another category and i think that's where innovation starts to happen is that sort of cross pollination synthesis of different ideas and i think

[00:16:35] as you say agency landscape is changing absolutely it is but there is still a very important role i think to have that sort of partnership with people who are working on all kinds of different industries and places and that partnership allows us to really start to create unexpected creativity left field ideas that traditionally might not reside in our category but can be borrowed from elsewhere right yeah there's

[00:17:03] tremendous value in going cross category because we think business is so different but ultimately i think and what i found a running agency for 15 years is that a lot of the problems that exist in one industry that basically exists in all the industries how do i capture mind share how do i differentiate how can i make sure i keep the value of my brand such as to be able to protect my margins all those things so you're right you can pick up an idea from one category that's very translatable

[00:17:30] to another especially in a world where as we mentioned earlier content is king and ultimately you're still talking to the end consumer that buys cars and laundry detergent etc but i also think beyond agencies as well what we're seeing is far more network between different businesses as well to solve problems and i think these collaborations are really helping us to innovate in new areas and kind of unlocking some

[00:17:55] quite interesting new products that are actually good for the world as well yeah absolutely so when you look back at your career in terms of the decisions you made along the way to kind of prepare you for a role in brand management at the highest level what are some of the decisions that you made right in retrospect that gave you the skill set and expertise to be able to thrive in this challenging environment oh that's a good question i think one of the sort of early skills i learned to hone if you like is this

[00:18:23] thing around resourcefulness trying not to be limited by the resources that we have around us if you want to create radical ideas you almost need to build the selling case for those radical ideas so that might be as simple as okay well i can't afford a photo shoot well pick up a camera take a picture do it yourself sell it in and as part of that startup mindset which kind of has always allowed

[00:18:50] me to start thinking about how you might scale an idea and that might be okay well we've got a really nice idea for a new innovation i can't afford to launch it at scale well how do we maybe start to test the waters on the digital environment to test like initial appetite from people on those ideas so i think certainly working as well in agency culture that resourcefulness and that startup mindset in order to try and sell things in to get that next bit of budget in order to scale that thing

[00:19:17] and iteratively build something out was certainly important to me as i started my career there's something i still do now absolutely i think so many of our just being an employer like so many of our best employees are exactly that they are resourceful because there's always a reason to say no there's always a reason to say oh i need to hire somebody or some company to get this done before people actually really take the time to try to figure out on their own and especially now with all the tools at our disposal growing amount of powerful tools i mean open ai if they just

[00:19:46] announced sorar which is like a text-to-video ai platform where you can create hollywood style footage just with a simple prompt i mean we literally have the power of hollywood the power of solcom valley in our pockets and power of madison avenue really to create anything right now and i think to say you can't do it really i think is the worst thing before actually really trying and being resourceful so i think that's a great way i also think and maybe just an additional point but brands

[00:20:12] are quite flexible things they are adaptable so i don't think we need to be afraid to push the boundaries to try radical things but i think the other thing to know is with that you've got to be really tuned into the signals i mean if something's working run with it scale it but if it's not you kind of losses quickly learn from it use that as fulfill next thing so many companies i've worked with so many big companies where they'll spend millions of dollars or tens of millions of

[00:20:40] hours on a huge campaign and then when it's over they'll just do something completely different and it's like well hold on like what did we learn from this is there not anything that we can take from this and sometimes it does great instead of trying to make a sequel that is even better than the first one again they'll just create a completely new brief and do completely something different i think what we've seen with certain brands like just say red bull what they've done well they've created a platform and it just made it better and better and better and they've cut out a niche for

[00:21:06] themselves because in a world where there's so much choice you really have to be the very best at whatever it is that you focus on versus just trying to be something new every single planning cycle yeah i agree absolutely so to wrap it up nicker and it's been a great discussion is there a mantra or saying that you guide your career by that comes to mind it's an old one i think from the raf the royal air force in the uk which just says rules are for the guidance of the wise and

[00:21:31] the blind obedience of others and i think that resonates in the world of branding the landscape is always shifting so we do need to stay adaptable and we can't just blindly follow old playbooks we've got to be willing to break a few of those rules and if we want to stay relevant yeah well you heard it from nick guys everybody don't be afraid to break the rules don't be afraid to innovate color outside the line so to speak because that's where all the opportunity is so nick thank you so much for taking the time lay cannot wait to see again what's up your sleeve and what's coming

[00:21:59] from you next with the vanish brand everything you work on so thanks so much for taking the time to join us today thank you matt a real pleasure thank you on behalf of suzy and we keen thanks again to the great nick horan the global brand experience lead for wreck it for joining us today be sure to subscribe rate and review the speed of culture podcast on your favorite podcast platform so next time see you soon everyone take care the speed of culture is brought to you by suzy as part of the ad

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