Design Mind frogcast: Voices from Cannes: Day 3

On this episode, we’re bringing you the third episode in our special summer mini-series recorded live from the Cannes Lions 2023 International Festival of Creativity. frog was an official partner of the event, where we hosted a cabana along the famed croisette. What ensued was four days of programming that included on-stage panels from our sunny beachside terrace and interviews with expert guests from leading brands in our on-site recording studio. In these series, we bring some of these conversations to you.

Day Three in the frog Cabana featured conversations on the topic of ‘Expectations for a Connected World.’ At a time of eroding boundaries between realms like the digital and physical, product and service, insight and interaction, bringing these worlds together in a seamless way is an ongoing shift.

Listen to the podcast episode and read the full transcripts below. You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify  and anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Episode Transcript:

Design Mind frogcast
Bonus Episode: Voices from Cannes: Expectations for a Connected World with Mercedes-Benz Mobility and Nestlé

Guests: Chiara Diana, Chief Design Officer, frog; Timo Bularczyk, Director of Global IT, Mercedes-Benz Mobility; Ximena O’Reilly, Global Head of Design, Nestlé & Advisory Council, Design for Good; Christina Schehl, Vice President and Head of Germany, frog

[00:09] Elizabeth Wood: Welcome to the Design Mind frogcast. Each episode, we go behind the scenes to meet the people designing what’s next in the world of products, services and experiences, both here at frog and far, far outside the pond. I’m Elizabeth Wood.

[00:24] Elizabeth Wood: Today on our show, we’re bringing you the third episode in our special summer mini-series recorded live from the Cannes Lions 2023 International Festival of Creativity. frog was an official partner of the event, where we hosted a cabana along the famed croisette. What ensued was four days of programming that included on-stage panels from our sunny beachside terrace and interviews with expert guests from leading brands in our on-site recording studio. In this four-part series, we’re going day-by-day, sharing these interviews with you. As mentioned in our previous episodes in the series, which we do believe you’d enjoy if you haven’t listened already, you might hear a bit of background chatter from a very active cabana, or even an air conditioning unit–June is hot in the south of France. But, it all adds to the ambiance. So let’s jump in.

[01:13] Elizabeth Wood: Day Three in the frog Cabana featured conversations on the topic of ‘Expectations for a Connected World,’ hosted by Chiara Diana, Chief Design Officer at frog. At a time of eroding boundaries between realms like the digital and physical, product and service, insight and interaction, bringing these worlds together in a seamless way is an ongoing shift, requiring endless experimentation, refinement, launching and scaling of new business models alongside entirely new ways of working. On stage, guests from Mercedes-Benz Mobility, beloved football team AC Milan, Cambridge Consultants, Nestlé and L’Oréal joined us to discuss the future of connected experiences. Here’s Chiara with more info.

[01:58] Chiara Diana: Hello, everyone. I’m Chiara Diana, Chief Design Officer at frog and Head of our Global Innovation Team. I have been the host of our third day at Cannes Lions, where we unpacked with our guests the expectations, opportunities and challenges to deliver significant, scalable and sustainable value in the connected world. With our guests, we discussed how businesses could create novel innovation by connecting products and customers, brands and people in novel ways—ways that capitalize on emerging technologies and the insights that are coming from an unprecedented volume of first- and third-party data that we can now collect at scale and in real-time, across physical and digital realities.

[02:48] Chiara Diana: We all know that the global Internet of Things market is booming and is projected to grow steadily about 30% starting 2023. Recent research by our own Capgemini Research Institute has confirmed that for many organizations—88% of those we interviewed—it’s a priority to offer intelligent services in the next five years in their portfolio. Nevertheless, guess what. Only 7% of those organizations have scaled the use cases in this space.

[03:21] Chiara Diana: So along the day in the Cabana, we spoke with our guests about the potential of innovation in the connected world, as well as the challenges to unlock his value. If you’re curious to learn a little bit more and get into the details of those challenges, you can find a link in our show notes to our article on Business Leader. Thanks to our guests that joined our conversation on stage and in the podcast.

[03:47] Elizabeth Wood: Thanks, Chiara. Now onto our first of two conversations in this episode. Timo Bularczyk is Director of Global IT for Mercedes-Benz Mobility. During the Cannes Lions festival, before joining us on stage in the frog Cabana, Timo sat down with frog Vice President and Head of frog Germany Christina Schehl to talk about what connected mobility means for customers and automotive manufacturers alike. Here’s Christina and Timo now.

[04:14] Christina Schehl: Timo, welcome to Cannes Lions. It’s a pleasure to have you here at our frog Cabana. So maybe let’s start with the first question, which is what kind of consumer developments in terms of expectations, trends, behaviors, do you see impacting what Mercedes-Benz and you with Mobility are doing?

[04:39] Timo Bularczyk: Sure. First of all, thank you for inviting me to this beautiful place. Happy to be here and talk about this super exciting topic. Customer behavior has changed over the last couple of years because digitization is all over the place. And with digitization, it’s “let’s get my things done frictionless.” When it comes to mobility, the car in itself doesn’t give you mobility. You have to do something around the car, right? You have to buy the car, which would be frictionless, the usage of the car, we just imagine the cost of it standing there, but also in taking care of the car, doing services for the car, washing, cleaning, everything. You don’t want to do that. And so the ease of having a car has changed over the years.

[05:19] Timo Bularczyk: It’s become obvious to us that we need to offer more services to our customers at their convenience, which is much more easier with the apps that we have today. You see within the Mercedes me app, I need to do a service, the fuel is low, there are services offered to me.

[05:35] Christina Schehl: Right. So talking about the customers a little bit more. What I’m experiencing in the automotive industry, especially with the traditional car manufacturers, is that everyone shifted for the last decade from a very product-centric to a very customer-centric organization—really putting the customer first. The question I have is actually because you said like, it’s about selling cars, of course. But the customer has more of the expectation to come from A to B, not really necessarily buying a car? Is this a shift that you’re experiencing as well?

[06:09] Timo Bularczyk: Yeah, yeah, we see that. We still have the luxury of the individual mobility. Then, people want to own a car. They want to have their surrounding which they have configured in a very nice way where they can leave their belongings and have that intimate feeling of that—that it’s mine. We still see that. But there are moments where people, you know, on a Friday night want to go for a party. Typically, you don’t want to go there with a car because the way back is more difficult. So you use mobility services that are there on demand. And ideally again, this is frictionless between your own car, the mobility services that you have around the car, that you can order that with a fingertip—that the data is available, easy payment, and you don’t have to think a lot about it. Just use it. That’s what our customers expect, for sure.

[06:55] Christina Schehl: So maybe talking about the car and the connectivity of the car in the future, sometimes there is the wording of the “smartphone on wheels.” How do you think the connected car will be transformed? How are you planning to do that? And what do you think is the role of the connected car in the future?

[07:14] Timo Bularczyk: Yeah, I mean, just think back. In earlier days, you went to the dealer, you bought a car and that was it, right? You could use the car for mobility services today. That’s different. You can order a car, you can configure it to your liking. But a lot of the services that we offer, you can either activate once you sit in the car, or once you have sold the car. The second or third owner can activate that. So, that device stays way longer in use, which is also from a sustainability perspective, quite nice. But that needed us to change how we offer services to our customers. It’s not that we build it once and then it’s there forever. You need to have the flexibility in the car to offer services, and those are typically digital services like navigation updates and convenient services, like parking, offers in the car, things like that where you prepare the car to offer digital services and in the car, you can activate them. And ideally, you can pay for that. That’s why we implemented, for example, Mercedes pay. So our car is the first payment device as a car.

[08:16] Christina Schehl: I’m very sure that autonomous driving will help a lot on that path. What is your expectation on how this will accelerate on the connected car, and how we can use these and what kind of services you use in the future? Now that we’d be having the time in the car not driving, but spending time with something else?

[08:34] Timo Bularczyk: Yeah, well, just imagine if the car would go all autonomous, and you didn’t have to take care of the stress of driving the car. You can do your emails, do your work, or just read a good book or watch a movie. That’s convenience that I personally would like to have. And I believe a lot of customers as well.

[08:49] Christina Schehl:  Yeah, I do agree. I mean, that’s a couple of years ahead of us, but I’m very sure it will come. That’s for sure. But it’s a little bit of time also, of course, for the automotive manufacturers to get prepared, which means how to really connect the car. And it’s not only by the way, from my perspective, connecting the car and making the car connected with connected services. It’s even beyond because the customer journey is much more than the experience that you have in the car when you are transported or you’re driving. It’s as you said at the beginning, it’s about how do I sell a car in the future digitally? How is it connected to my app? How is the dealer connected in the end when I enter a dealership? So it’s all about connectivity in the whole customer journey. So for me, the biggest question I have to you is, what do you think and what do you see as the biggest challenges at the moment to get this on one integrated platform? To make it really seamless, as you said, frictionless? I have the feeling that this is something that car manufacturers are struggling a lot with. What is your perspective on that?

[09:48] Timo Bularczyk: Yeah, the complexity is something that we have to deal with because we’re transforming in every area of our company to make that frictionless experience happen. The customer doesn’t care if he’s talking to someone from after sales, or from sales or mobility services. He sees one app screen or in the car one screen, and he says, “You guys have all my data? Why do I have to type it in again? Why do I need to confirm certain settings in different places of an app?” Customers expect frictionless services at their convenience at the time when they need it. And for that, we have to bring people together that have not been working together before. They have always focused on their individual product. And we have many products across our company, as you can imagine. Those need to come together and work towards a common goal, which is only possible if you implement agile frameworks where you have common goals, where you manage dependencies and ensure that we’re all fighting for that one customer journey that is as frictionless as it could be. With all the different priorities that we have in our company, with all the different skills with different mindsets, that’s really one of the biggest challenges that we have seen since our company has existed. Because that includes really everyone that needs to work together. Before that, we had engineers in one place to create a beautiful car. We had sales persons with the skills to sell them. But now, it’s bring that in an online journey and optimize supply chain so that it actually happens towards customer needs. That’s a big endeavor that we have.

[11:23] Christina Schehl: It is. I fully agree. Not coming from an internal organizational perspective, but because every organization has a part in his strategy around being customer-focused, sometimes I do from an outside perspective have the feeling that many organizations and businesses think they know their customers, but they honestly do not really act on it. Do you agree?
Timo

[11:48] Timo Bularczyk: I agree. And we have the saying in Germany that the bait needs to be tasty for the fish, not for the fishermen, right? And we sometimes believe that the solutions we love are also great for the customer, but from the very single-minded view of the product and the background I come from. But talking to the customer or putting yourself into the shoes of the customers, you see that it’s not only the product that you deliver, it’s much more. It needs to connect also not only within the Mercedes-Benz ecosystem—you need to grow that, right? And you want to connect to other services because we don’t own the whole space. We don’t own the parking lots. We don’t own all charging stations. But if we offer services to our customers when they go from A to B, and they need to charge and they want to have that seamless experience, then we certainly need to connect to those services, integrate them and make it hassle-free although it’s not in our control.

[12:38] Christina Schehl: Right. So this is a really crucial point that you mentioned. This is about partnering. So it’s not only about collaboration within your company and within the automotive manufacturer organization, it’s about how to really get the partners on board. And the right ones—how to select them to really add value for the customers, not necessarily in their own product and service portfolio, but much more beyond. Is that the trend? We see manufacturers are going to really create ecosystems. Of course, for customers, but also to get them locked into your system and stay there.

[13:12] Timo Bularczyk: In order to create that stickiness to our brand, our customers can demand services from us that are frictionless. And that can only mean that we open up and allow others to bring their services to our devices, the car, the app. To have frictionless payment through Mercedes pay to be part of our charging network, to offer parking space at airports that you can pre-book through our MBUX. We can’t manage that all on our own. That’s a platform business where all of those services come together. And therefore we need to open up on both sides—on our side to allow services to come in and from the service side. Saying, “You know, I can’t reach as many customers that you can with your brand, so let’s work together on this.” And this partnership is increasingly happening.

[13:58] Christina Schehl: So platform business also means collecting a lot of customer data. So how do you see the role of customer data in creating an ecosystem and also offering the right services and products to customers?

[14:10] Timo Bularczyk: Yeah, customer data is crucial to be successful. When it comes to offering the right services at the right time, first of all the customers need to agree that they are sharing the data for. And more and more customers do that. We see that many years ago, everyone was afraid of sharing data. We had the “big brother” and “What do the companies do with my data?” That has changed itself from “big brother” to “big mother.” They take care of me, they deliver services, and I need to share data for that, right? I need to send a consent that I want to be approached for good marketing efforts when my contract ends, right? I mean, Mercedes knows my driving behavior, why wouldn’t wouldn’t it be at the customer’s convenience if they offer a car which perfectly fits my needs, even before I think about it, and then get into contact? If I share my route, how I’m going to drive from A to B, wouldn’t it be great if Mercedes gives me information on where I should charge? What’s the best way to get there in an eco-friendly view or in an efficient way? That data is shared. We use it and then bring the best services to our customers.

[15:13] Christina Schehl: Very good. So, Timo, last question from my side: What are, from your role, and from what you saw in the last year, what are the biggest challenges to overcome to really create a connected mobility experience for customers? The three top ones.

[15:28] Timo Bularczyk: One is definitely overcoming the complexity. It must be easy from our side to connect to other partners. Also, our service partners should connect to us in a very simple way so that they can offer directly to our customers. The second is technology overall. We need to really see what’s happening on the horizon, which services we can offer using AI. For example, ChatGPT. I mean, that’s everywhere. How can we bring that into our cars, to our services, to our customers? By the way, ChatGPT has now launched in the US in our cars. So when you talk to our car, the answers will come from ChatGPT. And the third one is also on our roadmap for sustainability. How can we not only think of more profit but more benefit for the customers. For sure, we’re a company—profit is part of our story. But also to have more and more services which contribute to sustainability by 2039. We would like to be carbon-neutral in the entire lifecycle of the car. That’s still a long, long way. But also digital services can help a lot and together with the partners, we can make that happen. And that’s a huge challenge that we still have to tackle. And we’ll be successful, hopefully much earlier than 2039.

[16:42] Christina Schehl: So it remains exciting and I’m very much looking forward to what’s happening in the automotive industry and with mobility. Thanks for being here, Timo, today. And thanks for answering all these questions. I really enjoyed it. And I’m very much looking forward to our panel discussion right now here at Cannes.

[17:01] Timo Bularczyk: Thank you very much looking forward to it as well. Me too. Have a great day.

[17:05] Elizabeth Wood:  Our next conversation is between the day’s host, Chiara Diana, and Ximena O’Reilly, Global Head of Design at Nestlé. Along with leading design across Nestlé’s thousands–yes, thousands–of brands, Ximena is a member of the Advisory Council of Design for Good, a non-profit alliance of leading global organizations that leverage their design and creative talent to positively impact the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Ximena joined us on a panel with leads from L’Oréal and Cambridge Consultants, then later one-on-one with Chiara in our on-site podcast studio. Here’s Ximena and Chiara now.

[17:42] Chiara Diana: Hello, everyone. I’m Chiara Diana, Chief Design Officer at frog. So today we are here with Ximena O’Reilly, Global Head of Design at Nestlé. And at the same time, Advisory Council of Design for Good.

[17:56] Ximena O’Reilly: Yes, indeed. So my number one priority is Nestlé. But in the past year, I’ve gotten very involved in a new nonprofit called Design for Good, where I’m privileged to be on the Advisory Council.

[18:08] Chiara Diana: Fantastic, Ximena. And in fact, in the conversation today, we want to talk about these two hats that you wear, and what is the interplay of one and the other. We have been talking informally about how you’ve been working in the past years really to bring the design function systematically embedded and strategic within Nestlé at scale. So the question that I have is how are you bringing the perspective of social impact within Nestlé leveraging your external perspectives?

[18:39] Ximena O’Reilly: Well, I’ll approach the answer in a slightly different way, which is yes, we’ve been working a lot over the past—I’ve been at Nestle for 10 years. We’ve been looking at processes, governance, ways of working, and I suppose the Holy Grail is then the people-side. How can we make sure that we’ve got the right design talent, can retain them, but also can grow them? And we’ve also been as a company going through a transformation when it comes to our impact goals and sustainability, of course, at the forefront. And the design function, of course, plays a role in various parts of that process, of that journey. And, what we were feeling was that the training and the inspiration that we can give our designers internally, is somewhat limited to sort of the narrow areas where we have that information, or we can be guiding. And so I’ll tell you maybe a little bit about how I got involved in Design for Good, but we were really looking for: How could we be inspiring these designers to be able to play a much more active role in helping this transformation that we’re on?

[19:43] Ximena O’Reilly: A small group of design leaders met and they essentially developed the concept of Design for Good, which would be a standalone nonprofit that would unite the power of these hundreds and hundreds of designers that we have embedded within all of our different organizations to really try and solve some of the world’s most pressing issues. So it was incorporated, I think it was last April. It launched. We had over 600 designers from alliance partners. So Nestlé is an alliance partner, but we have competitors in there, too. We have General Mills. We have PepsiCo.

[20:20] Ximena O’Reilly: So what this means is that really during the course of eight, 10 months, small teams of designers that each company provides with some work time to be able to donate their time towards it. They get to work with designers from other companies on real-life pressing problems on the ground in places where, you know, development organizations are really trying hard, but they don’t have the design skills. So if you take a step back, the reason why this is so exciting is there’s no development organization in the world who could afford to work with 600 designers, right? And we’ve created this power of being able to bring great design skills to the world’s most pressing problems. At the end of the cycle, so each year, it’s a different UN Sustainable Development Goal. And at the end, all of the ideas are open source. So none of the companies involved retain any of the IP. It’s all open source. The idea is that anyone in the world could then use these ideas and operationalize them.

[21:21] Chiara Diana: That’s quite an impact. It’s an opportunity, I would say, for your team and the teams of the other firms out there working together with you in order to expand their vision as well as as their impact. How, from a Nestlé perspective, have you been seeing value then, the benefits coming back, and the learnings and the experiments to be brought within your more day-to-day design function?

[21:47] Ximena O’Reilly: To be very honest, it’s too early to tell. What I can see anecdotally is that there is a huge group of designers who are highly motivated. Some of them could not stay in the program the whole year. It’s quite a lot of time. And, of course, you know, things change during the course of the year and projects spike, etc. And that’s some of the things that I think Design for Good next year are going to take on board. You know, to really be able to bring designers into different phases of a project, as you would in a consultancy or an agency, rights? You know, you have different talents that are required at different stages. So that was a learning, I think.

[22:24] Chiara Diana: Maybe it feels like the experience of Nestlé in driving solutions to scale is something that you can definitely tap into in order to help those ideas or some of those ideas to make the shift. How are you thinking about that loopback of collaboration?

[22:44] Ximena O’Reilly: Yeah, exactly. And you know, it’s funny, because we haven’t done a lot of internal communications on Design for Good. There was a lot going on last year with the Ukraine War and other things. And frankly, it was a startup, right? So we wanted to see within the design area, how is it going to work? And this year, we’re going to be advertising it internally a lot more. But even with that minimal visibility or awareness, we had non designers come and say, “Hey, could I get involved?” And at the time, “We said no, we’ll wait and see and we’ll see you next year.” Definitely we’re going to open it up.

[23:21] Ximena O’Reilly: But again, it requires a certain amount of dedication on the Nestlé side to put that structure in place to make sure that the teams understand their roles, how much they should be involved. But let’s just consider the fact that we’re able to pair designers who might be sitting in, you know, Central West Africa, or in the Caribbean or Brazil or Beijing with designers who are working at Microsoft in Seattle, or Philips in the Netherlands. So that ability to collaborate over many months—and these teams are now friends, even though they only met each other virtually—that’s really magical. And that’s something that I think is difficult at a big company like ours. How do you encourage that within the realm of your everyday business? This is, to me, personally, I feel like this is a training opportunity—being able to work directly with designers who may have totally different backgrounds, different industries, different levels of experience, different skill sets, on something that you can all agree is for the greater good. So you can put aside all of that and collaborate.

[24:33] Chiara Diana: So you spoke about this diversity of design skills and perspective as a critical element in order to drive meaning and value at this stage of the innovation. But you also spoke about the next wave—how you want to bring ideas or some ideas of this first phase into a next level of development. What do you think will be the critical element that you need to be considered as the critical partners that need to be brought on board, beyond the ones that have been part of this first phase in order to get closer to real-world impact?

[25:08] Ximena O’Reilly: It’s a good question. I’m not sure I have the answer yet. But one of the things I think we’ve learned is some of the early briefs that the teams developed in the beginning of the last round were not yet in collaboration with a development organization. So the partnering with a development organization came a little bit later. And I think those are some of the teams that have had the hardest time: getting to a place where it’s actionable. What we’ve decided as an organization is that the co-creation of the brief needs to be with a development partner. because they’re the ones on the ground. They know what they know, right? They don’t know design. They don’t know what the solutions could be, but they can guide, in a much more collaborative way, so that at the end, we won’t have this gap. What this gap is is when you see the projects, you’ll see how vastly different they are. And some of them need tech engineers. Some of them need supply chain. Some of them need the ability to find partners on the ground who can tangibly create physical, whether it be mockups or, you know, pamphlets or other things, right. So, it’s quite vast. But again, I think that the beauty is: How can we empower those development organizations to do it? And it might need to be through fundraising. So, you know, I think Design for Good as an organization is going to have to look at that aspect, too. And we’ll see where it goes.

[26:41] Chiara Diana: That sounds fascinating. Looking forward to checking those ideas as soon as they go live. How are you seeing Nestle embracing this journey to impact, from the people—the way in which people are engaged—to the way in which to develop your own product service and solutions?

[26:57] Ximena O’Reilly: No, I mean, it’s embedded in everything that we do, which is really heartening. On the brand side, we’ve even woven it into every brand. We have thousands of brands, so every brand has its brand essence, but it also has its contribution framework. And in that contribution framework, there’s a roadmap of the impact that that brand is going to take on, and that then fuels everything that gets done, whether it be innovation, or activation, or packaging, etc. You won’t necessarily sense it everywhere yet. But this is now woven into the DNA of how we do brand building. So that was sort of step one.

[27:37] Ximena O’Reilly: Then step two, of course, is our most tangible impact potential is through our packaging. Because we’re still a company of selling products, right? So with the billions of packs that are out there, you know, we needed to make sure that any action that we wanted people to take, or any action that we’re taking that we want to make sure that people know of, is communicated on our packaging. And so we initiated this initiative called the “backstory” because we wanted every one of our products to have a backstory, and then guide our marketers in terms of how to weave that into the storytelling on pack, how to make sure that everybody understands the basic functional attributes. But also the emotional—you know, the fact that we might be contributing to social impact to farmers in certain parts of the world. And it’s hard, like, some of our packs are teeny tiny, right? And the next frontier is, how do we systematically have a digital link—so that connection between a pack and a place where we can show and tell and experience more of what we’re doing and what our ambitions are and how people can participate in contributing to it.

[28:50] Chiara Diana: In fact, you’re mentioning a very interesting point. You as an organization can embrace your journey to sustainability to reduce impact, but a key complementary part to that is the consumer. And so there is an element of behavioral change that can be triggered by your perspective, but at the end is in the hands of the consumer. And I think that there is a fascinating link: you in a way as behaviorists, but at the same time as educators and facilitators for this behavioral change to happen.

[29:24] Ximena O’Reilly: Yeah, and you know, it’s difficult, transitioning, for instance, to paper wrappers from foil. We need to make sure people know the difference and know that they might be recyclable. So that’s a communication job. And, again, packaging is sometimes very limited in how it can communicate. But it has to do that. If it doesn’t do that, then it’s on us for not making sure that consumers understand. Then yes, there is a behavioral change. But firstly they need to, you know, recognize the change.

[29:52] Chiara Diana: It starts with the accessibility. It’s kind of the basics. If you think about the state of change model, the first one is really understanding that there’s something that I need to change on. And I think that if you look at the later stages of that, you’re moving from packaging of some kind to a paper wrapper, as you mentioned, but maybe in the future, you would move to almost packaging-less with a refillable.

[30:19] Ximena O’Reilly: We are already. I mean, we’ve been early experimenters in that. We worked with the organization called Loop years ago on developing these refillable containers. We also have in many of our Nestle shops in some parts of the world, we have containers where you can refill your Purina Nibble—the dry food for your cats or dogs. So we’re starting, and we are collaborating with some retailers in that space. It does also require consumers to play a role in wanting to do that. And, of course, we would encourage it. And I would be excited if we could move more in that direction.

[30:56] Ximena O’Reilly: It is complicated. It changes the supply chain and distribution models. I think that we all do this in our daily life, right? At home, we reuse jars for other things. We don’t necessarily go back to the store. Years ago, in California, I had a store near me where I used to be able to do that. But I think it requires planning. It requires changing your attitude towards certain things. And then from a brand owner’s perspective, we could actually invest more in the container. So it isn’t always seen as just that thing that we need to dispose of as easily as possible. How can we make sure that it is seen as a valuable element that can be useful or actually adorn your countertop as it’s displaying whatever is inside.

[31:45] Chiara Diana: And as you refer a lot and often to the topic of the brand, at that point it really becomes an even stronger piece within your brand ecosystem. Thanks a lot, Ximena. Very nice conversation as usual.

[31:59] Ximena O’Reilly: Thank you, Chiara.

[32:02] Elizabeth Wood: That’s our show. The Design Mind frogcast was brought to you by frog, a leading global creative consultancy that is part of Capgemini Invent. Check today’s show notes for transcripts and more from our conversation. You’ll also find links to a Business Leader article, in which Chiara lays out the five challenges for building a sustainable, customer-centric connected world. Plus, frog’s 2023 report “The Road Ahead: Conversations on the Future of Mobility” with more perspectives on connected mobility. 

[34:00] Elizabeth Wood: We really want to thank our guests Chiara Diana, Chief Design Officer at frog, Timo Bularczyk, Director of Global IT at Mercedes-Benz Mobility, Christina Schehl, Vice President and Head of frog Germany, and Ximena O’Reilly, Global Head of Design at Nestlé. Stay tuned for the last episode in our series live from Cannes Lions 2023, as well as our regularly scheduled programming of stories from and conversations with expert guests from across frog, our partner organizations, and friends from brands we love around the world.

[34:32] Elizabeth Wood: We also want to thank you, dear listener. If you like what you heard, tell your friends. Rate and review to help others find us on Apple Podcasts and  Spotify . And be sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. Find lots more to think about from our global frog team at frog.co/designmind. That’s frog.co. Follow frog on Twitter at @frogdesign and @frog_design on Instagram. And if you have any thoughts about the show, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out at frog.co/contact. Thanks for listening. Now go make your mark.