WFL (ASX) 2019 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity

Originally posted by Catstar: ↑

Exclusive: P&G, Huffington's Thrive Global Team Up To Turn Everyday Products Into Wellness Boosters
News16 Hours AgoFortune — Sy Mukherjee

Consumer goods giantProcter & Gamblehas teamed up withThrive Global, the wellness and behavioral health firm led by Arianna Huffington, in a bid to turn some of P&G’s most commonly used products into wellness boosters.

The partnership involves a half dozen P&G brands – including Crest, Oral-B, Pampers, Venus, Secret, and Pantene – and spans both social media marketing campaigns and new internet-connected consumer health devices. The groups are announcing the initiative at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France on Monday.
picture ORAL-B device

https://start.att.net/news/read/category/news/article/fortune-exclusive_pg_huffingtons_thrive_global_team_up_to-rtime

A connected OralB devive

That includes the Oral-B Sense, an upcoming WiFi-enabled “smart toothbrush” that provides personalized feedback to consumers on their brushing habits. Thrive’s central role across the P&G portfolio will be providing what the company calls behavioral “microsteps” in order to “habit-stack” – i.e, build a positive, affirming mental habit into something consumers may already do every day.
That could include anything from urging people to give themselves a life-affirming message when putting on deodorant in the morning to singing a song to their babies while changing their diapers, Huffington toldFortunein an interview.
Both Huffington and Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer at P&G (a company whose products reach some five billion people), emphasized the potential scope of such a joint campaign.
“Human beings gravitate toward ritual… and P&G products have incredible compliance,” said Huffington. She added that the only way to end widespread burnout among workers – a cause she has long championed, and a reality the World Health Organizationdeclared a workplace crisisjust last month – is to build healthier habits, especially when it comes to mental health.
“The habits for the products we provide is quite high; 90% use deodorant, many people brush their teeth twice a day,” said Pritchard. “Through content we’re creating with Thrive, they’ll be able to learn these microsteps and use them in the everyday with our products.”
Advancit Capital and entrepreneur Sean Parker.The New York-based Thrive Global has been valued at $120 million, post-money, said sources, in the transaction. New investors include Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff and the venture firm IVP.IVP has invested about $20 million and Benioff $5 million. The rest of the funding came from another new investor, Marketo co-founder and former CEO Phil Fernandez, as well as early investors including Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Advancit Capital and entrepreneur Sean Parker.The New York-based Thrive Global has been valued at $120 million, post-money, said sources, in the transaction. New investors include Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff and the venture firm IVP.

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So here's what I got from that article and the collaboration between P&G & Thrive...Thrive supposedly being 'the wellness and behavioural health firm'.

I'm not saying either way, whether or not P&G have been advocates of WHO's (World Health Organisation) new definition of 'stress & burnout - depletion and exhaustion, negativism and cynicism, reduced professional efficacy'; but I am very unsure that the answer to issues surrounding 'stress & burnout', over-worked, under-paid, under-resourced corporations/staff, is via a collaboration with Thrive...who clearly are about to embark on methods that applaud the burying of one's head in the sand and adopting hypnotism, NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), positive affirmations, in an attempt to band-aid the real crisis, with one mission in sight...the chase & support of the almighty dollar.

It really looks to me that P&G are about to embark on a program, in plain sight, that will now incorporate using forms of known hypnotism, NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), positive affirmations and Rituals. I guess you could still call this clever marketing. SK-II even have a new 'Magic Scan' to boot...read on.

How about we address the real issues of 'stress & burnout', rather that try to trick people into thinking they feel better, by promoting addictive behaviours designed to retain existing customers and persuade them to purchase more products.

Also interesting is that P&G recently bought a start-up company called Walker & Company (Bevel men's grooming products and Form beauty products), designed to make health and beauty simple for people of colour. One of the core investors in Walker & Company was IVP (International Venture partners), so it looks like people of colour are P&G/Thrive's next target market for mind domination...read on:

https://www.vox.com/2018/12/12/18136744/walker-company-procter-gamble-acquisition-tristan-walker-bevel

Further interesting here is that P&G have been associated with IVP for a very long time, dating back to at least 1999, where P&G & IVP had what currently looks like a now shelved $50 million dollar collaboration called Reflect.com, offering more that 50,000 beauty products online:

http://reflect.com/

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/1999/09/13/daily6.html

Don't venture down the rabbit hole if you get queezy...In 2007 P&G completely shut down Reflect.com in order to focus on their core businesses' and the $57 Billion dollar merger of the day, which was Gillette:

https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2005/09/07/why-p-g-shut-down-reflect-com/

http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/11/08/268555/index.htm

And even more interesting is that the new collaboration to be formally announced by P&G & Thrive in the coming week, will once again have IVP at the heart of the action:

The New York-based Thrive Global has been valued at $120 million, post-money, said sources, in the transaction. New investors include Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff and the venture firm IVP.
IVP has invested about $20 million and Benioff $5 million. The rest of the funding came from another new investor, Marketo co-founder and former CEO Phil Fernandez, as well as early investors including Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Advancit Capital and entrepreneur Sean Parker.
https://www.vox.com/2017/11/29/16714392/arianna-huffington-30-million-thrive-global-120-million-valuation

No conspiraciacy here CB, just linking fair-dinkum facts publicly available in plain sight, online.

So it appears that P&G/Thrive/Walker & Co/IVP's best answer to the World Health Organisations (WHO) crisis of 'stress & burnout - depletion and exhaustion, negativism, and cynicism, reduced professional efficacy - are they going to put in their best performance?' - is to create a network of related entities who all agree that it is time to further hypnotise and polarise the masses, by using already proven techniques that involve ever so subtle and not so subtle techniques.

These reactive approaches to employee 'stress & burnout' global issues, further highlights the now arrogant approach of corporate's and start-ups to get in bed with each other to bleed more dollars into their own pockets. I guess it never occurred to anybody that maybe it's time to start paying a fair wage to workers, while providing engaging and empowering working conditions? This would be a good start to address the 'over-worked, under-paid, under-resourced' mentality that plagues earth as we speak.

So now 'Burnout' is supposedly an official workplace crisis:

The World Health Organization this week recognized burnout as a syndrome stemming from “chronic workplace stress.”

https://thriveglobal.com/stories/burnout-officially-a-workplace-crisis-world-health-organization-arianna-huffington/

Satire/fly on a wall conversation - 'we have a great idea that involves talking yourself into good mental & physical health via hypnotism, NLP, affirmations & rituals to encourage repeat product purchases, brand loyalty and reaffirming why you need more of them every single day of your life. Let's convince every consumer on the planet that it's their fault and not ours. This way, wages, conditions and human rights become a distant memory and band-aids flourish once again. Look over here at this nice shiny new thing. Don't take your eyes off it. That's it. You see, it was your fault all along and now, we have cured you and made a few extra bucks out of it too, which I'm sure you don't mind. I'm so happy for you and that you finally realised it was your fault and not ours. Don't you dare say that P&G/Thrive are ugly...take a long look in the mirror...it was you all along':

That could include anything from urging people to give themselves a life-affirming message when putting on deodorant in the morning to singing a song to their babies while changing their diapers.

Thrive’s central role across the P&G portfolio will be providing what the company calls behavioral “microsteps” in order to “habit-stack” – i.e, build a positive, affirming mental habit into something consumers may already do every day.

“Human beings gravitate toward ritual
… and P&G products have incredible compliance,”

YOU WILL COMPLY, whether you realise it or not.

Although Arianna from Thrive seems to have good intentions, imo she hasn't/isn't fixing anything. But she has found a way to make money from already struggling consumers, while she continues to further line the pockets of her partners P&G, Unilver, FMCG's etc.

Going it alone all of a sudden looks rosy if this is our new strategy. And yes, I say 'our' strategy, as P&G are our only current product partner.

'Visitors can experience next generation skin counseling through a Magic Scan —a first-of-its kind AI enabled skin analysis that unlocks skin age and personalizes product recommendations by sitting in frontof a mirror for a mere three minutes. No direct facial contact is needed as the Magic Scan can detectfluctuation of skin and assess the stability of skin by focusing on three core zones of the face –eye,cheeks and mouth.

Visitors can also look forward to a whole new way of trying SK-II products at the Interactive Tester Bar.At the center of the experience is a magical mirror powered by eye tracking technology that allows visitorsto control the content using only their eyes.

Visitors can keep their hands free to sample the productswhile receiving helpful application tips at the same time.Finally, the Smart Product Shelf introduces a fresh, effortless way to learn about SK-II’s products--withjust a glance. Using eye-tracking technology, the Smart Product Shelf is designed to catch each visitors’eyes as they walk past and follow her gaze to serve up relevant, snackable information about whateverproduct she’s looking at in real time.'

https://news.pg.com/sites/pg.newshq.businesswire.com/files/doc_library/file/SK-II_Future_X_Cannes_Fact_Sheet.pdf

Meet Yumi, SK-II's new Galactic AI Soul Machine Ambassador:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12241370

I still can't see one single sign of an OBJ-embedded MicroArray Product anywhere in any of these links. Once again, after over a decade of collaboration with P&G; very disappointing. So much for Connect+Develop?!?