Modern Mobile Innovation

As Marketing Manager for Asia-Pacific at Bugaboo, Martijn Ros is ready for the future. Bugaboo is regarded as one of the world's most innovative mobility brands. Bugaboo has carved its own path in the infant mobility sector and refuses to follow convention in their pursuit of modern mobility in a modern world. Coming from a background in search engine marketing, Martijn was on the forefront of social media during its inception. That cutting edge experience and expertise in communication has prepared him for the challenges associated with his position. However, it's Martijn's passion for building new things and drive to create that perfect experience that keeps him pushing forward.

6 questions with Martijn

1. What makes an innovative culture of innovation

The first step is to really understand why you're innovating. I deal specifically with innovating our way of communicating with our audiences and I see a lot of initiatives and brands struggle with the term innovation. For many brands it's hard to determine what innovation is in their realm. The most successful companies in innovation I believe revolve around the user. Where some brands go wrong is that they innovate for the sake of innovation. The truly successful ones put the consumer or whoever they are working for central and try to add something to the experience.

2. Do you have specific rituals for resetting the team to be creative?

We try to regularly look at ourselves and our internal structure to make sure we’re facilitating everyone’s desired outcome. When growing, people tend to forget what they are doing innovating for. Especially in our Asia-Pacific region we have a very young and enthusiastic team and if we hit those walls it's often because were looking inside out and forgot why we started doing what we do. If we are in that situation, I try to push my teams to take a step back and remember what our initial objectives were. Sometimes they change but looking back at where you started and trying to determine where we are helps us move forward.

3. How do you identify trends?

I look at what's going on in the world on- and offline, and what moves people. Social media is a huge driver for us. We have the same philosophy as a lot of big design companies do. We try to give people what they didn't know they needed yet. It's an old Steve Jobs quote but a good one. The difficulty is the world has changed a lot in the last 10 years. The voice of the consumer is much more important than it was before. Therefore our philosophy in communication is being challenged a bit by the consumer being very vocal. So we listen a lot more. We do a lot of market research to improve our positioning and communications efforts. But, we really try to stick to what we believe in. We'll never give people what they want just because they asked for it. And it’s not just in marketing. Our designers and engineers work in the same way. For example the Bugaboo Donkey came from people asking for a double stroller. Instead of looking at what the people asked for we looked at the situations you'd face going out with two children. We solved those issues by introducing a convertible stroller you can use for one child or two children with the same or different ages. That was one of the best examples of Bugaboo listening to the consumer wants but doing it in our own way.

4. What is the biggest challenge you face when innovating?

On a communications level and a marketing level the most exciting thing is how a lot of brands look at how they can integrate their product offering with new technology. A project I did recently was our first mobile app. Every product has an app so we looked at it from a more existential stand point. We asked ourselves; “what can an app add to our product experience?” So we built an app called Bugaboo Passport that's focused on getting everything out of your product. If something's wrong or you have a question about functionality it can give you the info. It's always with you when something happens on the road as it tends to. I didn't want to build an app that was flashy and does a lot of things but forgets about how we can help our consumer. I haven't seen another brand or company in our market that has a mobile utility to help people on a go.

5. Do you find inspiration from adjacent industries?

I find a lot of inspiration in a wide range of other industries. We are now working on a strategy to grow our brand in China. It's an important market for us going forward but we see a lot of companies making the wrong choices there. We look closely at the fashion industry and how they develop their brand strategies in China as many of them make use of their (European) heritage and brand stories to explain the premium positioning of their products very well. We definitely also look at the automotive industry and any other mobility brands for telling compelling stories about product performance. Inspiration comes from many places and sometimes it’s far away from what we are doing. However, we look at the mechanics that make an idea work and try to see if we can work with it.

6. Looking to the future, how is Bugaboo going to remain a leader in innovation?

We need to make sure we understand our consumer very well and be even quicker and better at adjusting to what moves them.