How the Chief Digital Officer at Danone Set a Guinness World Record.
“Sometimes you win. Sometimes you learn.” — Michael Aidan
This week’s interview was with Michael Aidan. At the time of our conversation, he was transitioning between his role as Chief Digital Officer at Danone, to joining a relatively newer organization as the Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer of DxO. Michael has incredible entrepreneurial tendencies, he’s a true intrapreneur. This comes through so clearly in the interview, I’m really excited for you to hear it.
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Here are the three things I learned from this interview:
1. Michael is relentless in the pursuit of his goals. Born in France, after college it was common for someone like Michael to head straight to the military. Around the time of his graduation, the French government introduced a new program that allowed certain graduates to work abroad for a global French company instead of serving in the military.
It took him almost a year to find a firm in New York that would take him on the condition he sorted out the logistics.
He applied — and was rejected — seven times by the French government, until they gave him the ultimatum to stop applying. He was on the cusp of being given a rifle and shipped to Nuremberg, Germany for 16 months.
As a last ditch attempt, he wrote a seven page letter to the French Foreign Minister, whose name he found in a newspaper somewhere, explaining that he was one of the few individuals who was embracing the spirit of the law by helping grow a small french company internationally.
A few days later, the Chief of Staff of the Minister gave him a call, and ultimately he got the approval he needed.
2. Michael teaches us all how to innovate within an organization.
In 2009, Michael and his team launched the first ever global campaign for Evian, creating the Evian Roller Babies Campaign, which set a Guinness World Record at the time with 45 Million+ Views (and countless millions of additional impressions through media coverage, and remixes of the video and commercial).
Three years later in 2012, many months before the concept of an Amazon Dash button ever existed, Michael and his agency created the Evian Drop button, which was a magnet that lived on your fridge, and at a press of a button, delivered a case of Evian water to your door in the UK and France.
Before Amazon Dash, and Gangnam Style, there was Michael Aidan.
3. Sometimes you Win. Sometimes you Learn. The successes in his career like Roller Babies came as a result of many failed-to-launch initiatives. Before the Guinness World Record Hit, he tried to launch a similar campaign for Volvic which got 35 views on YouTube.
In another project, his team tried to re-invent the plastic Evian bottle. The end result was so catastrophic that he had produced 400 Million useless bottles, that could barely pour water out without spilling it everywhere.
Michael survived those dark times and continued to rise in his career. That’s really impressive resiliency.
Hope you enjoy listening.
Daniel
Daniel Rodic is the Co-Founder of Exact Media, which is transforming the world of direct mail by enabling brands owned by companies like P&G, PepsiCo, Unilever and L’Oréal to distribute samples and coupons using the excess space in eCommerce parcels that have already been shipped to consumer.
Daniel was named Top 30 Under 30 by Marketing Magazine, and represented Canada at the G20 Entrepreneurs Summit in Moscow and Beijing. Daniel served on the Leadership Council for the United Nations Media for Social Impact Summit and he is a 2016 finalist for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
