2 Hours Changed the CPG Internet

One day I was searching for dye-free Tide detergent. Imagine my surprise when I saw their product locator page looked exactly like the ones I had created for M&M/Mars earlier that year. Imagine how much more I was surprised when I right-clicked, hit “view-source” and saw my hand-written old-fashioned style code with the nested <td> and <tr> tags I created in notepad. Code I wrote the same evening I bought a book on the way home to learn HTML and create this interface.

Earlier in 2001 …

IRI came to our office one day to try and pitch me on their new product locator tool. I was responsible for Consumer facing technologies and digital marketing. When they showed me the interface it was very IRI-lingo-focused. All the products were in a singular drop down menu with crazy cryptic names like “MMS PWR SHPR 2.2OZ MEGA PK 24/CASE” and “STRBST PEGPK 5.2OZ ORGNL 36/CASE”

There was a weirdly arranged set of input boxes for search radius and zip code and then a submit button off to the side. I looked at it and told the IRI guys, “I’m interested in the concept, but this user interface is horrible. I can’t put this up on our sites.” Considering most people knew where to find M&M’s I didn’t see much value in putting up an ugly page that didn’t add any value. It was getting late, I felt there was an opportunity to alleviate “hard to find product” calls to Consumer Affairs so I accepted their offer for a follow-up meeting the next morning.

The Expert Illusion

Just like in today’s “look what I can do” AI tool world, the dot com era was filled with action that had no corresponding vision or structure attached. People made it seem like they were experts and that it would be hard to figure out how they created all this. Action was high, thinking (about people and needs) was non-existent. Bringing in an expert web agency would be a couple hundred thousand dollars and months just for one brand’s page.

I wasn’t in the mood to pay for customization or wait months for them to make a product update, and I was certain this HTML stuff couldn’t be that hard. I used to program in PASCAL & Fortran, and I was fluent in SQL, so how hard could this be? I had a two-hour drive home, stopped at a bookstore on the way, found a guide to HTML programming, and bought it. I didn’t have a web design tool so I had to open the code in notepad and search for the <form> section so I could start updating the interface.

I knew the design needed to be more user friendly. Right off the bat, I decided to make the layout more intuitive and add numbered steps to the form. First, what product are you looking for? And I replaced the drop-down list box with a radio button group with English names and pictures of the product. Second, where do you live? Enter your zip code and choose a search radius based on urban vs rural areas. Lastly, click submit to get your list. I also went in and found the headers and the part of the results page I could modify without breaking the structure. Made sure the form passed the right variables and added a refine our search button on the results page.

All of this was new to me, and because I was working in a text editor, I wrote all my HTML code the way a PASCAL or Fortran programmer would with nested lines to see where each now column and row or section started. This was the critical fingerprint (not intentional) that allowed me to see that people weren’t just borrowing my design, they were “copy & paste”-ing my code directly.

Presenting it Back

That next morning, I walked into the meeting and told them I created a mock-up to explain what I was thinking. They took my html files and put them on their computer which had access to the test data. The new form worked and to my surprise, it wasn’t, “hey, this is great feedback.” Instead, it was, “Wow! We can use this just the way it is.” I didn’t have the experience back then to explain conceptually what I was looking for, so instead of just saying this is wrong, or giving it to somebody else to figure out, I created a visual representation that would illustrate my thinking. At that point nobody I knew was talking UX (user experience); there wasn’t a lingo to explain why I felt the interface needed to be understandable and usable.

I’ll stop here for a second to a cover a couple of important points.

Feedback: When you can’t articulate “right” you have to recognize there is no “wrong.” This is one of the biggest mistakes I see in marketing and advertising, as well as other functions. There are a lot of people running around with “wrong, wrong, wrong” placards trying to make everyone else seem small. The onus is on you to define what you want and what success looks like. It’s critical in getting work done through a team and it is critical in communicating through AI. You get out what you put in.

“Experts”: Any time something new comes out there are a lot of early adopters who have used it once or twice calling themselves experts. When something is this new, you are better off finding people who know how to deliver excellence and are agile learners. Their expert knew how to create web pages and had Front Page experience. But somebody who just learned HTML writing raw code in a text editor could create a more useful interface because usability and purpose wasn’t what the expert considered necessary vs knowing how to use the tool. At that point there were not UX experts roaming the halls.

Simplicity: This is a recurring theme in my content. Some of the biggest impact changes I have seen came from small insights and little effort. I don’t remember working more than two hours on those two M&M’s web pages that night. My code was used as their new pitch, and every CPG company using IRI’s product locator was using my code and interface. That lasted for 15 years. It also created the opportunity for me to create an internal agency to build out web tools and small sites for all the lesser brands that couldn’t afford 7-figure web investments. We could get a beautiful, fully functional site up for a brand within 30 days and cost less than $10,000. Big solutions don’t always need herculean effort or budgets.

What’s Next

The CPG giants didn't need a multi-million dollar agency to fix their product locators. They just needed someone to stop looking at the intimidating technical syntax and look at the underlying structural logic. That is what a Decision Architect does. And that is exactly what we are unpacking every single week inside this space.

This blog isn’t a collection of nostalgic corporate bedtime stories. It is a live diagnostic lab. We are going to take the hard-won scar tissue from 30 years of organizational warfare and use it to strip the over-engineered, bloated sludge out of your day-to-day operations.

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