Why Captain Birdseye is really a pirate
Back in 2018 strategist and brand innovator Alex Dobson read Be More Pirate. At the time he was working at Nomad Foods, the parent company of our well known and loved tea time favourite - Birds Eye. Seeing an opportunity to inject the company with the spirit of rebellion he invited Sam into work with them. The full story is in How to: Be More Pirate.
The result of their workshops was a series of internal mutinies and ‘new rules’ :
1. Building our culture:
Be More Clarence - Clarence Birdeye was first and foremost an entrepreneur. He saw the potential for frozen foods by learning from Eskimos, and bounced from bankruptcy in 1924 to selling the company for $22 million in 1929. In essence: be brave, be curious.
Meeting Free Mondays - Mondays are for talking and connecting – this will be tested for three months with the senior team leading the way.
Be Here Now – no mobile phones in meetings!
2. Accelerating our agenda
Diversity and balance – drawing attention to different thinking styles (diversity is broader than HR box ticking)
Readiness to act – take more risks, be willing to ‘kill’ things quicker, anticipate trends, follow an 80:20 mindset.
Plastic waste reduction programme – supporting the Ghost Gear initiative, changing labelling to help consumers recycle correctly, and working out what it will take to eliminate single use plastic from all Nomad sites.
3. You own it! Be Accountable
Embracing the power to say no
1 in 1 out - accept that things can be dropped.
Fuck it time – allowing a few hours each week for proper uninterrupted time to think and reflect, rather than react.
When asked what a pirate state of mind means to him, Alex described it as this: knowing what values matter to you, doing the ‘wrong’ thing with the right intentions, taking ownership, and thinking in a more offbeat way.
Steve Axe, Nomad’s CMO said that “Sam's workshop turned us all into pirates and gave us a mantra we can all live by – needed now more than ever.”
Alex added, “I’ve never been somewhere so receptive to this kind of thing, there is definitely a new focus on being entrepreneurial that wasn’t here before.”
Be More Clarence
For Alex, it’s ‘Be More Clarence’ is the part that really sticks. As part of his ‘FuckIt time’ Alex began to research the history of the company, and what he discovered was that their founder Clarence Birdseye was really something of a pirate. Not because of the connection to the sea, as you might imagine, but because of the way he thought and lived. We don’t tend to think about Birds Eye in relation to poverty or food scarcity but in the 1920s, when Clarence chanced upon an entirely new way of storing food, he improved the ability of millions to eat healthily, for less.
He innovated at the edges and ended up creating something that we now take for granted. Not because he was a saint, but because he was experimental, trusted his instincts, collaborated well outside of his usual circles, and was prepared to fail in the process. The team found that they hardly needed to Be More Pirate - the hero they needed, was there all along.
