| Follow our blog |
Click here to check it out and let us know what you think.
|
| Add a question to CCI |
|
Have you just launched a new product, created a new campaign or just want to find out what concerned consumers are thinking?
Add some questions to next month's Concerned Consumer Index and get the answers you are looking for.
Questions can be added on any topic and at any time. We also have a number of sector focuses which are listed below.
Apr - Airlines
May - Mobiles
Jun - Cars
Jul - Banks
| |
|
| Greetings! |
Finally sustainability seems to be moving (and this is not an April Fool's joke!) from being just about how we, as business, can make ourselves more sustainable, to how we can help our customers be more sustainable as well. Just look at P&G's recent announcement in the US that it will be expanding its environmental responsibility and education platform (Future Friendly) to meet its pledge of reaching 50 million households with conservation education by 2010.
Other brands are getting customers involved by giving sustainability an exciting and desirable face. During the ad break in this year's Superbowl, Audi showcased its latest A3 TDI which was recently voted Green Car of the Year. In the ad, which was watched by an estimated 100 million people, Audi took a satirical look at the green movement in a way that aims to persuade those non-hardcore environmentalists that sustainability can be exciting and desirable...it's not all about hair shirts. Will this change our opinion? Maybe. But it will certainly go some way to making many think a little differently.
Or look at Nike's commitment to get nine teams in the Football World Cup to wear shirts made from plastic bottles. Making the shirts this way is expected to cut the amount of energy used in production by 30 per cent and save 13 million plastic bottles going to landfill sites this year alone. Okay, so it's not going to save the world, but if it raises the profile of sustainability at one of the biggest sporting events in the world and gets consumers thinking, it can't be a bad thing.
We are seeing more and more brands catching on to the competitive advantages that brand responsibility can deliver and, with a confluence of factors 2010, looks like it might be a watershed year. At the recent Business and Sustainability Event (BASE2010) in London I said exactly that as part of the panel session looking at Protecting and Enhancing Your Brand. For those that didn't manage to make it, here is a tidied version of what I said.
It is good also to see some of the front runners not resting on their laurels, but continuing to push the boundaries in sustainability (and we're not just talking about the soon to launch Innocent Buy One Get One Bee promotion we helped to develop). In March we have seen Marks & Spencer making a major new commitment to become the world's most sustainable retailer by 2015. Again, what is interesting in the small print is that M&S is also committing to engage their customers - in fact they want to help three million of their customers develop their own Plan A by 2020.
As M&S has realised, if you're serious about integrating sustainability into everything you do it's vital you engage your key stakeholders in the process, whether it is your suppliers, customers or your employees. So it's interesting to note that in a recent survey from Brighter Planet over 85% of firms fail to properly engage employees on sustainability. If you want to know how businesses are responding, we now have quite a bank of case studies of doing just this for some of our clients.
Customer engagement is just one area that stands out in this month's Concerned Consumer Index - focsued on the Home and Gardens sector. Here we have a sector whose constituent companies have taken a range of high profile steps in communicating the sustainability message to consumers - think B&Q and its One Planet Living - and the consumer response is positive. 58% of consumers say they think the sector is doing enough to address social and environmental issues - up 11% from 2009, and the most positive response in any of the sectors we cover in the Index.
Which is more than consumers seem to think about energy companies - according to a recent survey from Accenture only 22% of global respondents said they unconditionally trust energy companies to act on climate change. With this level of distrust amongst consumers, trying to drive behaviour change through the energy sector is clearly going to be an uphill struggle. So why isn't government making more use of a sector (like Home and Gardens) which has the potential to really drive sustainable behaviour change? Our article this month looks at the links between these two sectors and government policy.
Our next Concerned Consumer Index focus will look at supermarkets and beyond. With Fairtrade marching on apace in the sector, Waitrose about to be stocked in Boots (now there's a match made in heaven), and food waste rising up the agenda, it will be interesting to see how things have changed over the last 12 months. If you would like to see more data from this month's survey, or want to find out how to add your own questions to the next one, please email David on david@goodbusiness.co.uk.
And as the parties reveal their election promises it will be interesting to see which commits to making policies from their sustainability aspirations - a delicious prospect...Much like the chocolate eggs I'm sure you'll all be enjoying over the Easter break!
Until the next time - onwards and upwards.
Best wishes,
Giles Gibbons
Founder and CEO
|
|
|
Behaviour home improvement
|
By Giles Gibbons
 There is a pressing need to address the contribution that housing in this country makes to CO2 emissions - around 27% at the last count. With little prospect of much new energy efficient housing being built in the next decade, improving the energy efficiency of existing houses through retro-fitting is essential to meet the country's carbon targets.
Making dull but necessary structural improvements, such as fitting loft insulation and better double glazing, to the places we live is important, but so is teaching us to behave differently. Turning down the thermostat, turning off the lights, using appliances more efficiently, and so on. The real scope for sustainable and sustained change lies when people do both.
This presents a huge opportunity for the homes and gardens sector. Retailers are well placed to provide the products and services needed to improve domestic energy efficiency, through the sale of energy efficient products and services. But they are also well placed to change the way we behave. When we are in their stores, we are focused on what they are selling, and what they are telling us. We're a willing audience, receptive to their messages.
And many retailers in this sector are already developing solutions that go beyond just providing low carbon products in their stores. From B&Q's recently launched Pay As You Save pilot scheme in London, its "One Planet Home" range and its environmental "store within a store", to Homebase's EcoHome initiative, helping customers make low cost environmental purchases, we are seeing significant investment in energy saving products and services designed to lower the customer's carbon footprint and cut their energy bills. The retailers are not only tapping in to the growing demand (the market for green home improvement has grown from £1.4bn in 1999 to £7bn in 2008), but also in these tough economic times reaching out to what Ian Cheshire, the B&Q Chief Executive, calls the "greener, thriftier consumer".
And this is bearing fruit. This month's exclusive Concerned Consumer Index survey for The Times, conducted by Populus, shows increasing levels of trust and consumer confidence that the sector is doing its bit to tackle climate change. 58% of consumers say that they think the sector is doing enough to address social and environmental issues - up 11% from 2008, and the highest level in any of the sectors we cover in the Index.
This is definitely good news for the sector. But there is something else interesting going on. Some retailers have announced partnerships with energy companies, offering discounts on energy efficient items such as thermostatic radiator valves and insulation products. Supported by big advertising budgets, these promotions come from the energy companies' requirement to spend a percentage of their revenues on installing energy efficiency measures in our homes. Carbon Emission Reduction Targets, or CERTs, cost energy companies billions of pounds each year - £3bn will be invested through CERTs between 2008 and 2011.
However, most investment from energy companies in meeting these targets has been through structural changes, such as providing loft insulation or energy saving light bulbs direct to the consumer (even if some of those 42 million light bulbs sent out in the last quarter are now sitting in draws), particularly amongst those at risk of fuel poverty. The challenge is that an approach which relies on shoehorning energy efficiency measures onto people without the support of a broader set of messages about changing the way we act is going to struggle to achieve broad and sustainable change. A man comes and asks if you'd like some loft insulation, you say yes, and he fits it and leaves. Your energy bills might be lower, but in terms of producing long lasting changes in behaviour, it's pretty ineffective. And there's something a little counterintuitive about an energy company, which makes more money when it sells me more energy, offering me ways to reduce my energy bills.
When funds are channelled into solutions that let consumers choose how and when they manage their energy usage, and give them the information they need to make a real choice - in other words, when energy companies work in partnership with DIY retailers, who not only know how to sell us things we need and want but also have more credibility in this space - there's a shift from the supply side of the solution to the demand side. We're focusing on behaviour change, rather than just structural change. And that's when we start to see big and sustained change.
So when the Government next starts to think about using business to deliver sustainable change, perhaps it should not only think about businesses with the operational capability to deliver it but also those that can actually take the consumer with them too. We might all save time and money and create a far bigger impact in the end - which surely is what it's all about, isn't it?
|
| Brand responsibility comes of age |
By Giles Gibbons
 I believe that in years to come we will look back on 2010 as the year that marketing and sustainability departments finally got it together, and started working together. This moment has certainly been a long time coming. When I started Good Business over ten years ago, people thought I was crazy when I suggested that marketing could be the vehicle for delivering sustainability goals and objectives, but it looks as if the rest of the world is finally catching up.
So, what's behind this sea change? Well, looking closely, I think we can identify four main drivers.
First, in most large companies, corporate responsibility or sustainability teams are well established and embedded, and are doing a good job of managing social and environmental risks effectively. In the past, senior people were understandably nervous about going out and talking to consumers about social and environmental issues. There was always that worry about whether your own house was in order or not. Now, further down the track, that worry has for the most part disappeared, and brand and marketing teams can be more comfortable talking positively about social and environmental issues without worrying that there is a skeleton lurking in the corporate closet.
In our experience, some really strong and innovative brand leadership concepts fell at the final hurdle - the boardroom - because senior management weren't confident enough in their own risk management systems to put their brand on the line. During what we call "the reporting era", companies went through a phase of assessing their impacts, measuring them and reporting on them. It was bureaucratic, heavily reliant on process, and had little emphasis on changing anything. But it was a fundamental first step in allowing businesses to become more ambitious and more confident about how they use their biggest assets, their brands, to facilitate change externally.
Click here to read the rest of the speech.
| |
