You can see the trend in supermarkets everywhere—moms in aisles probing deeper and deeper into product labels. Knowing where something comes from and what it’s about is increasingly important to consumers. And a new survey says people are now more than willing to do the detective work to figure it all out.
Weber Shandwick recently surveyed consumers and business execs in the U.S., U.K., China, and Brazil and found that 70% of respondents stay away from a product if they don’t like its parent company. What’s more, transparency has become a necessity. 56% hesitate to buy a product if they can’t find information about the corporation behind it.
Though consumers and executives both agree that social and environmental responsibility are important talking points, consumers are also becoming quicker to point out the cognitive dissonances between what a brand says and what their parent corporation does.
A Fast Company story on the research singles out Kashi’s problems relating to its parent Kellogg: “One of the ingredients in Kellogg’s FiberPlus Berry Yogurt Crunch—the preservative BHT—gets a thumbs-down from Kashi’s Ingredient Decoder tool.” Can’t you just see your mom’s disapproving nod?
As customers, communities, and shareholders use new criteria to make their judgements, companies that are seen as irresponsible or creating products without purpose will get punished. And companies that get it right will get rewarded. Havas media documented that more than half of all consumers worldwide are prepared to reward responsible companies by choosing to buy their products—and that percentage keeps rising.
Of course, this reveals a huge opportunity for brands to distinguish themselves. Only 28% of consumers worldwide think that today’s companies are working hard enough to solve our social and environmental challenges.
How and where will businesses find responsible growth? Game Changers, an upcoming Wolff Olins report, looks at this issue from companies’ perspectives and highlights the key behaviors that are now shaping the future of business.
Which high-growth companies are stepping up to distinguish themselves by being both commercially and socially minded?
What will happen to brands that don’t innovate to create new value?
More to come. Stay tuned for Game Changers, coming soon to WolffOlins.com.
In his New Yorker piece “The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” Malcolm Gladwell presents a critique of social media’s ability to create real cultural and political change. He argues that Twitter, Facebook and other platforms have failed to produce the kind of paradigm shifts that the 1960s protests did.
While I appreciate Gladwell’s attempt to play devil’s advocate, I often find that people too quickly embrace the effects of social media without any critical analysis. However, I think the changes social media has created are difficult to measure. The social impact it has is much more subtle and embedded in our everyday lives.
One of the most important social areas it has transformed is the relationship between brands and people.Because of the reach and speed of social media, information that was previously kept from the public eye can now spread quickly across communities. As we have seen this year with BP, it is in the best interest of brands to be transparent and honest. Research has shown people – particularly millennials and teens– are increasingly skeptical of advertising. Brands can not rely on slick images, but must create valuableproducts, services and experiences.
Furthermore, Twitter, Youtube, and other platforms have empowered the user with the tools to influence and co-create the brand in ways that facilitate the change they want to see in the world. Brands can help curate these conversations, productions, and changes by creating platforms for users to make a difference. For example, with corporate citizenshipat the heart of many of its marketing efforts, Timberland has created an Earthkeeper, an online community for individuals who are interested in reducing their eco footprint and promoting sustainability. Through social media-driven projects like Pepsi Refresh, brands can support individuals who have groundbreaking ideas that have a positive impact on communities.
Social media may not lead to a widespread social revolution – in the traditional sense, but it has transformed the ways in which brands and people interact. We should approach the effects of social media with a critical eye, but understand the potential it has for creating social change in and through brands.
Brand Value + Social Media + Corporate Responsibility
CSR reports have become the vehicle by which organizations put a moral and ethical face on their existence. At its core, it is a reporting exercise. It is usually reflective and without standards — but is that about to change? In autumn of this year, ISO (International Organization for Standardization) will release ISO 10668 – Monetary Brand Valuation. What does brand valuation have to do with CSR? Well, the back of this ISO offer has an interesting hook, SAM Group – the guys who produce the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) – intend to upweight businesses in the DJSI if they adopt ISO 10668. Suddenly, the criteria for exacting value on brands is directly linked to their sustainability ranking.
The upweighting is based on three key factors: Legal, behavioral, and financial analyses. Taking a look at behavior analysis, the brand must understand the size of the market and trends. What are the stakeholder attitudes? What are the economic benefits bestowed on the business by the brand? In many cases media is still used as a platform to talk at instead of enabling conversation with constituents and customers.
Here’s the reason why social media, brand strategy and CSR folks should start meeting by the water cooler more often. If we’re entering a new paradigm of evaluating brand behavior as well as CSR reporting methodologies representing the practice toward improved corporate citizenship, and if we agree that social media is the most relevant way to start and maintain conversations with people to share a brands values, how might we use this brain trust to help shape business strategy?
The following are 5 key challenges that, if addressed correctly, will differentiate leading brands and lead to greater customer loyalty.
1. Create value with Values- gain trust through responsible and transparent actions.
2. Visualize brand value (and risks) across the complete brand eco-system: the offer, culture, business model, and communications.
3. Stop approving obvious solutions; overcome incrementalism as the hallmark of efficiency engineering, and make change that people want and need.
4. Bring back experimentation and invention as business values, and open them up to collaborators.
5. Constantly challenge, inform and refresh people’s exposure with the brand over their entire experience- not as market segments with prescribed preferences.
Zappos’ innovative approach to customer service, Target’s social giving platform, Patagonia’s footprint chronicles, Proctor & Gamble’s the brandery, Interface Carpet, and Seventh Generation are just a few of the increasingly inspiring examples where brands have embraced the system of social communication, and embracing some or all of these challenges in a way that builds brand loyalty and value, while mitigating risk, reducing costs, and positioning the business for a new era of growth.
Is your brand fit for the future?
(Eric Wilmot)
photo courtesy of Victoria Garcia, Creative Commons
