Sustainable Brands 2010 Re-Cap, Part 1: Consumer Engagement
There’ve been a lot of write-ups of lessons learned and ideas shared at the recent Sustainable Brands 2010 conference, and – because I, too, learned so much – I thought I’d add to the online resource. I paid attention to three specific areas – consumer engagement, business trends and social justice. Following are my thoughts on the first:
Consumer Engagement
I began the conference by attending John Marshall Roberts‘ “Worldview Learning” presentation. Roberts is an applied research psychologist who delves deeply into the psychology of human behavior for the purposes of better communicating new messages. He referred to psychologist Clare W. Graves and his “spiral dynamics” work, which lays out the nine different states of cognitive complexity in the ways humans think and process ideas. According to Roberts, humans each have various combinations of the following “worldview” ingredients: values lens, filtering style and social optimism. Roberts’ work gives framework for helping marketers or corporate leaders understand where their audiences or workers are coming from – and how to reach them with new and perhaps uncomfortable ideas.
Within the nine different cognitive complexity states lie clues, for example, on how those with a more systemic type of thinking might communicate with and inspire those with a more individualistic thinking style or a patriotic/absolutist style. For instance, a lot of those who may need to be persuaded about sustainability in the corporate world may be of an individualistic mindset. It takes finesse for sustainability proponents (like me) to turn what we feel is obvious and right into that which an individualistic thinker can believe and be inspired by. Another point Roberts used was the image of “moving a rock uphill” in organizational change, in that we can conceive of moving a rock uphill by forcing it, persuading it or inspiring it. Ideally, for the sustainability pursuit, it would be the latter.
Bruce McGregor of innovation consultancy, IDEO, reminded the SB2010 audience that change is (disappointingly!) only 10% successful. But, to create change more successfully, he suggests we need to inspire joy, not fear; harness force with what we have already at our disposal; and “create the crowd” (which to me sounds a lot like psychologist Robert Cialdini’s concept of “social proof” – of which I am a big fan).
Other ideas about sustainability and change from the conference came in the example of Starbucks current pursuit of a recyclable cup solution.* That brand’s sustainability team has found that sharing with and involving customers in the process of research and development, from the start, has been key to engagement and progress. Customers gladly get involved in the challenge and now root for the company to find the solution. Their involvement inspires them to stay loyal to the brand, which is seen as sincerely making an effort. This serves Starbucks’ larger goal of attempting to make “bring your own cup” as popular and successful as “bring your own bag” seems to be becoming nationwide.
What that Starbucks cup research process demonstrates is something Earthsense/CRD Analytics research (also introduced at this conference) indicated and that panel member Maddock Douglas’s Marc Stoiber put so well: “the closer you (the brand) comes to the consumer with your green product or sustainability effort, the easier communicating it will be.” Starbucks is almost uniquely positioned to achieving this sort of engagement because their product is contained in a cup that millions of people handle daily – many of whom (we hope) are struggling about how to dispose of them.
*This just in – great article in Greenbiz.com about Starbucks cup initiatives.
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Stay tuned for Re-Cap, Part 2 – Sustainable Business Trends.
