Sustainable brands and big data set to go mainstream in 2014
Tuesday, 11 February 2014 00:01
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No more hairshirts and niche products, Tom Adams predicts ‘conscious’ brands will go mainstream and the best will use big data to influence consumer behaviour
http://www.theguardian.com: Toyota, Tesla, Method, American Apparel and Nespresso all, in their own way, attempt to let us have our cake and eat it: sexy fast cars that run on batteries; a green washing up liquid that actually cleans; sweat shirts not made in sweat shops; luxury coffee that supports coffee grower profits and sustainable farming practices.
These brands achieved many of the highest prices in an online stock market for brands created by FutureBrand, bringing together more than 1,000 traders worldwide who bought and sold virtual shares in over 1,000 global brands for a year. The results seemed to show a significant interest in brands that manage a balance between what we want and need, or immediate gratification and long-term benefits.
Common sense might suggest that brands, however enlightened, are only designed to increase consumption and therefore production, ultimately militating against a future that is truly sustainable. So is this just tinkering? I think not. Evidence that more conscious brands are going mainstream is significant and they set the stage for a future where brands help us curb our demand too. But why and how would they do this?
The brands selected by our traders remind us of an obvious human truth. We like nice things but we often feel guilty about having them for reasons of health, environment or ethics. So we’re willing to embrace alternatives that help to offset the guilt as long as they do an equally good job as the alternative, less sustainable option.
It’s unsurprising perhaps that Tesla was the number one selling car in Norway in September. Or that Americans are using environmentally-friendly cleaning liquid Method. They aren’t choosing these brands just out of a sense that our individual consumption decisions have an impact on the world around us, they’re also doing it because the product works well and looks great. This is significant because an array of new values are becoming embedded in consumption considerations, to a degree that brands cannot ignore and which will collectively have a positive impact.
However, brands that do a slightly better job of being sustainable in the process of helping us avoid more kinds of compromise might not overcome the challenge of over-consumption. Wasting food, packaging and other costly resources at the current rate means brands could still be complicit in the bigger picture issue of non-sustainable production. This, in one possible future, is where data comes in.
People are increasingly comfortable using digital technology to build a detailed picture of their activity in many realms, from fitness to energy use and personal finance. Data-driven self-knowledge feeds behaviour change as people become more acutely aware of their performance against ideals, rather than merely sensing it.
With consensual access to this data, companies and brands can help us manage our consumption on an individual basis. They can bring this data together and help us understand it. They can tell us when we are about to waste something, replace it before its natural life has ended, or how to make it available to someone else on a rental basis.
Current aggregator brands such as multi-brand retailers that facilitate access to multiple products and services are lead candidates to further personalise their services to us, but there are clear opportunities for individual brands. For example, with access to the kind of lifestyle and financial data people are already collecting through use of Jawbone Up and Mint.com, a food-related brand can suggest the optimal diet for my circumstances, in the right portions.
Throw in geolocation and ingredients can come from local sources too. The most committed brands will earn the extra trust this requires by incorporating crowdsourced data about their own practices from transparency initiatives such as transparency initiative Wikichains. Ultimately my consumption choices will start to be framed by a real understanding of how my consumption affects me and everyone else.
Because we all have a sense that we consume too much, we just need a bit of help in context to make the right decisions. And we will come to expect that help from our favourite brands, as part of the experience for which we turn to them. We will give them our loyalty, when they demonstrate they know us by selling us less, effectively squaring the circle.
So I am forecasting that “conscious brands” – or brands aware of the impact they have on the world around them – will go mainstream in 2014. No more hair shirts or specialist brands, just products and services across categories that work with the grain of human nature, take sustainability for granted and position themselves around it. That’s good but what’s even better is that data has the potential to elevate that consciousness to encompass being alert and intelligent about consumption, influencing it in real time. That will help effect the changes that really matter.
(Tom Adams is Global Head of Strategy at FutureBrand.)
