Consumer demands for sustainability

Jean-Baptiste Moggio, head of marketing at RLT AdConnect, hosted this session discussing the consumer demand for sustainable brands in Europe, as media and video content are being used to educate the consumer on how to make long-term lifestyle changes.

AdConnect’s research found that consumption habits are going to change, but in very different ways across sectors. “We understood that it was difficult for brands to be perceived as being responsible,” adds Moggio.

Lucy Crotty, cultural insight and strategy lead at ITV, discussed the increase in sustainability messaging in video comms. “We started to see an uplift of briefs on all thing sustainability in the later part of 2019, and we’re seeing a lot of those briefs through a sustainability lens,” says Crotty. Agencies are also starting to ask brands to demonstrate their environmental credentials.

Broadcasters are working to change sustainability habits behind the scenes, often measured by the Albert Carbon Calculator, which calculates the carbon footprint of all its programmes. “If you do not know what your impact is then you cannot make change,” says Jane Atkinson, SVP of global production at Fremantle agency.

Finding a renewable energy source is the best way to improve sustainability, but everyone is starting from a slightly difference stance, adds Atkinson. In terms of community availability or technology advances, every company has a different solution.

Internationally, countries have different key drivers in terms of sustainability, whether that is health, sustainability or animal ethics. Brands need to think about this when marketing their communications and match these key drivers with the target demographic.

“Sustainability is really resonating with a younger consumer, so that would be their primary reason to come into buying meat free products, for an older consumer its health driven. If we went to Sweden then sustainability is the number one driver but if we went to Italy it would probably be health again,” says Gill Riley, marketing director at Quorn Foods.

The pandemic created new challenges for corporate sustainability, such as the initial return of single-use plastic. However, in order to keep teams and communities safe, brands had to accept the short term hit, says Atkinson.

How brands can become truly purposeful

The pandemic put brand purpose at the top of many business agendas, but the most impactful organisations have been those that put these beliefs at the core of its culture and behaviour.

“Delivering against your purpose is nothing new, but we believe that the actions taken by brands during the pandemic highlights an opportunity in how to deliver purpose more effectively and efficiently going forward,” says Simon Gregory, joint chief strategy officer at creative agency, BBH.

There has been a shift from brands talking about why they exist to actually reacting and responding to customers and community changes. This year has seen a rise in short-term and impactful action that is directly felt and seen by the consumer.

Gregory encourages comms teams to ask ‘what is the point of your brand?', to shift the emphasis from internal confidence and strategy to driving the business  and being action orientated.

Emma Botton, group marketing communications director at Tesco, discussed the ways the brand worked on delivering its purpose during the pandemic. Tesco’s purpose is ‘Serving Britain’s shoppers a little better Every Day’, which places the consumer at the front and centre of its brand. It used tangible insights and data to move from weekly and quarterly reporting to daily interaction, with 20,000 consumers directly sharing their anxieties with Tesco. Having a consistent stream of information was crucial in maintaining purposeful communication, says Botton.

To be purposeful, brands must identify what exactly its purpose is. From there, they must think about utility and make the strategy tangible, reactive and customer focused. “Find a context for your purpose to live in. We didn’t go looking for Covid-19 it found us, but it did give us something to push against and a reason to open the purpose up a bit more,” adds Gregory.

Building Strong Customer Engagement

The global consumer engagement review from consumer engagement platform, Braze, defined ACE brands as the most advanced organisations embracing a culture of cross collaboration and employing data-driven strategies.

The panel discussed consumer engagement and how to achieve credible results to meet the criteria for ‘Ace’ level engagement. Using Dominos as a case study, the guest speakers explain how data insights can be used to drive more concise and impactful consumer engagement. Dan Head, chief revenue officer at Braze, says, “sometimes less communications means higher conversions.”

Hayley Pryde, head of chief relations management at Domino’s Pizza Group adds, “digital and marketing have been brought together under our new CMO, Sarah Baron,” as the brand moves towards increasing its digital investment. Having both departments under one roof now means budgets are unified rather than being split between the two.

To achieve ‘Ace’ results, Dominos is looking to change from a one size fits all strategy to a sending customer communications that are more relevant to purchase behaviour, at a time and channel most likely to result in engagement.

Data, marketing and IT solutions company, CACI, has also become involved with Dominos to personalise its marketing strategy. David Sealey, director of strategy and growth at CACI says there are three ways to measure the success of personalisation, the first being to ensure a campaign is leveraging the full capabilities of its data insights.

“The second way in terms of business metrics is proving that personalisation does deliver uplift in sales, revenue, average order size and frequency of purchase. The third is more person to person as a supplier, we want the team to feel more confident in their use of the data.”

Comms and marketing teams can then use this data and the insight of data scientists to respond and roll out campaigns much more quickly. “Only 12% of the top performing brands are using real-time data and that’s the big step up we can make with Dominos, is using data in real time to inform campaigns and then get cut through,” says Sealy.

How to Create a Credible, Positive Impact

Creating a brighter future and rebuilding after the past year and a half of the pandemic has pushed brands to reassess their purpose. “This notion of purpose is very important for brands to really engage at a time when people are trusting businesses and brands more than they are trusting traditional institutions including governments,” says Thomas Marzano, global head of brand at Philips.

Marzano talked through the importance of truly driving and delivering results on ESG and social issues. “This has more priority than the communication and marketing around it, you need those proof points to show that as a company and a brand you stand behind it,” says Marzano.

There are a number of challenges when it comes to implementing purpose strategy, including changing customer behaviours, managing sustainability, big data and communications around resiliency, says Ebru Ozguc, global head of brand and communications at Vodafone.

“This is a landscape that can be quite challenging to navigate and second guess, in terms of what’s going to be the latest issue that gains traction, but also you have to be wary of cancel culture which is a real material problem for many businesses,” says Nina dos Santos, Europe Editor at CNN.

Greenwashing is now very transparent and consumers are looking for tangible action, says Ozguc. Vodafone aimed to reinvent the way the business worked during the pandemic, as did many companies adjusting to remote and virtual working. Supporting the consumer and the healthcare industry was vital during this time, to show visible support and purpose.

Looking towards the future world of work, the panel discussed the ways brands can ensure purpose is at the heart of their brand, particularly in the diversity of its workforce. “When it comes to innovation and moving the world forwards, diversity and inclusion, different communities coming together and creating a better tomorrow is a fundament of business and progress” says Marzano.

On the contrary to immediate diversity and inclusion strategies, for sustainability, long-term solutions are a better option in creating lasting change and delivering on purpose. Brands and publishers really need to take a long-term approach and commitment to sustainability and ensure consumers feel informed and trust the organisation, says Keith Gillen, account director of Ireland and UK at CNN International Commercial.

While the pandemic has brought challenges for all aspects of business, it has pushed social and environmental issues to the forefront of brand purpose. With lockdowns ending, the next few months will be very telling as brands seek to adapt and deliver on the purpose strategies put forward for 2021.