Global Communications and Brand Strategy Manager
5 Brands Demonstrating Purpose is Good for Business in 2019
In 2019, consumers expect more responsibility, more transparency and more accountability before giving their trust. Brands will need to redouble their efforts to appear as credible options. In this context, we will see unprecedented attention on the role of purpose in the digital economy. Here are five of our favourite examples of successful brands that demonstrate that purpose isn’t a phase. Patagonia Founded in 1973, Patagonia is the perfect illustration of success with integrity. Committed to environment preservation, each year since 1985 the company has given 1% of its revenue to small environmental grassroots groups fighting to protect the planet. Rick Ridgeway, Patagonia’s VP of Environmental Initiatives and Special Media Projects, says the company aims at building “the very best product the teams are capable of creating while causing no unnecessary harm, to the planet, its societies, or its biodiversity”.[i] In the age of planned obsolescence, Patagonia is always looking to expand the useful life of their products, operating the largest repair facility in North America. Patagonia is the #6 most innovative company in 2018 according to Fast Company[ii] (the first non-tech driven company) and its annual revenue has quadrupled in the last 10 years to about $1 billion.[iii] In 2018, Patagonia sued the U.S. President in a bid to protect Bears Ears National Monument. Suing the government to protect a national landmark? Hardly a non-divisive topic. Patagonia's Facebook Feed: Allbirds Allbirds is a San Francisco based footwear start-up focused on sustainable footwear. After only two years in business, the company already generated an estimated $50 million in annual revenue in 2017.[iv] Wool, tree fibre, renewable sugarcane, recycled cardboard or bottles, Allbirds builds ‘the most comfortable shoes’ with materials that limit their environmental footprint. “Regardless of consumer support for the environment, empathy often goes completely out the window at the point of purchase because there’s a disconnect between this empathy and buying behaviour, in part because of limited options but also because a lack of understanding around what exactly sustainability means. That’s why we’re trying to do our absolute best to try and explain it along the way.”[v] —Tim Brown, Allbirds CEO, The Future Is Sweet And Sustainable For Allbirds, Forbes, 2018 Albirds’ Twitter feed We partnered with @complex to produce a video series called Sustain This, that profiles individuals who are finding ways to promote sustainable practices. In this episode, Chef @KristenLKish speaks about how her everyday choices contribute to a larger movement. #weareallbirds pic.twitter.com/JnsM0wb0pf — Allbirds (@Allbirds) December 10, 2018 Tony’s Chocolonely Ranked #1 on the Sustainable Brand Index in The Netherlands[vi], Tony’s Chocolonely is a Dutch chocolate manufacturer on a mission to produce 100% slave-free chocolate. Founded in 2005 by the journalist Teun van de Keuken, the company is committed to making its chocolate respectful of cocoa farmers in West Africa. Tony’s pays farmers 25% more than the standard price for their cocoa. Every cocoa bean in a Tony’s chocolate bar is traceable and has been directly purchased from one of their partner cooperatives. The company’s purpose seems to be resonating well with consumers, as it recorded a 53% revenue increase YOY in 2017.[vii] View this post on Instagram Time for some good news! 🎉 #Fairtrade is raising the minimum price of their premium! This is a great step towards enabling farmers to earn a living income. That makes us happy! Click the link in our bio to learn more. A post shared by Tony's Chocolonely USA 🇺🇸 (@tonyschocolonely_us) on Dec 12, 2018 at 4:37pm PST L’Occitane en Provence Founded in 1976, the French multinational cosmetics company L’Occitane en Provence has always brought a lot of care to its sourcing. The operations around its signature ingredient, shea butter, have been praised by the United Nations Development Programme[viii], “L’Occitane adds considerable value, notably in terms of the development of cosmetic formulas, packaging and design, and marketing. Due to this value addition, the end product can retail at prices that generate sufficiently large margins such that sourcing at the lowest prices is not a key necessity for the financial sustainability of the business model.” L’Occitane founder Olivier Baussan defends himself of doing charity, “I want to give things back, because I was given things. And this isn’t being charitable. It’s being human.”[ix] The company reported net sales of €1.3 billion in 2018, a 4.6% improvement YOY[x]. “A changemaker organisation is one that puts solving a major social issue at the core of its business, and acts accordingly in terms of governance, ways of working, managing their employees, educating their clients, etc. The world changes at a very fast pace, but economic divide increases even faster. Billions of people don’t have access to health, education, clean water, etc. With all due respect to social entrepreneurs, NGOs or governments, there is no way they can address them all on their own. Businesses have a responsibility to intervene and there is a true business opportunity for them if they do it right.” — Arnaud Mourot, Global VP, Strategic Corporate Alliance, Ashoka Europe Unilever Can you be a giant multinational consumer goods company and put sustainability at the centre of your model? For Unilever, the answer is yes. The British-Dutch company, founded in 1929, now operates 26 sustainable living brands, among which are Dove, Lipton, and the B Corp certified Ben and Jerry’s. Paul Polman, CEO, spearheads Unilever’s philosophy: “We are at a turning point. Only businesses that help people and planet thrive will succeed. We have to scale our impact through partnership, collaboration and trust.”[xi] This article is excerpted from Future Focus 2019: Searching for Trust.Download Future Focus 2019 for key insights and success stories on navigating truth and authenticity in 2019. SOURCES: [i]Conscious Media Company, How Patagonia balances social value and business value, December 2017 [ii]Fast Company, The World’s 50 most innovative companies 2018, February 2018 [iii]Conscious Media Company, Patagonia’s CEO says conscious leaders need to stand for something, March 2017 [iv]Business of Fashion, Allbirds Doubles Down in New York as it Eyes International Expansion, September 2018 [v]Forbes, The future is sweet – and sustainable – for Allbirds, August 2018 [vi]Sustainable Brand Index, How a chocolate brand is leading the way, June 2018 [vii]Tony’s chocolonely, Facts and figures about 2016 and 2017 [viii]UNDP, L’Occitane au Burkina Faso, More than just business with shea butter producers, 2012 [ix]Vanity Fair, L’Occitane en Provence, November 2008 [x]GCI Magazine, L’Occitane announces 2018 fiscal year results, April 2018 [xi]Unilever website, November 2018 0
6 min read
Conversation with Mark Cripps, CMO, The Economist
Trust, value exchange and staying relevant in the digital age: Mark Cripps, CMO, The Economist, shares his views iProspect. How would you define consumer trust and what do you think are the main drivers of trust? Trust is part of an individual’s belief system. In the specific instance of consumer trust, it is defined as an individual’s belief that brands and their products and services will perform as promised – as advertised and as per previously experienced. The Economist is a globally recognised brand in terms of publications and news. In the digital age, where readers have more choice than ever, how are you ensuring that your brand remains not only recognisable, but also a reputable and reliable news source? Increased competition for both mind and wallet-share means that we have to fight harder. In that sense, brands are more important than ever. Recognising that people have a choice, brand saliency is very much front of mind for us. We use several metrics to measure and manage this including awareness; relevance; preference and propensity to pay. Our brand trust stems from the quality and trusted nature of our content and therefore we surface the content in our marketing wherever and whenever possible. We do so whilst deploying established trust cues – that’s design and text based (colours deployed, language used etc.). In 2018, we celebrated our 175th anniversary. For most of that time, we were available exclusively in print, in long-copy format and published on a weekly cadence. Today, we distribute our content on a vast array of platforms; produce it weekly; daily (and hourly in some instances) and in many formats. Noticeably our audio content is reaching new audiences who are demographically at variance from our core subscription base. I’m confident we’ll be around for another 175 years! Listen to the excellent podcast of The Economist on SoundCloud Data and technology are the lifeblood of the digital economy. How does The Economist balance the needs for personalisation and privacy to build trust on the long term? Do you think technology enables deeper relationships or conversely that it is a factor of mistrust? Legislation, such as GDPR, should be considered as an opportunity for brands. Being data-responsible is a differentiator. It is a balance; we need to be on the right side of creepy. The balance aspect is important as that infers an exchange of some kind. As marketers, exchange is at the very core of what we do (offering goods and services usually in exchange for money). For the exchange to occur (and ideally be repeated), it has to be equitable, reciprocated, transparent and mutually beneficial. That’s what we seek to do. Regarding technology, I’m interested in the construct of “Computers as Actors or Agents”, which has attracted a great deal of academic attention. Research indicates that, where they are aware that they’re engaging with technology, people are increasingly prone to disclosing (more) personal information than if they are invited to disclose to a human. As responsible marketers, we can take advantage of this, responsibly, and capitalise on the value exchange. “Increased competition for both mind and wallet-share means that we have to fight harder. In that sense, brands are more important than ever.” This article is excerpted from Future Focus 2019: Searching for Trust. Download Future Focus 2019 for key insights and success stories on navigating truth and authenticity in 2019. 0
3 min read
LinkedIn: No Longer Just a B2B Platform
LinkedIn has quickly evolved from a social networking site for business professionals, to becoming a key brand and performance platform for iProspect, both for the iProspect agency brand, and for iProspect clients globally. As iProspect celebrates the milestone of 100,000 followers, it is clear that LinkedIn has moved past a simple B2B platform, and is now a key channel in helping to drive iProspect’s global EVP, allowing an insight into activity across our 94 offices in 56 countries. iProspect has seen success on LinkedIn as not just a channel for content distribution to industry leaders, but one that allows new talent pools the ability to viewing life at iProspect, with career pages receiving 5,000 average views per month globally. The rich range of offerings on the LinkedIn platform allows for a variety of media types, CTA’s and content amplification and organic industry distribution. While a strong tool for iProspect’s agency brand marketing, LinkedIn is also a key player in our media mix, ensuring we are able to deliver success for clients, expanding from beyond B2B to the consumer space. “Currently, iProspect is leveraging the full suite of media opportunities on LinkedIn and finding tremendous success, especially in the performance space. LinkedIn’s ability to identify business decision makers in the B2B space is unmatched, which allows us to target strong performance metrics across a variety of KPIs, including lead gen, acquisition and traffic. Many of our clients have been finding success within LinkedIn for some time now, but we’ve recently started seeing success expand beyond B2B into the consumer space, especially for our travel and hospitality clients as they focus on their rewards program acquisition. We’ve seen LinkedIn’s value expand beyond just their targeting capabilities within the B2B space, and really develop a strong product offering for marketers from a creative standpoint. Products like natively hosted video and remarketing capabilities put LinkedIn’s offering on par with their other social counterparts. Their measurement capabilities have also greatly expanded to help determine the value of our media that is placed on the platform. Lastly, we’ve seen inventory scale tremendously over the last year as consumers are spending more time on the platform since the social networking capabilities have expanded. Consumers are no longer just using the platform for job hunting, but truly networking with those around them, which unlocks more possibilities for our clients.” Jordan Jacobson, VP, Head of Social Media “LinkedIn’s ability to target at a granular level is a great way to drive performance whether that be driving event leads for a B2B client or elongating dwell time with great content for B2C clients. We currently use LinkedIn for B2C clients for a lean in manner - whether that’s product updates or a CSR initiative that they want to increase awareness of. LinkedIn were traditionally seen as the holy grail for B2B marketeers - the best platform for reaching key decision makers and whilst that is still true they have started to tap into recent consumer behaviour and stepped up their game. First came video ads and of recent times carousel ads; yes they were behind other platforms but whenever LinkedIn roll out new ad functionality there are less ‘teething issues’ than other platforms. LinkedIn is no longer just a B2B platform - if you have something to say in an authentic way LinkedIn should be part of your media mix.” Catherine Chappell, Client Partner, Performance Solutions 0
3 min read
