Tag: environment

College students, the pandemic, #BLM, and shopping habits

Kim Sheehan on

That’s a lot for a single post, but a new report from the research firm Student Beans shares some interesting information.

The pandemic has caused many students to shop online more often than before. As a result, some students are doing less impulse buying, and are many college students spend time searching for more ethical companies to purchase from. They look to family and friends, social media, and TV for what to purchase (so for responsible brands, social and TV are important media). The top two platforms for searching for products and services are YouTube and Instagram–meaning multimedia and visuals continue to be important motivators for today’s college students.

The #Black Lives Matter movement has impacted student shopping. According to the report:

The Black Lives
Matter movement has also shaped this year for many young
people, and our survey shows it has had a significant impact
on their purchasing decisions, just like the pandemic. In total,
71% of students have changed their shopping habits due to
Black Lives Matter. 44% want to support more Black-owned
businesses, 40% want to buy from brands who support the
movement, and 40% will try not to buy from brands that have
been linked to racism in the future.

Students continue to look for products that are gentle to the planet, and look closely at labels and ingredients.

Student Beans is a company that offers coupons to students. To learn more about the report, click here.

Purpose Driven Innovations in the Global Beer Sector

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The beer category as a whole isn’t really known for its purpose driven messaging. The ‘moderation’ messages are required by law. Stella Artois has had a good drinking water initiative with their partner water.org, and we’ve seen interesting messages about domestic violence in Mexico from Tecate and in South Africa Carling Black Label. But overall, especially in the United States, I’m not recalling a lot of purpose driven messaging.

Two new efforts in South America are notable.Corona beer in Columbia (Corona is owned by Anheuser Busch) is promoting eco-resorts in Columbia as many citizens plan a ‘staycation’ and will not leave the country (the Summer season starts in December). According to Trendwatcher, “As Colombia’s tourism sector is slowly opening back up, this initiative hopes to help rebuild the hard-hit industry in a way that promotes a more responsible and conscious form of tourism. ”

Another beer brand from Brazil, Cervejaria Colorado, is drawing attention to the plight of the rain forest. The brand is committed to biodiversity and the product is made with all indigenous ingredients. They are pricing the beer based on the rate of deforestation of the rain forest. They compare the rate of deforestation in 2020 to the rate in 2019—if deforestation increases, the price of beer increases. If it goes down, the price of beer decreases. According to Trendwatcher, “All proceeds are donated to the Terro do Meio Canteens Network, which includes local farmers and indigenous populations that live in the Amazon and are working to conserve the rainforest. ”

In just a few weeks, consumers saw the price of the beer almost double–from about $1 (in US dollars) to $1.79. During this time, devastating fires continue to burn in the Amazon.

What this does is connect what can be a bit of an opaque event to consumers–deforestation–directly with something that is very transparent to consumers–what they’re paying for beer. It is a different kind of promotion. Will it work? We’ll see.

Allbirds & Adidas to Work Together to Tackle Climate Change

Kim Sheehan on

MABR grad Trevor Shott wrote this at the end of Spring term—right before life got really crazy. We’ve saved it to now. Thanks Trevor!

On Twitter last week, shoe giant Adidas and sustainable footwear brand Allbirds, made an announcement that they would be working together to create a performance shoe with the lowest carbon emissions ever. By working with one another, the two competitors are hoping to “redefine the playbook on sustainability” and show that some issues, such as our growing climate crisis, are too important to try and tackle alone.

The shoe industry produces more than 24 billion pairs of shoes annually worldwide for a population of “only” 7.8 billion people. The emissions from these shoes adds up to over 700 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year – that’s the equivalent of powering 80,775,444 homes for an entire year. According to Allbirds, the standard shoe has a carbon footprint of 12.5 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (CO2e) when you consider manufacturing, materials, and end of life disposal. A study by MIT shows that this number could even be closer to 30 kg. By acknowledging their industry’s large impact on our environment, Allbirds and Adidas are hoping to co-create a shoe with an output of 2 kg CO2e or less.

Currently, Allbirds has gotten their products down to an average of 7.6 kg CO2e due in large part to the innovation of their materials. They do this in part by using more sustainable and renewable resources such as merino wool, eucalyptus trees, and sugarcane. On top of their materials, Allbirds makes sure to offset any remaining carbon emissions in order to be fully carbon neutral – with the larger goal of emitting no carbon in the first place. Though Allbirds is known for their sustainability, Adidas is no stranger to earth-friendly initiatives themselves. Their Parlay collaboration turns plastic waste found in our oceans into high performance shoes. They’re also currently developing a closed-loop shoe that can be returned and remade into an entirely new shoe via their FUTURECRAFT.LOOP initiative.

Both companies are trying to do their part to reduce their impact on the environment, and James Carnes, vice president of brand strategy at Adidas, is already seeing the benefits of working together, “We’ve already realized we’re doing the right thing because we’re moving so much faster than either of us would have if we were trying to do this alone.”

While collaboration between brands is not uncommon, it’s typically done so across different markets. This unique partnership, however, will allow the two companies to combine their tools and sustainably produce shoes at scale. Allbirds cofounder Tim Brown believes this shift in perspective about competition is a necessary step for the future of our planet, “When it comes to sustainability, we don’t see ourselves competing with one another, but competing for the future.” Allbirds and Adidas are paving the way for more teamwork and collaboration between companies for the sake of our planet and should be looked at as an example for others to follow suit. We can only hope that this partnership will lead to a future that emphasizes collaboration over competition. One where companies acknowledge that a combined effort can lead to a win for not just their bottom lines, but for society as a whole.

Only time will tell how this partnership works out, but there’s no doubt that they are redefining what role businesses have in tackling social and environmental issues. On his responsibility in addressing the environmental crisis, Brown says, “Climate change is a global problem that knows no borders, will wait for no one, and will challenge everyone. It’s going to be on countries, governments, companies, and individuals to solve the problem—it’s not going to be fixed by one person. We’re all in this race together.” Seeing companies come together in this time is very encouraging, and hopefully it inspires other businesses reflect on their own practices and how they can make a difference.

For all the brands out there: Take notes. This is brand responsibility. This is the future.

Michelle Pfeiffer on her brand “Henry Rose”

Kim Sheehan on

Day 4 of the Fast Company Festival of Innovation featured actress and entrepreneur Michelle Pfeiffer’s talk on how beauty products can be sustainable. Her line of fragrance is called Henry Rose, and she spent a decade creating a line of luxury fragrances with fully transparent ingredients that are safe, sustainable, non toxic, and humanely sourced. She now has seven fragrances in the line.

She started thinking about the line when her children were born, and she noticed that many products did not contain full ingredient lists. She examined the “Skin Deep” database where she found she could check ingredients of products she was using and look for alternatives. She noted that many fragrances contributed to high toxicity rates, given the total lack of transparency in reporting about fragrance ingredients—a brand can say that one of their ingredients is ‘fragrance’ and no additional information about the make up of the fragrance needs to be provided.

No major beauty company would do a partnership with her. She put the product on hold for several years, and then saw that there was more of an interest in ingredient transparency for fragrances. She met with a company called IFF, which introduced her to a group called Cradle to Cradle, which certifies products based on lifecycle assessment.

Most fragrances have over 3000 ingredients they can choose from. For Pfeiffer’s products, she could only choose from about 250 because she was only sourcing fragrances with transparent ingredient lists.Since the brand has launched, it has won an Allure Best of Beauty award along with multiple other awards.

She prefers the term ‘safe beauty’ to ‘clean beauty’ or ‘natural beauty’ as there is no real standard for ‘clean’ or ‘natural’. Safe, to her, makes a specific promise—the brand is not dangerous. It takes away a worry from people’s lives. People shouldn’t have to choose quality over safety.

She’s the founder of the brand, but she’s not the face of the brand. She wanted the brand to be credible on its own, without a ‘celebrity endorsement.’ She promotes the brand on Instagram. She tries to be authentic true to herself and her values, and realizes that any content that she posts could be construed as political content (e.g. ‘wear a mask’). The posts are really pretty:

Learn more about Henry Rose here!

Fast Company Festival of Innovation: Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey

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The Fast Company Innovation Festival kicked off Monday morning with an interview with Robert Downey Junior and his wife Susan Downey. Together, they run “Team Downey”, a production company and the “Footprint Coalition” , a non profit designed to help use technology at scale to save our planet. The conversation focused on both what makes a successful story, and what makes a successful company. While they didn’t talk about brands directly, in this post I will interpret some of what they said in the context of brands today.

In terms of storytelling, the questions that the Downeys ask are as relevant to brands as they are to movie blockbusters. First, you must ask -why should the audience care? What in the story is relevant to the audience today? Clearly, many brands talk about social issues because people care about them today, and want brands to care about them too. Of course, you can’t just stop there.

The story needs to be authentic, and the Downeys talked about how audiences want to feel like they are in the place and the time period when the story is told as an example of authenticity. They referred to their HBO series, Perry Mason, as an example of having an authentic time and place. For brands, this suggests that production choices can help contribute to authenticity.

Stories also need to have creative risk taking, and storytellers need to understand how the risk they take can lead to a great story. For brands, I think this means not relying on traditional tricks that advertisers use, and finding interesting new ways to talk about themselves. It means moving beyond what consumers might traditionally expect for a brand message.

Finally, stories need to give audiences heroes and other characters they can empathize with. The Downeys suggested that these people will create long term connection between audiences and stories.

All these points taken together made me think of Nike’s Colin Kaepernick ad. The ad was authentic as it showed us people who we recognized who had overcome obstacles to reach their dreams. It took a risk by using a controversial spokesperson . And it used both of these tactics to show a range of dreamers that could inspire viewers to be the best they could be, echoing back to Nike’s value proposition—that we are all athletes.

In talking about how they built and now run successful companies, a few key points stood out which can apply to all kinds of brands today:

1. Leaders need to be hands on and intimately familiar with how all the processes are working together to achieve the goal..
2. Treat every company like it is a small, family business, as there is a level of investment there that is can lead to success.
3. Encourage each employee to be proactive in the area where they have responsibility to create a sense of commitment and buy-in to the company. Employees should find ways to be invaluable to the company.
4. Every day, practice communication, trust and respect.

MABR spotlight: Shealy Long on how shared responsibility at grocery stores

Kim Sheehan on

Did you know up to 40% of food in the United States is never eaten? And at any time, more than 10% of American homes experience food insecurity?

MABR graduate Shealy Long examines how consumers and grocery stores can work together to address both of these issues. Shealy has experience in the grocery industry and is passionate about helping grocery stores be more sustainable. Enjoy her fascinating project!

[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/mabr/files/2020/07/Building-a-Sustainable-Future-How-Grocery-Stores-and-Consumers-Can-Make-a-Positive-Impact.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

MABR Spotlight: Michael Robelli on Project Blue and Covid 19

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Where do climate change and Covid 19 intersect? In his project, Michael Robelli sketches it out for us. He writes “It has become clear that a break from human activity has come with a break for the world.” He then develops how Product Blue, new not-for-profit brand designed to focus consumption behaviors toward products that are good for the environment, Product Blue, can leverage some of our societal learning from Covid 19 to push people toward better consumption behavior.

This report is well researched with great ideas!

Michael Robelli COVID Consciousness Product Blue Position Paper

MABR Spotlight: Emily Barna on Sustainability in the Cosmetics Industry

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MABR grad Emily Barna took an in-depth look at the cosmetics industry, and using a sustainability lens identified some of the key ‘pain points’ in that industry (spoiler alert: plastic, animal testing, and palm oil). She did some great consumer research and found consumers want more sustainable cosmetics! She has some great recommendations here:

We invite you to download and read her final project!
[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/mabr/files/2020/06/TerminalProject_EmilyBarnaV2.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

MABR grad spotlight: Trevor Shott on the Green Gap

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The Green Gap is what can be the huge gulf between what consumers say they will do to help the environment and what they actually do. Trevor Shott’s final project for his Masters in Advertising and Brand Responsibility examined some of the things brands can do to close this gap. In his introduction, Trevor explains:

There is lots of valuable information that both brands and consumers can find helpful in his work. Enjoy!

[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/mabr/files/2020/06/MABRFinalGuidebook_Shott.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

Photo by Kid Circus on Unsplash