In Good for Business: The Rise of the Conscious Corporation, we wrote:
Devising a new blueprint for the successful corporation of the future is not just about corporate responsibility or paying attention to the triple bottom line of “people, planet, and profit.” Nor is it simply about finding new ways to engage consumers and become a more integral part of their lives. It is about all those things—and a lot more.
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Fifty-five percent of Prosumer respondents to Euro RSCG’s Future of the Corporate Brand study said they prefer to do business with companies and brands that have a distinct personality. More than nine in ten agreed that, to be successful, corporations of the future will need to show a more “human” face (meaning they must care about people and take a more active role in community and social causes).
Count me among them.
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The era of mindless consumption is over. Consumers now want a simple, sustainable, and self-sufficient life.
Conspicuous consumption. Shop till you drop. All-you-can-eat buffets and supersized meals. The post–World War II era has been marked by a voracious hunger for more. In affluent countries, people bought too much, ate too much, used up too much, and owed too much. Yet, for many, it still wasn’t enough. There was something missing—lots of things, really. Among them, a sense of control and self-sufficiency, personal responsibility, and feelings of community and authenticity. Replacing the constant accumulation of “stuff” with these more substantive intangibles lies at the heart of the current shift toward mindfulness—a movement in which heedless excess is exchanged for a more conscious and considered approach to living.
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| Tags: abundance, accountability, ActBolder.com, Admap, Ann O'Reilly, APA, artisanry, Botox, BP, buy local, buycotts, Carrotmob, cause marketing, community, conscious consumption, consumption, counscious nourishment, CSR, customer engagement, Eco Options, Euro RSCG, excess, finance, financial crisis, financial literacy, food, frugality, gardening, green, Home Depot, Hyperconsumption, Marian Salzman, mindful consumption, Mint.com, money, MoneyStrands, New Consumer, organic, packaging, provenance, recycling, relationship marketing, reputation, Retail, saving, simplicity movement, simplification, slow food, slow travel, sourcing, Sustainability, thrift, transparency, values, voluntourism, Walmart, WARC, waste Post a Comment | 8 Comments | in Community, Consumerism, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate/Brand Leadership, Eco-Consciousness, Growing Up, Marketing, New Consumer, Purposeful Pleasure, Recession, Responsibility, Rightsizing, Shopping, Sustainability, Uncategorized, Value, Values
The following is adapted from Good for Business: The Rise of the Conscious Corporation (Palgrave Macmillan), written by Andrew Benett, Cavas Gobhai, Ann O’Reilly, and Greg Welch and drawing on findings from the Euro RSCG Future of the Corporate Brand study:
Throughout the course of this decade, it has been virtually impossible to tune out negative news of the business world. Our fears of the global recession and mortgage foreclosures were interrupted by massive recalls of contaminated pet food and children’s toys. Gas prices fell, but then banks began to fail. We couldn’t even escape by putting in a DVD: Tales of corporate scandal and immorality were fed to us through a steady slate of films exposing the dark sides of industries ranging from pharmaceuticals (The Constant Gardener) to health care (Sicko), from weapons dealing (Lord of War) to the diamond trade (Blood Diamond), and from Big Oil (Syriana) to corporate law (Michael Clayton).
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| Tags: accountability, Andrew Benett, Ann O'Reilly, Cavas Gobhai, corporations, Euro RSCG, financial crisis, globalization, Good for Business, Greg Welch, Havas, New Consumer, Recession, reputation Post a Comment | in Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate/Brand Leadership, Responsibility, Uncategorized, Values
The following is excerpted from Consumed: Rethinking Business in the Era of Mindful Spending (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2010), written by Andrew Benett and Ann O’Reilly and drawing on findings from the Euro RSCG New Consumer study:
The long, wearisome decades of hyperconsumption shaped not just the way we think and feel but the very language we use. It is now customary to refer to human beings as consumers or even as brands. And an entire lexicon has been summoned into existence just to give verbal shape to our profligate excesses: big-box store, Black Friday (and now Cyber Monday), bling, door-buster, McMansion, self-storage, shopaholic, supersized, warehouse club.
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| Tags: Andrew Benett, Ann O'Reilly, Arnold, Christian McMahan, conscious consumption, Consumed, consumer consciousness, consumers, Euro RSCG, excess, green, Heineken, mindful consumption, mindfulness, New Consumer, Retail, Sustainability, thrift, values, vocabulary Post a Comment | in Branding, Consumed, Consumerism, Corporate/Brand Leadership, New Consumer, Responsibility, Rightsizing, Shopping, Sustainability, Uncategorized, Value, Values
The following is a post from EditorialEmergency.com, spotlighting how brands can connect with the New Consumer by understanding and speaking to the four paradigms—in this case tapping into the move toward mindfulness and consumers’ increased hunger for susbtance.
“He once went to a psychic—to warn her.”
“His blood smells like cologne.”
“If he punched you in the face, you would have to fight off the urge to thank him.”
“Even watching him sleep has been described as breathtaking.”
“His legend precedes him, the way lightning precedes thunder.”
The above snippets of whimsy are all ad copy, as anyone familiar with Dos Equis’ current, hugely successful campaign, The Most Interesting Man in the World, well knows.
The upscale beer’s mascot, a gray-bearded, ultra-cosmopolitan man of mystery (portrayed by actor Jonathan Goldsmith) whose magnificence has awakened the inner fabulists in a fleet of copywriters, is a far cry from the usual TV dude hawking suds. In fact, his recurring catchphrase (uttered in floridly Latin-accented English) is, “I don’t always drink beer. But when I do, I prefer Dos Equis. Stay thirsty, my friends.”
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| Tags: advertising, Ann O'Reilly, beer, creativity, Dos Equis, Editorial Emergency, Euro RSCG, mindful consumption, Most Interesting Man in the World, New Consumer, substance Post a Comment | 4 Comments | in Branding, Consumed, Consumerism, Growing Up, New Consumer, Purposeful Pleasure, Uncategorized
The following is excerpted from Consumed: Rethinking Business in the Era of Mindful Spending (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2010), written by Andrew Benett and Ann O’Reilly and drawing on findings from the Euro RSCG New Consumer study:
Modern consumers feel disconnected because they are. Most of us have no ties whatsoever to the people who design and assemble the products we use, sew our clothes, and grow our food. We may not even know where in the world these workers reside. As customers worldwide begin to push back against this anonymity and divide, they are turning to brands that do away with myriad layers of commerce and reconnect buyer and seller in a more direct way.
One such business, the online site Etsy—where artisans personally sell their handcrafted wares—has enjoyed phenomenal growth as a consequence of this hunger for connectedness. Some 2.4 million people in 150 countries have registered on the site, and more than 155,000 vendors sold $58 million in goods in the first five months of 2009, doubling Etsy’s sales over the same period the year prior. Etsy has become the go-to place for conscious consumers looking for “real” products created and sold by “real” people.
The purchase process need not be direct, however. A colorful provenance can provide an authentic, more personal experience as well.
The store A Vida Portuguesa in Lisbon, housed in a former soap factory, only offers brands that are unique to Portugal, are handmade, have stayed true to their original packaging, and represent the best of indigenous craftsmanship. Even within these tight parameters, the store stocks more than a thousand products, ranging from toiletries to stationery and homewares. Part of the attraction is that the items offer an alternative to mainstream brands and strike a blow against modern artifice. “Taking a firm stand in the face of globalization,” one visitor says, “A Vida Portuguesa has tracked down Portugal’s unique brands and opened a store dedicated to products that have resisted the urge to keep up with changing times.”
Absolut Vodka is a worldwide brand, but lately it has honed a local touch with its Cities Series: for New Orleans, a special mango and black pepper blend inspired by indigenous traditions; for Boston, a black tea and elderflower flavor, marketed with a green backdrop suggesting the “Green Monster,” Fenway Park baseball field’s high rear wall. Such linkages have the ability to evoke a particular time and/or place and the values connected to them.
What other brands are successfully personalizing and localizing their products and/or the retail experience? Please share with us what you consider the best approaches to “humanizing” brands—bringing them closer to their customers and making buyers feel more intimately connected to their local communities, cultures, and to more “authentic” places and times.
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Want to learn more about the New Consumer and the move toward mindful spending? Join Euro RSCG New Consumer on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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| Tags: Absolut, Andrew Benett, Ann O'Reilly, authenticity, community, conscious consumption, consumption, Etsy, Euro RSCG, handcrafted, handmade, local, mindful consumption, New Consumer, Portugal, Retail, sourcing Post a Comment | 2 Comments | in Branding, Community, New Consumer, Purposeful Pleasure, Shopping, Uncategorized
The following is excerpted from Consumed: Rethinking Business in the Era of Mindful Spending (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2010), written by Andrew Benett and Ann O’Reilly and drawing on findings from the Euro RSCG New Consumer study:
At the heart of rightsizing, reusing, and recycling lies a concern for thrift. It is an old virtue, of course, stretching back through history. The American strain of it got going with Benjamin Franklin’s aphoristic proselytizing. In the 1950s, millions laughed at entertainer Jack Benny when he flaunted his cheapskate ways. In England, Queen Elizabeth is a famously frugal soul, in spite of being one of the wealthiest women on the planet. She wears her dresses repeatedly and stores cornflakes in Tupperware. In 2009, a Daily Telegraph columnist was aghast at the revelation that “Her Majesty eats breakfast off a tatty tray bearing mismatched china that would shame a Blackpool B&B. It’s all rather admirable, but I wonder if she’s overdoing the thrift.”
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| Tags: Andrew Benett, Ann O'Reilly, Arnold, conscious consumption, Consumed, consumption, Euro RSCG, excess, financial crisis, frugality, Havas, mindful consumption, New Consumer, Recession, recycling, saving, simplicity movement, Sustainability, thrift, values, waste, wealth Post a Comment | 3 Comments | in Consumed, Consumerism, Growing Up, New Consumer, Recession, Responsibility, Rightsizing, Shopping, Uncategorized
There are those who say the trend toward “mindful consumption”—people thinking more carefully about what and why they buy—will sputter out just as soon as the economy fully rebounds. They’re wrong, and for a number of reasons. As appealing as it may be for marketers to anticipate a return to hyperconsumerism and mindless excess, there are simply too many factors making that not just unlikely but virtually impossible.
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| Tags: accountability, Adweek, aging, Andrew Benett, Ann O'Reilly, Arnold, conscious consumption, Consumed, consumption, economics, Euro RSCG, Havas, mindful consumption, New Consumer, Recession, Sustainability, values, Walmart Post a Comment | 5 Comments | in Consumed, Consumerism, Eco-Consciousness, Growing Up, New Consumer, Purposeful Pleasure, Recession, Responsibility, Rightsizing, Shopping, Sustainability, Uncategorized
I moved away from San Francisco about a year before the Loma Prieta earthquake. Granted, we had the occasional jolt at our new home in Los Angeles, but nothing sufficiently destructive or alarming to get people to glance up from the latest issue of Variety much less gather in the streets. And while I was happy to have escaped the hassles of power disruptions and shattered glass, I was also a bit envious of my friends in the Bay Area who called with tales of what they had experienced and what others had endured. These feelings didn’t stem from some latent death wish or craving for excitement; rather, they were a twinge of longing for a shared experience powerful enough to create common cause and lifelong bonds. These friends had been through something, however peripherally, and, for a while at least, they were drawn closer to the strangers who populated the streets around them. Anyone who has been through an extended blackout knows how much friendlier a supermarket can become when everyone is filling their carts with bottled water and batteries and nonperishable food items. The shared hardship (however slight) gives people a sense of connection absent from regular store visits.
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| Tags: Ann O'Reilly, cause, common cause, communalism, Consumed, consumer consciousness, crisis, Euro RSCG, financial crisis, green, mindfulness, New Consumer, Recession, sacrifice, Sustainability, terrorism, World War II Post a Comment | 2 Comments | in Community, Consumed, Growing Up, New Consumer, Recession, Responsibility, Rightsizing, Sustainability, Uncategorized
