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Posts Tagged ‘consumer consciousness’

Can the Evolution of Empathy Save Us?

November 7th, 2010 | by Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange,

Increased concern over the environment and climate change is apparent around the globe. And people and communities are beginning to make real changes, whether it be a parent sending the kids to school with reusable water bottles or a city banning plastic bags at retail. Looking at the findings from Euro RSCG’s New Consumer study, we see that more than six in ten respondents in the seven markets surveyed feel good about making environmentally friendly choices. More than half are making an effort to buy fewer disposable goods, and 72 percent are feeling good about reducing the amount of waste they create. All hopeful changes, but can centuries of eco-mindlessness be undone?
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To Err—Make That Green—Is to Be Human

October 28th, 2010 | by Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange,

By Brad Stewart

From BP green-washing to Sun Chips bending under the weight of consumer pressure, the headlines have not been good for green marketing. At first glance, the future is looking less mint green and more a pale chartreuse these days, but success stories from other areas of the sector offer clues to a more skin-tone hue.
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Eco-Geo-Sustaino-Tourism

October 25th, 2010 | by Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange,

Adapted from KNOW: The Future of Travel, available to employees and clients across the Euro RSCG Worldwide network.

Bundled within the sustainable-tourism rubrics that have grown so common of late are a variety of philosophies and practices related to greener and generally more mindful travel. The term ecotourism has been around for at least two decades, generally referring to travel that combines nature-focused sightseeing with sustainably managed accommodations. More recently, the term has been expanded to incorporate a focus on indigenous populations and the needs of local communities.
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| Tags: accountability, certification, conscious consumption, consumer consciousness, culture, customer engagment, ecotourism, Euro RSCG, geo-tourism, green, Green Building Council, Green Globe, GreenMoney Journal, GSTC, hospitality, hotels, International Ecotourism Society, LEED, LOHAS, luxury, Mikhail Gorbachev, mindful consumption, New Consumer, organic, Partnership for Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria, public relations, social responsibility, STEP, STI, Sustainability, Sustainable Travel International, tourism, transparency, Travel, United Nations, values
Post a Comment | in Branding, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate/Brand Leadership, Eco-Consciousness, Marketing, New Consumer, Purposeful Pleasure, Responsibility, Rightsizing, Sustainability, Travel, Uncategorized, Value, Values

Company Spotlight: The Andean Collection

September 7th, 2010 | by Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange,

One of the four paradigms of the New Consumer is the search for what we term purposeful pleasure. For many people, this added layer of pleasure comes from making purchases from companies that are aligned with their own ethical and social values. Looking at the leading-edge Prosumers in Euro RSCG’s global study, six in ten prefer to buy from companies with a purpose beyond profits, and seven in ten prefer to buy from companies that share their personal values. On the flipside, 75 percent believe they have a responsibility to censure unethical companies by avoiding their products.

Here, guest blogger Katrina Pennington shares with us her perspective on the increasing social and environmental consciousness of the modern consumer and how her company, The Andean Collection, is challenging the notion that a business cannot simultaneously be at the leading edge of sustainability and fashion.

There is no doubt we are living in an age of globalization and global warming, made more visible every day through a media that increasingly offer us secondhand experiences of realities occurring across our planet. Yet confronted with overwhelming levels of third world poverty and the planetary ripple effects of climate change, we are not as helpless as some would believe. Here in the United States, as the world’s biggest consumer force, we are only just beginning to realize the extent of our power to effect change through our consumption choices—rewarding those businesses that promote sustainability and punishing those guilty of exploitation, whether of people or the land.
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The Start of Something New?

August 30th, 2010 | by Andrew Benett, CEO, Arnold Worldwide and Global CSO, Havas Worldwide, and Ann O'Reilly, Director of Content, Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange

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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Can Small Changes Lead to Big Ones?

August 23rd, 2010 | by Nathan Schock, Director of Public Relations, POET

This post originally appeared on Greenway Communique and is reprinted with permission. What can marketers do to nudge consumers in a more sustainable—and satisfying—direction?

How can people be convinced to significantly green their lives? To make the big changes needed to conserve natural resources and decrease energy use?

Robert B. Cialdini may have something to suggest. Cialdini is the author of Influence and I’ve been reading his follow-up book Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. Each of the 50 ways is given its own chapter in the easy to read book and number 14 is titled: “How can one small step help your influence take a giant leap?”
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The Reverse Walmart Effect

August 19th, 2010 | by Ben Phillips, Senior Planner, Euro RSCG Sydney

Giapo is a gelato store in Auckland, New Zealand, run by Gianpaolo Grazioli, a young Italian man. I haven’t been there personally but those who have describe it as “a lovemark . . . dripping with mystery, sensuality, and intimacy” and its products as “the only thing you need in life.” For today though, we’re going to put the in-store ambience to the side and try to forget about how tasty the gelato is. As much as Grazioli is brilliant on these fronts, what he really excels at is building and maintaining relationships.
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Mindfulness Sightings in the Food & Beverage Category

August 13th, 2010 | by Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange,

Look around you. Signs of the shift toward more-mindful consumption are everywhere, in every industry. Today, we spotlight innovators in the food and beverage category.

Rightsizing

o Australia is home to at least one restaurant at the forefront of the rightsizing movement: At Wafu in Sydney, chef Yukako Ichikawa is serious about diners cleaning their plates. (Who knows best? Mom knows best.) If you order more than you’re able to eat on premise, you have to pay a surcharge of 30 percent. Eat up!

o In New York and London, Otarian is billing itself as “the first ever low-carbon restaurant chain, using a cradle-to-grave analysis in the carbon footprinting of every menu item.” Springwise reports the restaurants are powered by wind, water, and/or sun, water use is minimized, and the furnishings are made from recycled materials. Diners get to see the difference in the carbon footprint of their veggie meal in comparison to a meat-based equivalent and earn “Carbon Karma” credits that eventually reward them with a free Choco Treat.
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How Green Was My Travel

August 10th, 2010 | by Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange,

Excerpted from KNOW: The Future of Travel, available to employees and clients across the Euro RSCG Worldwide network.

Whereas not so long ago the issue of “going green” was one of exhortation and persuasion, now it is more a matter of shade, degree, and implementation. Most all constituencies in the travel and tourism (T&T) sector—consumers, providers of lodging and transport, tourism authorities and operators—would agree in the abstract on the good of green, but are still challenged by how best to integrate green goals in terms of acceptable compromises related to comfort, ease, and the bottom line.

Varying Shades of Green

The most successful green practices are bottom up, well integrated, and transparent, with buy-in from all stakeholders. It’s a far cry from the early days of eco-consciousness, when hotels were able to earn green cred simply by placing small cards in rooms alerting guests that, in the interest of sustainability, sheets would not be laundered each day unless requested. Now that leading companies from Walmart to GE have shown that sustainability bolsters the bottom line, more travel and hospitality brands have made a commitment to go green all over. In one example of where the industry appears to be headed, every room at Seattle’s Best Western Executive Inn and Best Western Loyal Inn is an “EcoRoom,” meaning it features products that are energy and water efficient, waste reducing, nontoxic, and/or biodegradable. Reservation agents have been trained to discuss the hotels’ green program with prospective guests. Other T&T brands are approaching “green” from a more personal perspective: New York’s Premier Hotel uses special purification products and techniques to ensure each of its “Premier Pure” rooms is at least 98 percent free of bacteria and viruses. Marriott and Hilton are among the large chains entering the “hypoallergenic accommodations” space.
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What’s the Opposite of Schadenfreude?

July 21st, 2010 | by Ann O'Reilly, Content Director, Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange, and coauthor of Consumed: Rethinking Business in the Era of Mindful Spending

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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Posts Tagged ‘consumer consciousness’

Can the Evolution of Empathy Save Us?

The Start of Something New?

Can Small Changes Lead to Big Ones?

Mindfulness Sightings in the Food & Beverage Category

How Green Was My Travel

What’s the Opposite of Schadenfreude?

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