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How Green Was My Travel

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

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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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Value Comes from Behind: A Perspective from the Netherlands

August 6th, 2010 | by Remko Herremans, Director of Strategy, Euro RSCG Amsterdam

Are you sure the cheese on your pizza came from cows? How hygienic is the kitchen in that snack bar around the corner? Exactly how Italian were the olives that went into making your olive oil? And what about those tinned tangerines; how do they peel them, anyway? It is questions such as these that have been behind two of the most successful TV programs in the Netherlands in recent years: Keuringsdienst van Waarde (“Inspectorate of Value”) and De Smaakpolitie (“The Taste Police”). They give us that ever-so-desired look behind the scenes. And tomorrow’s mindful consumer will only be more interested in the story behind the product. Offering transparency will become more than a defensive move to head off potential complaints. In the age of the New Consumer, marketers can turn the process behind their products into a powerful weapon capable of creating brand preference.

The urge to double-check the facts increases as people lose faith in a company, product, or brand. And this is just what the credit crisis was all about: loss of confidence. So we need not be surprised to see in the New Consumer survey that 45 percent of Dutch Prosumers say they now set more store by how and where products are made. Their interests may range from the safety of the food they feed their children to the fees and commissions they pay for financial products. Already, we know that around half of Prosumers in the Netherlands (49 percent) are paying more attention than in the past to the environmental impact of the products they buy, and three-quarters (74 percent) are keeping a closer eye on the quality and freshness of the food they buy. The motives may vary, but the consequence is the same: People want to know more about the products they are consuming, and they will continue to dig deeper.
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Humanizing Retail Brands

August 3rd, 2010 | by Andrew Benett, CEO, Arnold Worldwide and Global CSO, Havas Worldwide, and Ann O'Reilly, Content Director, 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:

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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Buying Feelings

July 15th, 2010 | by Stuart Harris, CEO, Richer Business

Through the years of hyperconsumption corporations have excelled at inventing new products and even new product categories that have kept everybody keen to buy. No sooner has a phone or a camera or a computer or a pair of sneakers hit the market than it is overtaken by upgraded versions from rival brands or even from the same brand. This has been a sure-fire way to keep the wheels of business turning, but it doesn’t make for long-term consumer satisfaction.
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Signs of Change: Sam Gets Sustainable

June 7th, 2010 | by Ann O'Reilly, Content Director, Euro RSCG Worldwide Knowledge Exchange

Let’s face it: If global retail were a western movie, Walmart would be the guy in the black hat. The enormity of the megaretailer is such that if it were a country, it would be the thirty-first largest in the world, ranked by GDP. With some 2.1 million employees, it is the biggest employer in Mexico and one of the biggest in the U.S. and Canada. Add to that brawn a reputation for bullying suppliers, destroying Main Streets, and stiffing employees on healthcare and other benefits, and you have a company that’s catnip for critics. And so it was no surprise in 2005 when the public reacted skeptically (to put it mildly) to Walmart’s announced plans to become a positive force for environmental and social change. Yet five years down the road—under CEO Lee Scott and his successor, Mike Duke—the company has emerged as a bona fide leader in sustainability. It has reduced both its own carbon footprint (redirecting 57% of waste in its Walmart and Sam’s Club locations in the U.S., for instance) and the footprints of many of its customers (for starters, by selling them 350 million CFL light bulbs and stocking only concentrated laundry detergents to cut down on packaging). And it has been a perhaps unlikely proponent of transparency, applying pressure for clearer sourcing of goods ranging from gold to cotton.
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Posts Tagged ‘sourcing’

How Green Was My Travel

Value Comes from Behind: A Perspective from the Netherlands

Humanizing Retail Brands

Buying Feelings

Signs of Change: Sam Gets Sustainable

Prosumer Report

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