How to Reach Sustainability-Minded Consumers with Media Innovation
Our Futurecaster data proves that sustainability-minded audiences favor media innovation, and pinpoints the best ways to reach them
In 2021, engaging with sustainability will be essential to all brands. A BCG survey found that not only has COVID globally heightened awareness of environmental and sustainable issues, but more than 75% of respondents consider environmental issues as equally concerning as, or more concerning than, health issues. The demand for sustainability is not going away, and brands can benefit greatly from making sustainability a core part of a brand’s offering, which research has shown to provide additional value, increase efficiency, attract talent, and address consumer demands. This is true across industries, from food, to apparel, to finance.
Not only are consumers looking to brands to help them achieve their own sustainability goals, they also intend to hold brands accountable for making the world a better place. As we enter 2021, Forrester reports that 68% of highly empowered consumers plan to step up their efforts to identify brands that reduce environmental impact. To do this, and to do this well, brands need to make sustainability a key pillar of their company. Make no mistake, consumers will know, and they will call brands out who are simply “green washing.”
Previously, we discussed how essential sustainability is going to be for consumers moving forward and some classic tactics that brands can use to engage them. Since we here at the Lab like to back our takes on innovation and emerging media with data, we decided to consult our Futurecaster tool and look into how brands can best reach these sustainably-minded consumers in exciting new ways.
How We Identified the Key Media Channels
One of our custom Lab tools is the Futurecaster. Each year we crowdsource and collaborate with industry experts across UM and IPG Mediabrands to identify key media innovation territories, and use proprietary research data to tie them to audiences.
To pinpoint the best emerging media channels to reach the consumers who truly care about sustainability and want to hold brands responsible for their environmental impact, we crafted a “sustainability-inspired audience” in our Futurecaster dataset. Unsurprisingly, our data suggests people who care about sustainability are also early adopters of new technologies and emerging media platforms.
It makes sense for audiences committed to sustainability to also be open to innovation. After all, cleaning up this world of ours depends primarily on innovation. Having their finger on the pulse for new and emerging cultural and technology developments is likely a norm for them, as part of an ongoing effort to ensure their commitment to creating a sustainable world. These are people who pay attention to their environments, engage in new ways to operate, and are open-minded to trying new things and experimenting with new products and services for the collective good.
Based on our Futurecaster results, brands should consider how to leverage the following innovation territories to effectively reach this growing cohort of value-driven consumers.
Emerging OOH
Emerging OOH (EOOH) is best used to allow consumers an opportunity to organically and directly engage with the brand. This media format can utilize personalized or dynamic content, or provide tangible experiences to their audience. With EOOH, brands should aim to generate buzz and leverage the experience to raise awareness of their mission through shareable moments, interesting stories, or interactive elements.
EOOH is being used by brands around the world to showcase their sustainability focus to consumers. O2, a London network carrier, released a Living Billboard that literally grew their message “Go Green’’ in moss over time. Combined with recyclable paper flyers filled with wildflower seeds, that consumers were invited to take home and start growing, this campaign found a creative way to showcase their commitment to sustainability. In Europe, we’ve also seen McDonald’s create bee hotels in north facing bus shelters to promote bee conservation, and E.ON use AR integrated OOH to raise awareness on air pollution that people were breathing.
Interestingly, the EOOH media itself is becoming more sustainable. Many digital OOH spots are using solar power to run their signage, and OOH ad companies are offering sustainable printing options like 100% recyclable paper in any format, or planting trees to offset their carbon footprint. Last month, Rapport came out with a unique media offering to all of the US, Rapport Beyond, billboards and related media products that effectively offset carbon emissions and purify the air. For consumers who care about sustainability, this is an added bonus and demonstrates the holistic and embedded thinking that brands can partake in.
That being said, there is still plenty of white space here for U.S. brands to step into. US consumers are also environmentally conscious, and they are interested in EOOH. If you have a sustainability campaign or message you want to run, or even if you just want to attract the attention of sustainability-minded consumers, EOOH should definitely be part of your consideration set.
Visual Search
Visual Search provides consumers a frictionless way to discover products or find information by using their mobile phone camera as input. It is an innovation territory that has been increasing in both adoption and awareness during COVID, in large part due to the normalization of contactless menus. In fact, 65% of US consumers are interested or have already used a visual search tool. Visual search is an effective element to add to campaigns that help lead the consumer to specific information or additional content.
There are several key ways to incorporate visual search into your campaigns: QR codes may be the easiest to implement, but brands should also consider integration with Lenses (Google, Pinterest, etc.), or owned apps where they partner with startups to develop owned visual search tools. However, this is a pretty new space for anything that is not fashion-related and as such a great piece of white space to play in.
As consumers continue to demand transparency in brands’ sustainability efforts, brands are increasingly introducing ways to help trace their products from sourcing to delivery. To that end, Starbucks launched a visual search enabled Digital Traceability tool that allows consumers to trace the origins of their coffee beans, while H&M created a similar tool to showcase their clothes’ journey. Both well-intentioned initiatives suffered some negative press for not going far enough, nevertheless, they serve as a good thought-starter for brands that are serious about increasing their product and supply chain transparency.
Brands could also employ visual search on tags or packaging to showcase how to properly reuse or recycle to extend the life of their purchases. This will be especially useful in the ongoing need to re-educate how people dispose of their waste and encourage overall responsibility for their purchasing choices.
Meanwhile, brands can also consider partnering with Google Lens, which already has a great image recognition database of over 1 billion objects, and offers information or related products across products including apparel, furniture, cars, all at the snap of a smartphone camera. Or, as a more turn-key solution, Pinterest Lens can serve up ad units based on image recognition to help promote a more sustainable alternative, or provide additional information as needed. Snapchat has also expanded their visual search lens capacity from their Amazon partnership, and now offers insightful nutritional value for food, and the best pairings and price points for wines.
Virtual Reality
The beauty of VR is that it can provide immersive experiences that fully engage users. However, historically VR use comes with mixed reactions and a potentially dubious ROI as a media channel, but using it for event activations or other on-premise experiences has typically been a cool way for companies to share their sustainable messaging, especially for charities and organizations to promote their missions. Although this may be on the verge of changing. In 2020, 73% of 18 to 34 year-olds are interested in engaging in VR experiences and by 2023, the VR software and hardware market is expected to double to $5.1 billion.
Thanks to its immersive power, VR presents a unique opportunity to virtually transport someone to live out a specific experience of the brand’s choosing. Recently, the UN General Assembly in NYC in 2020, released MY World 360°, a collection of 360° VR films highlighting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to help guests become fully involved in what was being discussed. Earlier last year, the UN Environment Programme teamed up with ‘Dreams’ (a Sony Playstation platform with VR connectivity) to create an immersive virtual reality experience about climate change featuring possible climate catastrophes and the visualization of the CO2 emissions per individual. Both experiences leveraged the power of immersive storytelling that VR uniquely enables to allow the audience to actually live and participate in the experience, increasing awareness and encouraging action.
Furthermore, sustainability messages within VR can be much more subtle without losing effectiveness. When designing VR games or experiences, simply making the choice to reflect sustainable elements can unconsciously resonate through psychological affirmation. Something as simple as a subtle display of renewable energy (wind turbines or solar panels in the background or on houses) has the potential to go a long way, and showcases the brand’s commitment to sustainability while not distracting from the overall experience.
VR also holds some essential functional uses beyond content to showcase a brand’s sustainability priorities and help reduce waste. Fashion brands have leaned into VR to get initial consumer feedback on their fashion pieces before actually creating the clothes, in an attempt to better understand demand and ensure purchases. Additionally, holding a virtual event or conference within a VR setting cuts back significantly on environmental costs like flights, transportation, and food waste. As companies begin to invest in VR to make their meetings more interactive, regular VR conferences are just a small step away.
On-Demand Delivery
As on-demand delivery becomes table-stakes across industries, a Coyote Logistics Study found that 84% of respondents claim that a brand’s logistical sustainability practices influence their purchase decisions. Additionally, as a key element to the supply chain, it is an area that brands are increasingly invested in. And since it is part of the logistics operation, inevitably sustainability becomes one of the considerations for this innovation territory as well.
Several brands are using carbon offsets to help mitigate the carbon footprint of on-demand delivery. And while carbon-offsetting is sometimes seen as an easy way out, it is a great place to start. Spanish on-demand delivery service, Glovo, has partnered with Pachama to offset 100% of all carbon emissions from its app by the end of 2021, Hello Fresh has also committed to this goal and invested in entirely recyclable packing. Partners like Cloverly, a “sustainability-as-a-service” app, or Shop can help brands offset carbon from a multitude of areas including on-demand delivery offerings.
Brands can also focus on showcasing their commitment to the environment by investing in electric vehicles as the means of transportation as Amazon is doing. There is also the increased adoption of working with AI algorithms to determine the most efficient route, which, admittedly is in the early stages for same-day delivery options, but has the potential to be a real game-changer. After all, if deliveries can be made by one delivery vehicle to multiple people, that is far more sustainable than every person taking a round trip to the store and back in their own car.
There is also the opportunity for brands to take advantage of on-demand delivery orthogonally and introduce on-demand pick up. This opens a range of possibilities like recycling and reusing packaging, collecting clothes to recycle or re-purpose, and generally encouraging and guiding positive, sustainable consumer behavior change. Additionally, it will enable brands to showcase their sustainability values while accessing key materials and assets that will help them cut costs in other areas. Working towards this type of offering with a partner like Loop provides a more immediately implementable solution as brands like Nestle, Pepsi, and Unilever, and even UPS, have discovered.
Other Areas to Consider
While we have focused on innovation territories that registered the most traction for a sustainability-focused audience, they are by no means the only ones that brands across industries can tap into.
Brands should also consider how Social Commerce can come into play, perhaps being able to donate to a cause via Instagram. Wearables can also provide interesting opportunities based on movement and immediate proximity, and could be used to encourage consumers to walk places to help offset their own carbon footprint, or increase awareness of air or nature quality based on their current location. Meanwhile, interest in Culture Pops can be leveraged to increase brand awareness and affinity if they can help consumers get ahead of the next sustainability trend. And, at the end of the day, this audience is still very receptive to maturing media channels like podcasts and influencer marketing.
There is no end to the new and interesting ways to engage this audience, and considering how essential it currently is to include sustainability as a core business focus and marketing message, this is the perfect excuse for brands to add more innovation into their media plans and start experimenting in new and exciting areas.
The Lab closely monitors the coming disruptions and charts developments across multiple industries. If you wish to start a conversation around key ways to engage innovative media practices or the Futurecaster tool, and discuss how your brand can leverage these opportunities, please reach out to our Engagement Director, Ben Hone at ben@ipglab.com.
