Soda - Keeping Curious

I wrote about our plans for a new green agency in my last posting on 21st November, so here’s a quick update.

At that time I said it wasn’t easy, but we were hopeful of being up and running by February 2008. Well, it’s way more challenging than ‘not easy’ and so think April for a launch, not in 3 days time! I’m OK about the delay because I know we’re setting our sights high in terms of what we want to achieve and so that means we have to be better prepared … and that takes time. It will be worth the wait I promise you that.

So what do we want to achieve. That’s easy. We want to make a real difference. Ultimately a difference to green and sustainable issues, particularly climate change. And we’ll achieve that through the way products are marketed. And that’s so much more than about ads, websites, promotions etc. In fact it’s fundamentally NOT about these things, albeit they may well play a part. And it’s also NOT about focussing on profit.

So here’s our approach. Let’s understand what green attitudes and motivations are bubbling up in peoples’ minds. From what we can see so far, it’s complex and contradictory: an organic farmer that drives a Range Rover; An environmentalist that flies half way round the world to a Sustainable Conference. I’ll talk more on this in another posting. All the evidence is that there is a strong swell of attitudes and emotions around us having to do something.

But how does this translate into behaviours (not thinking brand purchase behaviours here, but things like switching off lights, taking the TV off standby, walking somewhere rather than taking the car). Well it takes very strong emotional attitudes to change many behaviours . There’s a lot of behaviour change and habit breaking to be done here. And that’s where brands and government can and are working together. This is the next bit we are mapping and tracking.

And then, if you’re a brand owner, how can we use this. Back to basics here: If we understand peoples’ attitudes, motivations & needs, we can work out a way of meeting them and benefiting the organisation at the same time. Now exit old marketing and enter a new way of doing things. Winning the hearts and minds of our consumers will be about engaging them in every sense, not just ‘marketing’. This is a whole company thing. And the work we do above will inform us on this.

In short, we understand the green attitudes and motivations of consumers (note this is NOT the motivations of green consumers) and then we use this to develop business strategies/plans which means that companies and brands engage with consumers even more effectively. And that’s real engagement beyond .. ‘yeah I like the ad, I can related to it’ … type of engagement.

If it doesn’t make sense to you yet, let me know why - please. And if it does, let me know how you can make it better!

Always thinking. Always learning!

Nick