Will We Be Green in 2009?

I mentioned a month or so that we were looking into the relative importance of sustainability, CSR, green and the whole environmental debate for our clients. We were hearing in the media that 2009 will be all about thrift and as such our green consumer values will go out of the window. We wanted to see if this was true.

So with this in mind Gyro has just completed research with close to 2000 consumers and over 150 Marketing Leaders in 8 countries. The objective behind this 2 pronged research was to understand the above question and also to discover whether the people behind the brands fully appreciate the buying motivations of their customers.  The results show a considerable disparity between what brands are communicating and what their customers actually care about.

A selection of highlights includes:

• Marketing Directors significantly underestimated the role green issues can play in the purchase decision of consumers. Even in current economic times.
• People see themselves living increasingly green lives over the next 24 months.
• The UK significantly lags other major European countries in green attitudes.
• Around half of consumers do not trust the claims of green brand advertisers.
• People want to see evidence of companies’ progress in ‘green R&D’. They are not interested in hearing about car sharing schemes. This is about real technological efforts and breakthroughs.

We jointly hosted a roundtable with The Times this week to discuss the results. The Shadow Environment Minister and representatives from P&G, Coke, HP, Shell, BT, Adobe, Google, Nokia Siemens Networks and The Carbon Trust all contributed towards a really interesting debate.

Will We Keep Our Social Conscience in 2009?

This time last year I wasn’t changing nappies, I was in South Africa, rising at 5.00am each morning to go out on an open top 4x4 looking for lions and other hungry residents of Madwike game reserve.  

The animal highlight was the sight of a female leopard taking down an antelope, only for three hyenas to effectively mug her of her dinner minutes later. Away from the game, the other highlight was the hospitality of the local people who run a number of the lodges on the reserve.

Accommodation options include the Madwike Collection, a group of fabulous lodges that in most cases are ‘community owned’. http://www.madikwecollection.co.za/

This means they are run and operated by the local communities with private capital and expertise being used to get them up and running. After a period of ‘a few years’ the lodges are handed over to the communities which means that your tourist $$s have a better chance of going to the people who really need them.

I thought this was a pretty cool idea and it played a huge factor in our decision to stay there. It is also just one example of a fast emerging sector of the economy that I hope defies the current economic downturn.

So it seems that in these tougher times, people in the UK not only want to see vibrant businesses contributing to the economy, but they also want those businesses to consider the communities and the environment in which they operate.

If you had been to Madwike and seen the impact the venture is having there, you’d find it hard to disagree that there is even greater need in countries outside the UK.