Trust plus
Will Galgey writes:
Trust in organisations and brands has been declining steadily as consumers have more information and are more sceptical. There’s also striking evidence that attitudes have shifted, certainly in Europe and North America, as a result of the global financial crisis. But if trust isn’t enough, how should companies respond? We’ve been collaborating with Millward Brown, the WPP company which runs the WPP brand equity research programme BrandZ, to try to answer this question.
Our joint research produced new insights into consumer behaviour and attitudes which should help shape the behaviour of companies and their brands, and new metrics to help gauge the effectiveness of these actions. In summary:
- trust is still essential
- but it needs to be combined with customer recommendation to be effective
- which generates the ‘equation’, Trust + Recommendation = Success.
And since both levels of trust and willingness to recommend can be measured in research, the quantitative wizards at Millward Brown have produced an index, the TrustR score, based on global consumer research, which indicates how effective different companies and different brands are in different markets.
There are some surprises in the data – Pampers tops the chart globally (and is also number 1 in the UK, France and Germany), while China Mobile is in the top 10. And Nokia, which tends to get written off by American commentators dazzled by Apple and Google, is top in 8 of the 22 countries covered by the study. The research shows a strong correlation between TrustR scores and brand financial performance.
The good news is that the TrustR report is free to our clients, and comes tailored for specific markets and specific categories. If you are a client, the consultants you usually work with can arrange for a copy to be sent to you. If you’re not a client, and are interested, please email us at betterfutures[AT]thefuturescompany.com, and we’ll see what we can do.
Add comment 12 March 2010
Becoming a ‘best company to work for’
The Futures Company has made it onto the Sunday Times list of ‘100 best small companies to work for’ at the first attempt. We asked our Human Resources manager, Liz Walkling, who steered us through the assessment process, to explain more.
Liz Walkling writes
Why did we decide to do it? Several reasons. We’ve always prided ourselves on ‘unlocking futures’, not just for clients, but for everyone who works here. We felt we’d built up a strong culture of openness, and developed an environment that supports learning and development. We thought we had something different to offer.
So entering the Sunday Times Best 100 Companies to Work For award seemed an ideal opportunity. Every employer should aspire to be seen as an employer of choice, and be recognised for it within their industry. The Best 100 Companies allowed us to test ourselves against some external benchmarks. Assessment categories such as Leadership, My Company, Personal Growth, and Fair Deal resonated within the business. For the first time, our size (53 staff in the UK) allowed us to enter the Small Company category, which starts at 50 employees; the rigorous assessment process allowed us to challenge our assumptions.
And the assessment process involves quite a lot of learning. The Best Companies team provide plenty of support along the way, with guidance on the categories, criteria, and the outcomes. The process is also thorough; it requires commitment from senior management, and investigates environmental polices, social commitment, as well as an anonymous employee survey (the level of response is one of the assessment criteria).
Six weeks later we got a call to say we’d been awarded Best Company status. Lots of hullabaloo in the office that day! Our exact ‘star rating’ came a few weeks later – 2 
stars for Outstanding (against a top 3-star rating for for Extraordinary). Our rating, and our 56th position (along with the comment that it was unusual to achieve a place on the listing at the first application) places us amongst the best of small companies. Whilst we’re proud of the achievement, it’s a process, not an outcome, and there’s a lot to keep working on to make sure we stay on the list – and more importantly, to carry on delivering a top-class working environment. The real work starts here.
Add comment 10 March 2010
Some good things we’ve seen #6
Compiled by Jo Phillips
- A sobering New York Times graphic of the 2009 death count (Allied military forces only) in Iraq and Afghanistan
- An alarming case of public sector innovation in South Africa
- Some interesting and successful attempts at behaviour change in Schipol Airport, also from Core 77, demonstrating that humour is important even when the subject is serious
- A talking plate that tells you to eat more slowly, via the iftf
- Stella’s app for finding the nearest pint of the stuff to your location – and a taxi to take you home!
- Bruichladdich’s beautiful bottle for the world’s first organic whiskey. It is possible to push the boundaries even in traditionally stuffy categories
- And a video of an uplifting performance by the singer Bobby McFerrin at the world science festival last year demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale.
The image at the top is from the Schipol bheaviour change campaign, designed by the Dutch firm Autobahn.
Add comment 8 March 2010
Cautious consumers, building buffers
Andrew Curry writes:
We’ve just published our latest report on the post-recession consumer, and the headlines are that although people are still concerned about the state of the economy, and are behaving cautiously as a result, there is less panic about the economic outlook than was shown in our previous research. But this is partly because people have changed their behaviour – the UK savings rate is now 8% (it was close to zero for most of the last decade, and even negative in 2008). As Futures Company Director Fran Walton said at the client launch, “People are building a buffer for what might lay ahead for them.”
A couple of insights from particular sectors are striking. The first is that people seem to have changed their grocery shopping behaviour – the proportion agreeing that ‘I am shopping at several shops to get the best prices, rather than doing one big shop at the supermarket’ increased from 22% to 36% between January 2009 and November, when the field research was done for the latest report. And there’s evidence that people are looking to spend less when they go out. There’s a more detailed summary of the data in WARC (subscription required).
News of the client launch event turned up in an unlikely place – Claire Myerscough’s Media Week in Brand Republic. She works for News International, and this was her take on the research:
Learn that consumers are still less trusting, with 53% worried about the price of petrol and 43% planning to spend less over the next 12 months. The mood of uncertainty is in line with our research: things have improved since this time last year but we are not out of the woods yet.
The Reconstructed Consumer is available as a paid-for report. For more information please contact Jennifer Childs on 020 7966 1824.
Add comment 19 February 2010
Death – now guaranteed
Claudia Rimington writes:
I’ve been doing some work on funeral planning products, and a number of providers, notably Age Concern, are advertising the guaranteed nature of their funeral plans – payment plans where you pay for a funeral in advance.
It is guaranteed because you can guarantee that it buys a ‘set’ funeral in the future – unlike a savings plan, which might not keep up with rising funeral costs, leaving relatives or friends to cover the difference.
So why is this interesting? The focus on ‘guarantee’, combined with the remarkable recent success of funeral plans, points to a prevalent consumer trend. The Telegraph suggested recently that the guarantee was the reason for the success of these products. Our own research in Planning for Consumer Change suggests the same. With consumers living in a world of greater uncertainty, we know that they look for where they can exert grater control. Guarantees provide this – indeed as they did in the 19th century when funeral plans were common (to insure against being buried in a common grave).
I also like the straightforward way Age Concern sells its offer. The funeral plan is simple and transparent – you pay for a certain number of things at a set price and they guarantee you get this. Other companies offering guarantees don’t always do this. Prudential, with its Guaranteed PruFund investment fund, explains that its guarantee results from their special ‘smoothing formula’, which is almost impossible to understand from reading their website, and which undermines the desire for control which makes the offer attractive in the first place. And of course, the whole point of a ‘guarantee’ is that you know what you’re going to get.
2 comments 12 February 2010
The Darwinian Gale and the era of consequences
Walker Smith, in Chapel Hill, writes:
I’ve been thinking about the nature of the recession, and consumer responses to it, for The Darwinian Gale. a large report we’ve just published. The prevailing view of the Great Recession of 2008/2009 is that the recessionary experience of frugality has ushered in a new era of thrift. Another says that consumers will pick up spending right where they left off the minute they can. Our research suggests that both views are wrong.
Instead, we concluded that the defining dynamic of the recovery consumer marketplace will be an overhang of uncertainty about economic risk.
The Great Recession blew away the keen consumption and liberal globalization that drove the global economy for three decades. But consumers still have aspirations for a better life; although they will re-channel these ambitions, and perhaps redefine what they mean by ‘better’.
As a result, the most important question facing marketers is what sort of value will animate the connection between consumers and brands in a recovery consumer marketplace coming to terms with uncertainty. But it’s not about frugality. Where it happened (and not all markets contracted), it is best understood as a coping mechanism. The risk for marketers is that if they focus on the frugal, they will miss the bigger issue of the changing value equation.
Indulging in economic risk, as consumers did in the run-up to the recession, meant not worrying about consequences. Now, after the recession, every aspect of every decision is up for review, along with the the full range of consequences from those decisions. A considerable part of redefining value will involve focusing on the possible consequences.
This focus on consequences will be the hallmark of value in the recovery consumer marketplace to come. Our research suggests it will be guided by a potent ambition of responsibility that will entail a greater emphasis on vigilance and resourcefulness. Spending will be shaped by the necessity to prioritize as consumers orient their shopping in coordination with networks of interests that include but also go beyond their own selfish concerns.
The Futures Company has developed a white paper called A Darwinian Gale (available here) that explores the story of the overhang of uncertainty and examines the implications. The Futures Company’s “unlocking methodologies” enable clients to identify the new value equations in their markets.
Add comment 9 February 2010
A is for Apple, D is for Dieter
Jake Goretzki writes:
According to one of the so-called ‘ten commandments‘ of the German industrial designer Dieter Rams, “Good design is as little design as possible”, something that is clear from the retrospective running at the Design Museum in London (until 7th March). Rams has a cult following among design enthusiasts for his enduringly simple, elegant designs for Braun from the 1950s until the mid 1990s. For his fans, that exhibition space full of stereos, toasters and coffee grinders is, well: it’s what Heaven’s branch of Curry’s might look like, surely.
Two thoughts struck me as I left.
Firstly, if plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, is Dieter Rams the most flattered industrial designer alive today? Without his influence, it’s certain that much of modern product design would look very different – including Jonathan Ive’s celebrated work for Apple, up to and including this week’s iPad.
Secondly, how did it come to be that an iconic, widely emulated and now ‘cult’ brand today only really exists as a largely forgettable range of electric toothbrushes and vegetable steamers? In an age where brands hunger for authenticity and ‘cool’ credentials, the brand that ‘did Apple before Apple’ could surely be working harder and making more of its credentials.
As Rams’ fifth commandment says, good design is unobtrusive. But to my mind, Braun’s fate feels like unobtrusiveness to excess.
The picture at the top of the post comes from slamxhype blog, and is used with thanks. Slamxhype’s post on the exhibition has a fantastic collection of pictures of Rams’ work.
Add comment 29 January 2010
Data for all
Oliver Wright writes:
Last Thursday was something of a watershed for the UK government. Data.gov.uk was launched, becoming one of a growing number of government portals giving us access to reams of official government data. That might not sound terribly exciting, but for businesses and research organisations that use official and reliable information, the announcement may fundamentally change the way they operate.
Government data has traditionally been stored in departmental silos where it is difficult to access. Many aggregation sites, such as the ONS, are notoriously hard to navigate.
The Guardian has been campaigning for such an initiative for some time, although its progress could only be described as incremental. In one of a number of articles on the site (you can find them here), they trace the birth of data.gov.uk to a comment made by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the world wide web, to the Prime Minister at a dinner for recipients of the Order of Merit:
“Gordon Brown said to me, ‘How should the UK make the best use of the internet?’ and I replied that the government should just put all of its data on it,” Berners-Lee recalled. “And he said ‘OK, let’s do it’.”
The site has been open to developers since October, in which time – without wanting to rely too heavily on one newspaper – The Guardian has created a portal which allows you to search for data from other ‘open government’ sources. It’s rather ambitiously called World Government Data, although currently supports only Anglophone countries. It mimics other efforts to combine official data from around the globe in an accessible way.
Why is this good news? Firstly, it seems only fair that taxpayers have access to information whose collection they have financed. Secondly, releasing such a vast body of data to the public enables a greater pool of talent to find ways to use it, in building new applications or finding new insight.
Ito World, for example, created some great visualisations using transport data . They were also responsible for this amazing video showing the edits made to OpenStreetMap over the course of 2008:
Greater access to data like this can have profound consequences. Members of the online mapping community scrambled together data from various sources to create an OpenStreetMap of Port-au-Prince that aid workers could use to help co-ordinate their efforts. Whilst their work was undoubtedly appreciated, it would have been made far easier with greater access. Here’s to Open Data.
The image above is used with kind permission of Jason Hawkes.
Add comment 27 January 2010
A history through objects in a post-material world
Eleanor Cooksey writes:
I have been enjoying the current BBC Radio 4 series ‘A History of the World in a 100 objects’ in which Neil McGregor, the Director of the British Museum, tells a history of humanity using objects from the museum’s collection. As I listened to his intricate description of the pestle, it made me realise that objects, things, ‘stuff’ – or however we like to call them – still have a very important role to play in our lives.
It is often easy to assume we live in a ‘post material’ world, but in a post credit crunch recovery marketplace, should we re-evaluate how we think about ‘stuff’? Looking at data from our 2009 Global Monitor Survey suggests that it is perhaps worth reviewing our hypotheses. Consumers are less likely to agree that they have all the material things they need: in the UK, this dropped from 60% in 2008 to 56% in 2009. In fact, the only market surveyed where feelings of material satisfaction have increased is Australia. Moreover, though we may not have everything we need, we are also less likely to buy more as spending without consequences is no longer in favour. Again, all markets – bar China – are showing a greater reluctance to take on debt. This suggests we are more likely to value what we have now.
Our research also suggests that people are still as interested in spending on experiences as accumulating possessions, but this is less about extreme experiences, and more about the enjoyment of simpler pleasures. Such pleasures, in fact, could consist of listening to something interesting on the radio, or going to a museum.
The image above is from the BBC’s ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects‘ website, and is used with thanks. For more information about accessing Global Monitor, please contact our UK Marketing and PR Manager, Jennifer Childs.
Add comment 26 January 2010
