E157 - Tom Gould, the Research Director and Head of Consumer at Impact Research

Quick word from our sponsor, 51toCarbonZero.com. If you're a CFO or board member staring down CSRD or Scope 3 and thinking, where do we even start? We at Sustainability Solved would point you to 51toCarbonZero.com. They turn complex, fragmented emissions data into something simple and give boards clear, audit-ready visibility on exactly where the reduction opportunities are. It's not another reporting tool that adds work. It's built so the data holds up when your auditor asks the hard questions. If that's a conversation worth having, get in touch with 51tocarbonzero.com, or just drop me a message and I'll point you in the right direction. Right, back to the episode.

Welcome to the Green Element Podcast, where we discuss sustainability in business with innovators and market disruptors, and business leaders. In the process, we strive to help you on your sustainability journey by sharing insights and expertise from organizations from around the world. I'm your host, Will Richardson. This week's episode has a slightly different focus to our usual podcast episodes. Today, we are interviewing Tom Gould, the Research Director and Head of Consumer at Impact Research. Impact is a market research agency committed to providing meaningful and sustainable futures. And in this podcast, we're going to be asking Tom about the changing attitudes of the public towards sustainability and how brands are responding to this. Welcome, Tom, and thank you for joining us today.

Thanks, Will. It's great to be here.

Can I start by asking you to tell me more about what you do at Impact?

Yeah, sure. So, well, as you mentioned, I'm a research director and I head up the consumer team. So I will talk to clients who have many a business challenge and look to understand what they're trying to find out and then design research studies to gather views and opinions from their customers to help them improve their services. A big part of what we do though is focused on sustainability. So Impact has been around for about 11 years now, and pretty much from the moment we started back in 2010, sustainability has been a focus of many of our clients, and that's just grown over time. We've had increasing number of research briefs come in talking about sustainability and really wanting to understand what consumers are thinking and expecting, because pressure is growing on businesses to act sustainably, and consumers are a lot more switched on as well. They really know a lot of them know what's going on and they understand it. They have a really good understanding and know what businesses should be doing. And as I say, have those increasing expectations.

It sounds like the coolest of jobs. I guess I'm assuming all of you, all of you guys at Impact Research are interested, if not like really interested in sustainability as a whole.

Yeah, definitely. I think we're all at different journeys. But that's quite nice, actually. So actually, So we've been running a study at Impact, a sustainability study, and as part of that, we've identified different groups of consumers based on their attitudes to sustainability. And we couldn't help ourselves. We had to test it out on the company. And it was very clear that we were all at very different journeys. You had some who were still very much reading up on it and really understanding what can they do to make a difference. all the way through to those much more active participants, those who are really taking that step forward. So, you know, they had EVs, looking at solar panels, solar energy, you know, even those smaller differences around like reusable coffee cups, refillable water bottles, but then also taking it that step further and going to kind of protests and marches to really try and make a more— a bigger change, a more governmental change. But we absolutely love it.

Yeah, I know, I bet. No, I bet. And how is the public perception of sustainability fed back to brands?

We collect lots of data around consumer attitudes, their behaviors, but also around kind of what's influencing their behaviors and their attitudes. So is it the government? Is it TV documentaries? Of course, Is it David Attenborough or Greta Thunberg? All these different factors which might be influencing their decisions. We also collect data on the perceptions of different brands and retailers. So which brands and retailers do the public think are really great at sustainability and which do they think are not so great? And we're able to relay that back to our clients and they're able to then understand where they sit versus their competitors. And kind of what are they doing particularly well on, what are they not doing so well on versus their competitors. And looking at that not just within their own direct competitor set, but actually what's really powerful is they can look at it by other sectors. So, you know, the supermarkets can look at it against fashion retailers or online retailers, or you can have your crisps brands, but also understanding how they compare versus bread and cereals. So it's a huge study which we're doing. And when we relay the information back, they are using it to take action. And that's what's really great in knowing that our data is leading to those sorts of changes.

Brilliant. And it's all a part of the whole big picture, isn't it? Now, I'm going to ask you a question that you probably won't answer. Which brands are the ones that are the best and which brands are perceived as the worst? You brought it up, not me.

Well, we've got to bear in mind this is all about perceptions. So it's not actually about what they're doing. But it probably won't surprise— so the study itself covers the major brands, the major retailers. So obviously there's lots of small startup companies who are doing great things out there in the world of sustainability. But for the purposes of the study, we've really focused on the major ones, your everyday brands that you see in the supermarket. So in terms of the top brands, it won't surprise you to hear that the likes of Ecover, Method all score particularly well. So actually, just to take a step back, what we've created is a sustainability score out of 100. And what we basically do is ask consumers to rate a number of brands and retailers on 4 aspects. So on being environmentally friendly, financially responsible, socially responsible, and ethical. And we're able to take those ratings and aggregate it into this score of 100. And so we've got a league table of every brand in retail. We have 162 currently in the study. And at number 1, as I say, is Ecova. So obviously they've got eco in their name. It sits well with consumers just straight away. And they've done a big campaign around laundry against refill.

Which interestingly, because Method are a part of the same brand as Ikova, and they have silently taken their B Corp certification away. So they're no longer a B Corp. They were bought by another company. I don't know what the other company is. I found out that the other day, which I thought was really interesting. And it's actually with everyone understanding more about B Corps and then what you've just told me, That's— it almost adds another layer of complexity, which is quite interesting.

I think that they can— it sounds terrible— they can get away with it, A, because their branding and their core values. But B, I still think the general public still don't have a great understanding of what B Corp is. And so, you know, it could say B Corp, it might not say B Corp. To the average consumer, they probably won't really know what that is and what that means. So yeah, they can unfortunately get away with these sorts of things. Also, the likes of other brands like Rude Health have done particularly well. Oatly, even though there was the controversy earlier this year, they do particularly well. And it's these young brands, these brands who, you know, if you look at their packaging, they're talking about sustainability all over it. And it's kind of in a kind of fun, exciting way. It doesn't feel too formal. You know, I think Oatly says this is the boring side. Which, you know, adds a bit of humor to the situation, makes you want to read it actually. So they score particularly well. If we go to the other end of the scale, so those that are not performing so well, it's the likes of some of our crisps brands like McCoy's doesn't do particularly well. Yeah, Doritos. And then we have Listerine as well, features quite low as well. And I think it's that some of these brands, They've got— so crisps is always going to be a challenging category to kind of do well in terms of perceptions because straight away you've got the health perception kind of kicking in, but also packaging. And this is a massive, massive factor for the consumer because it's something that's physical, they can see it, it's tangible, and crisp packets are one of those things that you just assume you can just You can't recycle; you just have to throw it in the bin. So immediately, people are quite unhappy with that. And also, there's always this perception that there's too much packaging for what you actually get with a bag of crisps. You always open up a bag and half of it's half half full or half empty, depending which way you want to look at it. So they don't. Yeah, those brands aren't scoring as well at the moment. I think with Listerine, it's linked to the color of you know if people don't know. Exactly what you do in terms of sustainability, they'll hook onto something else. And with Listerine, it's probably the color of the liquid because it's a see-through bottle. So they see the liquid and they go, wait, why is that? What's green? That can't be good to put in my body. Or purple. So they'll hook onto something else. We did some qualitative work for— as part of this, we did some focus groups and we actually asked about Vanish. And the people who didn't know anything about Vanish kind of immediately said, well, it's a pink bottle, that's very artificial, there's nothing natural about that, so they can't be good for the environment. So it's really interesting the sorts of things that people hook onto to make that judgment of a brand.

So you're right, it is actually perception. And that's probably— let's Keep that because actually, with what you've just said about Listerine, it's not fair on Listerine because actually that's perception, not actual. And I can see why you're happy talking about it now because it's not your opinion, it's what other people are actually saying about it, potentially for the wrong reasons. We don't know what's actually in Listerine, do we? So it could be the most environmentally friendly mouthwash. out there, but perception-wise it's seen as not.

Yeah, exactly. And but perception is a huge thing because if the public doesn't like your brand for some reason, they are unlikely to go out there and buy it. And we know that sustainability is becoming more important in people's purchase decisions, so they— so brands need to be thinking about sustainability and they need to be putting their sustainability strategies in place creating their commitments, actually taking action, communicating that. If they're not, the public will pick up on it and they will eventually kind of abandon your brand. I think what we're, you know, some— where we're seeing some big change at the moment is kind of in soft drinks. There's more pressure on sustainability. So we track the importance of sustainability in purchase decisions. Over time, we've been running this survey now for 2 years. And we have seen over time the importance of sustainability increase in the soft drinks category.

I was going to ask you about how consumer attitudes have changed in the last 10 years.

Yeah, so it's, it's interesting, because at least in our study, the last couple of years, the attitudes have stayed relatively similar at a personal level. So they still are saying, yep, sustainability is important, we should be doing this. And their behaviors have also stayed relatively flat for the last 2 years. So there's no sort— we're not seeing refillable coffee cups on the rise, or at least not in this survey. But where we are seeing change is the pressure they're putting on brands and retailers to act. As I say, in the soft drinks industry, I think it's around a 40% increase in the importance of sustainability in buying a soft drink. So they want to know that the brand is now being more sustainable in some way. Fashion as well. Fashion has seen the biggest increase across our whole survey in terms of sustainability. I think a big part of that is the media. The public will follow what the media reports on. So The increasing headlines around fast fashion, people wear clothes once and then throw them away and they go straight into landfill. Those sorts of headlines are now reaching consumers, they're seeing them on a regular basis. And hence, they're now putting more importance on sustainability and putting more pressure on fashion brands to act sustainably.

Yeah. And how is public opinion changing the operations And/or products of brands and services?

Yeah, so a number of— it's interesting because we've spoken as part of this survey, we've obviously been reaching out to a number of clients on this and probably been in now 50, 60 different client meetings discussing this. And they all come out with the same thing, the same theme, which is, but we are sustainable, we're doing, we're doing something sustainable. It's just they're not communicating it and they're not telling customers it. So we are seeing clients come to us with new products that they want to launch that are what they claim to be more sustainable. So it's using recycled plastic rather than any single use. And we've been testing those sorts of products out to see kind of what appeal there is and how much people are willing to pay for this product. Are they willing to pay more for sustainability? The answer is generally no. And so we're seeing them build it into their innovation pipelines, knowing they need to have more of these products out on the shelf. We've had some working with businesses because so we've worked with an electricity distributor and I think the local authority, and they wanted to help SMEs. Reduce their carbon emissions. And so we've done some research around that to understand kind of what are the needs, what do these businesses understand, don't understand. And off the back of that, a portal has now been created for SMEs to access, and they can now look at all of the kind of advice for them in terms of how can we reduce carbon emissions. So they kind of are filtering in. And some are using the results more for PR. So for instance, they're battling myths that are out there about their, their sector, and they're saying, no, we've got data to back up that this isn't the case.

That leads me nicely on to my next question. But before I ask it, just going back to what you just were talking about earlier on, we had Reckitt on They're quite a large, you know who they are, consumer brand. And what surprised me was what you just said. The stuff that they put in their different bottles and things is actually not bad. It's actually not bad for the environment and it is quite sustainable. But it's that they're not communicating about it. And I think that's what I got from that podcast was, wow, because I was a bit like, why have we got Reckitt on? They're not known as a sustainability brand. But actually, when I speak to them and we were asking them questions about what was actually in their products and the process that they went through in order to make the products, they absolutely should be talking to us. They are within the environmental and sustainability portfolio as industries. And so I don't know, I just— it's just interesting. It's communications, isn't it?

Yeah, it really is about communications. I think Reckitt are really interesting because I think they've switched in the last 6 months, they've gone through a bit of a rebrand. And they've really focused on their brand purpose. And now if you like look at any of their products, there's a purpose to it. And it's, for instance, Finish, it's all about reducing water waste. In Vanish, it's about making your clothes live longer. So they're really focusing on that messaging and focusing on the sustainability side. But yeah, it's just about effective communication. And at the end of the day, there's so many messages out there about sustainability. And it can get very hard for the average person to absorb all of that and, and also remember it and remember, okay, so who was it that said that they are now 100% recycled plastic? And so what they'll sometimes do is just generalize and go, well, if that brand is doing it, then probably all the other competitors are also doing it.

Well, that was the other thing that I got from it was they did say to be honest with you, the core ingredients are pretty similar in all the brands. And that's possibly why they've— there's never been any messaging around it because they're greenwashing. And they're kind of like, well, actually, we're doing the right things. Let's just get on with our day job and carry on doing it. Because greenwashing is a major concern and is a genuine threat to the environment. And my concern is that public perception isn't always a reflection of what actually is sustainable. So how do brands you work with respond to this dilemma?

Yeah, so it is a challenge, I think. So we know that about a third of people generally don't believe the environmental claims that brands make, at least a third, and about half of them feel that the claims are overused.

Right.

So it's not looking good. But it's really about, there's kind of a few kind of rules I would say when making claims. It's first of all, just be honest. That's a really obvious one, but one that we should say at the very beginning. Be open and honest. Also, don't come across, I don't know the right word, but preachy. So don't kind of come across like you're the absolute best and you're absolutely amazing Amazing. I think as a good part of honesty is saying, "Look, we know we've still got a lot to do, but we are making steps towards becoming a more sustainable brand." Keep them keep your keeping the claims focused as well. So you don't want to have twenty twenty thirty different messages. Just keep to the one or two key claims you want to make because again it comes across as if you're just. Trying to cover all bases just to please people. But actually, if you just say, yeah, my package— our packaging is 100% recyclable and we're using— I don't know, we're reusing renewable energy— just those 2 claims and just hammering those 2 claims home are a lot more powerful than trying to talk about 20 claims. And especially if you think about a retail context, in a shop, if you go into your supermarket, you've got claims everywhere. So you really do want to make sure that you're not overwhelming the public with, with your claims. And the other big thing is just about backing up the claims. So again, people will feel much more comfortable and believe you if they can actually see that the chain— the claim you're making is there. So again, if you're going to claim that, I don't know, your packaging is recyclable, make sure that it's clear that it is recyclable. We know, for instance, that about 3 quarters of people, I think it's 72% of people, feel that brands should be doing more to tell— should be telling them, making it clearer, sorry, making it clearer how to dispose of the packaging, which is a huge number. They clearly don't feel brands are doing enough in that regard, communicating Those sorts of things. So yeah, just backing up claims. And then I guess the final thing—sorry, I'm just throwing everything out there—but it's about talking about the present. Don't always talk about the future. So talk about what you're doing now because there's a lot of skepticism. If you say, "Oh, we're going to be doing this by 2030," people think that you're not going to do anything until 2028, 2029. Yeah. So they're thinking, okay, so you've given yourself 7 years of rest and then you'll start working on it. So there's a real skepticism around the language that is used. Even the word committed can kind of annoy people because they think, okay, well, you're committed, it doesn't mean you're doing it. So that's where our research really comes in because we're able to pick up those intricacies in the language used and kind of what brands should be saying and how they should be saying it.

Do you think brands have a responsibility to educate their customers on what is sustainable?

I think definitely. I think everyone has a responsibility in some way. So I think the public will put more pressure on the government. So we know that 70% of consumers think that the government are more responsible for this sort of thing. But the manufacturers also play a huge role. And so that is, again, as I kind of going back to that point I made earlier, they need to have clear messaging on pack and explaining, you know, plastic is a massive thing at the moment. It's, and, you know, plastic has become the villain of the environment. And that's largely because of all these documentaries and all of the the media coverage it gets. And we've actually found about 75% of people think that plastic should be banned, which the reality is you can't ban plastic.

No, and it'd be the most unenvironmental thing to do as well if you actually look at the environmental impact of that.

But that's the impact that the media has. So the media will be a big, big, big part of the education. But what was quite interesting was we then tested out different types of plastic. So we actually said to them, okay, so think about single-use plastic, PET, RPET, and a couple of others. And we said, okay, how acceptable are these types of plastics to you? And actually, the plastic that was the most unacceptable, as you'd expect, is single-use plastic. But then all of the other types of plastic, there was so much more openness to it. They were so They were quite keen. They say, yeah, this is absolutely acceptable to use. But if we then go back to that previous stat, which is 70% think that plastics should be banned, it really shows this massive gap in knowledge, and they just don't understand these different types of plastics. I mean, the biggest—the other challenge—I mean, single-use plastic is perceived as unacceptable. The other plastic is—it's kind of like the. Soft plastics, kind of that you get on bread packaging or crisp packets or anything like that. Those are also plastics which they are verging on saying is unacceptable. But that's partly because, A, they're unaware that you can recycle them, you just have to return them to the store. But if they are aware of that, it's the inconvenience of then having to return that packaging to the store. And there's a lot of, you know, Not all supermarkets are doing at the moment. I know Co-op have definitely rolled this out across their stores where they've got the bins in store for for customers to return soft plastics, but it's it's not as ideal as being able to just put the plastic in a bin at home.

Yeah, no absolutely, and I think that's working with the council and wrap wrap if you're listening listen to this. You're speaking to an you're listening to an expert. Um, in your experience, do brands respond and adapt their products according to the public perception, or do they research and then adapt their products?

Uh, yeah, no, definitely. Um, so we've done a number of product tests where, um, we, we give people the products and they'll take it home and test it out and, um, and then they'll give us their feedback. And we know a number of clients have then taken that feedback and adapted the product accordingly. Similarly, with packaging, we've done a few packaging— we've done a number of pack tests, as we call them, where we just test out kind of, you know, not just the visuals, but the materials, the size, just to see what people like, what they dislike. And brands do take that feedback and they do apply it. And sometimes we'll go through 3, 4 waves of research to get to the optimum product or the optimum packaging. Of course, there's the odd client who's already got it set in their mind. This is my product, I'm just going to do research as a tick box. But most clients are very receptive to change, and they have to be because ultimately they want to sell their product. And if they don't listen to the consumer, they're not going to end up buying the product because it's not meeting consumer needs.

And have you noted any other interesting trends from public perception about sustainability emerging?

Yeah, so it's quite interesting. I think COVID has had some impact. So I think at peak COVID, everyone was a bit more sustainability-focused. And they had a bit more time. So I'd say this is April last year. So this was the first lockdown. People had a bit more time to maybe reflect on behaviors, actually put the effort into becoming a bit more sustainable. But as time has gone on, and we've seen lockdown restrictions relax, we've seen those behaviors start to drop a little bit more. And suggesting that now they're kind of returning back to their normal, in the loosest sense of the word, normal lives, and they're becoming busier again, sustainability is starting to kind of become slightly less of a priority in their everyday lives. So actually, what we've— as I mentioned earlier, we have these 4 segments that we identified, and what we saw was in April, a real peak in the number of people in the more active segments, but then as time has gone on, those have shifted to the more inactive segments. So I think the COVID effect has had— COVID, sorry, the pandemic has had quite an impact on people's behaviours. In terms of perceptions, the one thing we also saw with the pandemic was a real jump in positivity for supermarkets. So in April last year, they were all— they all scored so, so highly on our sustainability score. And that was really closely linked to them caring for customers, caring for staff. It was putting those measures in place. And I think the public really appreciated the fact that the supermarkets were still open, essentially supporting them through the lockdown. But then as time has gone on, we've seen that positivity again start to decline. So it's quite interesting. And we've got the next wave of our study coming actually next month. So it'll be interesting to see if it's declined further.

How do you like to see brands implement the research that you conduct?

Well, I'd like them— like to see them use all of it as much as possible, to be honest. I mean, it really does depend on and clients and what they're looking to achieve. But you don't want to, you know, there's such a huge wealth of data in there, and we can apply it to so many different brands, so many different categories and sectors, and it's really valuable data. It's understood, it's so important to understand your customer and what their needs are and what their expectations are. If you don't meet those expectations and you don't meet those needs, you're going to lose them. So you really need to keep on top of what your customer wants, and their views do change. You know, all it takes is the media to start reporting something really bad again, you know, something beyond plastic, and it will change their views immediately. And so brands need to start respond— almost have to be responding to what the media is reporting because that is going to influence their customer views. So the survey itself, we have a number of clients who have bought into our study and they're able to influence it and they're able to add in their own questions. And those questions will be key business questions to them because obviously a lot of these brands, as I've said, they've got strategies in place. They just don't really know where to start with the communication. And we're working with one, for instance, who have their 10 commitments. And, but they've agreed, they say, we can't talk about all 10 at the same time. So the research has been focusing on, okay, which ones, which commitments should they prioritize in their communications, and then how to communicate it. And it was quite interesting, the findings, because there were kind of 2 commitments they needed to really prioritize for their in-store communications. But then 2, which they could then prioritize for their online communications. So some really powerful insights there which they probably wouldn't have got had they not joined our study.

So interesting talking to you. I probably should have said at the beginning, my undergraduate thesis was how people perceive the effects they have on the environment whilst partaking in sports within the Cairngorm region. And I mean, bearing in mind I was 20, 20 years old when I did that. Um, so yeah, talking to you today has been, it's been really, really interesting.

Bringing back memories.

I, I just, for me back then, um, I was clearly interested in sustainability and the environment, but I knew that there was a disconnect between the actual environmental impact and people's perception. And you're, it's, you know, you're cementing it, you know, you're, it's still there. Because in that instance, skiing, actually, if it's been designed, a ski resort's been designed properly, which a lot of the new ones are, can, if you were to take them away within 10 years, you wouldn't even know that they existed. And so they're not that bad. Obviously, the ones that were built in the late 1800s, early 1900s, generally the European ones as well, because they're older, are much worse. And they'll take hundreds to 200 years to grow back to where they were. But the North American ones are very, very good. And it's mountain biking, horse riding, all of that stuff as well comes into it.

Yeah, and I think that's something with consumers, that they have this one perception about something, but it can be so different to the reality. And so I think, as you mentioned earlier, the education and just making them realize that this is a really green product or even like, yeah, a green town, it's really powerful and really important to do. The education piece is a really important bit. We've got— it's interesting because as I mentioned previously, as I said, we've got these segments and we've got one segment who we call the inactive skeptics, the people who really can't be bothered with anything and don't care. But actually, We've then split that out into 3 subgroups, and we've identified the majority of that group are people who are quite ambivalent. They just don't really know what to do. They're lost. So just by holding their hand a bit more and educating them and helping them in their sustainability journey can just make such a huge difference.

No, absolutely. Tom, thank you so much for joining us today.

No, it's been a pleasure. Really enjoyed talking to you, Will.

And thank you for listening to the Green Element Podcast. Please do join us on our post-podcast discussion in our online community at sustainabilitysolve.org.