Just a spoonful of sugar: Making issues

palatable to consumers

Euromonitor International

01 April 2010
We all know there are good, sensible reasons to do certain things – but we don't do them. We find excuses to keep
driving cars (“climate change will happen, but not yet”), and we can't really be asked to hand over money to
charities (“it will only be spent on pointless bureaucracy”). Human beings are not naturally good or noble, but can
become so if there is something in it for them.

Key trends
• Downsizing as lifestyle;
• Glad to be a recessionista;
• No slog when it's guerrilla gardening;
• Green goodness;
• Footprints in the kitchen;
• Forget leather, give me jute;
• Do good while spoiling yourself.

Commercial opportunities
• Small is beautiful: more is no longer automatically better – for many consumers less is more now as they
increasingly realise that growth isn't making most of us richer;
• Don't fib to your customers about your green kudos – they will find out eventually and punish you for it;
• No need to appeal to the noble instincts in consumers, greed and vanity will usually do.

Background
It has gradually become clear that the world is never going to become a better place through good sensible
arguments. Idealism has its place but is not a mass market selling proposition. US author Bill McKibben has written
a book called “Deep Economy. The Wealth of Communicties and the Durable Future” which – among other things –
hails the power of combining goodwill with selfishness and a quantum of community approval. The American
Psychological Association has just published a study which confirms that young people react positively to lifestyle
rather than to moral arguments.

Downsizing as lifestyle
Downsizing is a term borrowed from the motor industry, where car sizes were adapted not to the new eco-
consciousness but to the increase in oil prices. In the USA, washing lines are returning into the realm of the
acceptable, after decades of dryers representing the American dream. Hanging up washing was banned by many
Homeowners' Associations, but now a mixture of green thinking and poverty is making the washing-line acceptable
once more. Fixed gear racing bikes have become a top seller in New York and London and turned 30-40 year old
sports car aficionados into green heroes. Colin Beavan, a NYC journalist and author tried downsizing in a complete
way. He is now making waves (and a book, and a film) with his blog noimpactman, in which he describes living for
a year with no electricity, car, washing machine and other mod cons. He appears to be making an impact as one
teacher responds to a blog entry: “I'm reading the chapter "Conspicuous Non-consumption” in the book right now.
These thoughts add nicely. I think I will print and post in my classroom.”

Chart 1 Global market sizes of major and small consumer appliances: 2004-2009
US$ billion

Source: Euromonitor International from trade sources/national statistics

Note: Market sizes based on retail value RSP. Historic regional/global values are the aggregation of local currency country
data at current prices converted into the common currency using y-o-y exchange rates.

Glad to be a recessionista
A recent twitter announcement leads people looking for a bargain – pardon me, recessionistas, to a party at Junc
Boutique & Gallery in San Diego, CA, to find “high style at prices that won't break the bank”. As long as it's a
fashionable event, there is no shame attached to being hard up. Even Manhattanites, notoriously averse to cooking,
are rumoured to be taking up cooking – sorry, becoming active foodies, in the wake of the recession. The global
trend towards home cooking has benefited food “basics”, such as rice, pasta, sauces and frozen foods, and there is
also room for restaurant-style ready meals to substitute the dining out experience. Flea markets and charity shops
have experienced a boom period, as vintage wear and vintage home accessories are coming back into LOHAS
homes worldwide.

No slog when it's guerrilla gardening

Community gardening is a nice idea, but there is often a lack of motivation on the part of the community. The
answer is – sex it up! A guy called Richard did just that with his blog guerillagardening.org, transforming gardening
into a radical experience. “Fight the filth, grow guerrilla gardens” he advises readers, and gives advice on making a
seed bomb or green grenade to plant in hard to reach areas of inner cities. Alternatively, offer something self-
sustainable for the “sellsumers”. Based around the concept of cooperative gardening, Veggie Trader is an online
marketplace offering the opportunity to buy, sell or trade home-grown produce. And on the topic of sex: it can sell
anything, even politically correct behaviour, as Rachel McAdams' eco-blog greenissexy.org proves.

Green goodness rewarded

Few drivers will remember to drive more slowly to save the planet when they are on a roll. Honda's hybrid car
model, Insight, has a feature that turns being green into a game: it shows leaves appearing on the bare stems of plant
icons on the dashboard when the driver is matching the ideal ecological driving conditions. When their driving goes
outside these parameters, the plants will wilt. At the end of each journey the driver is given a score which they can
build up over time and gradually they will be rewarded with trophy symbols for continued good driving.

The competition principle works in other ways, too. Scientists have found that if people are told about their
neighbours' low energy consumption, they will try and match it. If the energy balance was matched with a smiley for
good results and a weeping smiley for bad ones, consumption will settle at the lower level.

A team at Carnegie Mello University in Pittsburgh, USA, is working on a virtual polar bear application that lives on
an iceberg and grows bigger the more environmentally conscious its “owner” is behaving. Online forum Culture of
Future.com is a virtual round-table for lo-carbon lifestyle trends with links to green causes such as sustainable cities,
“climate biz trends” or ecological input at music festivals.
Footprints in the kitchen
Does your favourite restaurant have your carbon footprint at heart – asks UK weekly The Observer. Does it shop
locally; grow its own rocket on the roof? Or are its dishwashers running half empty and its chopsticks single-use?
This are the kinds of questions restaurant patrons are increasingly asking, and the success of eco-friendly restaurants
is proof of their validity. The American National Restaurants Association and the new UK Sustainable Restaurant
Association try to tighten their clients' connection to the environment. With the UK industry alone wasting an
estimated three million tonnes of food a year, their first task is to revive the practice of the doggy bag as smart eco-
practice. Which it is in many Bavarian county pubs: as soon as a waitress sees a customer struggle with his food, a
doggy bag appears, as a matter of course.

Forget cashmere, give me jute

The reason why young consumers feel good about wearing an item like Birkenstock sandals is not because they want
to do their feet a favour. When you are young, the state of your feet is of no concern to you. You wear Birkenstocks
because they are trendy, because you saw a celebrity you admire wearing them. As the baby boomer generation gets
older, Birkenstocks are a given. For younger followers of fashion, politically correct alternatives have to be trendy,
like Enamore, a creative hemp clothing label launched in 2004 by Brighton based fashion designer Jenny
McPherson. Her business philosophy is to design and create fashionable, beautiful, contemporary clothing from a
wide variety of hemp based fabrics and recycled materials. In North America, Rawganique Eco Apparel offers hemp
and organic cotton and linen products that are produced sweatshop-free, PVC-free and claim to help the
environment, protect human rights, and fight global warming.

Do good while spoiling yourself

“Ladies who lunch” have long been doing it, usually for a good cause, while enjoying social time with their peers. In
March 2010, the “Women's Mafia” is calling on women through fashion blogs such as www.thisthatbeauty.com to a
spa, shopping and charity event which benefits “History Starts Now”, an organization committed to fighting sex
trafficking. Women can support the cause by attending the spa event at New York's Downtime Massage and
Skincare, and enjoy luxurious packages and products for a modest $15 ticket price. Benefit events also have a long
history in the music world, where generosity is rewarded with cracking rock'n'roll, with Live Aid as the mother of all
benefit concerts.

The ultimate reward: good karma

The new spirituality that manifests itself in the strong Christian revival in the USA, a strengthened Catholicism in
the former communist eastern European states, the return to fundamental Muslim values and, last but not least, the
post-hippy search for values in the developed Western world that particularly embraces Buddhism – all these are
touch-papers indicating a basic worry about where the world is going. The German Zukunftsinstitut (Institute for
Futurology) has identified a change in values as one of the megatrends defining the 21st century: from the sense of
duty the 1950s required from the world to the hedonism of the 1970s and 1980s the world is now entering a phase of
reassessment.

Outlook
It is heartening to think that consumers can be won over by being made aware of good causes. But they are advised
not to believe everything they are told says Dean Walker, co-founder of a company called “Alternative Undies” A
2009 report about “Greenwashing” compiled by the environmental marketing agency TerraChoice notes a 79%
increase in products making green claims, but shows that 98% of the products surveyed engaged in what they term
the sin of greenwashing. On the positive side, the report found that legitimate eco-labelling has almost doubled in the
past two years.