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 Special Supplement to the October 2001 issue: A report on the proceedings of the Metropolis West Conference, February 7+8, 2001, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, "Finding the Thread of Sustainability." October 2001
Young consumers are beginning to think more deeply about the total cost of consumption. They're looking for signals that tell them about that, not just simple stuff like will it be recycled when you throw it away or that the soles of athletic shoes will be turned into basketball courts-it's far more subtle and deeper. They feel threatened. When I was growing up, I was threatened by B-52 bombers taking off from southeast England and scooting across to the Baltics and dropping H-bombs. I was worried about really big violent warlike stuff. They're not worried about that. They've moved on. They worry about the environment being destroyed, and they talk about it spontaneously. Who do they hold responsible for environmental degradation? Not the government, but business. And if you think of brands as surrogates for businesses, you begin to see why they might imbue brands with some behavioral expectations. This generation has grown up being told that they'll live to the age of 120. So if they're going to be hanging around for a while, they'd better make sure this is a reasonable place to hang around. In Japan, doing work for Coca-Cola, I met with a 28-year-old producer of Japanese hip-hop. He talked about how he was co-opting this very American music but had no interest in co-opting its value system. So I asked him, "What do you think someone like me, in advertising, should know?" "Two things," he said. "We're entering a time that is all about the mind it's what you know that matters. Here in Japan, we have everything we need. What we want is to be connected to ideas and to other places. And what we need to be really, really worried about is the environment." One of the most exciting things about consumers today is that they know they have power, and they're going to use it. There's a culture of consumer power. And the new generation is looking for issues they can identify with. The environment is a good issue for them-it is something that unifies rather than separates (like civil rights and racism did my generation). Consumers are going to use the environment and sustainability as a means of molding the brands and affecting the brand they work with. We are living in a global, networked society. And networks are all about influence-about being generous, about giving something to somebody because you think you might get it back. And the good thing about networks is that ideas can scoot around the world in no time. As these ideas scoot around, they're being used to uncover the reality of business. It's fundamentally a different way of thinking. Corporations can no longer control the media. In the days when you had five TV stations and the New York Times, you could hide in Cincinnati and pretend to be a family company, not a chemical company. You can't do that anymore. Consumers instantly personify brands like Nike and Coca-Cola as a group of people. When I started working with Coca-Cola ten years ago, there was still a clear separation between corporate identity and brand identity. Not any more. The Internet is commodifying mass brands and allowing people to look at the specification of products and judge them purely on rational grounds. Consumers are saying, "Unless you can demonstrate a really good reason why I should buy my stuff from you, I'll go and buy it from someone else. If you're a good guy and you entertain me, I'll buy my commodity from you." This is a real change. People want to know who you are as a business. The single biggest piece of news is that in every country where we did research for Coca-Cola, everybody had one question: "Who are you?" Not "what do you do or what's your product like?" And in this environment, given that consumers care about sustainability, who you are has to be answered with something substantial-and so brand owners should care about sustainability. The modern consumer adds environmental impact to the perceived cost of consumption and is attracted to companies who acknowledge their responsibility by embracing incremental improvements in environmental impact. What people really want is lots of really good cheap stuff. People are happy being consumers. Companies are doing well when they embrace the idea that they've got to be honest about the issues they face as a business. It's a really good strategy. I'm assuming most people have access to the same information we have. I'm assuming that most brands will integrate sustainability as an intrinsic element of their architecture, but they won't brag about it. And this is why I think it is a particularly brilliant moment to be in design and advertising, because everyone wants to feel OK. People are asking for honesty and openness and integrity. They're not asking to be sold stuff-they want relationships. The convergence of brand and corporate identity will accelerate this process. Common-denominator branding is being replaced by creative-voice branding. Honda's hybrid car is an indication of this approach: it's not a moneymaker, it's a brand statement. I was in the Honda showroom in Tokyo a few months ago, and they had this fantastic campaign called "Think Small." They're not only selling cars, they're selling small consumption. If you can move to a situation where sustainability and responsibility become a component of people's desire, then we're really in a good place. |
