Sustainability: Semiotics & Emotioneering

Malcolm Evans - Founder, Space Doctors The Marketing Society’s Green Think Tank: Making Sustainability Sexy 15 May, 2012 D R A

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From Pollution to Sustainability

• Historical path from 1960s pesticide concerns to 2012 sustainability

• An Inconvenient Truth (2006) a watershed in terms of changing agendas for marketing & consumer insight

• Clients turning to semiotics – new challenges, what consumers can’t tell you

• Impact of global financial & economic crisis – ecological agendas sidelined or another major game-changer for companies & brands?

• Semiotics analyses brand communications in competitive and cultural context • Understanding codes or discourse around a particular

category, benefit or theme • How brands use or break the codes • Stretches into difficult areas that challenge

traditional marketing discourses

Decoding a Category or Discourse

Understanding Sustainability – Why Semiotics?

• Decoding and tracking changing cultural codes & meanings

• Individual markets and cross-cultural analysis

• Patterns of meaning and behavior that consumers can’t yet articulate

• A predictive dimension - plotting trajectories of change into the future

Residual, Dominant & Emergent Codes

SEMIOTICS MAPS COMMUNICATION PATTERNS AND TRAJECTORIES TO UNDERSTAND HOW CULTURES ARE CHANGING & INDIVIDUAL BRANDS ARE COMMUNICATING

In time new ideas & forms (EMERGENT) become mainstream (DOMINANT) then dated (RESIDUAL)

— Heavily played codes —  The norms & mood of today — What consumers tend to

play back in research.

—  New thinking & executional styles

—  First pieces of a jigsaw puzzle

—  Tomorrow’s dominant codes

—  Not just spotting trends, but engineering new meanings

—  Around for some time, dated

—  The past in the present

—  May be revitalized (e.g. retro, nostalgia, reinvention)

Greenwash Transparency Actions Speak Louder

R E S I D U A L D O M I N A N T E M E R G E N T

One Trajectory- Sustainability in Developed Markets

Throughout the first half of the 00’s larger corporations have followed the lead of more innovative eco-friendly companies by advertising ‘Green’ products and initiatives even when they weren’t particularly eco-friendly.

A number of major disasters including the BP oil spill and the 2008 market collapse- have tested the integrity of big businesses and institutions. Companies promising transparency and environmental sensitivity are under intense scrutiny and eco-friendly messaging is not so easily believed.

About doing rather than just saying. Companies of all sizes beginning cut back on resource waste for both environmental & financial reasons. Eco-friendly action rather than advertising creates publicity. Colour green not as prevalent or used in as clichéd a way.

• Emerging Markets have become a focus of interest for semiotic & cultural analysis in the last decade • Grasping the big picture – internal diversity and speed of change • From emerging market entry for international brands - through

communicating local emerging brands internationally - to innovation led by emerging rather than developed markets

• Importance of sustainability in emerging market context • Space Doctors emerging market sustainability database ongoing – plus client projects on emotional coding of sustainability in specific categories in developed markets

Shivakumar & Evans, “Insight, Cultural Diversity & Revolutionary Change: Joined-Up Semiotic Thinking for Developing Markets”, ESOMAR Congress paper, Athens 2010

Semiotics in Emerging Markets

Semiotics & Sustainability Semiotic & cultural analysis has helped clients in commercial

organisations, NGOs and governments understand how communication and behaviour around ecological awareness & sustainability have been evolving in individual countries and globally. This topic, previously a focus of interest in specific pioneering markets (e.g. Germany in the 1990s), first became a mainstream concern in developed markets around 2006, particularly in response to the film of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, subsequently in emerging markets as well.

In June 2011) UK specialist semiotics agency Space Doctors carried out a study of how sustainability-related culture and communication are evolving in the major BRIC markets – with Brazil & China taking a lead role, each in its own distinctive way, while Russia and India develop more incrementally, reflecting local historical constraints & opportunities. This is a cut-down version that analysis, emphasising the unique role semiotics plays in helping bring words & action closer together in the world of sustainability – and leverage the critical emotional codes in communication that help bring about significant behaviour change.

ECO CHIC!

HOLISTIC BUSINESS!

ECO VALUE

CREATIVE EXPERIMENTATION"

CULTURAL RECYCLING CONSUMER SELF!

MANAGEMENT!

COLLABORATIVE ACTION

PRESERVING!INNOCENCE!

CORPORATE-LED "PRODUCTS +"INITIATIVES"

!

COMMUNITY"GROWN "

LARGE-SCALE "GOVERNMENT "INVESTMENT"

INDIVIDUAL"BASED"

INNOVATION"

Emerging Market Sustainability Mapping Idealism!

TOP DOWN! BOTTOM UP!

Pragmatism!

MACRO EFFICIENCY!

THEME 1!

COLLABORATIVE ACTION!

✔

Theme"Brazil is leading this paradigm shift, with collaborative cross pollenation of ideas and cultures being a deeply entrenched value in Brazilian culture. In India Sustainability is largely led by communities and NGO’s. In Russia and China, where consumer capitalism and individualism is relatively recent development, collaboration is more emergent, at times opening the door to confrontation with governments over quality of life and environmental issues. Connections Beyond notions of the Collective, where accountability has the tendency to fade out- A notion of active hands-on problem solving. Getting things done together. Stimulus Examples Santander Spot, 2010 advert: “Let´s do this together?” Marina Silva, Natura Ekos, Project Hope China,

THEME 2!

PRESERVING INNOCENCE!Theme"Emergent markets are exhibiting a nostalgia for pre-Industrial times in varied forms. In China and to lesser extent in India, this is expressed as a movement to preserve traditions, endangered species and natural environments central to national identity. Brazilʼs relationship with the Amazon is the most pragmatic, with a view to progress that is about preserving indigenous biodiversity."

✔

Connections"Romanticised nature as a precious source of tradition and national identity. essential cultural/ historical assets under threat of extinction with the advent of Global industrialization.""Stimulus Examples"Application of world cultural heritage sites: Yellow Mountain, the Great Wall "Ganges and Narmada Rivers. Save the Tiger""

THEME 5!

CREATIVE EXPERIMENTATION!Theme"Collaboration between urban planners, architects, fashion designers. Aesthetic pleasure benefitting from social and environmental problem solving. In India, a more prevalent form of this is the connection between Artisanship and Social work. The recent ʻGreen Breakthroughʼ in Brazil is quickly establishing it as a leader in creative solutions across all categories including art and design, energy efficiency and ecological packaging. ""Connections A mix of Art & Science. Re-purposing, Reuse. Transform. Sustainability as an inventive or creative attitude toward life Stimulus Examples artist Vik Muniz, Mario Queiroz designer creating dresses out of PET plastics Auroville Sustainable city, India

✔

THEME 6!

ECO-Value!

Theme"A convenient link between some environmentally sustainable products is their cost effectiveness. In some of the BRICs countries, recycling and re-use carry residual negative connotations with rurality and poverty. But increasingly, pragmatic Eco-Value brands are percieved positively. ""

Connections!Environmentally sound and economically savvy brands. Back to basics, living smart, Products enabling people to make the most of what they have. Cheap is positive.""Stimulus Examples!IKEA (Russia) is changing negative associations with sustainability there. Tata Swach water purifiers for rural areas" !

✔ ✔

Patterns across the BRICs

BRAZIL- Leader in Creativity & Collaboration""Innovation, Deeper engagement with Sustainability.""Government + Corporations + Individuals working together"

"CHINA- Top Down relationship to Sustainability."

"Leader in Government funded investments in Sustainbility. ""Competitive investments. More surface engagement in creativity and individualism- less NGOʼs or presence of individual business leaders in sustainability."

"RUSSIA- Concerns for Immediate solutions/ gratification."

"Financial concerns overpower Sustainability concerns. ""Conspicuous consumption is still going strong""Resource preservation, recycling, and re-use associations with Soviet era poverty are fading but still present."

"INDIA- Most robust Community and NGO activity but least organised from

the top-down perspective. Pockets of activity but no overall master plan (cf. China). A robust heritage of spiritual practices which emphasise empathy with nature."

"

Signs of the Times

• Companies have the resources to invest in new technologies that governments & other organisations may not have.

• Post-greenwash culture: doing not talking, independent

performance evaluation • Sustainability becoming a much bigger concept than is

covered by ‘green’ alone – company cultures & ethics, fairness, greater social & economic equality

• An all-pervasive weasel word legitimising austerity in UK

(NB major differences in mood, language, media & cultural buoyancy between Europe/US and emerging markets)

• The importance of emotional coding, credible

personal & local/community semiotics, some openness to interpretation & co-created meaning (versus rational didactic monologue)

C O N F I D E N T I A L , F O R I N T E R N A L D I S T R I B U T I O N O N L Y . A L L R I G H T S R E S E R V E D . © 2 0 1 0 S P A C E D O C T O R S

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