What does it take to build a sustainable brand? Richard talks to Phil White of Grounded World about his experiences helping companies define their values, turn them into actions, and then communicate them effectively to customers - and the role that neuroscience plays in being successful! Phil talks about the separation between customer intent and action, how often customers will say they want to make a sustainable choice but don't necessarily do it at the point of purchase. The conversation explores many such breaks and how framing and messaging can help to make it easier for customers to do the right thing.
Brandon Wehn (00:09):
Welcome to the show. This is Brandon Wehn, and you are listening to the Understanding Consumer Neuroscience Podcast, brought to you by the folks at Cloud Army. In this episode, Richard talks to Phil White, co-founder of Grounded World about his work with brands trying to become more sustainable with customers, and how neuroscience helps point the way with effective strategies.
Richard Campbell (00:37):
Hi, this is Richard Campbell. Thanks for listening to Understanding Consumer Neuroscience, and my guest today is Phil White, who is the co-founder and chief strategy officer at Grounded World, which is a multi-award winning B Corp certified social innovation and brand activation agency. That's a heck of a title name too. Phil, thanks so much for coming on.
Phil White (00:57):
You're welcome. Thanks for having me.
Richard Campbell (00:58):
So what do you do at Grounded World? You're working with brands and companies trying to do right things?
Phil White (01:04):
I mean, that's a much cleaner way of saying it, isn't it? Much less of a mouthful. Yeah, we say we do three things well, which is just as well because that's what our agency is built on, but we say we articulate purpose, activate brands and accelerate impact. So articulating purpose is, as you would expect, is helping companies or brands define their raison d'être, their reason to exist.
Richard Campbell (01:35):
Yeah, yeah. Thinking beyond make money into what is it we really do here? Why are we here?
Phil White (01:41):
Exactly. All the nice existential stuff. And then pull that down into a brand positioning or a go-to-market strategy or sometimes even just operationally in terms of how that's going to influence their product, their supply chain, their innovation pipeline, their culture sometimes as well. So that's the articulate bit, all the strategery as my co-founder would say. And then, the activate bit is how we translate that really into branding and marketing communications, so branding identity.
Richard Campbell (02:13):
Yeah. Ultimately how do you communicate that to others now that we know who we are and what we care about, how do I tell anybody about that?
Phil White (02:19):
Exactly. And ultimately what sits behind that, and I guess which is why we're ultimately going to be chatting, is how do you change behavior? It's enough to influence intention, and we often hear that people want to do the right thing, but they rarely do the right things. And that's often where we tend to focus, particularly when it comes to consumer behavior change and just trying to figure out what you do.
Richard Campbell (02:44):
Well, come on, Phil. Doing the right thing is hard.
Phil White (02:47):
It really is. Well, it isn't though, is it?
Richard Campbell (02:49):
Well, it shouldn't be, honestly. It shouldn't be.
Phil White (02:53):
We make it hard because we obfuscate it and post rationalize and justify actions outside of when we feel that we haven't got any influence or control. But really it kind of comes down to doing the right thing is actually really straightforward. We all feel it.
Richard Campbell (03:09):
Yeah. Well, and we quickly say yes to it too. It's like are you going to pick the non-impactful packaging? Absolutely. Until you actually are standing at the shelf.
Phil White (03:24):
Right, exactly.
Richard Campbell (03:26):
There's that what you said versus what you did moment, and it's really interesting when those two don't line up. Arguably this is, we talk about neurosciences trying to understand why people's words don't always match their actions. So maybe we can get those things to line up.
Phil White (03:40):
Right. It's funny, I was actually, we've been chatting to Matthew McCarthy just recently actually. He's the ex CEO of Ben and Jerry's moving now into more, I guess sort of leadership coaching, and you could almost argue CEO activism, but he was talking about some of his experiences at Unilever and Ben and Jerry's and trying on Hellman's is how to make sure that the eggs that go into Hellman's are free-range, are not battery farm. And it was like, well, it's the right thing to do, so we're going to do it. We've just got to figure out how we can afford it. We've just got to figure out how, but because it's the right thing to do, it is a simple decision. Now we've got to figure out how we do it, not the other way around.
Richard Campbell (04:26):
Yeah, yeah.
Phil White (04:27):
I think that's the trap that a lot of companies fall into. They try and justify it the other way around. So sustainability is always going to be a cost. It's always going to be about mitigating risk or trying to mitigate cost when in fact it's actually, if it's the right thing to do, then the business model should flex around it rather than-
Richard Campbell (04:44):
Well, and all change is hard. That's not avoidable. If you're going to change the supplier of chickens, that's a difficult thing. Whether they're a more sustainable chicken farmer or not, it's just a difficult thing. The idea that you're going to go through change, you're going to commit to that effort anyway, so now our values come into play. It's like we're going to shape this decision around we're going to do better on that. I don't know that it's any more hard. I don't think that's additional difficulty. You've limited the selection criteria. One would argue that makes your life easier. Anytime we can scope it down, but excusing, I'm not going to do this because change is hard because change is always hard no matter what. It doesn't seem to make any sense.
Phil White (05:27):
It's interesting you've got this... No, I agree and there's this inherent tension between courage from a leadership and an organizational point of view and convenience from a consumer point of view.
Richard Campbell (05:41):
Right.
Phil White (05:42):
And these are direct forces, opposing forces that are directly working against each other all of the time in terms of driving momentum or enabling us to create a more equitable or regenerative economy or helping people buy more responsibly, because convenience is a nasty bugger, isn't it? It really is.
Richard Campbell (06:08):
Well, let's face it, most people aren't carefully reading the label on the mayonnaise to make sure they were free-range chickens. So why are you incurring that expense? Because without a doubt, those chickens cost more, those eggs cost more if the customer isn't even looking.
Phil White (06:23):
Right. Exactly. Exactly.
Richard Campbell (06:25):
So do we make the customer look? Is that the thing to do?
Phil White (06:31):
Honestly, I think it's more about making sure that you support your brand equity from a functional benefit and an emotional benefit point of view, and you make sure that your sustainability claim or commitment supports the inherent point of difference or the value in your brand. If you can connect your desire to be more sustainable and do the right thing with a functional or emotional aspect of your brand, which is what differentiates you and actually what drives people to purchase you in the first place, then that's the holy grail. It's when those two things become disconnected where everyone smells a rat and greenwashing kind of comes along and it just feels very inauthentic and then it becomes a weight. Then it becomes a cost.
Richard Campbell (07:24):
Now you're doing harm to the brand.
Phil White (07:26):
Right. Or you do harm to the organization and everyone doesn't get behind it because intuitively they're being told they have to do it from on high, but they know intuitively that it doesn't make sense. And therefore that's where the disconnect occurs at that mid-management everyday brand level because you can't justify it because the people running the brand know that it doesn't make any sense.
Richard Campbell (07:49):
That's not what's happening. And that leads to an interesting question. It's like, okay, I've done the right thing here. I'm probably going to charge more for my mayonnaise because I have to make that work. Do I make a marketing campaign around it? Should I really campaign about the fact that we're doing the right thing or do you just do it and hope that's okay? It seems like you'd want to do the marketing piece.
Phil White (08:14):
Yeah, it's funny, just this morning actually on LinkedIn, one of my community I would say was posting. She was just about to give a keynote speech and she just posted a little video, said, "This is what I'm going to talk about." And she talked about really the way she framed marketing, which I thought was kind of interesting, is marketing is a service. Marketing's role, particularly in this kind of new world, is not to try and convince you to buy something, it's to try and help you make a better decision. And actually, I know it's a simple reframe. It's a very powerful reframe actually, if you of think about it, and whereby then marketing and what you say and what you do, it has to have utility. It's utilitarian because ultimately what you're trying to do is do the best thing for the greatest number of people.
(09:04):
To have the biggest impact rather than trying to bash someone over the head with something that you want to sell them, which they may or may not deem as relevant. And if you think about it in that sense, it does change a little bit. Well, not a little bit, a lot.
Richard Campbell (09:19):
Yes. This is not trumpeting we're good guys. This is about, hey, we think about mayonnaise way more than you do. So let me summarize the things that you should care about when selecting a mayonnaise.
Phil White (09:31):
Well, I mean, taking on mayonnaise. The mayonnaise is the mayonnaise, but then it's about, as I'm sure you and your listeners know, it's really more about their social players really around food waste and making use of more leftovers and how mayonnaise is the magic that makes your leftovers great again.
Richard Campbell (09:55):
Yeah, that's a great approach.
Phil White (09:57):
Which is a really fantastic positioning if you think about it, because that connects the reason why your brand exists, what mayonnaise is often used to do, and ties it to something which has really great social value and impact. So, I think that's why the brand continues to be relevant and continues to be successful because it's figured out how to connect the why it exists to the way of profit and actually deliver something of value as well as making a difference in the world. So I think that's really cool.
Richard Campbell (10:27):
No, it's fascinating and exactly that point of addressing that broader issue, plugging into the fact that people want to do better and so we can surface those things. I was only thinking about the packaging and the product within, you're thinking about how it's utilized and how I become a part of my customer's overall goal to reduce impact.
Phil White (10:48):
Right. Because brands, the whole point of a brand is it has some level of utility that conveys meaning, that adds value to your life. And I think for many, many years we kind of, well, I guess it depends on the brand and how successful and competent their marketing team are, but it's very easy, isn't it, to get straight jacked into more functional, tactical, commodified competitive frame where you're really just trying to reinforce your core proposition without really thinking more broadly about the bigger picture and how that brand can play a bigger role, more transformative role in culture or society? And the move towards a circular or regenerative economy is that it forces you to think more systemically. You can't think in isolation because you will die.
Richard Campbell (11:34):
But at the same time, most people are already busy. This is another thing they've only got so much cycles for. So, we have an opportunity then to make it easier to say, "This is part of your broader strategy, however formed to reduce your impact on the planet."
Phil White (11:50):
Right. Right. And the love that you have for a brand or a product or a service that never switches to hate. It's not like love and hate are actually a polarity, it's love and indifference.
Richard Campbell (12:11):
Oh yeah, no, that's the far scarier thing.
Phil White (12:13):
And as soon as people are indifferent, then you become irrelevant, and then when you're irrelevant, then you're really in trouble. So in this ever very complex sea change of political, social, economic kind of, I don't know what's going on at the moment... It's like the tectonic plates of culture are colliding, aren't they? In so many places around the world. Unless you've got your eye on that bigger picture and you are thinking about how you frame the utility and the value of who you are and what you do, you're going to get swept away. You're going to get sunk or you're just going to become irrelevant.
Richard Campbell (12:50):
Right. Now, I think we're very much in a social cycle where we have been reminded of the differences in each other and while they're still not large, they exist. And so there's an exertion in general to clarify your positions. People are more mindful of it than they have been in a long time. I think for a long time, and I'll lay some of this, at the feet of the pandemic, we just presume we were all on the same page and we got reminded that there's a few other pages here. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it means people are forced to think about it more and to express it more, and that is going to invariably lead to a certain amount of friction.
Phil White (13:26):
I agree. Yeah, I agree. I do wonder whether, because everything is political at the moment, isn't it really, let's face it, you can't really steer out of it away from it. It underpins everything.
Richard Campbell (13:39):
Well, it's become advantageous to make it present that way, whether it is or not.
Phil White (13:45):
Yeah, correct. It's presented that way. But the kind of perpetuation of the narrative of falsehood, if you like, and how even facts or truths now don't even seem to hold up on their own right, as being factually correct. There's always someone that will dispute it or just keep saying the same thing until unfortunately people believe it to be the case, not mentioning any names. It's nice, isn't it, to know that the bigger opportunity and where the emphasis and the real focus for brands and business now is the need for scientific validation and verification and support you do. Because what that does, that just brings a new level of transparency, I think, and a new level of rigor and a new level of validation. And I don't think you can do... Marketing has always existed on being very flexible with the truth, let's face it.
Richard Campbell (14:40):
Yeah.
Phil White (14:41):
You might get essentially to the truth of the product and what it does, but how you frame it and how you couch it and how you make it relevant is it's always been a little bit open to interpretation, which is one of the nice things about being creative.
Richard Campbell (14:54):
Yeah, within limits. You can't lie about your product. There are rules, but certainly we can get... There are, I'm always very conscious of there are regulated words and there are unregulated words and we go along. There's no regulation around the word natural. It doesn't mean anything from a legal concept, so people use it a lot. Right?
Phil White (15:16):
Exactly. Exactly. So the reason I mentioned that is going back, that kind of brings us to that original point about marketing as a service proving out utility, because unless you can prove out your utility and there's a reason you exist, which adds value and meaning in a genuine, authentic, verifiable way, marketing's going to have a problem. It's just not going to fly anymore.
Richard Campbell (15:41):
Sure. And so, I mean, this is where the neuroscience equation comes into play because it gives us a set measure. And you've worked with Cloud Arm before. What kind of tests were you interested in? Because there's a lot of different kinds of neuroscience. We've talked about a ton.
Phil White (15:54):
Yeah. So one of the things we spend a lot of time on ourselves as really a kind of innovation and behavior change agency, I guess you could say, is understanding intention action gap. Understanding why people say they're going to do something and then why they don't do it. Part of that is just a research methodology piece, which we all know, but actually understanding where that intention action gap occurs in a life cycle or in a customer journey or within a consumption occasion, let's say, or within a shopping mission. And then, being able to identify what it is, where it is, why it exists, and how big the lost opportunity is associated with not addressing that intention action gap, is often the thing that we find most compelling.
(16:47):
As brands and retailers need to work more closely together around their ESG commitments and figure out how to solve it together, then it becomes even more important to understand what the commercial value or the size of the prize is around addressing that intention action gap, because that's the thing that's going to drive the behavior change that's going to deliver the profit.
Richard Campbell (17:05):
Well, again, this idea of marketing as a service, it's like, "Hey, I'm going to help you with this gap," or I'm never going to say it that way. But it's also, "Hey, you mean to be more sustainable, let me show you how our product helps you to achieve the goal you've put out for yourself."
Phil White (17:22):
Right, exactly. Exactly. Thinking back to retail and just the influence, the impact that contextual and environmental cues have on people's behavior, which we all know. There's even just some even basic stuff that can be done just to make the chances of someone picking up brand X instead of brand Y more likely can often just come down to the context of the environment, let alone what it is you're trying to say or how you're trying to position the brand. So for me, I love it because going back to that point about systemic, you've got to think more systemically now about everything. You've got to understand how something fits within a broader context rather than just in the isolation of a given channel or a given moment in time, and that's the stimulating thing for me. That's why I love what I do, to be perfectly honest with you.
Richard Campbell (18:15):
And getting out there and actually watching, can we change behavior in a positive way ultimately? I don't know that we're going to change the world with mayonnaise per se, but I grab onto a metaphor that will help people sort of put it into place to say, "Is this the thing that makes a difference?" And what I like about that particular one is like, this isn't going to change the world per se, but it is a step better. It's also not the most important purchase you'll make in a given day, but most products aren't. Most of us that are marketing things, it's like, no, this isn't a defining purchase. You're only going to get that little iota of attention to make that momentary decision. How do you present those messages in a way that with that iota, it's enough to persuade that the feature set of the product gets them to a place that they wanted to go?
Phil White (19:05):
Yeah. It's funny, I was chatting to an associate a couple of weeks ago who's been working on this theory, I guess you could say, which makes a lot of sense, but it's the notion that we shouldn't talk about consumption, we should talk about consummation.
Richard Campbell (19:23):
Interesting.
Phil White (19:24):
And at first level you go, what? What's he talking about? But actually when you unpack it, it makes a whole lot of sense because if you rethink the role of a product and the act of consumption, not as an end in itself, but as part of-
Richard Campbell (19:38):
A step in a cycle.
Phil White (19:39):
Exactly, exactly. Step in the cycle and it's a part that makes that product whole as a step in the journey to its ultimate destination, then that again, it just reframes everything, doesn't it?
Richard Campbell (19:52):
Sure. The problem with the word consummation is because you only ever used it in the context of a marriage, and that makes it weird, although in that context, it is a large cycle.
Phil White (20:02):
It is, it is.
Richard Campbell (20:06):
Consummation with product is from that need, desire to acquisition, consumption and completion, and wherever it ends up before the need desire kicks back in again. It is a loop.
Phil White (20:21):
Right. Right. And the other thing I just love about that intrinsically knowing some of the barriers to why people say they don't want to behave more responsibly or sustainably is that you often hear, "Well, I don't know if I'm having an impact. I can't track my impact. I can't see the impact." But if you are, again, if the brand and the utility is inherently connected to something that has social impact or transformative value and you are connected with that and you see your role in helping that brand or product realize its ultimate purpose, then by definition you're overcoming that barrier, aren't you? Because just by consummating that brand or whatever it is, you're actually a player and a protagonist in it, rather than just a passive recipient of someone's engineered value proposition in a boardroom somewhere. So that's why I think it's also a really powerful concept actually.
Richard Campbell (21:14):
Yeah, and interesting to test for that to say, are they getting it to do the kind of testing to say, when I present it this way, does it tie in with that value? You have that response.
Phil White (21:26):
Yeah, for sure.
Richard Campbell (21:26):
So many industries I've worked in, always aligned it's been, we are not our customer. We care more about our product than our customer does. We have spent more time, we utilize it differently than they would. Maybe I'm not talking about mayonnaise, but it's always that same problem. And so going to these measurable methods, so this message resonates with us, but does it resonate with a potential customer, with the demographic that we care about? Because we are not them, and they're going to think about these things differently. And so the testing becomes an essential part of, okay, we have targeted a market successfully. We can move the needle on that. Now I can focus my marketing on that area.
Phil White (22:08):
Right. And that's why I like Cloud Arm's approach to this through implicit association testing because that really does act in the absence of very deep ethnographic or qualitative research, and often the commercial need to be able to turn this around at relative speed and relatively effectively, I just love the way how the implicit association, the speed at which you select swipe left or swipe right to select a specific product attribute or a barrier or a driver, really does actually give you some insight into purchase intent because it is a bit of a proxy, isn't it, for behavior. Unconsciously, what are you more motivated to choose? What are you more propelled towards without giving it too much thought? Which to your point is the majority of the mindset in which our daily decisions are made, then it's not a bad proxy for purchase intent, is it, actually?
Richard Campbell (23:07):
No, no, not at all. And it occurs to me in the work I've done with implicit testing too, it also can help you define... One of the things I'm appreciate about Cloud Army was the recruiting mechanism, that when I wasn't sure what the demographic was, I could, okay, let's do a few different demographic sets in the recruiting mechanism with the same set of implicit tests and could see, oh, this resonated more with this group than it resonated with that group. So it could actually help me shape the areas that I'm going to target for the marketing spend based on how the implicit test went.
Phil White (23:38):
For sure. Yeah. We've done a couple of studies with them now, and what's just been interesting is I think in both cases actually there wasn't any real significant difference actually across demographic groups. And I guess if you think about that, it kind of makes a bit of sense, doesn't it? Because if you're looking at more subconscious kind of automatic, I guess system two driven propensities, then we're all wired that way. Right? We're all wired that way. If you've hit the nail on the head in terms of fundamentally what are those utilitarian, functionally and emotionally driven benefit to make that brand of value, and that's not really going to change for anyone.
Richard Campbell (24:22):
Yeah, I wonder about that. Of course, there's a common sense angle or sort of gestalt that says, "Hey, it's the young people that are more concerned about sustainability than the older folks." But if that's not showing up when you do the test, it kind of flies in the face of that, because at the same time, I think we're largely exposed to a lot of the same media and a lot of the same messaging. You can't argue with the amount of messaging going on throughout the world around these topics that maybe it has sunk in for most folks regardless of demographic.
Phil White (24:52):
Right. Right.
Richard Campbell (24:54):
And at the same time, some messages just have more power. And I think it would be pretty exciting to be able to test that way and say, "Hey, it doesn't matter who we put this set of messages in front of, it has an influence." It helps them to act towards their values. That would be a huge win for me as a marketer to know, yeah, I could put this into any market it's going to do well.
Phil White (25:15):
Yeah, I agree.
Richard Campbell (25:16):
I don't that it's true, but we certainly want to test for it. But boy, I'd love to find that. I think it's a good day when you can get a set of tests that says clearly, "For this group of people who are customers that we want, we get results." That's a win. But to get a result that said, "Oh no, this span demographic groups, you can place this anywhere and you'll be fine," I think I'd be dancing in the streets.
Phil White (25:42):
Oh, well, I would agree a 100%.
Richard Campbell (25:47):
Yeah. I mean, these are challenging jobs in challenging times. And I think earlier we were talking about the challenges that going on in society right now. It's like, "Hey, anytime I can show that we're more alike," that's a good day, because I think we are mostly alike.
Phil White (26:03):
I agree. Yeah. Even though when you look around, it doesn't feel that way at the moment, does it?
Richard Campbell (26:09):
No, it's easy to get... That small difference is being amplified so much. It's kind of a great goal for us as marketers to say, "Hey, could we make a purely inclusive campaign?" No us versus them, we are all us.
Phil White (26:21):
I remember we were doing... That reminds me of, we did some work with the UN a couple of years ago, actually. It's just before COVID unfortunately, which means that the kind of brakes put on it, and it never really saw the light of day, which is a bit of a shame because it's probably more needed now than ever. But the challenge that we were trying to tackle was breaking hate. How do you break hate and what sits underneath it and why is there such polarity and division? And we were working with a very small nonprofit associated with the UN. I think it was called We Are Your Protector. And the fundamental notion is that the greatest stories and evidence of hate being systematically dismantled is when one person from one side has actually demonstrated humanity to go and save someone from another side. So imagine, I don't know, a no man's land running through the camp of two opposing forces and one human seeing someone struggling or one human seeing someone in pain or anguish, and actually just kind of reaching out and just displaying a basic humanity.
(27:38):
There's nothing stronger than that power of dismissing your narrative and actually just acting on a basic simply human way. And it was really interesting, we had a jazz musician that had managed to befriend the Chief Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He was a black jazz musician by the way, and then ended up to the point where he walked his daughter up the aisle to get married, which is, if you think about that in terms of that context, it's a crazy thing. We had a self-proclaimed terrorist who explained how he had basically shifted his perspective as a result of seeing pain and being more instrumental in actually helping people from the other side. We had some very interesting people with some very extreme, oh, a neo-Nazi-
Richard Campbell (28:34):
Wow.
Phil White (28:34):
White supremacist, neo-Nazi. And they all had some very, very interesting, very personal, very visceral stories about what they had done. But the way they came out of it, in every single case, was a realization of the fundamental power of humanity. And there's nothing more enlightening and rewarding than actually helping someone from the side that you are supposed to hate or the side you're supposed to be opposed to and creating a bridge between them. So I thought that was just an interesting learning that I think you can apply to lots of different things.
Richard Campbell (29:08):
And you had those two parts of first was the moment within their head to connect with humanity and to do the right thing. And then there's the impact that it had around everyone, both the person they saved and the moment of just saying, "Yeah, that the two enemies decided to came together, or at least one side did and effectively serve the other." We'd all be better off for more of that.
Phil White (29:33):
Well, to your point, it's a good metaphor for the intention action gap then, isn't it really?
Richard Campbell (29:37):
It is.
Phil White (29:37):
If you think about it,
Richard Campbell (29:40):
It's much the same thing, but a positive way. I'm supposed to hate that person, but then I save them.
Phil White (29:44):
We are what we do, right?
Richard Campbell (29:46):
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Phil White (29:46):
Basically.
Richard Campbell (29:47):
Ultimately, that's the truth.
Phil White (29:51):
So I think that's what it boils down to.
Richard Campbell (29:52):
Phil, this was a very fun conversation, sir. Thanks so much for spending the time with us. It's great to see applying these technologies obviously in a challenging area where we're trying to do right more often. And let's face it, some of our digressions were pretty interesting too because it is a bigger picture item here for us to understand more about how people really work and how these technologies are helping us to do better for it. Thanks again for coming on.
Phil White (30:19):
Thanks for having me.
Richard Campbell (30:20):
And we'll talk to you next time on Understanding Consumer Neuroscience.