Being Intentional
Motive RealScore Updates (4/23/21)
Welcome to Motive’s first newsletter! We know everyone’s Inbox is perpetually filled so it’s our intention to only provide information that we hope you find interesting on a bi-weekly basis. If you’d rather not receive these emails just unsubscribe. No hard feelings, we get it.
When Taylor and I started Motive we made it our mission to bring transparency to the shopping experience. We are committed to the idea that the world is a better place when companies do better, and nothing makes companies respond faster than consumer demand. Keep putting your cash to work, it has a huge impact!
-Kai
Time for a Change 🛒
👟 If you’re getting back outside to run now that spring is here and shopping for new shoes, consider Hoka (RS 36), Altra(RS 28), or Asics (RS 15) instead of Brooks (RS -24), Sketchers (RS -22), or Saucony (RS -13).
🧼 If you’re shopping for lotion, consider Aveeno (RS 38) over Dove and St. Ives (RS 21). Dove and St. Ives are Unilever brands and do pretty well, but Johnson & Johnson, the makers of Aveeno, scores higher.
What We Are Seeing 👓
We launched Motive Search on April 11th, 2021, and are still in the early days of what we intend this service to become...but we are already seeing some really interesting discoveries. Over a (nearly) two-week period since launch, we have hosted a few thousand distinct searches!
Users have turned to Motive Search to learn more about the impacts of 332 different brands across 68 industry sectors, notably led by Apparel & Footwear, Consumer Technology & Computers, Motor Vehicles, and Department Stores. We had expected to see Skincare & Cosmetics among the leading industry sectors, and it was the 5th most popular sector, however, it did not make the significance cut-off.
Of all searched brands, 12 were searched more often than would be expected under a normal distribution. These brands are clearly in the public conscience and people really want to know more about their impacts on the issues that matter.
What’s Interesting (to us) 🤔
Of the 12 top brand searches, one really stood out to us: Mercedes-Benz (see for yourself here).
Mercedes-Benz was searched 64 times in this period and was the only brand of the Motor Vehicles sector to break through the significance cut-off for brand searches. Even more interesting, it was searched more than 2X as much as the next Motor Vehicles brand (which was Tesla at 27 searches).
Interestingly, our reporting period for this newsletter coincided with the launch of the all-new Mercedes-Benz flagship all-electric EQS sedan. So congratulations to Mercedes-Benz on delivering a new vehicle with reduced impact...and hats-off to the Mercedes-Benz marketing team--our data would suggest they put together a new product launch that people noticed!
From Our Blog 💻
Climate Change...But not Only Climate Change
As our collective attention is turned to climate change, other issues material to sustainability are not put on hold. We need action on climate change--it is a risk and a risk multiplier--but we also need action on the risk factors whose severity may be multiplied by climate change yet which exist and persist independently from climate change. Sustainability is complex.
Forget the CEO, Thank a Customer
As individual consumers, you may never get the media-infused praise reserved for business and political leaders, and this blog is a far cry from a fawning headline in the New York Times, but nonetheless: Thank you for making a difference.
Things We’re Reading 📖
All We Can Save, by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
(buy it here from an independent bookseller. We have no affiliation)Kai’s been reading this book as part of MyClimate Journey's book club. This isn't a book I would have likely chosen had it not been for the book club but I'm extremely happy to be reading it. It's essentially a collection of essays and stories told by different people all of whom are dedicating themselves to dealing with our current climate crisis. In a section called "Catalytic Capital" by Régine Clément, this sentence really resonated with me: "The time has come to rethink the relationship among our economy, social progress, and ecological systems."
Understanding Seafood Consumers, a recent study from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)
MSC recently completed the third part of a multi-year research project into consumer perceptions and concerns of Ocean and Fishery sustainability. Globally, consumers rank Ocean Health & Declining Fish Populations as the 6th most concerning environmental issues; but in North America, consumers rank it as the 3rd most concerning issue. Nearly one-third of North American consumers do not believe their favorite fish will be available to eat 20 years from now! What do consumers want: 80% want better information so they can be confident that the seafood they are purchasing is not coming from unsustainable sources, and 70% want better communication from companies about their sustainability efforts.
Work in Progress 🏗️
We received awesome feedback. One of the main things we heard was people wanted more clarification and context to the data so that became our focus for this week.
Live now:
Search Bar: Now when you search you’ll see the brand category as part of the search bar. We hope this reduces ambiguity, particularly when there are similarly named brands.
Brand Rank: The search results page now shows how brands stack up against each other.
RealScore Page: Provides a more detailed explanation of how RealScore is calculated (view it here)
On-deck:
Improved sharing: Provide a better sharing experience for those times when you’d like to share your search results.
New brands added:
We added 250 new brands with complete RealScores, and have begun assessments on 6 more that have been directly requested by users.