Being Intentional
Motive RealScore Updates (06/18/21)
Hi everyone! Welcome back to another edition of Being Intentional. We’re delighted to share what’s happening at Motive and (hopefully) provide some insight into some of the brands we’re all familiar with. We are strong believers in the idea that customers are the most important stakeholder of any company, and we see it as our job to enable everyone to make informed shopping decisions, something we refer to as Intentional Shopping (hence the name of this newsletter 😉 ). Shopping from brands that fit your values is not always easy, or even possible as you’ll see below in the Time for a Change section.
Last week we included a very brief survey at the end. Thank you to all that took the survey! We asked if you looked for certifications when you shop and if Tide’s new marketing campaign highlighting sustainability would influence your shopping decision.
77% of you said that you do look for certifications when you shop!
Tide was tied (get it?) 50-50% with those saying it would influence your decision and those saying it wouldn’t.
We’ve included another survey at the bottom. We’d love to hear more about what you think so be sure to check it out!
Movies are back, just in time for summer. For this edition of the newsletter, we took a look at the top movie theatre chains in the United States and the top motion picture distributors. An interesting thing jumps out when you look at the top movie theatre chains: None of the top four companies have a RealScore above ZERO!
If you’re headed out to the big screen, choose Cineplex (RS: -16) and Regal Entertainment (RS: -18) above Cinemark (RS: -23) and AMC Theatres (-32).
Thankfully, the production companies scored much higher.
Sony’s Columbia Pictures (RS: +28) and AT&T’s Warner Bros. (RS: +26) easily outperform Disney Studios (RS: +8) and Comcast’s Universal Pictures (RS: +2)
Brand searches were very concentrated over this latest reporting period with all activity focusing in on 60 distinct brands—this is the most concentrated search activity we have seen to date.
…but the tight focus didn’t end there, within these 60 distinct brands, four stood out in particular for attracting so much attention. Papyrus-Recycled Greetings (is there a holiday of some sort coming up? Asking for a couple of fathers…), Nike (always among the searches, but much more so this past week), Coca-Cola, and Guinness were so popular that no other brand could break across the critical interest threshold to join them as leading searches.
New in our analytics…Motive users are more likely to click on a brand that has been recently searched by a fellow Motive user than they are to launch a fresh search of their own. The real question now is: Are people coming to Motive and clicking a recently-searched link as a shortcut to a search they were intending to carry out, or are they temporarily getting sidetracked from their intended search as they become intrigued by what other people have searched? The dynamics in these user flows are really interesting and we will be following up!
We have been publicly measuring the impacts of brands on the issues that matter for six months now and it is amazing to see how quickly and significantly some brands’ RealScores can change in such a short period of time. If there was ever a doubt that brands need time to respond to consumer demands, this should put it to rest. Comparing the RealScores of 12,578 brands from January 2021 to now:
5,377 (42.7%) of brands have been assessed to have decreasing RealScores over this six-month period. Of these, 22.1% were assessed with decreases of 10% or less…meaning a full 77.8% saw their RealScores drop by more than 10%!
On a slightly more positive note, 5,909 (47%) of brands have been assessed to have increasing RealScores over this six-month period. Of these, 17.8% were assessed with increases of 10% or less…meaning 82.2% saw their RealScores improve by more than 10%.
1,292 (10.3%) brands did not show any movement in their RealScores over this period.
Across all brands, the average change (whether increasing or decreasing) was of 65%. Brands are clearly not static, and with this much movement, there is ample opportunity for Intentional Shoppers to leverage their spending power to help drive the change they want to see.
…there’s a lot here to explore and we will be writing a more in-depth analysis soon…
Our Blog:
ESG is Not Sustainability (click here to read )
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) data is growing at an astounding rate but it’s important to understand how that data is developed and interpreted and to remember that “ESG” does not equal sustainability.
What’s Your Signal? (click here to read )
Intentional and informed consumers can change the world…but we need to know what we want to change it to. Every purchase we make sends a signal to all companies about what to make AND how to make—so what’s your signal?
Our YouTube:
What does ‘better’ mean to you?
Elevated Economics: How Conscious Consumers Will Fuel the Future of Business by Richard Steel. It’s hard to overstate how closely aligned the thesis of this book is with Motive’s mission. Each page feels like it’s been pulled from Motive’s fundraising deck, so if you’ve ever wondered why we started Motive just read this book and you’ll understand (or you can just ask us!)
Things Live this Week:
New brand tiers: We have added a tiering system to the brands within the Motive RealScore database based on popular recognition. When you search for a brand, we return three additional reference brands to help contextualize the results—with this new tiering, the reference brands should be more appropriate.
AskMotive.com: We have added a new location to the Motive digital real estate! Motive Search is moving to www.AskMotive.com. This address is more action-oriented and simplifies our social media and video marketing efforts. The user-facing Motive Search is migrating to this new address while we will be maintaining our former address for corporate development.
Up-dated data: All scores in the Motive RealScore database have been updated as of June 8th, 2021 and over 600 new brands with full RealScore details have been added.
Things being worked on:
Analytics: This doesn’t directly contribute to the customer experience but we have a growing body of data and need to continually improve our analytics so the insights we provide are accurate and meaningful.
New search types: Still working on presenting new ways to search for brands and products. This includes things like search by sector (e.g. Beverages), certifications, high scores/low scores, and more.
In this newsletter edition’s survey, we’re curious about how you shop. What’s important to you when you shop? You told us that certifications are important, but are there other things that help you decide which products to buy? Do you shop for yourself? Or do you shop for multiple people? Click the link below and let us know!
Take the quick survey here (2 minutes, max)