Being Intentional
Motive RealScore Updates (06/04/21)
10 years ago it would have been impossible to imagine the day that ExxonMobil’s shareholders would vote out two board members and replace them with climate advocates. It would be equally impossible to imagine Chevron’s shareholder voting to adopt a resolution to cut the company’s emissions. But, this is exactly what happened this past week and it’s historic. Many people have already written about the events that unfolded, including us, but it’s worth pointing out (again) that these events occurred for a simple reason: sustainability equals profitability and companies can no longer ignore this fact. ExxonMobil and Chevron’s shareholders understood this and voted with their wallets. This is just the beginning—the wave is coming 🌊.
Thank you for being here with us. We appreciate your support as we build Motive. In this edition of the newsletter, we include a small, two-question poll at the bottom. This is an experiment so please take the poll and let us know what you think!
Time for a Change 🛒
Since we’re on the subject of summer, let's take a look at some summer staples that most of us will likely purchase in the near future: Sunscreen and beer!
If you’re out shopping for sunscreen reach for Neutrogena (RS: +38), Skinceuticals (RS: +33), and Kiehl's (RS: +33) instead of Hawaiian Tropic (RS: +14), or Banana Boat (RS: +14)
Looking for a cold beer on a hot day? Well, Guinness (RS: +40) may not be the thirst-quencher you were thinking of but it has the highest score among its peers (and is delicious!). Heineken (RS: +33) and Coors Light (RS: +21) also perform well unlike Budweiser (RS: +17), Modelo (RS: +8), and Boston Beer (RS: -5).
Things We’re Seeing 👓
This recent reporting period brought in search activity covering 159 distinct brands across 38 distinct industry categories.
Interest in learning more about the impacts of particular brands is quite distributed across the economy. Of the 159 brands that were searched, only four achieved critical interest status--Compose[D], Shell, Nike, and Catena Media. We are seeing a lot of interest spread across a lot of brands.
Following, only three industry categories reported search volumes above what would normally be expected within this distribution of search activity, yet all but 18 also reported three or more searched brands. This pattern reflects a growing trend of comparison shopping on the Motive RealScore platform and is something we will be keeping an eye on as we continue to plan new improvements to our service.
Things We’re Interested in 🎓
It is really interesting to see how Integrated Oil companies fared throughout this reporting period. History was made last week as Integrated Oil companies came under the heavy hand of the law and of shareholder power for how they have been preparing (or not) for a decarbonizing world. Developments at Shell, ExxonMobil, and Chevron stole the headlines and drew public attention and scrutiny to the entire sector. We witnessed this attention on the Motive RealScore platform as these three companies were among seven Integrated Oil companies to be actively searched by users seeking to learn more about the brands’ impacts on the issues that matter.
What was even more interesting, is that interest in learning about the impacts of Shell far exceeded that toward any of the other Integrated Oil companies. In fact interest in Shell was 18x that of ExxonMobil and 37x that of Chevron.
Although all three of these companies experienced decisive and very public actions on their climate strategies, Shell was the only company to be held to account within the rule of law. ExxonMobil and Chevron were taken to task within the frameworks of their annual general meetings, but Shell was handed a legal verdict. That the company could be found guilty of misrepresentation and ordered, under the force of law, to reduce their carbon emissions by 2030 was simply not expected. This unprecedented development left many people wondering exactly what were Shell’s impacts and how they could be improved--and these people turned to Motive for answers.
Things We’re Saying 🎙
It Could Have Been Just a Tag (click here to read ) -- Are brands trying to offload their responsibilities onto customers? Taylor breaks down his experience while cloth shopping.
Intentional Shoppers Force Change at ExxonMobil (click here to read ) -- What has once been considered the intangibles of businesses are now the competitive differentiators of businesses. Sustainability is a cornerstone of profitability and what happened at ExxonMobil this past week is further proof of just that.
What Are Parent Companies Trying to Hide? (video below)
Things We’re Reading 📖
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!)
The Ministry for the Future: A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson. This book is being read as part of MyClimateJourney’s Book Club series and takes readers into a future trying to cope with the effects of realized climate change. While it’s science-fiction it feels all too real and not too futuristic.
Things We’re Doing 🏗️
Things Live this Week:
New Single Search Result Design: We are constantly striving to make the results we present more actionable. All scores are now on the right-hand side of the page and company-related information is on the left. Additionally, we’ve updated colors to better reflect the scores. The Brand Realscore tile is now color-coded so you can quickly determine if this brand has a good score or not.
Things being worked on:
Askmotive.com: We will be switching to askmotive.com very soon. This domain is a) easier to remember and b) more reflective of how people are using Motive.
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.
What do you think? 🤔
We’d love to hear what you think in this extremely short, two-question poll about current sustainability topics.
Do you look for certification logos when you're shopping online or in stores?
Tide detergent claims that their new product, Tide Coldwater Clean, is better for the environment. Does this claim make you more inclined to purchase the product?