Being Intentional
Motive RealScore Updates (05/21/21)
Welcome, everyone! We’re so glad to have you as part of the Motive community. It’s been a busy two weeks, so let’s dive in! As always, thank you for your continued support of Motive, and please keep the feedback coming! We are here to help you however we can.
As we build Motive, we are constantly seeking new ways in which we can both tell our story and also help bring more transparency to our everyday shopping experiences. This newsletter is one of those ways, but we’ve also begun publishing video content on YouTube as a way to provide more context around Motive. If you haven’t already seen the videos check them out—We’d love your feedback! Are there topics you’d like to see covered? Video provides a new dimension for us, and we want to make sure it’s valuable to everyone.
(Just look at that smiling face—who wouldn’t click on that?!)
Time for a Change 🛒
Summer is quickly approaching, and that means that people all over are beginning to think about summer vacations. Certainly, everyone’s ability to travel depends a lot on where you live, but globally there has been a resurgence in travel, so we thought it’d be helpful to look at some hotels and airlines.
🏨 If you’re looking for a hotel this summer, check out Hilton Hotels (RS: +32), InterContinental Hotels (RS: +31), and Hyatt Hotels (RS: +23) instead of Marriott (RS: +18), Choice Hotels (RS: +16), or Wyndham Hotels (RS: -3).
✈️ If you’re looking to fly to that hotel for your summer vacation, check out Qantas Airways (RS: +21), Delta Air Lines (RS: +13), or Southwest Airlines (RS: +8) instead of Spirit Airlines (RS: -21), Hawaiian ( RS: -17) or United Airlines (RS: -12)
What We Are Seeing 👓
280 distinct brands representing 56 distinct industry categories were searched over the most recent reporting period. Impressively, 12 brands achieved Critical Interest status, meaning they were searched significantly more frequently than the distribution of search activity would lead you to expect.
The searched brands are drawn from 56 distinct industry categories, although interest is predominantly focused in Motor Vehicles, Food, Apparel & Footwear, Personal Care, and Internet Software & Services categories. Interestingly, Food is one of the most represented categories yet no individual brand within this group achieved Critical Interest status, suggesting a greater interest in comparing brands across this category rather than learning more about one, or a few, key brands.
Again, Mercedes-Benz has managed to retain Critical Interest--the only brand to have done so continuously over a 6 week period. We’ve explored this story in the last two newsletters--and most recently in a new video--and so will stop here so as to not repeat ourselves!
What’s Interesting (to us) 🤔
Nearly all of the brands achieving Critical Interest status are drawn from industry categories from which many other brands are also being searched. What we see here is a patterning of comparison shopping, and it is really neat to see Motive RealScore data making its way into the decision-making processes of so many intentional shoppers.
But...Among the brands achieving Critical Interest status, one stands out in particular: V&V Co. Limited, a Hong Kong-based company specializing in the manufacture and retail of diamond (particularly of Russian origin) jewelry throughout China, Southeast Asia, and Australia.
All other Critical Interest brands are drawn from industry categories with numerous other brands also being searched, suggesting plenty of comparison searches. Even PostNL, of the Air Freight & Couriers industry--not exactly a household name--is joined by five other brands competing in this same space.
V&V Co. Limited is one of only three Jewelry & Watches brands searched yet is also the second most searched brand overall. The other two brands of this category are G. Diam and Belfont, each only searched once. This pattern suggests that Motive Users were less interested in comparison shopping for jewelry and watches but rather keenly interested in learning more about V&V Co.
And as it turns out, we are also keenly interested in knowing more about V&V Co. Our assessment of this brand is still underway as we try to identify and validate more data about their impacts on the issues that matter. The company is privately held and does not fit the description of being transparent! Our curiosity is piqued, we need to keep digging on this one...
From Our Blog 💻
They Don't Make 'em Like They Used To (click here to read ) -- This post digs into adjusting our personal perceptions of brands. Much of what we think of brands is highly influenced by brand marketing and the culture in which we were raised. Now is the time to re-evaluate these personal perceptions and make sure that the brands we purchase actually live up to our perceptions.
One Incentive to Rule Them All (click here to read ) -- Where are the incentives for companies to do the right thing? Profits, you say? Where do companies derive profit? From us, the customers. This post goes into why the need to focus on customer demand is paramount.
Things We’re Reading 📖
The Shopify Sustainability Playbook. In our line of work, we read a lot of Corporate Sustainability reports. These are usually found buried deep within the Investor Relations side of a company’s website. And for a good reason. These are typically dry reads with many flowery language that ultimately don’t tell you a lot. However, Shopify has just published an excellent CSR report, and it’s worth reading. We hope this sets a new standard for this type of reporting!
Consumers Expect Sustainability. This is another study (we read A LOT of studies) going into the changing consumer behavior we’re witnessing globally. It’s a quick read with some fascinating statistics.
Milk!: A 10,000-Year Food Farcas by Mark Kurlansky. This might be a slightly off choice for inclusion in this list, but we really enjoy food history books (Cod and Salt are two other great ones by the same author). Understanding why we eat the foods we do is crucial to understand our impacts on the planet. Milk is a fun, and fascinating look into something we generally don’t think about but has influenced our history in ways most of us have never thought about. This is especially true in today’s world where we’re beginning to understand the impacts of agriculture as it relates to climate change.
Work in Progress 🏗️
Things Live this Week:
This past week we introduced new sharing features! This seems like an obvious feature to have but it was left out of the product when we first launched so we’re delighted to get it back. Check it out on the web and mobile and if you come across interesting brands share those things! Sharing is caring 😁
Things being worked on:
New Single Results Page. We continually strive to make the data we present to you more useful and actionable. To that end, we are cleaning up our search results page to provide more context around the results with better visualizations, especially in terms of colors and how they relate to the scores. The new results page will be live soon so stay tuned.