Being Intentional
Motive RealScore Updates (05/07/21)
Hi, Everyone!
First off, thank you all so much for all the positive feedback from our last (and first) newsletter! We are sincerely happy that so many of you found the content useful. This newsletter is our opportunity to not only share the things that Motive is working on but also to explore the data we work with in different ways. With that said, if there are specific things you’d like to see us discuss in this format please let us know. Our challenge is not about getting the data (we’re good at that part 😉 ) but about making sure the data we return is useful to you. When we first launched our search tool one of the best pieces of feedback we received was “After I visit your site I need to know more than I did before.” That has become a lens from which we now look at all things, including this newsletter. After reading this newsletter, if you don’t know more than you did before then we haven’t done a good job and we’d like to know that.
Be Informed. Do Good. And have a great weekend.
-Kai & Taylor
Time for a Change 🛒
💄 Shopping for Skincare & Cosmetics?
Consider products from KAO (RS: 42), Beiersdorf (RS: 40), or Johnson & Johnson (RS: 38) instead of Coty (RS 9), Proctor and Gamble (RS: 23), or Unilever (RS: 21).
🍔 In the mood for some fast food?
Hit the drive-thru at Taco Bell (RS: 15), Burger King (RS: 9), or Popeyes (RS: 9) instead of McDonald’s (RS: -6), Wendy’s (RS: -16), or Del Taco (RS: -22).
What We Are Seeing 👓
Mother's day is fast approaching and it looks like gifting is likely going to follow expected patterns… The list of companies seeing significant search activity is dominated by brands that provide flowers, skincare and cosmetics, and jewelry.
Along this same stream, the two industry categories of Skincare & Cosmetics and Personal Care have raced away from all others throughout this reporting period. What is really interesting is that we are seeing a wide variety of brands within these categories being searched. People are really exploring their options, and if we have been able to help even just one of them discover a new and better performing brand then we can call this a victory!
Very interestingly, Mercedes-Benz remains of interest to a significant number of users—in fact, it is the only brand to carry over in our top-searched category from the last reporting period. The launch of their new all-electric vehicle line, as we noted in our last newsletter, appears to continue to resonate with shoppers.
What’s Interesting (to us) 🤔
We saw a lot of searches for 1-800-Flowers which sparked our interest. So much so that we wrote a blog piece on the topic that looked into the industry as a whole.
Needless to say, second only to Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day is 1-800-Flowers’ big day so it’s not a surprise to see search activity. What was likely surprising to many, however, was seeing such low scores across the board. As you can see, only Business Ethics is in positive territory and Climate Action is a lowly -49. It’s worth noting that 1-800-Flowers is the only big player in space that publishes its metrics.
From Our Blog 💻
How to Order Flowers for Mother's Day
This was a fun piece to write and maybe the beginning of a new series of “actionable” blog pieces. With Mother’s Day coming up flowers are in high demand so we looked into where your money goes when you buy flowers. Surprisingly the multi-billion-dollar flower industry (Big Flower?) is dominated by a few large players, most of whom are privately held companies. Check out the blog to see the full breakdown.
In this post, Taylor discusses the need to combat the narrative that individual actions are meaningless and that systemic change is the only thing that can help us. Taylor argues that systemic change is a product of individual actions, rather than a “white knight” solution driven by business leaders or politicians that swoop in to save us.
Things We’re Reading 📖
There are a couple of studies that have really caught our eye. We reference the data from these studies in our investor deck but they may be interesting for people reading this as well.
Sustainable Market Share Index Report, a study published by NYU’s Stern School
This is a really good study that gets published annually detailing the market dynamics of sustainable shopping within the Consumer Packaged Goods sector. What jumps off the page is that sustainable-marketed products hold only 16.1% of the market share yet they account for a staggering 54.7% of market growth. It’s worth saying that again… 16% of products account for 54.7% of growth. Any guesses where CPGs will be focusing their efforts in the years to come?
Meet the 2020 Consumers Driving Change, a study by IBM (IBM RS:31)
The big takeaway here is that there are as many “values-based” shoppers as there are “value-based” shoppers worldwide. (40% vs 41%, respectively).
Rotten Docu-series on Netflix (Netflix RS: -32)
It’s not something we read but rather something we watched. As is all programming of this nature it’s meant to be a bit intriguing and makes no claim on unbiased reporting. Still, it does a good job of digging into the supply chains of various food products we all know and love and highlights the environmental and social impacts that come with such products. Fun game: Use Motive to look up the various companies as they’re mentioned in the episodes. Our scores don’t always agree with the position the show takes but you’ll get a fuller picture of the company.
Work in Progress 🏗️
Over the past two weeks, we’ve turned our attention to a few internal items. It’s true that these aren’t very exciting for anyone using Motive but they are needed in order for us to continue to scale. Things like improving our analytics (a never-ending battle), and internal data management were at the top of the list this time. We are trying to balance between attending to “housekeeping” things and building things for users.
Things being worked on:
Theme card update to provide a detailed explanation of what the score entails
Improved sharing: Provide a better sharing experience for those times when you’d like to share your search results.
Search by Category. Currently, you can only search by a brand/company which essentially means that you need to know what you’re looking for at the start. However, people would like to be able to discover brands by category. NOTE: We’d love to hear the ways you’d like to discover data.
New brands added:
We added 263 new brands with complete RealScores.