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94% of Consumers Think Businesses Should Give Back

94% of Consumers Think Businesses Should Give Back

business of giving backConsumers are more likely to reward businesses and brands that give back to the community and world through charitable donations and socially-conscious initiatives. According to research from Cone Communication and Echo Research (infographic from Zendesk, no longer available), 94% of consumers think businesses should do more than make money. Businesses and brands should give back.

Specifically, consumers think businesses have a range of resources available to them, which those businesses should use to positively impact global issues. This isn’t an isolated sentiment. Over 10,000 consumers in 10 countries were surveyed, and the consensus was clear — consumers expect businesses to give back. Businesses that do can gain loyal customers. 47% of survey respondents indicated they are more likely to be loyal to a company that supports social and environmental causes, and 53% indicated they are more likely to recommend those companies and brands to other people.

It’s important to note that while there are specific causes that consumers are passionate about and believe that companies should support in order to drive changes (see the infographic below for the details), consumers also want companies to make internal changes to positively affect social and economic causes. According to the participants in this study, consumers most want companies to:

  • Change the way they operate = 34%
  • Apply unique business assets = 19%
  • Develop new products or services = 16%
  • Raise awareness and educate = 11%
  • Develop partnerships = 11%
  • Make donations = 7%
  • Donate employee time/expertise = 5%

Take a close look at the data above. The first step most companies and brands take to demonstrate their commitments to impacting social and economic causes is to donate money or require employees to donate money and time to charitable organizations. Are you surprised to see that the internal changes consumers most want companies to make in order to support social and economic causes don’t include making donations and donating employee time and expertise until the sixth and seventh items on this list?

Businesses should support economic and social causes for multiple reasons. Most importantly, they have the resources to make positive changes, but also because consumers want them to and will reward them with referrals and loyalty. For brands the benefits are numerous. At the most basic level, economic and social causes evoke powerful feelings in people, and tying emotions to your brand can have significant results to loyalty, advocacy, and sales. Never underestimate the power of emotional branding.

5 Ways to Turn Employees into Vocal Online Brand Advocates

employee-brand-advocatesA company’s employees are its most powerful brand advocates, but few companies know how to effectively empower their employees to advocate their brands. Learning how to do it should be a top priority for every company and brand, particularly for generating online brand advocacy where the reach and influence of your employees could be significant.

Of course, employees have to be happy and have to believe in the brand promise in order to want to advocate it to their own connections and online audiences. That’s where a company needs to start — with a focus on internal brand building.

Next, you need to give your employees the tools they need to advocate your brand in the ways you want them to. This is particularly important for workforces that are spread out in multiple locations. Using a tool like the employee advocacy software from Expion can help you manage the process, but you need to create your strategy and brand advocacy plan first.

You can’t expect your employees will know what to do. It’s up to you to guide them to advocate the brand properly. To help you get started, following are five ways you can turn your employees into vocal brand advocates online:

1. Give your employees the messages you want them to share.

What do you want your employees to say about your brand in their online conversations? What messages would make them proud to share information about their company and your brand? Can you give them messages that would be useful and meaningful to their friends, family, and online connections? Don’t assume they’ll relay every message you give them, and don’t give them sales-oriented messages. Very few employees will want to broadcast marketing and sales messages from their employer to their connections, but many will want to share useful information.

2. Give your employees the content you want them to talk about and share.

Beyond giving your employees messages, give them actual content to talk about and share online. This includes videos, infographics, images, slideshows, ebooks, and so on. This content should be meaningful, useful, or entertaining or none of your employees will share it. The goal for employee brand advocacy should be to build brand awareness across wider audiences that can lead to sales at a relatively low cost . With that in mind, keep self-promotion to a minimum. Focus on brand storytelling and tapping into emotions in your content, so people will want to share it.

3. Acknowledge your employees who actively advocate your brand online.

Don’t let your employees’ brand advocacy activities go unnoticed. Respond to them online. Acknowledge them offline as well. This acknowledgement should include company recognition and personal appreciation on a one-to-one basis. They’ll have more motivation to continue talking about your brand if they feel appreciated for their efforts.

4. Show your employees the results of their online brand advocacy efforts.

If your employees’ online brand advocacy efforts are showing measurable results, make sure they’re aware of the effects their activities are having on the brand and company. They’ll feel more motivated to keep up their efforts knowing that those efforts are actually having an impact.

5. Reward your employees who actively advocate your brand online.

If you can tie brand advocacy efforts back to individual employees, then you should have a method in place to not just acknowledge those employees but also to reward employees who are extremely active or driving real results for the company through their efforts. This is essential if you can tie employee advocacy efforts directly to sales and revenues. Internal brand advocacy can help your company drive word-of-mouth marketing at a fraction of the cost other marketing initiatives would require, so make sure you reward your top employee influencers whose advocacy leads directly to sales.

Image: Svilen Milev

Google Zeitgeist 2012 – Scarce on Brands but Big on Emotion

google ipadThe Google Zeitgeist 2012 has been released and reveals the top Google searches across the world throughout the past year.

The list of the top trending searches (defined as “search queries with the highest amount of traffic over a sustained period in 2012 as compared to 2011”) in 2012 is heavy on people and tragedies but short on brands. In fact, just two brands or branded products made it on the top 10 list — Apple’s iPad 3 and the Diablo 3 video game.

Top 10 Trending Searches in 2012

  1. Whitney Houston
  2. Gangnam Style
  3. Hurricane Sandy
  4. iPad 3
  5. Diablo 3
  6. Kate Middleton
  7. Olympics 2012
  8. Amanda Todd
  9. Michael Clarke Duncan
  10. BBB12

Similarly, only two branded products made it on the list of the top 10 trending image searches in 2012 according to the 2012 Google Zeitgeist — Apple’s iPhone 5 and the Minecraft video game.

Top 10 Trending Image Searches in 2012

  1. One Direction
  2. Selena Gomez
  3. iPhone 5
  4. Megan Fox
  5. Rihanna
  6. Justin Bieber
  7. Harry Styles
  8. Minecraft
  9. Nicki Minaj
  10. Katy Perry

Things start to get interesting in the Google Zeitgeist 2012 list of the top trending consumer electronics searches where mobile devices dominated. Apple branded products made up three of the top 10 consumer electronics searches followed by Samsung with two of the top 10 searches in this category.

Top 10 Consumer Electronics Searches

  1. iPad 3
  2. Samsung Galaxy S III
  3. iPad Mini
  4. Nexus 7
  5. Galaxy Note 2
  6. PlayStation
  7. iPad 4
  8. Microsoft Surface
  9. Kindle Fire
  10. Nokia Lumia 920

Google Turns Search Trends into an Emotional Branding Opportunity

Google provides perfect proof that with some creative thinking, emotions can be tied to just about any brand in any industry. Google’s television ads over the past couple of years are great examples as is the Google Zeitgeist 2012 video below. Who said search engines can’t make you feel happy, inspired, sad, hopeful, and more? Check out the video below to see for yourself.

Curious how the Google Zeitgeist has changed over the years? I wrote about what brands could learn from the Google Zeitgeist in 2009 here on Corporate Eye, and at that time, social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, and Hi5 dominated the top search lists. Consumers’ interests change faster than ever these days, and watching search trends provides useful insights that can help brands tailor marketing programs which are relevant and timely.

You can review the complete Google Zeitgeist 2012 list or explore specific 2012 search trends by country on the Zeitgeist 2012 website.

Image: Alan Levine

More on Mandatory CSR in the EU

Back in January I wrote about how I believed mandatory CSR reporting was going to come into the EU’s regulatory frame work under the auspices of the Single Market Act (SMA), which is on schedule for adoption by the end of this year.

In brief, the EU has said it by 2014 it will provide a “legislative proposal on the transparency of the social and environmental information provided by businesses” which apply to large companies, such as those with over 1,000 employees.  Read New CSR Regulation Coming Your Way for more details.

Now, it may have skipped your notice but this month saw the 20th anniversary of the EU’s Single Market (the Maastricht Treaty, when the EEC became the EC).  To celebrate it the EU launched a debate entitled “Europe, Wake Up!  We will only return to growth and prosperity if we complete the the Single Market”, including this video and this Google hangout.

In the best tradition of Hollywood slasher/romcom/fantasy flicks (delete as appropriate) it also launched SMA The Sequel, more properly known as the Single Market Act II.

This addresses several key areas for which the European Commission considers to be priorities for rapid adoption to try and stimulate the EU out of the current economic crisis.  Proposals in these areas will be put forward in 2012-14.

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Store Brands Continue to Gain Popularity While Name Brands Lose Customers

generic store brand krogerThere was a time when the majority of consumers believed that name brands were better than generic store brands. With a perceived higher quality attached to name brands, products with those brand names on them came with higher prices.

However, the perception has shifted (I reported on the shift to store brands here on Corporate Eye multiple times over the past few years — links to those stories and statistics can be found at the end of this article). Today, most consumers believe that store brands and name brands are equal.

The perception gap between store brands and name brands has closed rapidly over the past few years. A recent study from the Integer Group found that 64% of consumers do not think that name brands are better quality than store brands (up from 57% in 2010). Today, 77% of shoppers consider both name brand and store brand products before they make a purchase. The percentage is even higher among women at 90%. Considering that women make or influence the vast amount of purchase decisions, this is an extremely important statistic.

The data from the Integer Group’s “Private Label” report also reveals that brand preference can be greatly affected by category. Important findings related to category brand preferences include:

  • Health and Beauty: 74% of women prefer name brand health and beauty products, but just 56% of men say they prefer name brands in this category.
  • Laundry Detergent: 69% of male and female consumers prefer name brand laundry detergent (the category where brand names were ranked highest in the study).
  • Medicine and Milk: Only 26% of all consumers prefer name brand medicine and milk over store brands.

The rise of store brands isn’t new. The shift has been happening for years as consumers have access to more information and can learn the ingredients in products within minutes. Comparing a specific name brand product to a generic brand product simply requires a web search and a few minutes of reading. With smartphones in hand, consumers can even research brands and products in stores when they’re actively making a purchase decision.

Store brands are well positioned to leverage this shift and steal more market share from name brands. On the other hand, name brands need to focus on building differentiated perceptions in consumers’ minds before they arrive in stores. It’s more important than ever for name brands to tap into consumers’ emotions and create the perception that there is no substitute for the name brand.

Is your brand up to the challenge?

More About Store Brand Trends and Statistics

You can download the full report here.

Image: Lisa Brewster

Business opportunities for inclusive and sustainable development | Part 2 of 2

(This is the second and last part of a blog detailing the opportunities businesses have to become “creative disruptors” and engage in inclusive and sustainable development around the world.  It is based upon DANIDA’s 50th anniversary conference and a paper presented there entitled “The challenge of, and opportunities for, inclusive and sustainable development” (PDF).  Part one can be read here.)

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