In 2010 Volvo launched a green living experiment, called One Tonne Life, to see if one family could learn to live more sustainably. That experiment, which involved other Swedish brands (Siemens, A-hus, Vattenfall, ICA), saw the Lindell family adopt a low-impact lifestyle that reduced their carbon dioxide emissions from 7.3 tonnes per year, the Swedish average for a family, to 1.5 tonnes — just shy of the one tonne goal of the project.

Now Unilever is running a UK-wide consumer challenge with 12 families to see if they can lead more sustainable lifestyles and save money on household bills. The goal is to address food waste, according to the press release for Unilever’s Sustain Ability Challenge.

Developed in partnership with The Futures Company, the challenge aims to bust the myth that it costs more to live in an environmentally-friendly fashion. The Futures Company's recent survey of 1,975 UK consumers found that seven out of 10 (68 per cent) identified the main barrier to living a more environmentally-conscious lifestyle is that it costs more — a myth that Unilever wants to overturn.

“We know that nearly 70 per cent of our environmental impact occurs when consumers use our products at home so changing consumer behaviour is one of the biggest challenges we face in achieving our Sustainable Living Plan goals," commented Amanda Sourry, chairman of Unilever UK and Ireland.Continue reading...

Traditionally, Black Friday retail sales in the U.S., falling on the public day off that is the day after Thanksgiving, has been a bellweather for the holiday shopping season. But this year, retailers have been trying to preempt Black Friday in order to get a jump on holiday sales. 

Target tried to literally move Christmas to July with its summertime "Bonus Black Friday" and "Summer Cyber Week" sales. Meanwhile, Amazon said it would turn Black Friday into a whole week of special deals beginning on Monday, November 19, the week of Thanksgiving. Walmart, on the other hand, may have something to fear, as employees threatened to blacken the chain's holiday sales with a possible Black Friday strike.

The good news for retailers is that consumers are apparently ready to shop. The majority of U.S. consumers, 51 percent, have already made their holiday shopping plans this year and will make purchases with money they have set aside specifically for the holidays, according to the just-released Accenture Holiday Shopping Survey.Continue reading...

Turns out Gen Y is “greatly misunderstood, and for those looking to connect with them — whether a political campaign or a consumer brand – it is critical to understand that Gen Y cares deeply about the world around them, even if they have their own unique ways of expressing it,” according to Joe Kessler, President, The Intelligence Group, whose latest survey was just released.

“Generation Y: Slacktivism or Social Consciousness?” finds that Millennials are not only socially aware but also uniquely positioned, as digital natives, to meaningfully impact the world of today.Continue reading...

It might be a stretch to say that Toyota didn't see this coming. But Toyota Motor executives are likely stunned by how quickly the brand's latest recall fiasco has affected the standing of the once-sterling Toyota marque, at least in the minds of some consumers. And soon it could affect the breakneck pace of Toyota's sales bounce-back in the U.S. this year.

Last week, Toyota announced a recall affecting 7.4 million vehicles worldwide, the biggest number seen in the auto industry in 16 years. The recall is to correct faulty electric-window switches that could catch on fire, but Toyota had reported no accidents or injuries as a result of this problem.

Presumably because this "massive Toyota recall" of 2012 sounds too much like the "massive Toyota recall" of 2010 not to mention subsequent recalls, consumer perception of Toyota's brand "has plummeted" according to YouGov BrandIndex research. Its score slumped badly over the last few days and now occupies the bottom in a chart of 32 car brands tracked by the service, down from sixth place just a week earlier.Continue reading...

The biggest misconception about Twitter? “That you have to tweet to use Twitter,” said CEO Dick Costolo in a "fireside chat" with Federated Media's John Battelle this week. Indeed, new research from Beevolve finds that 25 percent of Twitter users have never tweeted.

Costolo’s newfound celebrity on magazine covers, The Today Show, Charlie Rose, as well as a recent New York Times profile, is impressive for a brand that didn’t exist seven years ago. Now, it's up to an estimated revenue of $350 million this year and 140 million users, even as Wall Street and Silicon Valley mull over engagement and the "dark social" arts of social marketing. Twitter, meanwhile, is trying to get smarter about providing support and analytics to brand marketers grappling with the age-old question of demonstrating ROI.Continue reading...

On the eve of Advertising Week, Nielsen announced a modest uptick of 2.4% in global ad spending in the second quarter. And now that Advertising Week is upon us, the ratings giant is out with its latest metrics on how the rise of online video and digital platforms are upending traditional ad models.

According to the new Nielsen Cross-Platform Report, “in addition to watching 34-plus hours of TV per week, the average American spends nearly five hours online on the computer. More than half of Americans now watch video online, with online viewing increasing average weekly video consumption to roughly 35 hours.”

Nielsen is pitching its clients to rethink how they view the viewer, and that an online viewer is equally valuable to the advertising ecosystem as a television viewer — a message that coincides with the kick off of Advertising Week in New York, and the launch of Nielsen Cross-Platform Ratings for multi-screen ad measurement to Madison Avenue.

After extensive trials across the advertising ecosystem with brands including ESPN, Facebook, Hulu and Unilever, the new product delivers unduplicated and incremental reach, frequency and GRP measures for TV and Internet advertising. Their new measurement includes the number of people who watched a campaign digitally, those who watched on TV, and the intersection of those two audiences.Continue reading...

Epsilon’s new New Mover Report 2012 finds brand loyalty challenged when consumers move. The online survey of 999 U.S. respondents covered a range of categories of loyalty, including household services, electronic products, appliances and professional services.

Top line findings include: 

• moving is an incentive to change service providers (60% of respondents) or upgrade (42% of respondents).
• movers change brands, but are also two to three times more likely to purchase/acquire or upgrade their products and services as well.
• across all categories 20% or more of new movers change their current products and services and 20% or more upgrade their current products and services.

“We have known for a long time that new movers represent a highly lucrative category for marketers as the average household moves every five years and during each move a household spends approximately $9,000 on a broad array of goods and services,” said Don Hinman, SVP of Data Strategy at Epsilon. “When marketing to new movers, brands aren’t just up against their competitors for share of spend, they’re also competing against goods and services providers in other categories.”Continue reading...

There was an interesting reaction to the recent report that organic food holds nary a nutritional edge over regular fare: It did little to dent the enthusiasm of organic mavens because most of them don't buy the stuff for that reason but, rather, because it carries fewer pesticides and because organic farmers raise their crops sustainably.

In a similar way, the subtext of a new report on "green" spending by U.S. consumers may be more interesting than its headline's conclusion: "Organic Buying, Other Behaviors Have Gone Mainstream – But Green Purchasing Still Faces Price Barriers."

The consumers surveyed said they're less willing to pay more for the most environmentally benign products in their categories, according to new findings by GfK Roper in its latest Green Gauge report. Just 42 percent say they are willing to pay more for a "green" car, for instance, down from 62 percent in 2008. And only 60 percent say they'd be willing to pay more for energy-efficient light bulbs, down from 70 percent.Continue reading...