I live as the sole injection of estrogen in a house full of testosterone with my husband and two young boys, aged nine and six. But suddenly I am swimming in estrogen. Coming off the back of two different client projects both of which involved global brands targeting women — one in beauty and the other in food — I’m awash in gender comparison data on what people care about today and how this aligns — or doesn’t — with their brand interactions, lifestyle choices and purchase decisions.

I’ve just digested John Gerzema’s latest book, The Athena Doctrine: How Women and Men Who Think Like Them Will Rule the Future* and Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, both of which are garnering sales and conversation. There’s a growing buzz about the attitude, engagement and positive impact of women in the marketplace and in society at large. But is the girl effect real?

The answer is yes. My consultancy’s research tool The SHIFT Report™ has recently launched a report called The New Variables™that reveals a significant difference in how women and men rate CSR and sustainable life issues. Women are driving The New Variables that are defining success and driving lifestyle choices, purchase decisions and brand relationships — integrity, authenticity, community, connection, consciousness, social responsibility or, as The Athena Doctrine describes, the characteristics and traits that are typically identified as feminine.

After surveying 64,000 people in thirteen countries and in-depth interviews worldwide, Gerzema and his award winning co-author Michael D’Antonio conclude: The world would be a better place if men thought more like women. This fantastic book, at which I was privileged to get a sneak pre-launch peek, outlines the case for “How feminine values can solve our toughest problems and build a more prosperous future.”

According to The Athena Doctrine. “This marks a global trend away from the winner-takes-all, masculine approach to getting things done … men and women alike are recognizing significant value in traits commonly associated with women, such as nurturing, cooperation, communication, and sharing.”

Why are women driving The New Variables? As The Athena Doctrine shows, “Femininity is the operating system of 21st century prosperity.” Athena might even argue that women are defining The New Variables.

The New Variables report launches at an appropriate time — in the middle of growing chatter about the opportunities and implications of the women, business and positive impact trifecta.

The SHIFT Report reveals that over the past five years, across both the general population and demographic groups, there is year-to-year consistency in the hierarchy of what’s important to people today: sustainable life and CSR issues. Those issues that fall into the Personal, Social and/or Spiritual Sustainability Pillars are consistently the most important to people and those that are exclusive to the Environmental Sustainability fall at the bottom of the hierarchy.

For example, for 89% of respondents, “feeling connected to my friends, family and community” is an important sustainability issue, according to The SHIFT Report’s 2012-2013 study of 5,000 general population adults aged 18+ across the US and Canada; “Fair Trade: how the workers who make the products and services I use are treated fairly” is an important sustainability issue for 72%. Global warming is an important sustainability issue for 50%.

However women are significantly more likely than men to rate all sustainability and CSR issues as important.

Across all pillars women are more attitudinally engaged then men according to The SHIFT Report. 93% of women say that a Balanced Life is important versus 85% of men. 90% of women indicate that Feeling Connected to my Friends, Family and Community is important versus 79% of men. One of the biggest differences is the importance of Nurturing Personal Relationships versus Material Possessions; 84% of women state this is important versus 69% of men.

Attitude is one thing, and action is something quite different. The goal for marketers and the brand experiences they create is to align the two. Women are already more likely to align attitudes about what’s important with action then men are. The attitude-action gap is smaller, and more likely to close, with women.

There is indeed a girl effect

In addition to higher attitudinal engagement, women are more behaviorally engaged with sustainable life and CSR issues, according to The SHIFT Report. Women are significantly more likely to connect attitudes with action when it comes to making sustainable and socially responsible lifestyle choices and purchase decisions. Across all consumption categories from food to automotive to financial investments and more, women are on average 12% more likely than men to have already made sustainable and socially responsible lifestyle choices and purchase decisions.

It appears that not only is the girl effect real in lifestyle choices and purchase decisions, the qualities that are driving the girl effect are increasingly important in personal, social and business success.

Why is this happening now? What does this mean from a business and brand perspective and will certain categories benefit more than others?

Darcy Winslow, founder of sustainability consultancy DSW Collective, has some knowledge of this. Darcy tenured twenty-plus years at Nike where her roles included leading Nike’s Global Women’s Fitness Business and as senior advisor to the Nike Foundation, which seeks to empower disadvantaged girls, ages 10 to 19 years, through poverty alleviation and creating economic livelihood opportunities.

“It’s so far beyond the tipping point, that you can’t ignore it — the role that women are playing” in driving these New Variables, says Winslow. “What business or sector wouldn’t benefit from that and from a greater sense of well-being? Look at professional sports. Look at the military.”

So do women lean in and embrace what has been described by Sandberg as how men typically behave in business to their benefit, or do they embrace their feminine characteristics as a tool for success? There’s no one-size-fits-all, but I’d hazard a guess: It’s a balance of the two.

*All proceeds from the sale of The Athena Doctrine go to the United Nations Foundation’sGirlUp campaign. You can help raise awareness for this foundation by Tweeting this message. For each Tweet or RT a $1 donation will be made to the Girl Up Campaign. You can also share on Facebook or LinkedIn.

The topic of happiness is exploding, with growing conversations locally and globally on happiness as a goal, a brand-positioning opportunity, and a metric of success in marketing, political and cultural arenas over the past two years. Brand and marketing leaders are obviously paying attention as there’s been a steady increase in brands’ positioning around, and promises to deliver, happiness to their consumers and the culture in which their business operates.

“Happiness” is an important and potentially game-changing opportunity in which brand and marketing leadership can — and should — engage, strategize and execute, but there are several key steps to ensure any human and financial marketing resources invested show a return.

Instead of brand and marketing executives jumping on the happiness bandwagon due to its current popularity, we need to understand what customer experiences and concerns lead to happiness while looking at quantified metrics that reveal where this insight authentically aligns with the brand and brand experience. The movement around happiness is not a trend and shouldn’t be viewed as such. It is instead an indicator of the cultural shift to sustainability andThe New Variables™ that characterize this shift. The New Variables guiding people’s lifestyle choices, brand relationships and purchase decisions are: authenticity, integrity, community, connection, consciousness and social responsibility.

What do happier people care about?

The people who are happier with their lives overall care most about sustainability and CSR issues than those who do not, according to The SHIFT Report’s 2012-2013 survey of 4,000 Americans and 1,000 Canadians. The quantitative data in this free report — a preview of The Brand Happiness Index™ — reveals that those who are the happiest are significantly more likely to feel that sustainability and CSR issues — across all of Consumers’ Four Pillars of Sustainability™ (personal, social, environmental, spiritual) — are more important than those who are not very happy. This includes CSR issues such as community connection and engagement, climate change and having a higher purpose in life. This quantitative research mirrors SHIFT’s cultural and qualitative research.

Can some brands enable happiness more than others?

While brands from Coca Cola and Jet Blue to Domino’s Pizza and Best Buy are packaging and promising happiness, some brands will be more successful in enabling happiness than others. The SHIFT research reveals that brands that stand for more meaningful values and connect with what consumers care about today are more likely to have happy consumers than brands who package and promise happiness when it’s not a cornerstone of their brand DNA. These brands are less likely to enable happiness in their consumers.

For example, the Report finds that 32% of regular Seventh Generation consumers are very happy versus 20% of regular Tide consumers. 31% of weekly Whole Foods customers are very happy versus 21% of weekly Safeway customers.

An initial response to this finding is that the Whole Foods/Seventh Generation customer is likely a wealthier customer, and therefore more happy. However, while higher incomes do equate to higher levels of overall happiness, this plateaus at $75,000, according to research by Economist Angus Deaton and psychologist Daniel Kahneman. 

The SHIFT Report shows that across income groups and not just for those with higher household incomes, brands that stand for more meaningful values are more likely to have happy consumers.

What are the implications of the happiness chatter for brands today? 

A dozen or so years ago, I was at the Account Planning Conference in Miami where I attended a great workshop run by On Your Feet, in which one workshop volunteer sat on the “Hot Seat” and assumed the personality of a brand nominated by the group, while others tossed both silly and strategic questions their way. I took the Hot Seat as Levi’s, during a time when the brand was knee-jerk responding to the latest trend without any confident, central consistency of what it stood for. With every question, I answered something along the lines of “I don’t know. Whatever you think is cool.” At this point, Levi’s was going through a tough time— sales were tanking, factories were closing and lay-offs were happeningthey had not authentically connected with what their customers cared about. Shortly after came Flat Eric— a character created for Levi’s commericials by advertising agency BBH — with a cool, relevant, confident and consistent brand experience that led the way, and didn’t knee-jerk respond. Flat Eric became a cultural phenomenon and things improved for Levi’s.

Regardless of subject area, a knee-jerk response by a brand is never a good thing if you’re looking for authentic consumer (and other key stakeholder) engagement and trust, and the market and shareholder value that requires these two elements. In the current consumer, cultural and marketplace landscape of The New Variables^TM, these elements are even more important. Doing a “happiness” campaign in a silo because it’s trending well — without looking at what people care about today, what is important to those that are happy versus not, and how this authentically aligns with your brand experience — won’t deliver results. Without this strategic analysis, as simple as it is, companies lower their chance of brands delivering a return on their “happiness” marketing investment.

How to use consumer happiness to drive results

Here are three rules for looking through the lens of happiness to engage your customers, grow your audience and drive market share and results in the cultural shift to sustainability and CSR:

Rule 1) Big Picture:
Take a big-picture understanding of happiness and what kind of experiences, issues, cares and concerns lead to happiness

Rule 2) Look at Your Audience
Drill into and understand what makes your audience happy, where the lines and significant differences are between them and the general population. Do the same thing for micro-targeted consumer groups in your overall audience.

Rule 3) Alignment
Determine where the alignment points are between what your brand authentically stands for, the overall brand experience pipeline and the cares, concerns, experiences and sustainable life issues that lead to happiness. Your products may taste, feel and cost the same as your competition but enabling happiness can be a competitive advantage, if it’s done right.

Happy consumers that will engage with, buy and evangelize your brand are the result of not just understanding happiness, but authentically linking your brand to your CSR initiatives to gain competitive advantage and market share.

We’ve been tracking and monitoring the cultural shift to sustainability for nearly a decade and in celebration of our birthday we are happy to launch a new SHIFT Report Featured Insights section where you can download free research and insights.

Visit our home page to access these free reports. The first one to launch is Consumers and Local.

I was recently at lunch with two friends, one of whom brought her husband. After the couple departed, I found myself apologizing to my other friend for the husband’s rude behavior, the mildest part of which included leering gestures at the waitress and comments that don’t need to be repeated.

“Don’t worry about it,” he responded. “I always try to focus on the points of alignment with someone. There’s always something. And once I found them, it was an interesting conversation where we were both engaged.”

Alignment is crucial.

As businesses seek to define and tell their sustainability story in the landscape of shifting consumer values — which they must do in order to be culturally relevant — there has been significant focus on environmental issues where there is less likely to be alignment and which aren’t necessarily the most important to some people.

Sustainability (a word so overused, misused and abused that I’ve started calling it the S-Word) is about the issues that lie underneath it. These are a collection of issues that include but go beyond green and include personal, social and spiritual sustainability issues.

This was uncovered both qualitatively and quantitatively in our market intelligence tool, The SHIFT Report. These sustainability issues are important to mainstream consumers in varying degrees. However, across most consumers groups — from either a brand consumption, activity, demographic, lifestyle or political point of view — green issues are not necessarily the most important ones. They are significantly surpassed in importance by social and personal sustainability issues: community connection, fair trade and employee treatment. These are areas consumers feel personally affected by or connected to, and represent two key motivations for caring about brands and companies.

People aren’t waking up across the globe declaring, “I want a green life.” Rather, they are waking up saying that they want a connected, conscious, thriving and sustainable life (though they don’t necessarily use those words). Brands and their storytellers need to understand this in order to define and tell their stories and engage consumers in conversations. As one respondent put it during one of our focus groups, “How can we take care of the environment if we can’t even take care of ourselves?”

Environmental sustainability is crucial, but it’s not the only piece of the puzzle. Green needs to be looked at in the context of other sustainability issues, not in a silo. Green may turn out to be the best color of a brand’s sustainability message, but it might not be.

Unless brand manager focus on the issues that define a brand and determine which issues authentically align with their initiatives and audience, they risk making misleading claims, not connecting with their audience and potentially alienating others. When brand managers targeting a diverse global or national audience look primarily at environmental issues without interconnection and context to broader sustainability issues, the result can be a brand experience that doesn’t bring disparate and diverse audiences together, but keeps them apart. Looking at green in a silo doesn’t reflect a big-picture understanding of the cultural shift to sustainability, in which people are redefining the criteria by which they make lifestyle choices, purchases and brand decisions, It misses the forest for the trees, and in doing so can also reinforce sustainability myths, such as that those on the political left are more engaged with sustainability than those on the political right.

Indeed, looking at political parties in the U.S. and Canada and how voters connect with sustainability issues is a good way to assess brand alignment within a mass and diverse mainstream audience. For Republican and Democrat voters (or, in Canada, Conservative, Liberal, NDP and Green Party voters), alignment is not necessarily around environmental issues, it’s around all the other issues: schools, housing security, health care and general well-being. This bigger-picture, interconnected approach doesn’t minimize the importance of environmental sustainability. But it delivers on its importance in a different way.

Let’s take look at two social sustainability issues where there is alignment across a diverse audience: community connection and supporting locally based business, which are themselves interconnected. With the support of local business and local economies, the environment becomes the beneficiary (such as lower greenhouse gas emissions) rather than the direct strategy. Environmental sustainability issues are supported, but they are a direct result of focusing on key areas of alignment across a diverse audience: buying local and supporting locally based business.

Thus, brands — political or otherwise — that speak to a diverse audience have two key words to keep in mind when telling their story in a culture of shifting consumer values: authenticity and alignment. What can they authentically talk about given their initiatives around sustainability? And where do these internal sustainability truths align with their diverse audience?

Determining the sweet spot that aligns these truths will uncover opportunities that deliver on business priorities to drive positive change and business success.

Inspired by The Visual Miscellaneum’s Left vs. Right Political Spectrum, we thought we’d take a dive into The SHIFT Report and see the impact of political affiliation on connection with sustainability issues and motivation. It is interesting to look at the issues where the parties diverge (environmental), where the more right wing views push ahead (spiritual) and where they are quite close together (social + personal).

It ain’t about the dollar or trying to go fast
Unless you take pride in what you’re doing, it won’t last
Craftsmanship is a quality that some lack
You got to give people a reason for them to come back

The world’s a different place than what I was introduced to
They don’t wear shineable shoes like they used to
Casual clothes in the office, what is this
The villain in sneakers is killing my business.

There have been a few products / projects that have come across my radar recently which fall into this arena though at different access points – Yves Behar’s Aesir cellphone ($8500), Samual Davies’ Repairware (concept) and recently my good friend purchased a new pair of beautiful 1000 mile Wolverine boots ($400).

Almost always buying the product that was built to last will be an upfront investment, requiring long term thinking over instant gratification. This is not always easy. In fact it’s almost never easy! But as we see in The SHIFT Report research, products that are designed to last rank highest among product design characteristics. Of the 60% of North Americans who say product design and lifecycle is an important sustainability sign post, 82% rank durability as important over material characteristics (toxin free, plastic free, compostable, etc.). North Americans want their material possessions to last. This is a huge insight and opportunity for industrial designers, producers and investors.

To learn more about which signposts consumers look to in determining whether a product or service is socially responsible, consider investing in our special innovation report “Defining and Telling Your Brand’s Sustainability Story“. We like to think of it as both incredibly timely and durable research.

[audio:EbE-Darcy-Winslow-final.mp3]

Darcy Winslow

I’m thrilled to launch the latest Sustainable Innovators interview in the Experts Behind the Experts Series with Sustainable Life Media. In this latest interview, you’ll get inspired by Darcy Winslow – Founder,  Designs for a Sustainable World Collective as well as Executive in Residence at MIT. She is a proponent of Systems Thinking as the tool for the future, and actively involved with the Society for Organizational Learning founded by Peter Senge.

Like all of our EbE, Darcy Winslow is a passionate pioneer in the intersection of sustainability + business, with a track record in leveraging sustainability as a tool for innovation. For many years this came via her leadership role at Nike, Inc during her 20 year tenure at Nike during which she held several senior management positions within the business. She has been an active practitioner of sustainability frameworks and principles, exploring and experimenting with the application of these to all aspects of business.

An executive, a thought leader, an educator and an athlete who is committed 100% to sustainability, press play and listen to Darcy as she shares her thoughts on sustainability, success and innovation and where courage,  collaboration and goal setting fit into an equation that will support the cultural shift to sustainability.

Web:  dswcollective.com | Twitter: @DSWCollective

Thirsty for more? Listen to the other great EbE interviews here.

The Experts Behind the Experts Interview Series is a collaboration between Ci and Sustainable Life Media, created and hosted by Kierstin De West.

Of course any time I see the word passion, especially in the context of media and communications, I think of The SHIFT Report’s Sustainability Passion Index. If passion is a proxy for potential and The SHIFT Report research is designed to gauge the North American populations’ passion levels surrounding sustainability issues – it would seem we’re in a good place. A place from which to drive and support the cultural shift to sustainability by helping brands understand where that passion lies in relation to brand awareness, lifestyle choices and connection with sustainability issues (personal, social, spiritual and environmental).

Ads worth spreading, most definitely.

Image Credit: www.fronteerstrategy.com

Do you meditate?

A few weeks ago, the New York Times Article “How Meditation May Change the Brain” by Sindya Banhoo in the “Well Blog” garnered 590 comments and was number six on the list of most emailed articles that week. I became curious about people who meditate every day versus those who do not and wondered:

Are they more likely to be the agents of social change? Are they more empathetic towards brands that make an effort to be socially responsible?

How did people who meditate every day measure up against the general population in terms of:

• How important key sustainability issues are to them.
• Sustainability attitudes- action disconnect
• Are meditators more or less likely to feel the brands they engage with are socially responsible?
• Are daily meditators more or less likely to be motivated by altruism to care about these sustainability issues?
• Are they more or less motivated by fear and how do they compare to those who never engage in meditation or prayer?
• Does the increased empathy that comes with meditation (as some of the research noted in the article suggests)  carry over to their brand relationships?

Diving into the database (n=5000, general population) from The SHIFT Report‘s annual quantitative study and SPI segmentation update, I looked at people who engage in meditation or prayer every day across a few areas of the study: sustainability issues, motivation, sustainable consumption categories and perception of brands as socially responsible. Here are the results:

Overall, those who meditate are more likely to rate the sustainability issues as important,  There’s no surprise that this would ring true for some of the issues that fall into the spiritual sustainability pillar. Those issues that fall into the environmental sustainability only show the least difference.

Q: Please rate the importance of the following issues associated with sustainability as they relate to you

Are those who meditate daily actually living their values with lifestyle choices and purchase decisions that deliver on social change?

The attitude-action disconnect is an unavoidable truth for everyone. Hey, we can’t all be like the folks in Portlandia. It turns out that those who meditate every day are more likely to be making sustainable lifestyle choices and purchase decisions than those who don’t, showing that they are more likely to be turning their sustainability attitudes into actions.  Note to Social Innovators and NGOs – Start a ‘get meditating’ campaign (and go beyond green).

Q: Which of the following areas of your life have you already made sustainable lifestyle choices and purchase decisions?

If people who meditate are more empathetic, according to the research published by Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging cited in Banhoo’s article does that empathy extend to brands?

Those who meditate or engage in prayer every day are more likely to want to know about the socially responsible behavior of brands whose products and services they buy: 73% versus 67% of the General North American population.

Here I selected a few brands from the study to look at. The first chart is clustered together a bit loosely, but with three groupings in mind and some overlap between them: competitors, those that spent consumer marketing $ on telling their sustainability story (authentic or otherwise), those that have sustainability ‘equity’ but didn’t spend significant consumer marketing $ telling their sustainability story.

Here we’ve sorted the brand list in a different way, ordered by perception as socially responsible. Those that North Americans (general population) feel are the most socially responsible sit at the top.

Me or We? Are meditators altruistic or are they equally motivated to care about sustainability issues by self-serving generosity as the average person?

Overall those who meditate are more motivated overall to make socially responsible lifestyle choices and purchase decisions and we can see that engaging in meditation or prayer leads to deeper motivation when looking at the differences between those who don’t ever, the general population and those who everyday.

Q: Please rate how motivating each of the following are in your interest to make socially responsible lifestyle choices and purchase decisions.

(Full disclosure: I meditate daily. )

An Industrial Designer merged with a Sustainability Consultant merged with an MBA: Meet Dawn Danby.

[audio:EbE-Dawn-Danby.mp3]

Another down to earth thought leader as part of our EbE Sustainable Innovators interview series, Dawn Danby explores the intersection of design, sustainability and business. Which is a fancy way of saying that she wants the things we make to benefit both people and the world.

In this interview Dawn shares the benefits of a diverse background, the upside of making mistakes and the importance for designers to look at the social sustainability context in which their environmental sustainability initiatives lives. An early game changer to the sustainability space, Dawn remans excited by the possibilities that design presents.

An industrial designer by training, she’s a boundary-spanner and synthesist who has acted as a cross-disciplinary designer, strategist, art director, project manager, producer and artist. She currently manages Autodesk’s Sustainable Design Program, integrating sustainable thinking into the digital tools used by 9 million designers and engineers worldwide.

Through Autodesk’s Education Program – Sustainability Workshop – Dawn is now connecting withstudents putting tools for change – and a dose of inspiration –  in their hands.

Dawn holds a design degree from the Rhode Island School of Design (2000), and an MBA in Sustainable Business from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (2007). She apprenticed in green building and policy with the Fisk-Vittori team at CMPBS, and in furniture design with Macek Furniture. She collaborated with international artist Noel Harding on Windsor, Ontario’s Green Corridorinitiative, where she helped teach an interdisciplinary course at the University of Windsor. She designed a $3.5M tree-covered, wind-powered pedestrian bridge on the US-Canada border, has developed closed-loop manufacturing strategies for a leading outdoor footwear manufacturer, and helped establish a public art master plan for a major American airport. Dawn was also one of the founding writers behind Worldchanging.

Web:  www.autodesk.com | Twitter: @ecoworkshop | Twitter: @altissima

Thirsty for more? Listen to the other great EbE interviewshere.

The Experts Behind the Experts Interview Series is a collaboration between Ci and Sustainable Life Media, created and hosted by Kierstin De West.