Pi-Consulting

As this site reported on March 17th, “America’s consumer electronics (CE) industry is grappling with stringent new federal and state legislation to ensure that manufacturers ‘take out the garbage’ as they sell-in new gizmos like HDTV. The issue is a serious one, with the impending switch-off of analogue TV services likely to mean huge numbers of old TV sets getting left on the sidewalk”. We spoke too soon. A new CEA (Consumer Electronics Association) study posits an “afterlife” for many superannuated TV sets. “While some have speculated that millions of TVs would enter the waste stream, …results of the (CEA) study …show that households …expect to remove fewer than 15 million televisions from their homes through 2010. Ninety-five percent will be sold, donated or re-cycled”. Nearly half of OTA-only (i.e. traditional “over-the-air”) TV households “expect to buy a digital converter box, …and to continue using the same TV”. When the old set has to go, re-cycling is increasingly the disposal method of choice, with consumers reporting 30% more TV’s recycled in 2007 than two years earlier. Pi salutes this impressively green and responsible consumer trend! Sources: CEA, Pi.

If you go to Las Vegas for a blackjack’n’craps weekend, watch out for whales. Whales, in gambling parlance, are players who can afford to lose (or, presumably, win) $3 million dollars during a single stay at a casino. They number only a few thousand worldwide, though a growing number of them are swimming in from the People’s Republic of China. You know how it is: $3 million here, $3 million there, pretty soon you’re into big money, as the people behind Las Vegas’ Venetian casino and resort empire have found. Their new Venetian casino resort in Macao is three times the size of its namesake in Nevada, and opens its doors to 60,000 gamblers a day. 40% of the casino’s revenues come from 59,700 of them. The remaining 60% of the money is laid on the green baize tables by just 300 people. The rest of us punters just shrug our shoulders, and reflect that getting skimmed a few hundred bucks seems insignificant beside what the whales must be losing. Sources: Washington Post, Pi.

Winston Churchill jokingly – and affectionately – called them “Two great nations separated by a common language”. The “separation” he referred to did mean that “You say Tomaytos, and I say Tomahtos”, but that part never got in the way of the idea that here was a very “special relationship” indeed. As countries, Britain and America seem to many outside observers to form a kind of indissoluble “Anglo-Saxon Front”, resolutely seeing the world in pretty much the same way, following the same basic domestic and foreign policies, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder to see those policies enacted.

Brits and Yanks may like each other a lot, and visit each other’s countries enthusiastically come vacation time. But does this mean that the two nations share most of their fundamental attitudes? Pi has tested that thesis over several years now, and found it to be almost completely without foundation. More on that below.

Now the august British weekly newspaper The Economist has weighed in with its own findings on the subject. In March this year, they commissioned a simultaneous poll on both sides of the Atlantic, with YouGov asking the questions in the UK, and Polimetrix doing the honors in the US. A thousand respondents in each country were quizzed on their fundamental attitudes to a wide range of “things in life”. “Broadly”, reports the Economist, “the differences between the two countries look more striking than the similarities”.

The full results of the survey make fascinating reading, and can be found at www.economist.com/anglosaxon. Highlights: “The gap between Britain and America is widest on religion. …Britain is famously a post-Christian society, and Americans are …rediscovering the faith of their fathers”. “Britons are more international than the Americans, and keener on free trade and globalization”. Instinctively polarized opinions are more visible between members of the US population, with Britons more disposed to see their fellow-citizens’ point-of-view. By contrast, “Only nationalism seems to unite America’s left and right”. Just don’t look for the fervent American kind of patriotism in the UK these days. In January this year, the figure of Britannia was banished permanently from British coinage. The UK’s national flag has been reduced to a kitsch prop for noisy football fans, when not draped provocatively over the contours of a Spice Girl, or providing the backdrop to irreverent cartoons of Prince Charles looking goofy on a coffee-mug.

If doubts remain as to how different American and British attitudes can be, Pi can now dispel them. We Pi-Charted (what else?) both nations, and realized that they headed in fundamentally opposing directions on way more than half of Pi’s attitudinal measurements.

The average American professes a long-term commitment to “The American Dream”, a culture of ‘can-do’ go-getting, self-fulfillment, serious commitment to acquiring money and getting ahead. The American way is to live by your religious convictions, care what people think of you, “do the right thing” at home, trust in those in authority, and leave the rest of the world to get on with its own affairs.

The equivalent attitudes in the UK are those of short-term thinkers, restless and impulsive opportunists, with little faith or respect reserved for either Earthly or Heavenly authority. British conventionality means shoulder-shrugging resignation to an unsatisfactory state of affairs. After all, what can you do? Better to dedicate your efforts to the pursuit of fun, entertainment, and materialistic opulence.

Pi’s blogmeister is strongly reminded of the old joke about the difference between an American factory worker leaving through the factory gates on Friday night, and his British equivalent. The American watches his boss sweep by in a huge Lincoln, and says “Damn, one day, I’ll have a car like that”. The Brit watches HIS boss speed past in his Rolls Royce, and mutters “Flash git, he should be riding a bicycle like everyone else”.

Joined at the hip? We don’t think so. Pi rests its case, no foolin’.

These days we all talk the green* talk. We just seem less bent on walking the green walk. Could it be that just about everyone is now at least a pale shade of green? In a survey late last year, 83% of Americans said they “…want to protect the environment for the benefit of future generations”. Only 3% disagreed. That sounds like a pretty unanimous voice.

It was not always thus. Decades ago, once the world had accustomed itself to Peaceniks and Bra-Burners, it found itself facing Eco-Warriors too. Green 1.0 was born. Swedish pressure groups forced paper-mills to stop chucking bleach in rivers. Soft drink bottling plants found themselves surrounded by a million “non-returnable” glass bottles. Rubber boats attacked whaling ships. Whatever next?

This strident little group of activists were initially written off as manifestly insane, until they started political parties and began to win seats in Europe’s parliaments. Advertisers were initially dismissive. They finally woke up to the scary realization that they were going to have to take the “loony Greens” more seriously, or lose business.

Market research played a seminal role in the early propagation of green marketing trends. Clipboards filled up with complaints about companies’ callous indifference to the fate of our planet. Of course, what answer you get depends on what question you ask. The prevailing ‘green’ question in early questionnaires seemed to be ‘agree/disagree’ scales on “I would be willing to boycott companies whose products contribute to pollution”.

Unsurprisingly, the result was a torrent of flower-strewn, corporate-credential-polishing advertising which said little more than “We’re Green”, “We’re even Greener”, “New! Greener than ever!” and so on. The focus was on inoculating brands against consumer opprobrium. Even now, whole pods of TV commercials deliver bland and unfocused eco-friendly messages, one after the other, in sectors from household products to automotive to *gasp* big oil. You’ll know the process has become completely sterile the day you see an ad saying “No other brand gives you more Greenness”.

And so we enter the era of Green 2.0. Everyone’s green. Advertisers get it, and start seeing the positive side rather than using their communication platforms to ward of the evil green eye. Suddenly they are using planet-friendly messages as a way of bonding with consumers. This is particularly noticeable in America’s consumer electronics (CE) market, where the industry is grappling with stringent new federal and state legislation to ensure that manufacturers ‘take out the garbage’ as they sell-in new gizmos like HDTV. The issue is a serious one, with the impending switch-off of analogue TV services likely to mean huge numbers of old TV sets getting left on the sidewalk. Yet, far from running for cover, CE brands are now enthusiastically associating themselves with the green movement’s “positive outcomes”. It’s now “fun/cool” to be green. A majority of CE consumers no longer think that “green technology” is a contradiction in terms. They now believe in hi-tech’s ability to solve environmental problems, save energy and boost America’s ailing economy – as well as being “way cool”.

The advent of Green 2.0 means that basic “greenery” is no longer an ideology, just another paving slab in the floor of our collective consciousness. But would the early eco-warriors be proud that “they won” so resoundingly? Not necessarily. There is a growing separation between what “Green Believers” say and what they do, much of which seems to produce unexpected side-effects. Some “eco-fixes” make things worse, not better.

Concern for animal welfare is at unprecedented levels, at least in the West, and is still growing fast. Yet demand for meat has been expanding everywhere. Worldwide meat production has quadrupled since the 1960s, and consumption is set to double again in the next forty years. It is difficult to reconcile the new prevalence of humane thinking with the increasingly carnivorous habits of consumers, and the nasty intensive meat-production methods they directly cause. Meat is increasingly bad for the environment, too. 30% of the earth’s plant-producing surface is already being grazed for livestock production, and the flatulent beasts themselves produce almost a fifth of all greenhouse gases – more than transportation.

What of the new green mantra that the automotive industry should switch to eco-friendly biofuels? Widespread public opinion thinks it’s a no-brainer that corn-based ethanol is the right alternative to fossil fuel. The enthusiasm might be dimmed if everyone realized that veggie ethanol burns a third less efficiently than petrol, corrodes the insides of engines, pushes up the price of corn-based staple foods such as breakfast cereals and tortillas, and ends up pleasing no-one except the farmers who get vast government hand-outs for growing the stuff.

Bizarrely, large numbers of professed American ethanol fanciers still also seem to believe that access to cheap gasoline is their inalienable right, as if guaranteed by the US Constitution. The USA now imports more than half its oil, compared with under a third in 1970. When the price of oil hit $100 per barrel, the sharp intake of American breath was audible around the world. Perhaps that figure would seem less exorbitant when put in context. For comparison, Coca-Cola costs $126 per barrel, Perrier water comes in at a cool $300, Pinot Grigio’s p.b. price is just over $2,000, and Chanel No5 is very reasonable at $1.67 million per barrel. They all sell. Everything is relative.

It seems that perceptions count for more than realities. The new, genuinely scary (for advertisers) learning from recent consumer studies is that a nascent “Green 2.1″ generation will no longer be fobbed off with unsupported claims of “corporate green credentials”. These vocal refuseniks will punish manufacturers less for being insufficiently green than for touting green credentials when their record fails to support their claims. Putting unmerited green tags on products may produce the very backlash that manufacturers feared from the start.

Remember, planet-savers, you read it here at pi-consulting.com. No other consumer insight source delivers more Greenness !!!

*Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Even Pi Goes green!!

American teenagers want to do their bit for good causes, and one way is the “cut-a-thon”, growing your hair long, getting it all cut off and giving it to charity. Trouble is, the result can be a mountain of hair that no-one can use. Locks of Love, the leading US charity of its type, reports ruefully that around 80% of the hair they receive as donations is unusable for making wigs. Despite circulating clear guidelines, they get hair which is too short, too wet, too processed or flecked with gray. It mostly goes in the trash, rather than becoming wigs for cancer sufferers or patients with hair-destroying immune deficiencies. The charity’s leaders muse that the whole thing may be more about donors getting “a warm, fuzzy feeling” than the reality of actually helping people. The hair-donors? “They get the attention. They get so much out of it. Actually, a check would be easier”. Source: New York Times.