For too long marketers have sought refuge in tactical innovation, secure in the thought that small sustainable changes cannot majorly rock the brand boat. But it is in this narrow thinking that the potential wealth of growth opportunities that circular marketing offers, slips through their grasp.
We see three core principles for progress which represent a more radical way to accelerate sustainable transformation through innovation initiatives, while also providing the highly sought growth that all brands desire. For each principle, we outline here three ways to access its potential.
Principle 1: Capturing Upstream Value
Traditionally, brand owners have mostly considered sustainability in their downstream activities, with worthy, but often limited initiatives around end-of-life initiatives such as recyclability. When you newly consider upstream innovation opportunities related to the manufacturing phase, a fresh world of influence and opportunity rises to the surface.
The three ways to access this are via:
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Reimagining Category Norms
This is about turning the today on its head, in the pursuit of a better tomorrow. Which conventional assumptions can you challenge? What truly new occasions can be shaped? Which boundaries can be reshaped? What supply chain materials can be repurposed to generate additional value? Kantar analysis tells us that innovative products grow 7x faster than competitors, and circular business models and principles offer new spaces within which to generate value. -
Cross-Functional Collaboration
For innovation to drive strategic value, marketers need to consider innovation in its broadest scope. Close working with procurement, manufacturing and parallel business functions shapes a ‘one-team’ mindset and enables previously unseen opportunities to emerge for the taking. -
Inclusive Design
75% of consumers globally agree that a brand’s diversity and inclusion reputation influences their purchase decision. Designing with under-represented groups in mind opens a product or service to all, not just the few. Representation matters.
Principle 2: Mainstream Use-Phase Behaviours
55%
of marketers identified new business models as the second biggest opportunity for marketing accelerating a sustainable transition.
As marketers, there is a need to widen sustainability thinking from the end of a product’s life to its in-use or use-phase time. Kantar’s Sustainability Sector Index shows that 85% of people want to make more sustainable choices, but are hindered by cost, convenience and awareness. Circular business models that can help resolve these barriers are being adopted by many brands, but latent potential remains vastly untapped.
The three ways to address this are:
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Creating circular propositions for mainstream audiences
Whether this be elevating the customer experience or building deeper emotional connections with your consumer, circular solutions offer broader benefits than a solely linear offer. As an example, research shows that people who are more emotionally attached to a brand are likely to look after its products for longer, supporting circular or repeated use. -
Using AI as an enabler
GenAI can be leveraged in many ways to encourage sustainable behaviours. From shaping consumer-centric test-ready concepts to enabling consumers to understand the sustainability of a product, AI’s capabilities can consumer time, manufacturing cost and help mitigate sustainability-related risks. -
Incentivising life extension activities
Brands can embrace secondary materials and keep them in use at their highest value through avenues such as repair, resale and refurbishment. There may be a need to reframe the benefits associated with refurbished products, or to reassure on performance such as through extended warranties or digital product passports. The consumer demand is there – Kantar’s Planet Pulse shows that only 3% globally claim to not be bothered by waste.
Principle 3: Level up Circular Capabilities
Our final principle focuses on the internal factors within brand businesses which need to be resolved to make Radical Innovation happen. Not surprisingly, this has to start with us.
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People
Our research highlighted that 35% of marketers cited a gap in their sustainability knowledge and skills – a real challenge to overcome in scaling sustainable solutions. With circular systems typically requiring a more collaborative and systemic approach than linear systems, this chasm is likely to become even more pronounced as more brands explore circular business models. -
Processes and Tools
To embed new circular capabilities, marketers need the necessary systems, processes and cross-functional ways of working to bring theory into practice. Integrating circular decision-making into existing ways of working will require marketers to consider circularity in their day-to-day work. -
Culture
Without an environment of permission and curiosity, none of this can happen. Organisational culture plays a pivotal role in the adoption of circularity within the marketing function. Radical solutions require enabling conditions in which people are at liberty to experiment, trial and reconfigure.
In Summary, The Three Principles of Radical Innovation
Now is the time for radical innovation, to grow brands sustainably and improve the world for people and planet. Not for nothing did the centuries-old adage foretell that fortune favours the bold.
Find Out More
To find out more about Kantar’s approach to Radical Innovation, follow this link here. Within the interactive webpage / full playbook we expand on each of the three principles and the routes to access these. We also outline case studies of brands harnessing the transformative power of radical innovation underpinned by sustainability to unearth new opportunities and reshape their categories.
How Kantar Can Help
If you would like to shift from innovation as a tactical opportunity to a strategic driver of brand growth, Kantar can support you. We can help you identify new opportunities to generate upstream value, to level up your team’s circular capabilities and to drive your consumers’ adoption of circular solutions.
To discuss, please reach out to Emily Hill, Sustainable Innovation Lead, here.