Building the brand’s sustainability story from scratch

Information needs

• Understand homeowners' expectations for sustainability in this specific sector
• Assess the current perception of the brand in this context.
• Identify & explore:
  • relevant sustainability narratives & overarching frames they contribute to
  • underlying drivers of (I) sustainability and (II) sustainable consumerism
  • Determine and explore the elements that the brand could use in its positioning and communication.
  • Map out the most suitable communication channels, labels, visuals etc. to position the narrative in the market to ideally benefit the development of a single designated marketing/ communication campaign.

b²sense approach

The approach consists of 2 phases.

Phase 1
Explorative face-to-face focus groups were used in which we could deep-dive into the various building blocks of sustainability, and which provided space for projective techniques, including collages - very useful tools in understanding the semiotics we need to consider when developing a communication campaign. We opted to talk to homeowners who are very committed to sustainability, not only passively but also actively and have knowledge of the brand. We organized the groups in Belgium, a more "conservative" country and Denmark a more "progressive" country on the sustainability spectrum,

The result amounted to an extensive script that could be used to develop the communication tools. The fact that interviewed homeowners had very high expectations about sustainability also made the client decide to limit the communication campaign to a few pages on the website and several videos. The development of other communication tools became a long term goal as the development journey is not quick and easy.

Phase 2
Evaluation of the developed web pages and videos. We opted for digital interviews in 3 other countries representing the main markets of the brand with a more general target group of homeowners aware of the brand.
 

Outcome

The result amounted to a very critical analysis that mainly focused on simplifying communications, and which allowed the customer to take the current communication tools to a higher level. The main message was that the link with the product needed to be strengthened and that the manufacturer’s viewpoint was less of a priority.