The idea that stories are powerful is an uncontroversial idea. But what does it really mean to harness story to shift mindsets and inspire positive action towards a circular economy inside and outside of an organisation?
The idea that stories are powerful is an uncontroversial idea. But what does it really mean to harness story to shift mindsets and inspire positive action towards a circular economy inside and outside of an organisation?
In this episode, hear from Poppy Mason-Watts, Chief Growth Officer at WaterBear and Alex Cramwinckel, Global Circularity Strategy Lead at Heineken to find out:
To receive more information about Campus, send an inquiry email to campus@emf.org.
[00:00:00.800] - Seb Egerton-Read
It's often said that better stories are critical for the transition to a circular economy. But how do we connect that storytelling to real changes in the way the world operates? To consider that cultural shift both externally in the media and internally within our organisations and businesses, I'm joined on this podcast by Poppy Mason-Watts, who works at the production and streaming company WaterBear, and Alexander Cramwinckel, who works at Heineken. The foundation is working with both organisations at the nexus of storytelling and real changes to the economy. This is the Circular Economy Show and I'm your host, Seb. So, Poppy, thanks for joining us on the podcast. We're talking about storytelling, but I guess to kind of put some context down for that. Why, you know, why do we care about storytelling at all? Why is storytelling or telling stories important?
[00:01:01.400] - Poppy Mason-Watts
Thanks so much for having me, Seb. Stories, I think stories have been around since the caveman times, right? They are the foundation of foundation of humanity. They sit at the heart of everything that we do, that we talk about. And at Water there, we fundamentally believe that stories have the power to change mindsets, to shift behaviours, to drive, to drive change. Ultimately, stories hit emotionally. They, they are, you know, there's this proven data that shows stories are more impactful or powerful than stats and numbers. Stories engage with people, stories inspire people, they motivate people. I always say they give people a kick up the bum to doing something if you can ultimately, if you can ultimately connect them to, to the action. And fundamentally, that's what we believe at Water Bear, right? It's different types of storytelling levers, different types of storytelling mechanisms to ultimately drive people to do things or think about the world in a very different way.
[00:02:02.760] - Seb Egerton-Read
And there's sort of a truism in what you're saying, right? Like, and we can see it in ourselves that when we want to change something or we need to make a change, or when organisations need to make a change, very often the starting point is to try and tell a different story or try to tell a new story or try to tell an evolved story in some way? I guess the kind of question is how easy is it to connect or how easy is probably the one way of expressing it. How do we connect the storytelling, which is this kind of like somewhat high level idea or concept to like real change? How easy is it to draw that line between I've told this story here and here's an impact that I want to create in the world on whatever basis.
[00:02:46.530] - Poppy Mason-Watts
At WaterBear, we've got a few different examples. You know, the first is A beautiful docu-fiction called Matar, which is about the refugee crisis. And the brief for that was, how can we appeal to a mass audience member or a general consumer? And how can we change their sentiment around the word refugee? How can we destigmatise the word refugee? And how can we make it more culturally acceptable to talk about it and raise awareness of the Ban the Boat bill that was taking place place two years ago in March? 20. I've lost track of years. 20, 23. And that was. We made a docu-fiction. We used kind of Hollywood talent because we knew it would appeal to a mass audience. We used a storyline that was very relatable, about delivery drivers in the uk and we called for action at the end of it. It was, if this story frustrated you or it made you feel something, fill in a templated letter to your MP and we'll send it off for you. And you know, within 24 hours of releasing that film and watching that film, we'd had thousands of letters signed to MPs.
[00:03:52.720] - Poppy Mason-Watts
Right. That's a very tangible, tangible action that we gave to people who felt inspired by a story. Much harder to then measure or kind of track behaviour change or sentiment shift. But there are ways of doing it. With pre and post surveys, there's ways of engaging with different audience members. But I think really it has to start with what are you trying to achieve? Who is the audience? What is the right kind of story you need to tell to do so, and then putting metrics in place to measure it at the end.
[00:04:22.230] - Seb Egerton-Read
Thanks, Poppy. And I guess bringing Alex into that conversation. So Heineken, obviously a massive global brand. What's your role in telling stories?
[00:04:34.100] - Alexander Cramwinckel
Yeah, I mean, it's obvious that as a brand you are telling stories, right? And as brand builders, really you want to tell a story that also meets a certain expectation or need and desire from our consumers. So that's where we try to link that story of who we are as a brand with the quality beers and beverages that we want to serve to our consumers. I think quite interestingly, a great example of really building a story around a certain category would be the example with Heineken really being a leader in driving the growth in the 00 category. So this is a category that has really grown a lot in the last years. At the beginning, a lot of story was around finding the right occasion. Right. So if you drink, you don't drive. So that is where you would have a 00 rewarding this type of behaviour on certain occasions. So now the campaign is really to go beyond. Beyond the occasions, right, where you. Where you don't drink because you're driving or other situations like that. But really to say there's no reason to choose. There's no reason needed to choose a 0.0. It might be just that you enjoy the taste or that you want to feel healthy or whatever your reason is.
[00:05:58.070] - Alexander Cramwinckel
It shouldn't just be. You wouldn't even need to give that reason. So there's a lot of storytelling behind this and also a different story you want to tell at the beginning of the growth of this category versus where it is now.
[00:06:14.980] - Seb Egerton-Read
What's really interesting about what you're sharing there, Alex, and connecting it a bit to Poppy's point about this kind of notion of really knowing what story you need to tell, impact you're trying to achieve, is that Heineken, obviously you had a product innovation that you needed to sell quite directly, but in order to do that, you've also had some role in shifting the overarching market. Like many of your competitors now have similar products. And I'm wondering, how do you know how kind of aware you were as a brand of that wider kind of market creation, market generation you were doing at the same time as obviously having quite a specific product that you have very key metrics around its, you know, its growth and sales?
[00:06:58.930] - Alexander Cramwinckel
Yeah, I think, I mean, this is not my area of expertise, Seb, but I think really at the time, I mean, we all experienced that 00 was never cool and there were many product launches around it that really probably failed as well. And maybe also the taste was not so good. So I think what Heineken did really well at the time was to go big, right. You have to really believe in it, commit, and then really tell this story. And I think Heineken believe that they could be creating this space.
[00:07:35.350] - Seb Egerton-Read
And I guess the question, and coming maybe more to some of your area of expertise, Alex, is like, when we think about the ambitions around circular economy, and in particular, Heineken has very significant ambitions. For example, in the space of reuse, is something similarly achievable in terms of making reuse this kind of aspirational, exciting thing for customers to be part of. In your view, or is that like an ambition of yours?
[00:08:01.750] - Alexander Cramwinckel
Yeah, I would definitely say so. So I think reusable bottles, I mean, the position of that differs in every market. Like what, what. What the position is. But in a way it has this maybe also a stigma, like the 00 that the reusable bottle is, is not so premium. It's kind of a cheap version of the, of a premium beer which tends to be in, in one way bottle. So there is this to shift the mindset of the consumer. So indeed, one of the things we really want to do is to make reuse aspirational, cool. And there are ways to do that. Right. We have a good example of a launch we did with the Heineken brand in South Africa where we shifted a large part of the portfolio into reuse. And this is. Heineken has a very premium position in the market. And actually one thing we did was to design a bottle that was really quite beautiful, I would say. You can look up the pictures, but it is a, it's a nice bottle and, and that is with a very premium, with a very premium positioning and premium bottle. You could say it's heavier, it's embossed and that actually really leaned into the fact that Heineken's premium.
[00:09:21.120] - Alexander Cramwinckel
But we can still offer this reusable bottle and at the same time also really sharing the story about how sustainable this bottle actually is, right? Because having this reusable bottle reduces the amount of waste which is there. Glass is actually not well recycled in South Africa today. So the campaign was also linked to creating green parks, green areas, clean spaces within cities. So this is similar to what Poppy was saying. There is this idea that you want to have consumers want to see that impact. At the same time, there is this convenience factor that we really need to look at. Right. It's infrastructure needs to be built. There needs to be clear regulatory guidance to try and ensure that the reusable bottle, let's say if it has a deposit and one way bottles do not have a deposit, there is kind of just more commercial practical reasons that need to be addressed. So scaling, scaling reuse is both a challenge on really making sure that infrastructure exists and really do that legwork and make sure that it's there and then also like driving that consumer behaviour to really engage with that product.
[00:10:38.080] - Seb Egerton-Read
I, I mean, what's really fascinating, but what you're saying there to me at least, Alex, is this interplay between the story that's being told and the practical reality of what's feasible, what's possible, where the innovation is at, where the, you know, the convenience factor is at, where certain costs, I assume comes into that as well. And in some ways you always want the story to be, you know, you know, leading the way, but not so disconnected from the reality that it's, you know, that the truth is under delivering on what's being promised. One of the things that the foundation and WaterBear and indeed Heineken have sort of discovered together is that these stories also play out in internal context. So we imagine stories playing out in kind of cultures and online forums or whatever it might be. But within organisations, there are also cultures where stories are a really powerful role to play. And I just wonder if you could share a bit about the experience WaterBear has had with discovering that as a value, a place that you could play in as an organisation that's traditionally been, you know, outward media facing and some of the solutions that might be offered there.
[00:11:52.070] - Poppy Mason-Watts
Absolutely. So recognising, again, coming back to Alex's point of consumers or people want to shift, people want to do things differently, this huge appetite for more sustainable practices to be thinking about these bigger crises that are facing the world. And there's a shift, right? Audiences want to see how they can change, they want to see what they can do. And that shift is happening internally at businesses as well. If you think about an employee base that's made up of consumers, that's the yous, that's the me's, that's the people who are begging, asking, pushing for change. And Water Bear has a model whereby it works with, with different brands, different organisations, different NGOs to tell stories, as you say, Seb, that are outward facing, that are kind of media stories that we use to engage and inspire people. But while on that journey with these different brands, it became very apparent that there was a need internally for stories to drive intern, internal transformation around these topics that we talk about. I think there's a crazy statistic that it's nearly 70% of internal employees are actively disengaged with sustainability training, which is a really, really high number.
[00:13:02.140] - Poppy Mason-Watts
There's issues or challenges with employees remaining unaware and disconnected from a company's sustainability initiatives. There's L&D resources being kind of deployed or money spent on learning and development. Sorry, recognize that not everyone uses the word L&D. And the kind of response is not overwhelmingly positive. Right. I mean, I've sat through multiple learning and development courses and thought, this is really quite dry and I'm not engaged. And at WaterBear, we recognise that and worked with the foundation to have a think about how we could deploy storytelling as a mechanism for change internally as well as externally. So we kind of sat down and said, what if we could emotionally engage employees with sustainability? What if we could kind of turn that corporate training that feels quite dry, that feels quite clunky into something that's entertaining, that it's exciting and what if we could ultimately channel that into empowering employees to get involved in sustainability initiatives, to put pressure on business leaders to make change. And it comes back to stories. Right? So we, we have launched something called Campus, which is the first learning platform that aims to bring together impact training, incredible stories, entertainment and stories around circularity, specifically to Dr. Of change at kind of business and corporate level.
[00:14:27.080] - Poppy Mason-Watts
So we're moving away from don't hate me, but we always say the non charismatic expert that is talking purely about a business's sustainability initiatives for example. But we're starting to think about authentic stories, ways to engage employees, kind of character led character driven stories to really shift perspectives internally.
[00:14:49.770] - Seb Egerton-Read
I'm not sure why you said don't hate me when you said non charismatic expert. I'm definitely not an expert, Poppy, you know, you don't need to worry about offending me. And Alex, as Poppy says, I mean actually in my time working the foundation across a lot of our educational initiatives, I've been aware that Heineken is historically a big investor in its kind of internal learning and development capacity around circular economy and I'm sure wider sustainability climate topics as well. What is it specifically about? As probably mentioned, you're an early tester, adopter of this tool. What is it about that internal engagement that's so critical for achieving what you're trying to achieve as a circular economy lead within an organisation?
[00:15:33.610] - Alexander Cramwinckel
Yeah, I think first of all indeed that, I mean the role of capability building within your organisation is extremely important and especially because we as Heineken, we actually just took external commitments or external targets around our, around circularity. So one of them increasing our share of reusable bottles or reusable packaging formats that we sell, so increasing that to 43% of all the volumes we put on the market should be in a reusable format. So that's that. But ultimately it's not my role to implement this. Right. So for each of the targets that we take, we have our function within the business that's responsible for it or accountable for the, for meeting that target, putting in place the roadmap, etc. And these that can be the procurement organisation for recycled content, for source recycled content. It's the supply chain for putting sustainably designed packaging onto the market and also the commercial organisation to pick the right format, right, the reusable format and drive that growth within this category. And these are marketeers, procurement people, employees. They don't necessarily have the knowledge around circularity. And that's what you need, that's the capability you need to build and also on a global function level, but also ultimately it's the countries that need to execute on the, on the strategy and they also need to be, need to be aware.
[00:17:03.450] - Alexander Cramwinckel
And I think obviously Heineken being such a story led company, there was a lot of, yeah, a lot of synergy behind what this, this, this training tries to achieve. So there's a lot of engaging stories, character led, as you, as you said, Seb, like there are a lot of interesting stories that really speak to the, to the heart, our employees, to really engage them and get them really thinking about this topic and what it means. I think definitely a lot of the feedback has been extremely positive about the stories and how engaging that is. I think the part that we need to get right is in the end, and that's the case with any training that you start with explaining circular economy, etc. And an employee wants to know, okay, but how do I then what do I do with that? How do I use this knowledge in my job, et cetera. And that's something that you need to really make that connection with your strategy. And also, and this is something that we're working on together with Water Bear to really make it specific for Heineken. So we are developing a module especially for our, for our commercial colleagues to really do that deep dive into reusable, reusable formats.
[00:18:12.560] - Alexander Cramwinckel
What does that mean? What do we need to do as a company? What examples do we have? And I think that Heineken specificity is important. At the same time, I'm always, and I've talked to you about this before, but I also think think examples, great examples from other industries or other things really can help you think about the. Think out of the box. Right?
[00:18:35.070] - Poppy Mason-Watts
I think, Alex, you've just summarized. It's almost thinking is a microcosm for what's going on in the world, right? In that everyone has a different level of knowledge about circularity or about climate or about whatever topic it is you're trying to engage in and thinking about how you deploy a tool that engages different levels of knowledge or different knowledge bases. So interesting, right, because you've got a team that are, are hardcore supply chain experts who are aware of your bottle changes or your materials changes and understand the concept of circularity. But you might have someone who sits in a completely different team who has absolutely no concept of what circularity is. And those building pathways for different people is such an interesting challenge and requires different storytelling mechanisms. And that's what we see in the world. Everyone's on a different stage of their impact journey. Someone right at the start of it might require eight or nine different types stories to ultimately take action or change their behaviors. Whereas someone who sits in a supply chain team at Heineken might require one article that gives them that kick up the bum and completely transitions how they think about something.
[00:19:42.550] - Poppy Mason-Watts
So it's, it's, it's so interesting thinking about those journeys that people need to go on to, to ultimately make change.
[00:19:48.800] - Seb Egerton-Read
Thank you so much, Poppy and Alex for making the time to join me today and for sharing your points of view and stories. So whether it's external or internal, we've heard that stories have a critical role to play in shifting mindsets towards a circular economy, and we've heard some examples of that in the podcast today. We've also heard that there's a real feeling of appetite from employees, from citizens, from consumers for a better story and to understand the role they can play in that story. So please do check out our show Notes to find out more about all of the things that we've talked about in this podcast, but especially Campus, the internal engagement tool that we briefly mentioned with Poppy and Alex today. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Circular Economy show. If it's provided you value or you've enjoyed it, please do share with your friends and with your colleagues and we'll see you next time.