In this episode of the Circular Economy Show, our guests Georgie Rose from Selfridges and Simon Davies from VISA tell us how they have been working together to find out how to make circular behaviours irresistible for consumers. Collaborating with Mindworks Marketing to optimise messaging and branding for promoting circular shopping behaviours, Georgie and Simon discuss how their behavioural lab has been bridging the gap between customer intent and action.
In this episode of the Circular Economy Show, our guests Georgie Rose from Selfridges and Simon Davies from VISA tell us how they have been working together to find out how to make circular behaviours irresistible for consumers.
Collaborating with Mindworks Marketing to optimise messaging and branding for promoting circular shopping behaviours, Georgie and Simon discuss how their behavioural lab has been bridging the gap between customer intent and action.
Listen to this episode to hear:
This August on the Circular Economy Show, we’re revisiting four conversations that help to navigate the marketing challenges and opportunities of switching to a circular economy. So listen in if you want to learn how to take something from a good idea to something that actually sells.
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[00:00:00.000] - Simon Davies
Nearly 90% of consumers have this intent to be more sustainable in their spend behavior, it's only sub 30% actually action that.
[00:00:07.360] - Georgie Rose
We want circular to appear as more choice, more products, more ways to engage with us.
[00:00:13.240] - Pippa Shawley
What if you could change customer behavior just by tweaking a few words? In the third part of our marketing miniseries, we're revisiting a conversation Lou had with Georgie Rose from Selfridges and Simon Davies from Visa, who did exactly that, running a live behavioral experiment on the shop floor to make circular shopping feel irresistible.
[00:00:35.700] - Lou
How do we make customer experience so rewarding it becomes irresistible?
[00:00:42.520] - Simon Davies
I think the answer to this is quite broad because in the guise of recommerce, we think of it in a number of different use cases. Within Visa, we talk about resale, repair, rental, refill, return and redistribute, trying to get all of those out. Each of those will come with their own flows and payment experiences. From a Visa point of view, it's about ensuring that's seamless, that's fully embedded in general customer experience, which is how we work within Visa. To support that, then you have different payment capabilities. Where you think about Visa Direct, which can enhance or enable instant payouts linked to refillables and returnables and so on.
[00:01:31.220] - Simon Davies
But also about tailored solutions. We're a lot about data and insight in Visa, about understanding what a consumer is going to do before they actually do it. Within sustainability, we look at Visa Sustainability Index which can inform and provide our partners with that insight. To think about it in the guise of where we want to make it seamless. Me as a consumer, I'm getting told within my banking app that a purchase I just made at Selfridges has actually just impacted positively around carbon footprint and that stuff. Those things should just happen and be embedded in that experience.
[00:02:07.700] - Lou
Georgie, Selfridges and Visa, how have you guys come together to crack open these opportunities?
[00:02:16.440] - Georgie Rose
We've been working really closely with Visa and Visa's behavioral experiment partner, Mindworks, to understand how we can capitalize, really maximize the use of our existing messaging and branding. We haven't started from scratch. We've taken what we're doing today already, and we're trying to enhance that using specific framing techniques that we have no idea about. We're using really subtle variations in language and framing to understand what piques customers' interest most. We're trying out these variations in language in isolation, and we will see over the duration of the experiment what happens and what is most effective.
[00:03:00.000] - Georgie Rose
We're really excited to see the results, and we will take the use case that works most effectively and roll that out. Really, what the framing is trying to do is capitalize on our inherent desire as customers to mimic what other customers are doing. We've learned loads from Mindworks around how customers often want to copy. Some of the language we're using is, "Everyone else has started using refill, why don't you join in? Do it, too." Interestingly, we're also trying out the flip side of that. Start a trend, be the first, and we're testing to see which one will be most effective.
[00:03:38.740] - Lou
Just so we all know, how do Visa and Selfridges come together to collaborate on this journey?
[00:03:46.580] - Simon Davies
The lab that Georgie mentioned, I guess between us, we'd scope out the project, and it's a defined process around that, which allow us to test and experiment in real life and monitor the data. At different stages, we'll look at what the output looks like, and then ultimately, we'll have the end of the experiment output. Between us, we'll feed that back into our businesses, but we want to more broadly drive thought leadership as well. Those results will be open and shared more openly.
[00:04:18.660] - Lou
This is the behavioral lab, and is that where Mindworks comes in?
[00:04:23.360] - Georgie Rose
Exactly. You've got three players in this, and we're all using our skills and assets to capitalize and make the most of this experiment. You've got Selfridges, so we're obviously providing the store, the customers. You've got Visa, who have brought everyone together, providing the funding. Thank you. We've got Mindworks, who are the behavioral change experts, who are helping us with that language and framing that I mentioned before. Together we've co-created this experiment, started with workshops back at the start of last year, unpicking what this could look like and all of the different options. Here we are a year later with the experiment live. Then Visa and Mindworks will help with the analysis and the next steps as well.
[00:05:02.160] - Lou
How's it going so far?
[00:05:03.880] - Georgie Rose
Really well. We've been running it for about 3 months with all of those different messaging variations in isolation, as I mentioned. We haven't yet analyzed the results, but qualitatively, we've heard from the store team members that they're definitely getting more conversation around refill, which is really exciting. As I say, just really excited to see what has actually been most impactful when you look at the stats. But fundamentally, we've just taken so many learnings for how we communicate around circular more broadly anyway. We hadn't ever looked at language in this way, and how nuanced certain messaging can be. Really important learnings for the wider business.
[00:05:42.780] - Lou
When you talk about refill, what products are you referring to in particular?
[00:05:47.340] - Georgie Rose
For us, it's really beauty. We do have home refill as well. This experiment is on beauty products.
[00:05:52.580] - Lou
That's where you're focusing at the moment, both of you.
[00:05:55.390] - Georgie Rose
Exactly. Refill is a really interesting one for us in Selfridges because unlike our other circular business models, the product exists. It's in the stores. We're not actually launching a new product or necessarily a way of buying, unlike with preloved and rental. It's all about how we amplify and make people aware that those refills exist.
[00:06:16.520] - Lou
Why do you both see this as an imperative way forward for the future of the customer experience?
[00:06:25.260] - Simon Davies
I think there are trends and there are changes in demand. As Georgie mentioned, I think we've got to find those subtle levers to pull. Without it being a hard marketing push, it's more about finding subtlety and almost the subliminal messaging to drive that awareness. There's heaps of data, and insight, and research that we've done which talks about what customer expectations are, especially generationally.
[00:06:51.920] - Simon Davies
You think of Gen Z and Millennials. I think we saw some research that said 40% of Gen Z and Millennials consider themselves to be sustainability champions now. A further 30% recognize themselves more passively. We also see, generally, I think consumers, whilst they have intent, and it's nearly 90% of consumers have this intent to be more sustainable in their spend behavior, it's only sub 30% actually action that. We want to bridge the gap between that intent versus the action. I guess that's the hypothesis we're trying to prove out, based on everything.
[00:07:28.780] - Lou
You're both generally really seeing it as a growing trend, especially among Millennials and Gen Z. That's brilliant.
[00:07:36.440] - Georgie Rose
It is brilliant. I think that say-do gap, though, is still very present, unfortunately. We see very similar trends and stats to what Simon was just saying. Fifty percent of our customers say that they know how to shop sustainably, but they find it time-consuming, or expensive, or difficult, and so for us, and really what we're trying to do with the experiment with Visa as well, is make shopping circular and shopping more sustainably feel as intuitive and easy as buying new, and actually as exciting and desirable as buying new as well.
[00:08:08.320] - Lou
Making it the norm.
[00:08:09.640] - Georgie Rose
Making it the norm, even better than the norm. We're trying to overturn perceptions that sustainability requires sacrifices. We want circular to appear as more choice, more products, more ways to engage with us.
[00:08:21.850] - Lou
Meeting people where they are, basically. How do you think we do scale from this transactional relationship most people have with their customers now to something that's long-lasting and bring it to the masses, basically, over all sorts of products and materials?
[00:08:45.000] - Simon Davies
It needs to be… We're doing a lot of work in Visa at the moment, which is planning forward. We've got our 2030 strategy that we've just launched, which looks at where we think things are going to be in 2030 and finding the steps towards that to make sure we remain relevant towards that. A big part of that in terms of how we engage with people like Selfridges and our merchant partners is understanding and aligning with their corporate goals and then making sure we move forward in synergy.
[00:09:13.260] - Simon Davies
I think a key part of that, as we look forward to 2030, sustainability is more and more important to each of the organizations we work with, not just from a regulatory requirement point of view, but actually, how they build that brand affinity and brand loyalty with their consumers. Obviously, the beauty of what we have in Visa is we say in order to look forward successfully, you've got to look back and understand what your experience has been. We've been doing this within Visa sustainability tech for a few years now. We're able to look back on that experience, evolve, and update to make sure we are fundamentally embedding this into what we do as Visa with partners like Selfridges.
[00:09:58.180] - Lou
Do you guys, just as your experience across the business road see this as a growing thing across all businesses or?
[00:10:06.940] - Georgie Rose
Definitely. I think we've been really lucky to be pioneers in the space or considered pioneers in the space, but we've seen a lot of people following us. I think there are still challenges around how to truly embed it into the customer experience and the commercials around it continue to be challenging. But everyone is trying, and more people are trying, which is really encouraging.
[00:10:28.060] - Georgie Rose
I think what we've seen really in Selfridges as well is this shift to really just embedding it… Again, continuing what Simon and I were saying, by embedding it in the everyday circular experience. As part of that, we're trying to create meaningful connections with our customers around circular in the same way that we do with our wider offer. It's not just one-offs, it's creating those long-lasting relationships that you said, Lou. Therefore, we actually avoid any transactional messaging around how we communicate with our customers.
[00:10:56.800] - Lou
You're creating much more of a relationship with them.
[00:11:01.480] - Georgie Rose
Exactly. To the same end, we actually, you'll see with Selfridges, we avoid any sustainability messaging with our circular models as well. We focus purely on the relationships that customers have with the products. By that, we're trying to draw parallels between them and the relationships that we control with them as customers.
[00:11:19.390] - Pippa Shawley
Once you've tried to get customers to change their behavior, how do you know it's actually working? Next week, Emily Hill from Kantar joins us to share a new framework for measuring marketing success in a circular economy. If you enjoyed this episode, please do share it on LinkedIn to help more people find it. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.