Glow launches initiative to help Australian brands to track social responsibility
Australian research technology company Glow has launched an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) tracker, Social Responsibility Score (SRS), designed to give companies a means of measuring and tracking consumer’s perceptions of their efforts to address their impact on environment and sustainability.
The world first initiative will help companies to benchmark their ESG performance, helping brands to do better on the issues that matter to Australians.
According to Glow’s research, 64% of Australian consumers listing social and environmental responsibility as key decision drivers when choosing a brand, particularly those in the sought after millennial category. Moreover, on average Australian consumer are willing to pay a 3.5% price premium for more socially responsible brands, and one in five consumer have reported switching brands in the last 12 months based on ESG performance.
Glow has so far measured 200 well known brands across 15 categories for the initiative, with approximately 400 brands to be under measurement by the end of this financial year.
“The Social Responsibility Score measures consumer perspectives on a brand’s ESG/CSR performance. All Australian boards, company directors and the C-Suite have a laser focus on meeting governance standards and non-listed companies are actively pursuing sustainability ahead of profit. Most critically, consumers are choosing brands that are acting responsibly over those that aren’t,” explained Tim Clover, CEO and founder at Glow.
Cadbury parent company Modelez has granted Glow permission to publish its SRS case study for Australia, with the company having a strong focus on sustainability, implementing a number of initiatives to reduce plastic and packaging waste and address supply chain challenges. According to SRS, the food and grocery industry overall has the highest SRS of all measured commercial industries while Cadbury scores ahead of that industry average.
Paul Chatfield, vice president marketing ANZ at Mondelez said, “Since the Cadbury family founded their iconic business back in 1824, we’ve always had a strong purpose. This remains the case today where the challenges faced by our planet are clear for us to see. Our consumers have never been better informed or enjoyed so much choice on supermarket shelves. Cadbury fans rightly expect us to be making a positive contribution to address the challenges they see in their communities.”
Dion Brogan, senior insights manager, Mondelez ANZ, said: “Glow’s ESG program has provided us with fresh and powerful insights into Australian consumer perceptions of our ESG performance that will influence not only our program communication strategy but also our investment approach.”
SRS shows that Australia’s food and grocery industry are the leaders when it comes to social responsibility, ahead of all other industries by 78%. Consumers believed the biggest issues in this industry include plastic and packaging waste, cost of living, ethical sourcing, setting appropriate corporate policies and encouraging employee support.
The findings also show that that social media companies, oil, gas and mining and gaming and betting companies are severely lagging behind and have much more work to do.
The SRS is an independent benchmark and repeatable measure of how well consumers think a brand is performing, why that is, and how to improve perception. SRS captures brand performance relative to the industry and competitors in a single score across a syndicated data set and analysis of 13 underlying drivers. This enables brands to diagnose risk and identify opportunities and act to improve perception.
“The measure has been under development for over 12 months and has been validated against key brand performance metrics including trust, propensity to pay a premium and revenue growth, based on over $1Trn of sales data. What consumers think of companies and brands’ Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) footprint has never been more important,” added Clover.
“SRS invites consumers who are aware of the brand or organisation in scope of the study to rate how environmentally and socially responsible they consider the brand to be. “To create an SRS, we assign a score to each rating, either positive or negative. Using this methodology, the highest attainable score is 100, while the lowest is -100,” concluded Tim.
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