Been dreaming about data, talking about it, just not writing it down this past year. But with a new year comes a resolution to sit down weekly and capture some of the most interesting data trends that cross my path plus, I want to share the excitement that I feel from the work I’m doing.
Sometimes, I think when you set out to write (be it blog, letter, email), you have this image of the perfect post….and it’s difficult to let it go until you’ve polished yourself to a very dull point. The same can be said for all projects, and data projects in particular.
Last year I formed a new company called Earthsense with my business partner and a group of crazy colleagues who like to take on really challenging marketing problems. The idea started simply – to apply common sense to the explosive green movement. As researchers, we wanted to use our skills at gathering and analyzing data to arm organizations with the information they need to produce products that are good for our earth while being good for the bottom line. Since early last summer, our team at Earthsense has been immersed in sourcing, collecting, evaluating and standardizing lots of disparate data sources. Our goal was to create a proprietary study – the Earthsense Eco-Insights Survey but to use our various skill sets to provide more than the traditional banners associated with syndicated market research.
This particular group of people have various backgrounds, but at our core we are all data geeks. (Yeah, the truth comes out.) We have expert researchers, marketers, analysts, statisticians, demographers, business folk, a microbiologist, a few with psychology backgrounds, city planners, geographers and ex-broadcasters and a few professors, too. We have always had an interest in understanding consumers from a holistic sense — and so this survey has a special set of questions designed to understand consumer attitude, motivation and behavior when it comes to eco-friendly products. For behavior, we had a theory that people express themselves by “voting” with their wallets (product purchases), voting with actions (conservation efforts, volunteering, donating) and also, traditionally and publically, by political affiliation and choice of candidate.
Oh! Wait until you see the patterns we are uncovering by examining the largest group of observations on the subject — 30,000 people answered our survey! (Yes, count ‘em. It is the largest survey of its kind in this area.) We see strong relationships between political orientation (conservative, libertarian, moderate), Democrats, Republicans and Independents and attitudes about global warming and who is responsible for getting us out of this mess. That is, some groups have higher concentrations of people who take personal responsibility and believe that we all need to do our share, while others believe more realistically, government and private industry are the only entities large enough to have measurable impact.
And to make it more challenging, we are actually going farther than just creating segments from survey responses — we’re looking deeper at “personal eco-systems” (mecosystems) where we examine all the influences that affect an individuals propensity to adopt eco-friendly/green/socially conscious behavior.
But it gets tricky. When do you have to stop collecting and start analyzing? So many theories and so little time! It’s not demographics alone, nor lifestyle or lifestage, not the economy alone….is it media? Social networks? External factors like organizations, climate, resources (exographics?) It’s tricky because there are varying levels of data (geographic based, vector based, point level, summarized, etc.) and they are not all updated at the same timeframe. The possibilities are endless!
These are the types of data we’re crunching, examining, analyzing. If you’ve read Super Crunchers — you’ll understand the fire that burns when you have lots of data to look at…its addictive as you move it around (kind of like a Rubiks cube) looking for the solution. And it is an new way of understanding the perfect storm needed to incite consumer behavior.
So, we’re not waiting to release our results until we find the perfect answer. We’re teaming up with information pros around the country (international has to wait until next year!) to digest our data, enhance it, analyze it, and provide measurable, actionable information for companies who are grappling with growing green. The green train has left the station — only companies who have open minds and willingness to experiment and learn will wind up on the other side of Sustainabilty Mountain intact.
