Basic HTML Version
‘
making
things
better
and making
better
things
’
Mark Shayler – now heading up UK eco-design and
environmental consultancy Tickety Boo, and formerly head of
environmental matters at ASDA-Walmart – is an engaging
speaker with an uncompromising agenda, as delegates found.
‘Making things better and making better things’ was the broad
topic he addressed. While he said there is no ‘silver bullet – no
right or wrong’, the overarching philosophy should not be to
alter the quantity or weight of packaging, but simply to make
BETTER packaging – and remember that the ‘biggest value in a
packaged product is the product, not the packaging!’
Packaging has to work, he emphasised – and in this context, he
said that sustainability should not be imposed downwards by
the customers: it should be innovated upwards by the
producers.
‘If “green” is costing you money, you are doing it wrong!’, he
said and, quoting from a Cone Communications survey, said
that, while – across all countries – 60% of consumers say they
prefer to buy from environmentally-responsible companies,
only 44% trust companies’ green claims. But a tectonic shift is
taking place in our attitude as consumers: we are, he said,
changing from ‘conspicuous consumption to calculated
consumption’ – and this takes us back to the need for better
product design. Here the ground rules are clear. Find out
what the customer wants; ‘don’t just copy what your
competitors are doing – that won’t give you competitive
advantage!’; and beware of ‘green washing’.
‘Don’t throw anything away: there is no away’ was Mr Shayler’s
quote from a Shell promotion that led into an impressive
succession of Tickety Boo case histories, demonstrating
creative design thinking on packaging, that delivered
sustainability – both in terms of the environment and in terms
of cost savings. All were different. The common denominator
is that ‘you have to have a core purpose – start with this and
work out’, Mr Shayler summed up.
‘
compete
–
or
create
?’
‘A portrait of a bright future’ for the world (and the label
industry) in 2030 was the fascinating theme chosen by the next
speaker, Magnus Lindkvist, founder of the world’s first
academically-accredited course in trendspotting and future
thinking, at the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship. His
company Pattern Recognition helps companies to make sense,
and money, out of anticipating the future – forecasting, in effect,
what life, society, and business will look like in the years to come.
He began by observing that today we are suffering from
‘infobesity’; and went on to create a matrix of influencers on
business today and tomorrow. Globalisation is a horizontal
activity: the same things are happening in more places around
the world. Technology, however, is a vertical enabler. He
asked: ‘Are you going to spend the future competing – or
creating?’ Echoing Mark Shayler, he rejected the idea of looking
at what competitors are doing, and copying it. However, he
added, if you choose the ‘create’ agenda, you have to face the
fact that ‘society has an immune system that protects it from
new ideas’.
‘Innovation’, Mr Lindkvist said, ‘is about destroying the old. It is
about liberation.’ He left delegates with an insightful checklist
of five key things that companies need to do better if, he said,
‘they want to live longer than a woodpecker’. They are to take a
long view; to blend ideas; to experiment; to fail, and try again;
and to have patience. Most of all, however, he adjured the
audience to ‘make enemies!’
45
FINAT YEARBOOK
2013
|