here with more insight on this Ryan Berry President at
Zap E. Thanks so much for joining us.
What were some of your biggest takeaways from this survey
? So I think some of the biggest takeaways are
that consumers today are increasingly expecting brands to take action
on issues that matter to them. And it's specifically
profound within younger consumers. So 75% of millennials are
expecting the brands that they do business with To stand
for issues that resonate with them, but that is
trending up in older groups as well. 56% of
the us population is expecting brands that they do business
with to take a stand, but not only a
stand action on the issues that matter to them.
So what were some of the top social issues that
those in this survey really care about? Great question
? So the war in Russia roe versus wade gun
control, Black Lives Matter Movement among the top that
we saw within our data. The survey also found
that consumers want brands that actually walk the walk,
as we had mentioned earlier. What does it look
like when a brand genuinely supports an issue and follows
through on those pledges because I think we have seen
over the years and particularly recently with things like the
Black Lives Matter movement, there are a lot of
different pledges and commitments that happen. Um and not
a lot of consumers that necessarily do the background work
on the opposite side to see that there's follow through
with those great point. I think consumers are increasingly
able to sniff out lack of authenticity. So what
isn't good enough is changing the logo to be rainbow
for a month? It's actually doing things to support
your employees and the communities that you do. And
so I think consumers, particularly younger consumers are actually
looking into the actions behind what they're doing and holding
them to account. So it's not enough to just
put a statement out that you support or you condemn
actions. It's actually to do things within your employee
base and within your community that you're trying to integrate
with that matters. This also wasn't a part of
the survey itself, but if you had to attribute
one thing to this rise in awareness and also productivity
from consumers, what do you think it would be
? I think my first guest, if I had
to take a stab at it would be just social
media and how interconnected we are with information. It's
you're absolutely right. I mean that's the same hypothesis
I have, we were closer to celebrities than we've
ever been were able to speak to brands like they're
people, we expect the things in our community to
integrate with us and you know, the societal issues
of today are loud and the algorithms perpetuate that.
And so I think it creates heightened awareness and then
an expectation of action. Um and then there's a
lot of rolling eyes that you see of of brands
that do the performative measures without the substantive action on
the other side. Something I also want to ask
you though, is can there be any detriment to
brands that speak out about an issue and a brand
that comes to mind most recently is Disney with the
don't say gay bill in florida and kind of the
saga between Disney and florida state. Um do you
anticipate that there have ever been issues when a brand
kind of spoke outside of its lane and faced backlash
? Yeah, for sure. I think that the
advice that I that I give to a lot of
our customers and something we follow internally is be really
clear as the brand of what you stand for and
be really clear of what your employees expect you to
do and their needs, but also your customers and
then don't be surprised if there's backlash outside of that
, but be intentional. Um, businesses aren't their
innate objects, right? So there's some of the
employees that they serve in the community that they're in
. And so there is definitely backlash is one of
the things we did was just write a set of
principles of how we're going to govern and decide on
these issues. And I see a lot of our
our brands whether they be Mcdonalds or Pepsi co or
meta doing the same thing and being intentional of what
they stand for and what they don't Ryan, I
think there's been a lot of hesitancy from corporations and
we're finally seeing this tipping point now with how culture
is shifting for these businesses to have to move with
the landscape and really align in some ways with customers
, social issues and the things that they care about
. Um do you have any data over at happy
that points to this being a benefit for businesses when
it comes to revenue and other drivers? Yeah,
I mean it's an upward trend but 33% of the
Americans we surveyed have stopped doing businesses with companies because
of issue misalignment, which is which is sort of
the downside. But I know many businesses like whether
it was Mcdonald's pulling out of Russia. I mean
they they saw great upticks in performance otherwise. So
I think being intentional and then taking action within a
community that resonates is going to have a positive impact
on consumer sentiment and as a result of consumer sentiment
, revenue growth. Yeah. Happy also helps to
amplify creators effectiveness and shape their innovation. I'm wondering
as far as trends that you're seeing right now,
are you also seeing this trickle down to smaller,
more individual creator economies where they're really taking on different
issues that they care about or that their audiences care
about and how is that affecting, you know,
smaller businesses? Yeah, I mean so so zap
predominantly serves big enterprise, so Fortune 100 brands.
We are helping smaller brands in pockets. One of
the things we put in all of our modules as
a social sensitivity assessment to understand the risk the residents
. Is it gonna actually alienate consumers? And I
think that's just another diagnostic to help consumers really assess
. Is it going to alienate you? Probably remember
an infamous campaign where Kendall Jenner was in place,
taking a stance on a societal issue and that caused
quite a bit of backlash. So one of the
things we're trying to do is help brands get their
tone right and how they actually engage on a social
issue. That's really interesting. And what are some
of the predictors that allow you to understand from an
analytics perspective if something is going to go over?
Well uh do some of that also take into account
things like diversity and representation um within the process of
creating this content, because I think that was one
of the biggest issues when you bring up that particular
commercial. Yeah, absolutely. So being able to
analyze data by different subgroups is really important. I
mean I think a lot of marketers are getting,
getting this, but we're no longer talking at consumers
where programmatically speaking to them in very relevant ways.
And so just because the message resonates in the masses
doesn't mean it might it might not alienate a specific
subgroup. And so giving the brands the ability to
really understand the risk, the risk of something going
viral, the risk of something alienating a human being
within a specific subset is a really important thing for
brands to look at if they hope to engage with
that part of the community. Yeah, kind of
piggybacking on that. I just want to tie things
into some of the trends that we're also seeing.
I want to ask you about key social issues,
impacting consumer behavior and helping a brand to grow its
audience in that same sort of vein. Are you
beginning to see a lot of these corporations move away
from maybe the shiny, more polished brand ambassadors and
more of the everyday person because they are entrenched in
a lot of the culture for these social issues.
Yeah, it's a it's a great question and we
do, we have a question module that assesses the
relevance of celebrities and celebrities cost a lot of money
for brands anyway and I don't have exact data point
in this meeting but consistently I'm seeing more authentic.
Raw content is resonating because it's it's consumers just value
authenticity these days. So the days of the big
polished product shot with the shiny model or celebrity may
be numbered and and that also is impacted by how
media is created in place. You can, you
can create content really quickly and disseminate it. Um
, so it allows you to do much more organic
content production. I think that Covid really accelerated that
because you you didn't have the benefit of going into
big studios to produce content. So a lot of
ads were produced on iphones and and I think that
that authenticity really resonates with consumers across demographic groups.
Ryan, I just have about 30 seconds left with
you. But I have to ask, especially with
the scotus decision coming down on roe v wade,
are there any trends or patterns that you're predicting over
at happy when it comes to how corporations are going
to tackle this issue? Yeah. So I'll speak
on behalf of zapping my personal views and you can
probably read between those lines. Um I think businesses
are having to really understand a how are they taking
a stance on this issue and then whether they publicize
it or not doing what's right by their employees.
I was in a conversation with our chief people officer
this morning who's having discussions with dozens and dozens of
chief people officers around the country. And there's quite
a bit of complexity of supporting your employees on this
topic. And I think putting out a statement without
doing anything is really gonna alienate consumers from a brand
. And so, you know, in our case
, we're not gonna put out a statement, we're
just gonna support our employees. Um and I think
that's the right call on this issue, but each
brand will have to do what's guided by them.
But I think just putting out a linkedin statement from
your Ceo is gonna alienate more than it's gonna help
. Really good information. Thank you so much again
for joining us. That's Ryan Barry President at