In an episode of the Investing In Regenerative Agriculture podcast, Ethan Soloviev, the Chief Innovation Officer for HowGood was interviewed.
In part of this conversation (starts at 42:33), they talked about how to communicate regenerative to consumers, and he shares what’s working and what isn’t.
Here are some recaps from that conversation:
Regenerative isn’t a well know term. Eveyrone one that learns about regenerative immediately wants more of it. Regenerative is so much sexier compared to sustainable.
The brands that do move towards regenerative do well in the marketplace.
Even companies that are on the journey towards regeneration, but aren’t there yet but are open and transparent are seeing good results.
He also shared more details on a trial they ran in a UK supermarket in September of 2023 to test the impact of different eco labels on sales.
Using their own database of all the product characteristics, they came up with 6 different impact labels:
- Climate Friendly: have lower greenhouse gas emissions than average
- Water Smart: use less water than average in their production
- Clean Label: have a simple formula with seven or fewer ingredients
- Minimally Processed: made with ingredients that are not dependent on commercial or industrial processing
- Low Synthetic Inputs: contain ingredients that minimize the use of petroleum-based herbicides, fertilizers and other chemicals
- Fair Labour: respect workers’ rights and dignity
Terrible image quality, but if you squint, you can see the “Climate friendly” label at the left of the price on the electronic sign:
On average products with one of these labels saw a sales increase of 25.8%.
Between the different attributes “Fair Labour” the biggest uplift, 45.1%!
It’s already interesting that these labels are able to draw an increase in sales.
I wasn’t able to find more data on what was tested, but it would be interesting if there were products that qualified for different labels, and then to see which one led to the highest increase in sales.
Ethan also shared that it doesn’t work to do negative ratings and only works to use on the most successful products. Banner blindness etc.
Sidenote: I was talking to someone from Unilever at Groundswell. And he mentioned that the carbon reduction they were doing (without telling consumers) might also help them to get a better position on the shelf. Or as is illustrated with this example, it might get them one of these labels!
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