Consumer Behavior Change Marketing & Communications

Cultural Intelligence Unlocks Campaign Strategies to Support Brand-Led Culture Change

By unpacking consumer trends and crafting poignant narratives, today’s brands can create behavior change, shift consumer demand, and drive good growth — resulting in positive market transformation and sustainable culture change.

Brand Provided | By Kristen Tetrick | Published 1 year ago | About a 3 minute read

Image: Doritos

The most impactful brands are the ones who can tap into our cultural values and societal norms to create ongoing positive connections. This cultural intelligence enables CMOs to develop and market their offerings and initiatives in ways that will specifically resonate with their target audience.

Sustainable Brands®’ (SB) Socio-Cultural Trends Research™ reveals that 96 percent of US consumers have an intention to behave in ways that protect the planet, its people and its resources; yet a key barrier to making more sustainable choices is simply not knowing where to start. Marketers now have the tools and the foresight to measure their efforts and meet their consumers where they’re at to lead them toward a more sustainable future.

As a global leader in convenience food and beverages, PepsiCo wanted to drive business results while making a positive impact by showing sustainable living as aspirational and accessible. In 2021, dovetailing off of its 2020 #AmplifyBlackVoices work, the Doritos® brand initiated the SOLID BLACK™ campaign, designed to amplify the voices of Black innovators and creators. These brand leaders understood the importance of connecting with their consumers as a paramount factor in the ability to impact positive change. As such, they tested a 30-second ad in SB’s Ad Sustainability Awareness Platform™ (ASAP) to gain qualitative and quantitative insights to analyze consumer feedback and leverage the learnings toward future rounds of campaign creative. The data told them exactly where and how they could make improvements to increase the campaign’s ability to improve overall brand positioning and close the intention-action gap.

Based on the insights they received from SB’s ASAP tool, the Doritos team re-approached their campaign creative with a deeper level of authenticity and found success:

16 percent increase in their overall score for the general population audience
4.6 percent increase for their specific target market audience
36 percent increase in overall brand favorability (9 percentage points above the norm)
Internal systems improvement on using data to measure effectiveness

PepsiCo confirmed the power of ad testing and cultural listening as important parts of its journey toward impacting sustainable consumer behavior change. The company tested an additional 10 campaigns and expanded its research into the UK and Mexico markets, unlocking key qualitative cultural nuances from different geographical respondents. As a best practice, PepsiCo is now methodically integrating SB’s ASAP tool into its ongoing insights and marketing process.

“SB’s ASAP tool is not only effective for the current team but since we’ve launched these ads, my team has completely changed our historical perspective on how to use insights to guide our approach on improving effectiveness. This data is incredibly valuable because it goes into a knowledge bank that we use to make sure continuous improvement is an ongoing way of thinking for any new business leader that joins our team in the future.”

— Brodie Dunn, Director of Strategic Insights, PepsiCo

By unpacking consumer trends and crafting poignant narratives, today’s brands and marketing leaders can impact behavior change, shift consumer demand, and drive good growth — resulting in positive market transformation and sustainable culture change for a better tomorrow. Attend SB’s Brand-Led Culture Change 2023 conference — May 22-24 in Minneapolis — and gather the insights, relationships and tools you need to align your brand's success with changing our culture toward a more sustainable future. Join your peers and experience live sessions, workshops and industry forums presented by leading brand marketers and experts from around the world.