BillerudKorsnäs

The consumer panel as fuel for brand positioning, business development and public relations

How to position a brand’s thought leadership by launching a unique global consumer panel.

Background

In the coming decades, increasing urbanization – with megacities becoming the power hubs of societies, with large portions of the population concentrated on a small portion of the earth’s surface – will pose unique social, economic and environmental challenges. Creating the conditions for a more sustainable future, with these challenges in mind, is a top priority for countries, municipalities, NGO’s, corporations and citizens around the world, and at the core of BillerudKorsnäs’ mission: ”to challenge conventional packaging for a sustainable future”.

As a leading global manufacturer of packaging solutions, BillerudKorsnäs saw it as their task and needed to find a way to inspire discussions regarding the future of packaging, recycling and sustainable development among cities and communities, brand owners and the packaging sector.

Idea

Packaging is a hot topic nowadays, discussed frequently on top level at brand owners, by politicians and NGO’s and most of all by consumers. Since packaging and its environmental impact is a global concern and to understand the power of consumers, BillerudKorsnäs decided to initiate their own global consumer panel. The incoming answers would then be used as fuel for brand positioning through public relations and business development through internal presentations as well as inspiration for discussions regarding the future of packaging, recycling and sustainable development among cities and communities, brand owners and the packaging sector.

Implementation

To gather insights about consumers view on packaging’s role in society, how packaging can enable better solutions from an environmental point of view as well as different cities capability to support consumers in acting sustainable with packaging, 16 so called megacities of the world was identified and selected. A megacity is defined by the United Nations as a metropolitan area with a total population of more than 10 million people. A representative sample of 3,300 people based on age (18-65 years) and gender participated from Berlin, Delhi, Jakarta, Cairo, Karachi, Lagos, London, Los Angeles, Manila, Mexico City, Mumbai, New York, Paris, Shanghai, Stockholm and Tokyo. And although Stockholm and Berlin do not qualify as megacities, they were included because they are considered to be “early movers” in sustainability.

Results

BillerudKorsnäs’ unique consumer panel generated great interest in both traditional media around the world and in social media under the hashtag #packsus. While BillerudKornäs ’role as a global leader in packaging solutions could be strengthened, the effort to analyze how consumers in different parts of the world reasoned about packaging issues, also strengthened BillerudKorsnäs’ position as thought leader, catalyst and preferred speaking partnerand among cities and communities, brand owners. and the packaging sector. The report was also used extensively internally as a culture carrier, as factual evidenceand and as a guide and a source of inspiration for the forthcoming innovation work. For those interested, the report can be read here.

Lessons learned

» Surveys are a proven way to create publicity, but think carefully about the purpose before and be very careful when designing questions and answering alternatives. Properly done, the survey can be conducted annually and thus become even more valuable through the opportunity to show a temporal change.

» To be statistically assured, each subpopulation must comprise at least 1000 respondents. This can be very costly in major global surveys. Therefore, take the help of a professional partner to discuss setup and execution.

» In global surveys, there are great differences between different regions. It is both a difficulty and an opportunity if supported by a clear reasoning.

» A survey should never be considered merely a publicity tool. It also largely constitutes a basis for decisions, an internal source of inspiration and culture, as well as an important addition in the meeting with customers.

» Be careful to use the term ”sustainable” and be prepared to support claims with facts.

» Global communication requires different methodsin different regions. Using the same approach everywhere is ineffective.

Credits

A special acknowledgment must be made to Jon Haag, at the time Director Consumer Insights, and Maija Bigestans, at the time Market Intelligence Manager, at BillerudKorsnäs without whose dedication and hard work this consumer panel could never have become a reality.