June 2021
Our latest episode featuring Philippa Wagner, Creative and Cultural Strategist, explores the rise of the sustainability agenda. We discuss the response of businesses and their role in helping consumers make better choices. Philippa shares her thoughts on brand activism and the increasing convergence between what employees and consumers want and expect from businesses today and in the future.
In Conversation With…Philippa Wagner
Series 1: Podcast 7
Lucy Lewis: Hello, and welcome to the Future of Work Hub’s ‘In Conversation With…podcast. I’m Lucy Lewis, a Partner in Lewis Silkin’s Employment Team and in this podcast series, I’ll be hosting exclusive discussions with innovators, business leaders and thought leaders to explore their perspective of what the future of work holds. The pandemic has accelerated longer term societal, economic and technological trends giving us a unique opportunity, a once in a generation challenge to re-think who, how, what and where we work.
And today, we’re going to be talking about sustainability. With the pandemic transforming how we work and how we live, sustainability is rising up the business agenda, with the Paris Agreement seeking to limit global warming below 2 degrees, Extinction Rebellion is becoming a household name and we’ve got the UN Climate Change Conference taking place in the UK this year. That’s making leaders in government and in business have to devote a significant amount of attention to green issues.
But the pandemic has also accelerated cultural shifts in the workplace and many organisations are now making public commitments and taking action on societal and on environmental issues and that’s because they’re getting pressure from investors, from consumers, and of course, from employees.
And I’m delighted to be able to explore all of that with our guest speaker today, Philippa Wagner. Philippa is a creative strategist and thought leader. She has spent over 20 years in strategic trend forecasting, shaping the future of some of the world’s leading brands and she has worked with a range of global clients across hospitality, apparel, food and drink, retail and technology.
Welcome to the podcast Philippa!
Philippa Wagner: Thank you very much.
Lucy Lewis: I thought, if you’re ok, we’d start by just giving you a chance to introduce yourself and telling us a bit about what you do.
Philippa Wagner: Yeah, I mean I think that was a fantastic introduction, so thank you for that to start. But, yes, so my background is really trend forecasting and helping business unpack the cultural nuances that are happening around us to really just make an actionable and kind of robust future. As you say, I work across all sorts of category, but specifically the last couple of years I’ve been focussing more on kind of place and space because that’s a big piece of the puzzle for all of us. But I guess where my approach is, it’s always rooted in the consumer. Because at the end of the day, we’re all human, although we are evolving all the time, we still have the same kind of needs and expectations. It’s just the response to the drivers that are out there that are affecting the choices that we make and the expectations we have from the businesses and the brands and experiences that we engage with.
But in addition to that, I’m also a Lecturer at Central Saint Martin’s on their world-renowned material futures masters which is super exciting course because it’s where sort of science, technology, design and sustainability collide.
Lucy Lewis: That’s fantastic. And actually, those two things bringing them together would be great, looking at the future, looking at the trend forecasting because one of the things we’ve talked a lot about at the Future of Work Hub actually pre-pandemic is that we were witnessing a real shift in attitudes towards the role that business should play in society so we’re seeing an increase in expectation from consumers, also from employees, that actually business models and business themselves need to change.
Sustainable Business
Sustainability needs to be more at the centre of what businesses do and it would be great to hear from you about what behaviours and priorities you’ve seen emerging over the last few years to where we’ve got to today and what challenges that presents?
Philippa Wagner: Yeah, I mean, obviously the last year and a half has been extremely hard for everyone, but there are some positives to have come out of the pandemic. And one of those certainly is the sort of the harsh reality that our behaviour and treatment of the planet and each other is just not right and that we can’t continue the way that we are. So, as you say, there really has been a shift in attitudes.
But we were seeing this happen pre-pandemic as both businesses and consumers were definitely thinking differently. But in many cases, it was still I guess, still on the fringes. It was seen as something that people perhaps should be thinking about but actually not necessarily building into their daily lives. It was actually pre-pandemic I was working for Ennismore, who own the Gleneagles and the Hoxton Hotels. And, we had an internal portal, which is a consumer insights panel which was made up of sort of innovative change maker thinkers and consumers who were really at the forefront of change and we used to carry out sentiment analysis research with them and we’d be tracking their attitudes towards lots of different subjects, but sustainability being a big piece of that puzzle. You know, at what point were they going to start walking way from perhaps some of the brands that they were engaging with.
And what we were hearing from them, that already, you know sort of two/three years ago, they were all actively, as they called it ‘buycotting’. So, refusing to buy from brands that they didn’t believe their values aligned with and actually looking for more sustainable solutions. But at that point, it was still very much about sustainability, waste, recycling, sort of, less harm on the planet.
What we started to really see during the pandemic and sort of evolving now, is this shift. It’s much more front and centre and it’s much more of a holistic approach and the debate is increasing around this more sort of regenerative and equitable mindset. Which, I think, was already evolving but has really taken root.
And you know, everyone talks about COVID as being the great accelerator, which I totally agree it has. It really has fast-forwarded so many of the trends that are already emerging and I think what’s the most important piece is that trends often will take three to five years to go from sort of innovator, early adopters, all the way through to mass consumer. But, what we’ve seen is everything move very, very quickly in a matter of months through to mass consumer spurred on by Black Lives Matter, big debates around some of these things and the spotlight on the equalities as well that COVID has shown us is meaning that responsibility is now happening. It’s not sort of a thing we need to worry about tomorrow. It’s actually something that we need to, yeah, to action completely now.
And I guess one of the things, and this connects across so many different areas and we’ve been seeing the fashion industry particularly had picked up sustainability much quicker than perhaps some of the other industries because they were quite rightly being, you know, a light was being shone on them for not doing things. But it was still kind of that fringes, still sort of they were tentatively looking around, and we’ve recently seen the likes of Hermès launching their new handbook which is made from mycelium which is grown from mushrooms. And there’s a lot of hype around it and that’s fantastic. But this technology isn’t ,this alternative material has been around for over a decade. But it’s actually now that people are ready for it that it’s able to flourish in the market. And I think that’s really what’s super interesting is because consumption has become a big topic of conversation and people are now looking at that in a different sense and saying actually, where can I make the right choices and the mycelium handbag is a perfect example of an extension of the veganism rising trend that had been happening. And as it’s gone sort of more mainstream.
Lucy Lewis: The other thing we see in fashion is there is an idea of pre-loved fashion or, you know circular fashion.
Sustainable Fashion Brands
We know there’s a big focus on avoiding waste. You mentioned that. Is that a sustainable or long-term trend or is that just of this moment, a kind of pandemic moment?
Philippa Wagner: I mean Vintage, which in a sense, it sort of has a lot of connotations. It’s something that’s obviously been around for decades. I believe this pre-love, this rental, this second hand will stay. I think it’s born in some peoples’ minds through sustainable lens, but I actually think where it’s going to root itself more is it’s because people haven’t got the same funds to spare, particularly the younger generation.
So, Gen Z as we know the kind of the most sustainably minded cohort because their growing up into this world and having to sort of deal with the negativity that our catalyst sort of environment has created for them. But they’re also becoming of age at a time where there are very, very few jobs around for them, unless of course they want to move into hospitality industry but that’s a whole other conversation, probably podcast in its own right. But they aren’t going to have jobs in the same way and for them, they’re looking at it through the lens of ‘well if I can access that amazing outfit for the night, I can rent it, I will’.
It’s coupled of course with the need to still go to Primark and buy the kind of the fast fashion but I do strongly believe that the model of that system and it’s coming from the top down to places like Selfridges doing it all the way through to the likes of Her with their rental websites. It’s going to become a successful model. It’s just taken the luxury industry too long to get on it so it feels a bit ‘now’ for that reason because there’s been a rush of blood to the brain I guess to get into that category, but it makes sense on so many levels.
Lucy Lewis: And the other thing I wanted to come back to is something that I’ve been thinking quite a lot about, is this sort of concept of brand activism. You touched on it a bit in what you said and there’s an increasingly expectation, you mentioned Black Lives Matters.
Brand Activism
But actually brands, they’re expected to respond to the societal issues of the day. Does that expectation impact whether it’s actually meaningful? Can it be really meaningful if you’re expected to do it?
Philippa Wagner: It can’t be meaningful if you’re expected to do it. Absolutely not. And, people are so much more savvy to greenwashing or brand washing. And knowing that that’s not necessarily the truth, and that word ‘authenticity’ which got so battered and bruised a couple of years ago because it was sort of the buzz word of the industry. It has to come back down to that. It’s about attaching to your values as a brand or a business and seeing where you can actually make change.
I guess where again it makes sense is recognising that no one is perfect, and you can’t solve all the issues. It’s about saying we’ve made mistakes in the past. We can better those mistakes. We can learn from that and we’re all on a journey to solve problems and work together. It’s when you have the tokenistic elements of it and where a brand gets it so wrong that it undoes all the good that other brands are doing.
So, no, it’s very much about recognising where your values lie and where you can align accordingly. And therefore the types of people that want to buy from you, the types of people that want to work with you will naturally gravitate towards you because for them, the aligning of those values makes sense and it creates a community of connective minds.
Lucy Lewis: And, as you know, this podcast is about the future of work.
Consumer Trends
And one of the things that we’ve been thinking about is that there seems to us at the Future of Work Hub to be becoming a convergence between what employees want and expect from their employers and what consumers want and expect from their brand and I would be really interested to hear your thoughts on it and particularly, is that a good thing for business?
Philippa Wagner: Yeah, I mean I do think there is absolutely a convergence. But, we have to remember, at the end of the day we are all consumers aren’t we?, whether we’re the boss or whether we’re the worker, at the end of the day we’re all still being influenced by the same drivers that is happening around us. We’re still watching the same news, we’re still engaging those, same kind of conversations. So, yeah, I do think it is good for business in the longer run. Well it possibly doesn’t feel good for business at the moment, particularly with the millennials and some of the older Gen Z’s who are actively making choices about who they’ll work with based on these shared values and so it, you know, it’s making it harder for a business or a brand because it’s not necessarily about the location that they’re sitting in or the salary that they perhaps offer if somebody is going to work for them or the perks and benefits. That sort of stuff feels tokenistic now because people are making choices about do I believe we share the same values or do I believe that they’re making good choices for the world around them and if that’s good for me, then I’ll connect with them and ultimately that’s got to be good for business because, if we’re looking from the outside in as a consumer into a business or a brand, and we want to align, if the people inside the business aren’t all working towards that same value, then disconnect comes and that’s when you see it. Almost as a sort of societal greenwashing for want of another way of looking at it.
Where I think it does really build strength is, it makes businesses and brands accountable, because it really forces them to review and reassess their best and worst practices. Because, not everyone is getting it completely wrong. Some people are doing amazing things.
I was on a panel a couple of weeks ago with one of the team from Depop and she is a person of colour and she was saying how incredibly supportive the team have been internally. Giving her a platform, giving her a voice, asking her opinion as a person of colour about what its like to be in certain situations. And for me, that was such an incredible moment to hear, because she’s young. And in traditional senses people would be like ‘Well, what have you got to add to the conversation?”, but she’s got so much to add to the conversation because she knows the conversation. That’s where you see a brand who are saying ‘we’re not perfect, but we can do better’.
Lucy Lewis: Yeah, and actually , I’ll share for the benefit of the listener, I know you’ll know these but, there’s some really interesting statistics from the Unily census, 65% of their respondents said that they would be more likely to work for an organisation with a strong environmental policy and then I thought you could provide us with some advice and guidance on 57% of respondents said that they wanted their employer to share more information about their company’s environmental goals.
Environmental Strategy
Do you have any advice for businesses about how they can go about creating an environmental strategy and then of course, sharing that with employees if that’s what they want?
Philippa Wagner: Yeah, again the environmental conversation is such a huge one because as I was sort of saying at the beginning. The sustainability conversation used to be about waste and recycling and upcycling. Now the sustainability conversation is that wider sense of wellbeing. Wellbeing for us as individuals from a health and mental health and wellbeing perspective, wellbeing of our planet but also wellbeing of the buildings we’re in, all of that stuff sort of mixed in together. And it’s very difficult for businesses to have to work out where they focus their attention.
They’ve obviously, for a while now, some of the bigger businesses have had to adhere to certain sustainability criteria and they’re sort of doing the audits and all of that sort of which is a bit more defined for them but getting into this softer space where it’s more emotional, is much harder. But it is fundamentally important. A lot of business have when you talk to them about how they continued during the pandemic is ‘oh it’s been fantastic for our business culture. What we’ve done is we’ve had Zoom cocktail nights and we’ve had Zoom yoga’. And it’s like that’s great, but that’s just tokenistic. It’s about actually understanding your values, your cultural core and getting everybody together to be on that same trajectory and that same journey.
If a business or a brand doesn’t have its core values, then how do you know where you’re going and how do you know that you can get everybody as a team together to go in those directions.
I think one piece of the puzzle is going to be super interesting which is just wrapped up everything to do with COVID is, from a sustainability point of view, we’ve stopped flying. We’ve stopped driving. The trains, almost everything. We’ve seen the positive impact that’s had on the skies, the birds are singing, we’ve all got our own story to tell around that. But one of the biggest footprints for most businesses, is actually their corporate travel. The carbon footprint of people commuting to work, but more importantly commuting to other offices or commuting to meetings globally. And because we’ve been forced to stop that, that actually gives businesses an opportunity to actually reduce their carbon footprint by a huge amount if they don’t go back to the pre-pandemic travel.
Obviously, the hospitality industry wants everyone back out there, but we have to be realistic. This is an opportunity and I actually saw, there’s a really recent report that’s just come out which is saying that if we went to a four day week, but paid people the same, we would actually be able to reach the targets that we need to, to bring the UK’s carbon footprint down.
So, it’s such a complex puzzle of pieces that all need to be put into place by businesses and by employers that it’s about, as you say, building a strategy but it’s a strategy that works for you and your teams, there is no template for this.
Lucy Lewis: That’s really, really inciteful example isn’t it, going to four days a week. About how actually what we do day to day from a work perspective can very directly impact environmental and sustainability issues. You talked about something, right at the beginning that I was going to pick up on, and that’s this acceleration of trends and we’ve seen the pandemic act as a really huge accelerator. I mean, none of us would have predicted that it would only take 18 months to essentially embed hybrid working, stopping all the travel as you say. So, I’m interested in just looking ahead a little bit and particularly the impact of the pandemic and what that means for sustainability moving forward. You’ve talked about travel.
The Office of the Future
I know that our listeners would be particularly interested in your thoughts on how we redesign office space, I mean that’s something that’s very high up peoples’ agenda at the moment.
Philippa Wagner: Yes. I mean, office … the ongoing debate about the future of work is certainly kind of hot topic isn’t it? People saying those businesses who are saying come back to work, those businesses saying stay at home. But it’s ultimately, it’s about flexibility. What people are asking for is to have this flexible mindset of working and whether that would be a four-day week. It doesn’t need to say that everybody has to work the same four days, that crosses over the seven days and with people coming in maybe on a Monday and a Wednesday and somebody else on different days, this flexibility means that the office does have to be redesigned.
We were already seeing, you know, new office developments that were building sort of outdoor spaces for wellbeing or decompression zones, you know yoga classes at lunchtime. That was already happening. But this is about us rethinking about the usage of when we come in, how we use them.
I’m talking to lots of clients at the moment about how they’re thinking about building Zoom rooms so that when people are in the office, they can have this Zoom space. But, for instance, even just a Zoom room creates huge amounts of carbon footprint.
We all jumped online, everyone’s gone great, we’re not flying, the world is getting better. But actually, every time we Zoom, I don’t know the exact statistics, but the amount of carbon waste is huge and I’ve recently heard that if you turn your camera off and Zoom you can actually reduce the power consumption by 95% which is insane. So, the idea of some of the solutions of let’s create a Zoom room, which is an interim solution, but people still need to be together and when they come together, I think we’re starting to see some of this bubbling to the surface.
The Venice Architecture Biennale that’s happening at the moment, it’s a really interesting exhibition from Ecologic Studio and it’s called Bit.Bio.Bot and it’s exploring the role of algae as a biomaterial for urban design. So, it’s not specifically been designed for the office environment, its more for the urban environment. It’s essentially a living cladding that acts as both an air purifier and also a vertical garden. So, the walls are made essentially. it’s a farm for algae farming. So, as the algae grows, which is a really renewable and alternative material, its purifying the air which creates environments where people can feel healthier and there’s that sense of wellbeing but also, what’s really interesting is it’s a future food source. Because we know that we have issues around our sort of future food.
So, this is obviously a very future view of what spaces could be, but if you just imagine that that could be an office environment where you are breathing clean air but also giving something back to the local community. And if you sort of extrapolate it back into say a little bit more now, we’ve already started to see offices. There’s particularly DBS Bank in Singapore is a great example. Lots of offices have been turning their spaces into vertical farms for their workers. So the workers can go and harvest the plants just as a mental sort of wellbeing task, but also the food is then truly local and its then cooked in the canteen which is just a really interesting way of thinking about this blend and this flexibility that office spaces will have in the future.
Lucy Lewis: Really interesting way of bringing those really critical issues of wellbeing and sustainability together. You’ve talked about that earlier. The needing to not disaggregate these different issues and see it as all as part of broader policy and they’re brilliant examples for that. I didn’t want to let you go without talking a little bit about the role of government versus the role of business in all of this because we know that we’ve got the UN Climate Change Conference coming to Glasgow this year. We also know that the UK government is really keen to position itself as an international leader on these issues,
Climate Change UK
but I’m interested in your thoughts about whether we’re going to see change coming from the government, perhaps on the back of the Climate Change Conference, or whether actually given all the challenges they’ve got, you know things like Brexit trade negotiations actually is what we’re going to see, employers and brands being really the driving force behind this. Essentially filling a void that the government leaves?
Philippa Wagner: Yeah, I mean for a long time, businesses have been stepping in where governments have been failing. That is something that we’ve been tracking for probably near on a decade now. It has to be a collective shift. It can’t just be one or the other and the pandemic and the rush to get the vaccine out has really demonstrated just how well businesses, governments and people can work together when there’s a common cause and I think our green future is clearly a common cause. So, I sincerely hope that we can be a green leader and some of the examples that are out there that businesses and companies sort of stepping up and making change to carbon offsetting will be really important and I think really nice example where we’re starting to see businesses and brands making changes.
There are few companies, notably Volvo being one of the companies and also a couple of the fashion companies, who are doing low impact websites. So for their e-commerce they’re realising that by having videos and high res images is actually causing a lot of big carbon footprints so they’re offering consumers a choice to say actually, you can choose our low energy website or you can choose our high energy website but by using the low, you’ve still got the same products and service but you have made less of an impact.
I think those sorts of things are really interesting because businesses and brands are able to educate us in a really simple way that way. Help us make the right choices.
When it comes to governments, we have a different dialogue with them. Often, we don’t trust them. We think, you know, they’re after something in a different way. We’ve already aligned with those brands because we’ve chosen to share our values with them, so they are enabling us to have an open dialogue.
So, I do think that’s where brands have a bit of a better position than Governments.
And a really nice example I came across the other day is that Mattel who have just launched a new Barbie range and they were fantastic when they came out with a disabled Barbie. They’ve come out with the Barbies of different colours and different genders, so they seem to be pushing the conversation around social play in a really clever way. But their latest one is their campaign which is called the Future of Pink is Green, which is such a lovely approach to it. And it’s about teaching kids about sustainability. but each Barbie is made from at least 90% recycled plastic.
Maybe they’re a bit late to the game, maybe they should have been before, but they’ve wrapped it up in the idea of helping educate from play all the way up. Because it can’t come from the bottom up with the top down, it has to come from every area and that’s where I think businesses and brands have the responsibility. It’s who we spend our money with. It’s who we align with. It’s who we trust and so we need them to be, yeah, to be showing us and helping us make the right choices.
Lucy Lewis: That’s really interesting. And it’s a really nice way to think about it, businesses’ role in educating and helping us make the right choices.
Future of Work
We’re running short of time but, there’s a question I ask all our guests on this podcast series, and that’s very briefly what you personally think is going to the biggest and most radical change that we take for the future of work forward with us from the pandemic?
Philippa Wagner: Flexibility. Absolutely. And I think we’ve already touch on that when we were talking about some of the other points. You know, particularly the four-day week and if that’s going to happen, sustainability. But people have had the opportunity to sort of sit back and take some time and work out what’s right for them, their work life balance. So, flexibility is of location. Flexibility of hours. Flexibility of roles.
And again, like a really nice example I came across the other day is Huckletree who are a co-working location. They’ve got locations across London, Manchester and Dublin and a few other places. They’ve created a sort of flexible business model now which is that they’re offering what they call their neighbourhood pass which means if you’re a company that has taken the space in a Huckletree, it doesn’t matter where your workers live, they can go and choose to work from whichever of the Huckletrees is closer to their location. And for me, that’s a really nice way of seeing a business shift their business model to be flexible in a way that is really committing to the direction of travel that we need to go in.
Lucy Lewis: Thank you, Philippa. Thank you so much for your time and all the examples you’ve provided that and all of them, they’ve been really insightful and actually really thought provoking.
If anyone would like to find out more about Philippa and her work you can visit www.philippawagner.co. You can also find out more about the Future of Work Hub at www.futureofworkhub.info. Thank you, Philippa.
Philippa Wagner: Thank you.