Kantar, the world’s leading marketing data and analytics company, in partnership with climate tech accelerator, Subak, today announces the winners of the first edition of Kantar’s Global Open Innovation Challenge. All submissions leverage the power of big data, analytics and artificial intelligence to propose solutions that help brands empower people to turn the desire to act sustainably into reality – to close the ‘Value-Action Gap’.
The award winners are start-ups Audiense and Really Good Culture (formerly Wherefrom) for their joint proposal which uses sustainability-related reviews and social media meta-data to forecast product shelf potential and identify new customer segments. Linked to Kantar’s brand expertise, proprietary data and scale, these findings can become a game-changer for clients in the sustainability space.
“We are thrilled to have taken part in and emerged as winners of this challenge. We have complete faith that the idea and product from Really Good Culture and Audiense, coupled with the support of Kantar’s expertise and scale, can effectively help to tackle one of the greatest challenges facing our society, which is sustainability”, said Adam Williams, Co-Founder, Really Good Culture and Javier Burón, CEO & Founder, Audiense.
Kantar employees worldwide were also invited to participate in the competition, with Archana Venkatraj, Dinesh Krithivasan, Gnana Kumar, and Satya Sarvani Malladi and Patricia Gregory from the company’s Advance Analytics Practice resulting as winners. Based on quantitative findings on people’s self-stated values and on their actual shopping patterns, Kantar’s team developed a new model that identifies consumer segments that are most likely to be persuaded by sustainability messaging, prescribes actions that will help marketers close the gap between consumers’ values and actions, and quantifies the ‘Green Budget’ investment needed to drive higher ROI.
Commenting on the competition, Kantar’s team said: “We are delighted to have the opportunity to use our expertise to tackle a problem as urgent as sustainability. We enjoyed working together and seeing a new approach take shape from our many ideas, and diverse viewpoints was a thrill. We hope to build on this success to address the value-action gap in sustainable shopping”.
Jonathan Hall, Managing Partner of the Sustainable Transformation Practice at Kantar: “People need and expect companies and brands to be at the forefront of the change we need to see. Despite the fact that the Value-Action Gap was identified decades ago, no one has cracked this challenge so far…This is an example of something that should encourage us to look to collaboration within Kantar and beyond our organizational borders to unleash an open innovation approach. A great, concrete example of winning together. This challenge help us identify data and technology-led solutions that marketers can leverage to make it easier for people to choose, use and re-use more sustainable solutions, thereby making a lasting difference in their behaviors.”
Cynthia Vega, Global Head Dx Analytics & iLab Partnerships at Kantar: “We firmly believe open innovation is the key to winning now and in the future of market research. The high level and diversity of the many ideas we received as part of the challenge confirm that we are on the right path to reimagining product development and accelerating speed to market”.
Amali de Alwis MBE, CEO at Subak: “We believe in the power of open innovation and big data to drive meaningful change, and we have seen the difference we can make when partnering with a world-class organization like Kantar, known for its data excellence. Every proposal is a testimony to the unlimited potential of bringing together diverse ideas and expertise to address today's most pressing climate issues”.
The next edition of the challenge will take place during the summer of 2023. To learn more, please visit Kantar’s Global Innovation Challenge.