S4E11: Diving Into “The Heritage Gap” Report

Transcript:

Transcript 

 

SPEAKERS

Andrew Rugg, Erin Narloch, Adrian Gianforti, Jason Dressel

 

Jason Dressel  00:11

Today on the History Factory Podcast, we talk about new research into how companies and brands are using their history and heritage and what it means to customers and employees. I’m Jason Dressel, and welcome to the History Factory Podcast, the podcast at the intersection of business and history. In this episode, I’m joined by some of my colleagues to dive into a fascinating new research study and report that we’ve published here at History Factory. Now this research stems from our curiosity about the current landscape. What are companies doing with their history, and just as importantly, what resonates with people when it comes to brand heritage? If you’re listening to this podcast right now, chances are you have an affinity for history, and more specifically, you have an interest in the history and heritage of the companies, brands and products that you interact with and you’re not alone. We see the history of businesses and brands as ubiquitous and enduring inspirations for storytelling across all platforms of media and entertainment. But on an everyday basis, how much are companies and brands really leaning into their history and heritage as an asset, as a brand, heritage and archives agency here at History Factory, our vision is to empower the world’s best enterprises to make their history infinitely useful in pursuit of their missions and in pursuit of that this project was our Next step in understanding, both quantitatively and qualitatively how effectively companies and brands are leveraging their history and tapping into this widespread affinity for it. This latest research effort culminated in a report we’ve titled The Heritage gap, along with the development of the brand heritage index. So to unpack this project and what we’ve learned, I’m joined by three incredible guests. First, Adrian Gianforti, History Factory’s director of marketing and communications, Erin Narloch, History Factory’s senior director of business insight and performance, and Andrew Rugg, president of Certus Insights, who we partnered with on the study. Let’s jump into my conversation with Adrian, Erin and Andrew. Happy Holidays, friends. Welcome to the History Factory podcast. Great to see you all.

 

Erin Narloch  02:36

It’s great to be seen. Thank you.

 

Andrew Rugg  02:38

Hello.

 

Jason Dressel  02:41

Well, let’s jump in. Let’s first begin with, what’s an overview of the Heritage Gap Report? You know, what’s the report? What was the scope and breadth of what we were trying to accomplish here?

 

02:53

Yeah, I

 

Adrian Gianforti  02:55

can take that one, the heritage Gap Report. While it was not called that initially, we decided that we wanted to dig in deeper about why we thought brand heritage worked, and specifically how it worked for our clients. And so we thought the better point of entry was to look at the social content of some of the world’s best brands and be able to identify the volume and performance of that content over the course of a year, and so we wanted to find a research partner that could help validate some of the points that we’ve been making over time, that we think that heritage content outperforms other forms of content for our clients. And so it felt only natural for us to find that authentic message through a research partner that could validate it through a survey and some form of social listening that would better allow us to claim that stake and be able to move forward. So yeah, that was the original point of it. We also thought it would be interesting to explore an index scoring system that would allow us to look at the brands and be able to rank them and how and how they’re doing in their performance. And so while I think that was something that we thought in its nascency would be a good idea, we weren’t sure we were going to keep it or put it on the cutting floor. So kind of exciting to think about ways we could explore this topic and give something a little bit meatier for press and for other brands to take a look at and come back for more.

 

Erin Narloch  04:22

And the audience we focused on were consumers, job seekers and employees, and if, in fact, those brands that we mentioned, were serving up and did for these target groups, was the appetite there? And then the flip of it is, were these companies serving up enough content to kind of satiate the needs of these different groups?

 

Andrew Rugg  04:46

Yeah, and I think Adrian and Erin kind of teased the objectives of it, and the way that we thought about it is we wanted to create some kind of robust measurement to put behind some of these things. Things. And so part of it was we use social listening to determine what these brands are saying about themselves on social media. So if you don’t know, social listening is the practice, if you go out, you kind of scrape social pages to determine what’s being said. And we analyzed, I think it was 20 of the top brands from the inter brand report, right? They ranked top brands. And so we took 20, we took those top 20, we identified their official social media pages, and then we went and we scraped them for a year, and then we were able to identify how they’re talking about history and heritage on the social media. And then we linked that data up with the survey directly towards consumers as well as employees, about their attitudes towards history and heritage, and also their attitudes about history and heritage, you know, social media content. And so what we had is a kind of a nice, nice amalgamation of some of the discussion about history and heritage, people’s perspectives on it, how much they want about it, and how you know, their feelings about engaging on it, some of their behaviors on it. So that created a nice, kind of three prong stool of which to develop an index that we’re able to kind of track these things over time, and we’re also able to kind of break it down into individual measurements. And so it was a nice exercise from that perspective of trying to take something amorphous, you know, how do brands talk about history and heritage, and how do consumers feel about it, and break it down into something kind of numerical, and doing it in a way that acknowledges that you obviously, you lose some fidelity once you kind of distill these things down into numbers. But if you’re kind of being honest and open about it, you can still have some interesting results, and I think, I think there are, and I’m sure we’ll cover that in a second, but that was kind of the overall goal of the methodology, and in terms of focusing on how to break it down. And

 

Jason Dressel  06:53

Andrew, was this your first survey in which a client came to you and asked you to conduct an analysis of how companies and brands were using their history and heritage and social media?

 

Andrew Rugg  07:03

Yeah, I don’t think history and heritage is a common topic. And for Survey Research, at least in the Outlook most you know, it’s not necessarily uncalled for when you do. You know, there’s a type of research that people do that’s called reputation research. And part of doing reputation research, often, firms will ask about, you know, do you think this brand has a good history behind it, or do you think it has had a bad history behind it? That’s generally as deep as it goes. So it was interesting from that perspective, which I think makes the work that you all are interesting is there’s a lot more layers and complexity in terms of how you think about it, which provides a richer source of data points in order to generate when normally you’re doing reputation work here, maybe you know one or two data points at most. Yeah. So,

 

Jason Dressel  07:48

So we embarked on this, this exercise of, of wanting to understand how companies were using or and are using their history and heritage, how that content is being sort of interpreted and reacted to in the marketplace, and to essentially, sort of assess, first, is that content that is appealing to audiences? And secondly, you know, is it something that companies and brands are even doing or doing effectively, is that kind of a fair, fair summary of what we were trying to accomplish?

 

Andrew Rugg  08:26

Yeah, I think so. I think that was kind of a good that was kind of like the overall treatment goals, and, you know, not, not to bury the lead. And what we found is that brands weren’t really doing it right, yeah, these top 20 brands, and, like, you know, you know, our the poor team that had to go through all these pages, there’s just a lot of null posts, right? They were just going through and so a lot of these brands aren’t talking about history, heritage, even, like companies like Apple, who have, like, dynamic founders, like Steve Jobs, they just weren’t really talking about it. So in kind of like the moment we were looking at this, just a really dearth of conversation about it. And the ones where we did find some conversation was it was more kind of nostalgic, more playful, was kind of the general thrust, like companies like Microsoft were doing of that. But the overall finding that we had is there wasn’t a lot there, which, you know, when you conduct research, it’s always really exciting to come back and say, Hey, we didn’t find anything, because people are really excited about that. But, you know, that’s what it was and then. But you know, when we found that, when we linked it up to the survey, what we found is that people are excited about that. You know, they had an appetite for that type of content. They rated it positively in terms of, they would like to see more of it. They think it’s interesting. They think that it differentiates brands and brands who have been in business a long time and talk about that, that makes them, you know, more interested in those brands and in employees as well. So you know, it’s not, not, not an unsurprising story, but it was pretty a strong story that brands aren’t doing this, but there’s an appetite for consumers to do that, and us being able to track it. Down and track these different brands down, kind of shows that maybe, you know, in the future, if things change now, we have an ability to measure how much they change, because we’re kind of starting at least in terms of the content that is being produced. We’re kind of starting at a Nadir, and like we’ll see if it goes up over time.

 

Adrian Gianforti  10:15

It also prompted us to look beyond the social media among the History Factory experts who know these brands really well and understanding how they’re deploying their heritage, perhaps in other ways, outside of social rights, we understood that the scope, in and of itself, was somewhat narrow, and so we wanted to look at and it really was an Andrew. Maybe you can speak more to this, but the questionnaire that we had issued to our teams was really about yes or no questions of, do they have a historian on the staff and archivist? Do they have an archive or a corporate Museum and so on? Do you see it showing up in their product designs, in some cases? And I think that helped us balance the scales, a little bit about not saying that they’re devoid of using their heritage, but it just wasn’t something that was prominent in their social presence. And so I think that that allowed us to feel a little bit more comfortable with going out with an index survey that didn’t feel so finite in its analysis. Yeah,

 

Andrew Rugg  11:07

and that’s a good point. I should elaborate on that. So I’ve talked about the social listening aspect. I talked about the 38 survey aspect. The other part of the stool that I haven’t really talked a lot about was a scorecard that we developed in conjunction with you all about rating these brands and the History Factory team kind of looked at these brands from a perspective of their own expertise. Yeah, and exactly the type of questions that you were just talking about. ADR, do they have an archivist? Do they have a museum? Do they have an easy page that talks about their history, or a dedicated website that talks about the history? You know, those types of more infrastructure related questions, but also kind of the prominence that they had, and I think that also provided kind of a richness of the data. And, you know, not, you know, for some brands, it was kind of hard to tell, even from you guys, is just kind of, you know, that some, some of these brands were hard to tell, but it also showed that there’s is an infrastructure that a lot of these brands have when it comes to their history and heritage. So it makes it even more kind of, it seems like there’s an opportunity lost, considering this infrastructure that a lot of these brands have that they’re not utilizing in social media despite they’re also having a consumer appetite. So I think that kind of added more to the kind of part of these findings in terms of why aren’t these brands utilizing it more technical

 

Adrian Gianforti  12:21

term, yes,

 

Andrew Rugg  12:22

exactly, well,

 

Jason Dressel  12:24

well. And it’s interesting, because certainly one of the points of sort of inspiration behind this project is for many years, we have heard anecdotally from clients that when they are using their history, their heritage stories or assets from their archives. We have heard over the years anecdotally that this content performed really well, and when you just think about that in the context of how all of us interact with social media in our lives, and we’re all familiar with things like Throwback Thursday and Flashback Friday, it all feels very familiar. So I’m curious, were you all surprised that there was not more compelling data to demonstrate how these companies were actually using it, and did you find any kind of consistent patterns in terms of what kind maybe it was, you know, companies in specific industries or of a specific age? Were there any patterns in terms of what organizations were maybe using history and heritage more or less than others,

 

Andrew Rugg  13:35

considering that it’s really hard to draw large scale trends when you have such an underutilization of this type of content. You know, for example, the company that did this the most was Disney. But, you know, over the year that we looked at, they had 134 points posts that had some kind of history and heritage connection, but that was across, you know, all social media platforms we’re talking about, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, so and a lot of that is them promoting kind of older movies. And even had an anniversary. They had a big anniversary that they’re in in a movie about Disney’s, you know, anniversary coming up, considering all that, considering that this was such an important 134 posts about heritage, even that was low. But then underneath that, you had Mercedes Benz at 119 BMW at 45 and Microsoft at 44 so those were kind of like the top one. So what’s the common factor? Role, other than Disney, it’s car companies and Microsoft. You know, like, it’s hard to say tech, because some of the other tech companies rated really low. But I think what you know, and the way those companies approached it were very different, you know, I think Mercedes Benz had, like, an approach that was very, kind of grounded in, like, we have a history of building complex cars and machinery, you know, even pointing out to, you know, we developed this car in the 1920s isn’t that great? You know, BMW was more nostalgic. Is like, oh. How cool your dad was when he was driving a BMW in the 80s, right? And then Microsoft was like, hey, remember Clippy? CLIPPY was fun, you know, like that was, you know, the theme kind of running through and so very kind of different and scattered approaches. But I think, if there’s one kind of throughput, I think Mercedes Benz is the outlier, right, in terms of them, kind of really focusing on the history, part of the history and heritage. The other ones were more the heritage, playful nostalgia, I think, was kind of where the trend was going. And so like, from it like, a social media differentiation, you know, they’re trying to be playful, they’re trying to be more fun. They’re trying to use that as a springboard for their social media presence. But, you know, to pair that, what we found in the survey, one of the things that kind of stuck out to me is a lot across different industries. What consumers were telling us is, you know, companies that have a, you know, in for automotive companies, companies that have a tradition, tradition or history of innovation, are likely to continue to be into and you find that going forward and that kind of pointing towards we have done difficult things, or we’ve innovated, or we’ve done, you know what? I don’t know what the equivalent would be for the style world, but whatever the equivalent for innovation would be for style that that that kind of carry through of we’ve done this in the past, and we can continue to move forward as an integral part of that brand, that kind of connective tissue is really missing in the social media. And this seems like a lot of one off a lot more playful, even Mercedes Benz seemed like, you know, it was just kind of like a, here’s a fun little historical fact, you know. And you know, no kind of connection to some sort of liable, kind of larger brand narrative. So that was, I think, kind of an interesting part of how these top brands were using it, not to say that there are any major trends, considering what we found. You

 

Jason Dressel  16:46

Now, my dad was driving a sob in the 1980s so he was clearly in a cool but, but your point, your point’s a good one. And I’m curious with respect to kind of shifting to the survey piece, because you mentioned that before Andrew, in terms of, you know, what were some of the findings there, in terms of, you know, that piece of it,

 

Andrew Rugg  17:10

yeah, so, you know, just, just to kind of go over, kind of some more basic data points that I thought kind of emerged from the survey, you know, in terms of interest, right? You know, 74% said they would be interested in stories on social media about a brand’s or company’s founding origin. Now, what surprised me about that is, generally, when you ask people, would you find something on social media interesting? Generally, they say, No, they’re like, Stop bothering me. But the fact that 74% said they would be interesting, I thought, was a particularly strong finding. You know, 54% said they would be interested in an announcement of a brand or company’s anniversary, right? So that’s kind of like, that’s on the positive side, I thought. But, you know, you contrast that with, you know, stories about a brand’s founding and origin, that shows, to me, that there’s interest in that. You know, 72% said they would find nostalgic posts from a brand they follow on social media interesting, and a similar 72% said they would be interested in learning how brands they follow learn from their past paths to develop better products and services. And then, you know, equally, around 70% said they would be interested in brands they follow showcasing the historical preservation efforts, and they’d be interested in historically important innovations from brands to companies that they follow. So you have this kind of, you know, seven and 10 who’s saying, Yeah, I would like to learn more about this across the survey. And what I what I think is kind of going on here is that, you know, for consumers that are following brands on social media the company’s history is a way for them to differentiate these plans and understand them and understand what makes them unique, what understands make them different, and it’s a source of information that they can use to kind of help them understand the brand. It’s not just kind of, here’s the latest sale or something kind of light hearted and fun. Give them something tangible to understand where this brand is, where it might be going, where, how it’s evolved in the past. And I think that if you view history and heritage as a source of information that consumers are using to help them understand the brand, the appetite that consumers have for it makes sense. I think it’s

 

Adrian Gianforti  19:15

important to call out the generational differences too, because I don’t, and maybe you’re not contacting that, but it’s, you know, it wasn’t. I found it more surprising that the older generations didn’t have as much of an interest in it, and that, in part, because they don’t follow as many brands as the younger generations do. But that aside, for those that do want to look into the brands that they that they purchase it, I found it sort of compelling that they were less compelled to fall and be interested in the brand’s history in the same way that, say, like a Gen Z or a millennial, would millennial being the, sort of the top, top generation. So that part, I found to be sort of compelling, and thinking about how we shape our messaging, and then being very specific about who that’s meant for. So Erin, anything to add there?

 

Erin Narloch  19:58

Now, equally. And to me what kind of jumped out that you saw broad interest in these different generational cohorts. And maybe falling on, falling off a little with the kind of the boomers, right? But generally the interest is there,

 

Andrew Rugg  20:15

yeah, you know, if you, if you looked at, I think that we asked the question, do you think companies and brands should post more frequently about their history and heritage on social media? And just looking at that, I strongly agree. You know, 18 to 29 year olds at 31% you jump up to 36% to 30 to four four year olds, then you cut back to 45 to 64 year olds at 21% and then 6565 and older at 14% I think part of that is kind of just generational differences in social media. I kind of recall a conversation I had with my grandmothers, like, Why? Why is Levi Strauss posting on social media? Why would I want to know what the brand is doing on social media? Like she’s just confused by the concept of brands and social media in general. But part of it is also that younger consumers are, you know, exploring brands more than we’re interested in learning about brands on social media. So I think there’s a social media aspect in terms of interest, and I think there’s an information appetite in terms of learning about the brands. But you know that that’s kind of where I draw from it. But yeah, I think it’s interesting that your initial assumption that older consumers are going to be more interested in history and heritage doesn’t hold true when it comes to learning about history and heritage on social media.

 

Jason Dressel  21:29

Yeah, and we’re talking about this notion of history and heritage. And another word that came up a lot, and indeed is kind of is a core theme of the report, is this notion of nostalgia. And so I’m curious if we can maybe dig in a little bit on, maybe for our listeners, first, clarifying how we think of sort of the distinction of history versus heritage. And then where did this concept of nostalgia then make its way into the findings,

 

Erin Narloch  22:04

sure, so I like to think of history as an accurate reporting of everything that’s happened in the past. There’s a reason we don’t have perfect memories, right? Because I don’t want to have that memory of my life like accurately remembered heritage is what we choose to take with us from the past that really helps drive us in the future. So thinking of a brand history, brand history is kind of rarely what a consumer will see. It will be brand heritage, right? It’ll be those proof points in the past that either are threads of their DNA, their innovation, whatever is going to take them into the future and nostalgia is, I would say. And I’d love to hear what Adrian has to say about it. It’s more of the emotional connection we have collectively, in the collective to different what those different heritage proof points? Yeah, I

 

Adrian Gianforti  22:59

would agree with all what Erin said. I mean, the way I sort of differentiate history and heritage is really about just the facts. Man has been kind of your historical proof point, and then the heritage is really about a curation of those stories and through lines that you want to bring through that’s driving your business forward in the future. And so, you know, I think it’s a very strategic decision making process when you are looking at those stories and making sure that they’re validating the things you continue to want to bring into your strategy and how you bond with your consumers today. And so, yeah, I think that that was a really interesting trend and sort of a happy thing that we found. But interestingly enough, I think we found that there was more historical content that was being posted in the nostalgic content, even though nostalgic content was outperforming historical content. So thinking about pulling on hearts and minds, right? That was really the focus of the nostalgia content, and it didn’t really seem to be as commonly focused on. And so I think that’s a really big opportunity that perhaps is being missed right now in terms of building that community with your followers. Yeah,

 

Andrew Rugg  23:59

and Adrian, I think what you said was really interesting is, you know, the nostalgia content, it’s kind of was pulling on hearts and minds, right? So there’s an emotional aspect to it and going, you know, and these brands, a lot of the time, were seeking to make us, you know, some sort of emotional connection with their official social media pages is with their audiences, with their customers. And so in that sense, the nostalgia centric posts serve that strategy, right? Kind of either be fun, be relatable, be understandable, right? That was kind of like the common element that they were striving towards. And I think that’s why you see some of the nostalgic posts perform better. And by performing better, we mean, you know, they had more engagements, they had more likes, they had more shares. Those types of metrics are how we determined whether they were more effective or not. The historical side of posts, which, like any good, you know, schema is everything else but the historical side of the equation. There wasn’t any sort of connective tissue in terms of those things. We’re trying to do it. Every once in a while, you’ve had something like IBM trying to show, you know, like on this date in history, you know, IBM helped, you know, Apollo scientists do this or that. And there was a hint at, you know, that history of innovation is still around today, but it was very soft, very minor, you know, maybe in like the last little sentence or so, or even if all, or maybe even expressed in a hashtag, like future innovation or something like that. But there wasn’t any sort of larger brand connective tissue or larger brand messaging that kind of group those historical posts. And if there is an opportunity that I think this kind of report hints at is, kind of is considering that there’s a consumer appetite. These brands can use history, in particular, as a vehicle to kind of underscore what they’re currently trying to do, pointing towards they’ve done it in the past, and they’ll continue to do that, and particularly in fields like tech and fashion, no motive that there’s a lot of opportunities, because right now they’re they’re not, and there seems to be interest in it. And so that kind of unifying principles, absolutely,

 

Erin Narloch  26:07

knowledge becomes cultural currency with consumers, right? If you know, you can share, and that’s what I think you know is shown with those nostalgia posts, those high engagement, because you want to be the one to know and share that with your friends, your cohorts.

 

26:27

What were some of your favorite

 

Jason Dressel  26:29

examples, or what were some of your favorite things that you saw did anything kind of stick out that you saw particular brands do that you thought were especially creative or unique?

 

Andrew Rugg  26:44

That’s a good question. I thought there were some interesting things. I have a kind of scattering of observations. One, I thought it was interesting that McDonald’s had their archivist talking on their LinkedIn page. You think a big brand like McDonald’s wouldn’t necessarily do something like that, but, you know, and they kind of, it seemed like, you know, if I imagine they kind of said, Hey, go ahead post, you know. And he was just talking about some of the history of McDonald’s on the LinkedIn page, which I thought was really interesting. Another aspect of it is, you know, I think a lot of brands are kind of scared of ghosts in the closet when it comes to their history in terms of, you know, bad things that have happened in their past. But even companies like Mercedes Benz were able to post online about cars that they were developing in the 1930s. I didn’t see any kind of pushback or any kind of negative reaction to those things. Now, it could be that they just flew under the radar, right? But like, you know, the instantaneous reaction you’d expect just a lot of reaction in terms of people talking about Nazis and there, there wasn’t. So even those kinds of risk skirting posts didn’t generate that type of playback. And I thought it was particularly interesting that Microsoft, you know, of the companies, was really leaning into their nostalgia and heritage by pointing at old logos, even old advertisements that they were doing. You would expect that other companies would have a similar kind of focus, but they were kind of ones who are really kind of leaning into that nostalgia focus and getting a lot of engagement. And just as you were saying, Erin, it was kind of creating, like a way for people to kind of like, Oh, I remember that. Oh, that was interesting, that was fun, and it wasn’t something I would have necessarily thought kind of going into it. And

 

Erin Narloch  28:17

I feel like Microsoft also borrowed nostalgia from music and repurposed it for themselves a bit, right? They kind of lifted a bit of that late 70s, 80s vibe into what they were doing, which shows, I think, there’s ample room for creativity in the execution of nostalgic posts and how you can be authentic to the brand, without just doing quote, unquote history, but tapping into the kind of the zeitgeist of the time. We

 

Adrian Gianforti  28:50

I also know that there were a mile of milestone years that we typically see being celebrated. So Coca Cola, I think, was 137 in 2023 so you don’t normally see that, just in my experience, and I’m sure Jason, you can relate in your experience. You don’t have a lot of prospects coming to you asking to do a 137 anniversary plan. So that was kind of fun to see, even though it wasn’t robust and it was kind of a one off. It actually was good for you guys to see the value of heritage outside of a traditional milestone here.

 

Jason Dressel  29:25

Yeah, it’s also interesting to think about, sort of the context of where these organizations are, sort of through the lens of the things that they’re posting, because, to your point about Microsoft, Erin, I also was surprised at sort of just kind of both the volume and sort of amount of fun that they were having with their history and heritage. And I think it’s a pretty safe thing to say that that’s not the kind of content that Microsoft was posting 10 or 15 years ago. You know, there’s been a lot of, obviously, coverage about how the culture is. Really changed there over the last decade, under, under their leadership, and just when you when you kind of just sort it. So it’s kind of interesting to look at this through that kind of lens of knowing, more broadly, sort of where these companies are in their life cycle and sort of, you know, what that says about their products, their culture, their business performance. So I thought that was really interesting as well. Where do you think this whole notion of sort of history and heritage and nostalgia may be misunderstood? You know, we named the report the gap, and so do you all also see this discrepancy between how marketers and communicators and the folks who are responsible for shaping the stories around these brands and getting them out into the marketplace? Do you see a discrepancy between maybe how they think about history and heritage and what it can really do for them?

 

Adrian Gianforti  31:03

Yeah, I can start, I think that they are doing a risk assessment, if anything. I mean, this is, of course, assuming it’s within their sort of Zeitgeist at the moment, right? We don’t know necessarily if they’re even thinking about it in that terms, but for the sake of our argument, let’s say that they are. I think a lot of the time there’s a pressure on companies to be solely future focused and on that concept of innovation and that we’re looking to the future and we’re trying to, you know, improve things now and for tomorrow. What I think is a missed opportunity is that they don’t kind of look at their past as a way to inform those decisions moving forward as like a as a sort of not letting history repeat itself, so to speak, but using that as a learning block to to move through challenges, and how that validates their their policies, or their mission, vision and values, or the way that they take a stand on certain issues, and that they have a history of doing that right. So it is just again, as we keep saying, it validates the points that they want to make about how they want to move forward. But they may not realize that their history is exactly the first place they should start for sort of that treasure trove of stories that will help bolster that. So I think there’s just a risk aversion there that rightly or wrongly, kind of seeps into the conversation so they avoid it altogether.

 

Erin Narloch  32:12

Yeah, sometimes I feel like it has to do with the preconceived notions we have as a society around what it is to use to learn history, to use that, to be a student of it. And I think, like Adrian’s point, there’s a much more nuanced conversation. There’s much more richness and what you can explore. Is it, you know, your credibility? Is it the fact that you’ve been speaking to this audience for the last 40 years, and you’ve never turned your back on them. It’s being able to drop different lenses on your past and project that into the future and new and different in different ways, and it not be like, you know, an art history lesson or a lesson where the lights go down, the screen comes up, and we’re going to listen about about the past in like, a very, you know, flat way, yeah, stale way, flat way. It’s very dynamic. It is the most because, in the end, all companies, right, are built by humans. We’re intrinsically interested in the stories of who made the things that we use, why they were making them, what problems were they trying to solve, and what was culture like at the time? Like everybody, it’s like spilling the tea, and it’s like great tea that people want to be in on, right? And then utilizing your heritage is a way to do that. It’s a way to share those insights, the human aspect of your company in a way that’s incredibly dynamic.

 

Andrew Rugg  33:50

Yeah, and Erin, I think, you know, you can see that there’s the ingredients for some of the more consumer facing companies that have a larger consumer presence to kind of talk about that right to talk about, you know, how they develop things like, you know, how what decisions were made. You know, the stories behind the history and how they got there today, in an interesting way. I think what’s still in the like, very much experimental stages in like this is clear that they haven’t sorted out, is the less consumer facing companies, the more B to B focused companies. And on this list, you know, I’m thinking of companies like Oracle or Cisco, you know, maybe Intel, but definitely like JP, Morgan, SAP now, IBM, you know, these are a little less you’re not, you know, you don’t find these companies at, you know, CVS or Walgreens, right? So in that regard, how do they utilize their history and heritage as a way to kind of demonstrate that they’ve done things and they’re going in the future. Because generally, these companies just talk about innovation and what they’re doing and what’s new. I think that there, if there, there is something that was kind of surprising to me about the report, is that those companies don’t really talk about it at all, and there seems to be. An opportunity to figure out how to talk about history and heritage period in addition to talking about how they utilize it in their social media page to kind of create dynamic and interesting content that engages. So I thought that that was kind of a large addition to the consumer facing focus of it, that part of it, I thought, was interesting, and then that seems like an area for experimentation.

 

Adrian Gianforti  35:23

Well, that’s where the employee, job seeker results of the survey really could lend itself to, where I think their interest may lie, because that part I found to also be sort of a standout, while it wasn’t necessarily the intent going out to learn about that audience with that hat. These consumers are also employees at some of these larger businesses and or are looking for jobs at these businesses. And the fact that they were resoundingly united on that front, that they want this content. I mean, you can speak to the data, Andrew, but it was, to me, kind of a shiny spot of our research that was sort of just a happy accident, that we found that they want it and that they think it would actually help them be better at their jobs, that they want to work in a place that has that place that has that sort of transparency, and the job seekers want to work at places that have that history of stability. So while it may not have a consumer-facing role for some of those folks to buy their products, because I’m not looking for a tractor or a massive, you know, financial portfolio at JP Morgan, it doesn’t matter, because I may want to work there, right? So for me, it feels like there’s a real benefit to engaging a pretty I would argue, like a disparate team, or they’re spread across multiple countries and locations, and having that sort of ability to be a resource for a talent pool, to pull those folks in.

 

Erin Narloch  36:37

I would even argue that as a job seeker, if you had that, like the cultural currency of knowledge on a company, going into an interview, you could differentiate yourself and kind of parroting back some of that knowledge. I think that that is also something that I thought of reading, reading that that data,

 

Andrew Rugg  36:58

yeah, and, you know, I should, I should clarify so, you know, as part of the survey aspect of it, where we asked people about their interests in different topics of history and heritage, what we also asked was a certain subset of questions just to people who are employed in kind of larger companies and older companies. And so, you know, we asked about their employment status, and we had questions individualized, tailored to them. That was different from the consumer piece of the survey that we’ve been talking about. And so what we found in the employee portion of it is, you know, 30% of employed adults fear their company promotes their history to employees very well. So that’s pretty low. But what we found is that, you know, they thought that getting more knowledge about history and heritage would help them in their job function. So a few data points about that. You know, 85% agree that knowing about their employer’s history will create a better work environment. So just general, overall work environment, you know, 85% feel that knowing about their company’s history will improve productivity and culture. So now we’re getting a little bit more in terms of, you know, what are some of the values and sort of the things and the benefits of the company. 87% feel that they will be more invested in their company’s success if they know more about their company’s history. So, you know, attachment to the company, kind of knowledge and interest in it. You know, 80 88% felt that increased company history knowledge would lead to better decision making. So now we’re getting into the realm of more tangible, you know, decision making, not just, you know, values and culture, but you know, here they see value too. And the strong, 93% agree that knowing about other companies history would help them navigate current challenges. So they seem relevant. They see potential relevance to them solving issues today, I think, kind of taken as a whole, you see that there’s broad agreement that it would be useful for them to understand and do things within their company and create a better company culture. And the employees really feel strongly that it would help them in immediate tasks. It was really interesting to me, because generally, I see the opposite, right? You know, you get agreement on like, the more amorphous. Like, yeah, it’ll help with culture, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, I’m not sure how it’s relevant to me doing my current job. Here we see the opposites, like, Yes, it’ll help me with my job. I’m less certain about the broader cultural impacts, but so that was an interesting inversion to what we normally see when we talk about what would help people in their jobs. But either way, I think, like that shows there’s an appetite and to connect to kind of the two thoughts. You know, you see that companies are trying to use their social media presences online to serve a lot of functions. One of them is just great relationships with our customers. The other is to serve as a platform to get people up, get people to want to work there, right, particularly for more of the business focus companies. So if you have those two aspects and also to be a platform engagement for current employees. So you have those three kinds of purposes, and the survey shows the appetite and the interest for all, for history, inheritance, to serve all three of those purposes. And you know, there’s different ways you have to differentiate those things, and if you engage highly in one of those aspects, you kind of maybe will lose some. Other audience. But even still, I think the throughput is the same. Then there’s a kind of value in these things, and there’s interest in these things

 

Jason Dressel  40:08

well. And I think one of the things that often folks lose sight of is that you know different people are going to receive and see different posts from companies that they follow and see in these social media environments. And one of the things that struck me is that when you really kind of dig into it, and condolences, to some extent, Andrew, for you and your team, because when you have to spend that much time looking at that much content, it really does become sort of a sea of sameness. And you realize that to your point, even though they’re trying to accomplish a lot of different things on these platforms, the content is not necessarily as diverse and as varying as it could be. And you know, when these organizations were using history and heritage, it was kind of like a change up that really felt like, sort of like a change of pace in terms of a lot of other content that there felt very kind of familial and routine, where there’s continually talking about the same themes of things that they’re doing in their communities and their, you know, products and services that they’re that they’re promoting. So I was struck by that, especially because, ironically, some of the companies that did very little to nothing are actually organizations that have incredible histories, and we know from our experience in the market, actually have well resourced history in archives departments, And so that discrepancy, in some cases, of what they have to work with and the resources that they can deploy on this and and with what they’re actually doing was was really striking.

 

Andrew Rugg  41:52

Yeah, you know, if you think of history, and if you think of a company’s history and heritage as a source of information, it’s a currency that brands can use to help differentiate themselves in within a sea of other brands, was the one thing that some of these established companies have, these new companies dough, and that’s their history and heritage. What’s one source of information that they can use to differentiate and tangibly show, not just tell, but show consumers that they’re different, or at least have a history of being different. And it seems pretty obvious from the survey that we did that people value that type of information as an indicator of something true and real and different about these brands. So that, I think, is a huge missed opportunity that companies have, if you view it from the lens as a source of decision making information for consumers as well as for employees.

 

Adrian Gianforti  42:37

In some cases, we know that some of these companies have segmented channels that are dedicated to their archive. So I don’t want to be remiss in not mentioning that, but we’ve deliberately focused on the corporate channels, because even still, they’re not sharing that content onto their main platform. So it sort of speaks a message that the archive is the other and that the main focus of their corporate channel is not about that. And so I think that it’s, again, we keep saying missed opportunities that weren’t abundantly clear. But we want to make sure that when you’re segmenting that channel, that at least you understand that there’s you invested in the channel enough right to show that value, that you value it enough to dedicate something to it. So what’s the harm in pulling some of that content over to your corporate channel that also could have a wider reach?

 

Jason Dressel  43:20

Well, to your point, it’s a great point. Adrienne and many organizations that we’ve tracked that are creating this kind of content on non official corporate accounts, like, for example, an archivist or historian, or maybe one of the official social media accounts for one of their sub brands. Even in those instances, you would expect that then there would be some, there would be some semblance of reposts, you know, and that so, so even in those scenarios, just the fact that we didn’t see more of that sort of cross account, sort of sharing and reposting and commenting was a little bit of a surprise. So other than the obvious, we would like to see organizations leveraging the value of their history and heritage better, quantitatively and qualitatively. Are there any other things that you all would like to see differently, different if we were to do this research again, if we were to say, Do this report in another year or two,

 

Adrian Gianforti  44:26

I know what I want. It’s like, it’s a holiday, right? I have a wish list around this research. I mean, I think that AI is a missed opportunity, just because, obviously, when we started it, it just wasn’t as sophisticated as and has grown the way it has since we kicked this off. You know, just in less than a year’s time, I would say there’s a lot more functionality out there that we simply haven’t explored as much of and what I mean by that is, I think there’s a lot of room for growth for the index. I think that we are thinking about this in terms of how we advance it, where any brand can go in and see where they fall on the index. You know, I often think back to why in ours. Um, brand assessment, valuator tool, just a real throwback for those of you out there who are old enough to remember when that came out, but it’s really special in the sense that it was innovative about reaching brands to think about where they are on the spectrum of their competitors, and of what just other brands are doing with with a certain niche content, in this case with history and heritage. So I think that really it’s being able to analyze and get that score in quick succession for any brand out there, I think is a really exciting opportunity that I hope to see in the next year.

 

Andrew Rugg  45:31

Yeah, you know, I think what’s particularly interesting is that official social media pages are one way that brands get attention for their history and heritage. But I think what you’re seeing in terms of the social media marketplaces of last splintering does not mean you were not just talking about, you know, people leaving x Twitter for blue sky, right? You’re seeing people gravitate more towards influencers and intermediaries between information and themselves, right? And so those kinds of influence, influencers, personalities, whatever you want to call them, you know, how are they talking about these brands and their history and heritage? Because it’s something sometimes it comes up in light hearted ways and more humorous podcasts. Sometimes it comes up in news podcasts, and that’s, I think, a very very powerful way that people learn about companies and brands. You know, humorous discussion about, I don’t know, you know, New Coke right, on a funny podcast would be a way that people learn about this new heritage of Coca Cola is probably, at the end of the day, far more impactful than wheat that Coca Cola sends out that people will maybe glancing and move on. So looking at the impact of history and heritage and how people learn from it, from the perspective of the more impactful information sources, I think would get a more surround sound picture. But you know, that comes with the cost of you know, these are channels that brands don’t control, right? So these are good and bad. These organizations are going to be but these organizations are going to be having associations with the brand outside their control. But I think it is an important source of that. And I think if there is going to moving towards a more comprehensive way to understand how history and heritage brands are discussed, it’s focusing on the intermediary later, I

 

Adrian Gianforti  47:23

I want to just mention something about Coca Cola, because I think it’s a good point, Andrew, is that Coca Cola, if you, if you’ve been paying attention to their holiday campaign, has gotten into a little bit of trouble because it was a general. I think people genuinely miss the like old fashioned, if you want to call it, that, animation of, you know, using real artists, because the work that they did with the polar bears and the Polar Express was so beautifully done that having an AI generated was maybe a little premature for what their audience was ready for. So, you know, I do think at the end of the day, that’s still history and heritage, right? We have a nostalgia for the campaign when it first came out, because of the artistry, I believe so when you have that sort of dichotomy of new technology infiltrating a little or kind of getting over its skis, pun intended, see what I did there, that they would have, that they had some blowback. They had some, you know, blowback from their community of followers. So, you know, I think it’s really important that when we adopt new technology, that we also kind of take, take stock in the history and heritage of the organization, and what they’ve done historically, really well,

 

Andrew Rugg  48:26

yeah. And that’s the other piece of blowback that they got was, you know, a not major presence of Santa Claus, right? And the reason that I mentioned that is, you know, yes, there’s missed opportunities for brands to utilize their history and heritage, but I think we’re entering an era where there’s just a lot more risks. And you know, this isn’t necessarily the time and place, but politics is infusing just about everything, right? And so there’s inherent risk to talking about history and heritage, or really kind of anything that touches on any sort of social political issue, and in that sense, there either there with greater risks involved, you know, whether or not history and heritage is a safe place to avoid that, or fuel on the fire, I think it kind of yet to be seen, but that’s kind of something that needs to be taken into account and carefully considered, because you have just a higher sensitivity online to anything that could potentially even be misconstrued as problematic or offensive. So I think like that, that kind of goes hand in hand with something that brands need to take into account when they consider utilizing history and heritage. Yeah, I

 

Jason Dressel  49:37

I think that that goes for just about anything that they’re talking about in this day and age that now everything is being looked at through that political lens. But there’s no question that for some companies and brands, those sensitivities and challenges are more difficult than others. So for instance, if you’re you know. Know a company whose history overlaps with periods in the history of the United States or elsewhere, with more problematic you know, periods and causes, then that is certainly going to be more sensitive than if you’re a you know, a 30 year old tech company as an example, right? But there’s no question that that is a consideration for many,

 

Andrew Rugg  50:29

yeah, and, you know, and maybe to undermine my own point a little bit, is that you’re, you’re seeing acknowledgement of risk and social media from a lot of brands and companies, but I almost feel like we’re a little bit past that. And I don’t even necessarily think this is conservative versus level progressive thing, but I feel like there’s at least an appetite amongst a lot of people that not everything needs to be at an 11 when it comes to reactions online. Now that’s easier, that that attitude, how that manifests, may necessarily not manifest anything meaningfully, but you have, maybe the I the beginnings of this idea is we don’t necessarily need to react to everything as a crisis, and maybe that gives brands a little bit more wiggle room to be more exploratory and talk about things that would normally, maybe as early as three years ago, presented more backlash. But that’s just a hypothesis from my point of view. And you, you, you can, you can see the potentials of that so emerging

 

Jason Dressel  51:26

well, and to that point, there’s always the elephant of the room when you’re talking about companies and brands using and embracing history, heritage, nostalgia, whatever you want to call it, the common pushback that you’re may hear from from some is that we don’t want to be talking about the past. We want to be talking about the future. So curious, if maybe this is a question for you. Erin, if you know, you have any thoughts on how we advise clients on how to balance that paradigm? Well, I

 

Erin Narloch  51:59

I definitely think that what we’re talking about is where memory meets imagination, and is really great fuel for the future of all of these different brands and companies, and engagement, I think, will always be high when it comes to that kind of material. And I would just say in the future, I would love to see this be something we review, revisit year over year, because I think to have the perspective over time and the waxing and waning and the increase in the Engage is the appetite going to stay with consumers? Will we see increased engagement from different sectors? Do. I’m curious to think of the people I know at different companies not represented in the index, and if, if they, you know, if they make it, if we look at them next year. So I think the future is bright for this type of content as well as this type of research.

 

Jason Dressel  53:00

Well said, Well, why don’t we leave it there? Thank you again to all of you for your great work on this work. So we’ll, we’ll leave a note in the in the podcast, note the Episode notes, the show notes of where to access the report. But thank you all again.

53:22

Thanks so much. Thank you.

Jason Dressel  53:30

That wraps up this episode of the History Factory podcast. Again, if you are interested in obtaining the heritage Gap Report, the link is in the show notes. Thanks again to Adrian Gianforti, Erin Narloch and Andrew Rugg, until next time. Thanks for listening and be well. I’m Jason Dressel.