The Campaign Company specialises in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading. Here’s what’s coming up this week:
Hello and welcome to the TCC Weekly – the Friday bulletin for people who know their Camel’s Nose from their Boiling Frog.
With the UK in the grips of a heatwave, we take refuge among the test tubs and the refrigerators of the Values Lab this week. There we dust down an old classic and ponder the relationship between Values Modes and a love of hot weather.
And of course, there’s the Weekly hothouse of bad memes and good ideas that is Charlie’s Attic. This week’s attic includes the two flags we most commonly mix up.
The Values Lab is based on the Values Modes segmentation tool – created by Cultural Dynamics and used by TCC– which divides the population into ethics-driven Pioneers, aspirational Prospectors, and threat-wary Settlers. Take the test here to see which you are.
Feeling hot hot hot
How hot is it where you are right now? You can type your postcode into this natty BBC tool, to find out the exact answer. It also cuts through some of the hyperbole, letting you see whether your neighbourhood really is hotter than Hawaii/ Jamaica/ Marbella/ Malaga/ Los Angeles etc.
But who’s enjoying the hot weather and who just wants it to all be over? We thought we’d retire to the air-conditioned climbs of the Values Lab, to find out. The heat map below is one we actually first looked at a few years ago. It shows the values of those who say they like the feeling of the sun on their skin.
As we can see, it shows that sun-worshipping is an especially Prospector pastime. Love of hot weather is high across the board, it should be said – perhaps unsurprisingly, given Britain’s drizzly climate and often underwhelming summers. But enthusiasm for the sun is meltingly high – easily in the 80s and 90s – right across the Prospector segment.
We wonder how much this relates to association between hot weather and looking good. Everyone likes a nice day, but Prospectors perhaps derive a particular thrill from it, as an opportunity to top up their tan or show off their bodies.
The group that is most lukewarm about the sun on their skin, meanwhile, are a small sub-set of Transcender Pioneers, in the bottom right corner. Perhaps we’re over-reaching here, but we wonder if many within this ethical and globally conscious group, while enjoying nice weather, also have one eye on the wider environmental questions which freak weather points towards.
And finally this week, the ice cream van of social and political miscellany that is Charlie’s Attic:
