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 Bedford Level from their Barnett Formula.
This week we look, in the Values Lab, at branded baked beans. Which values groups are inclined to choose Heinz? And what does this say about Tory electoral prospects?
And of course, there’s Charlie’s Attic, the sociological deli counter where you can Taste the Difference each Friday.
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.
Tory MP Brendan Clarke-Smith recently got tongues wagging, by arguing that people should weather the cost-of-living crisis by choosing unbranded products. Pointing out that own-brand beans are significantly cheaper than alternatives, the Bassetlaw MP subsequently doubled down, by tweeting the above screen-grab.
We thought this merited a trip down to the Values Lab, to see who’s likely to be annoyed by this statement and who’s likely to agree with it. The heat map below shows agreement with the ‘Premium Shopper’ values characteristic – the statement for which describes a desire to pay extra rather than shop around.
There is strong agreement with this in the Prospector segment, to the left, with weakest support in the right have side of the map. Prospectors favour ease and convenience and are likely to invest more of their identity in consumer choices, so in a way this is no surprise.
The most interesting aspect of this, however, is that the strongest agreement of all occurs in the most ‘Prospector-y’ part of the Settler area, right on the fault line between these two groups. This is the boundary where Settler concerns about threats to resources start to morph into a Prospector desire for status and success. Buying “premium” is part of this, representing an approach to life which is starting to become less focused on survival and more upwardly mobile.
This values space has traditionally been a position of Conservative strength. So in a week where another Tory MP, Damian Green, appeared to look back fondly at a boyhood spent swimming in sewage in South Wales, many wonder what the Tories are playing at. One commentator speculated that this was an appeal to the Conservatives’ core support: “The party is increasingly the preserve of the comfortably retired, enriched by rising house prices and generous pensions. They are protected from many of these issues, and can dismiss attempts to solve them by relying, like [Damian] Green, on some half-remembered privation of youth.”
TCC wrote a few years ago about the Tories’ gradual contraction and monopolisation of the Settler space, partly as a result of Brexit. Between 2005 and 2017 their values appeal became much more concentrated in this socially conservative area – narrower as well as deeper. We wonder now if the sorts of anti-aspiration messages which Brendan Clarke-Smith and Damian Green are promoting represent the natural end-point of this; the point where asking people to be happy with the ‘bare minimum’ begins to fracture even the Settler vote.
There will certainly be a ‘never did me any harm’ group of Settlers, who agree with the idea that society has become overly entitled and pampered. They may think we should learn to be happy with the basics – be it cheap baked beans or dirty swimming water. But, as the above heatmap shows, there are other Settler sub-groups who want a little more from life. The question, for Clarke-Smith and co, is whether the former grouping is large enough, as a section of the electorate, for the Conservatives to rely upon.
And finally, Charlie’s Attic, the part of the Weekly that takes things back to basics each Friday:
Listen to this discussion with Matt Le Tissier, which tried to understand his attraction to Flat Earthism and other conspiracy theories.
