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Our life expectancy is increasing. But as we live longer, the significant milestones in our lives, the ones we traditionally measure our progress against, are becoming further apart. Harder to reach.
So, we find ourselves seeking more frequent markers – the ‘little and often’ things that allow us to build a personal narrative of progress and give us a sense of control over our lives.
Brands and organisations have a significant role to play in this space. As allies in our quest for progress and success, and symbols of how well we're travelling.
It’s a powerful space, but only for those who can read the room – those who can tap into the cultural context and innovate to create value and meaning.
In this episode, Andrew is joined by Laura Mulcahy, Head of Cultural Practice at TRA, and Daniel Talbot, Strategy and Innovation Director at TRA.
Explore more and download the full report at: theresearchagency.com/progress
Andrew: Our life expectancy is increasing. That's good news. But as we live longer, and do so in more uncertain times, the way we think about ideas such as success and progress is changing. The major milestones in our life that we traditionally measure our progress by are becoming further apart and harder to reach. We find ourselves seeking more frequent markers to sustain our need for momentum in life. The little and often things from which we can build ourselves a personal narrative of progress – things that can give us a sense of control over our lives. And in this space, there is a big role for brands and organisations to play as allies in our quest for progress and success, and as symbols of how well we're travelling. It's a powerful space, but only for those who can read the room, those who can tap into the cultural context, and those who can innovate to create value and meaning for us. And reading the room – well, that means really understanding people.
Andrew: Hello and welcome to Frame, a podcast dedicated to the art of knowing people. And over a series of three episodes, we're exploring the themes of progress and success with thought leaders from different human science disciplines. By layering their unique perspectives on the topic, we're gonna search for the truths others don't – the uncommon truths. In the first episode, we looked at the headline findings from our most recent study on progress, titled ‘Are we nearly there yet?’
Andrew: In today's episode, we view these findings through the lens of culture and look to understand the implications of this for innovation. I'm joined today by Laura Mulcahy, Head of Cultural Practice at TRA.
Laura: Hey Andrew.
Andrew: And Daniel Talbot, Strategy and Innovation Director at TRA.
Daniel: Hello Andrew.
Andrew: Thank you for coming along today.
Laura: Thanks for having us. Excited to chat.
Andrew: Let's start, Laura, with the cultural lens, shall we? So, from the perspective of culture. What do the findings from this study signal about people's attitudes towards success and progress, and what's changing?
Laura: We're definitely seeing that there's this evolving definition of progress. It's not your parents' version of progress. This is a whole brave new world that we're looking at. Those traditional markers, like you mentioned before – owning a house or even pathways to progress – are going to be much different for a younger generation coming of age, right? It's just potentially completely out of reach, some of these goals that their parents or grandparents have achieved. For many, progress won't be marked by the same indicators. It's actually going to be marked by the absence of those markers of progress. You discussed this in the last episode and mentioned it upfront – that focus then goes into smaller moments, those more incremental daily, ‘have I had a good meal tonight?’ ‘Have I brushed my teeth?’ Kind of those needs that we put to the side, but actually, when we do them right, and when we follow through with them, actually make us feel better and operate better as humans.
Laura: It's not so much about the big marathon. It's about the ‘have I gone out and had a walk around the block and got my steps in’ sort of thing.
Daniel: A recent article talked about wellness culture, those soft wins.
Laura: And for an industry that is built on big milestones and going beyond human capabilities – in terms of sports and activewear brands and things like that – we've all been around when they're speaking to Type A personalities – pushing to the limits. But as Dan said, which I looked at in the article, we're seeing brands like ASICS saying, ‘Hey, just take a break from your desk’. And ON is having Elmo as its ambassador and calling it sort of soft wins. Not who you would have thought of.
Laura: We had Michael Johnson in the 2000s and now we've got Elmo in 2025. What does that say about where we are today? There's shifts like that we're seeing in brands – that actually these smaller incremental wins of the day, those soft wins, are just as important and more relatable.
Daniel: And makes people feel good.
Laura: Yeah, exactly!
Daniel: It's nice, softer.
Laura: And that's also something we're seeing in some work we're doing alongside this concept of ownership and what people are attracted to in ownership - in the context that we talked about - we've got a crazy world, a lot of things going on - is the fact that ownership can be a marker of progress, but it also can give you autonomy and stability when the world is not that.
Andrew: That's interesting. Owning as in a sense of control.
Laura: Yeah, absolutely. From the small things to the big things.
Andrew: Okay. So, just like what we saw in the last episode, these traditional markers of success are still there, but they really are becoming less important as measures, particularly about progress when we think of success and progress in our day-to-day. They can feel quite hard to reach. And as you just said, for generations coming of age now, they may be defined more by the absence of these than the presence of them. So we are leaning into these smaller markers of progress to kind of sustain our sense that we're making headway.
Laura: Yeah, and they're more universal. If less and less people are experiencing those big moments -
Andrew: We relate to each other over the little ones. Well, that's interesting. And the way we stitch these together to form a narrative of our own personal progress and give us some sense of control in our lives. And it's interesting that there are signs of that in culture. Both in those examples from, particularly the wellness industries, but also that idea of ownership and how even the little ownerships along the way, stitching up to create a narrative of progress and independence.
Andrew: Linking back to that idea of progress, there is this suggestion through the lens of culture that as we look more towards the little and often markers of progress, that what we choose to own or align with is going to be of increased importance to our narrative of success, which is an interesting thing when you think about it from a brand - an organisational perspective in terms of the roles played. I think it's particularly interesting in light of the findings we saw in the last episode, where we have this gap opening up between how we see our progress at an individual level and how we view progress about what's happening at a national level for us, and how, as we individually sense that we're making progress and expect to, looking forward to make progress, but when we talk about our nation - looking at Australia and New Zealand here - we're not seeing progress and we're not expecting to see progress as we go forward.
Daniel: I think it's an important thing to highlight. Laura was talking to the things that people can control, but that's something that people can't control. It is bigger than them and there's a real lack of optimism that was coming through, and what's being offered up to people, the solutions that they're seeing are not really going to help them progress.
Andrew: Let's layer in innovation on that then. So with that cultural context, with that lack of optimism, with this individual need for control and the lean into the smaller things, from a lens of innovation, what's your perspective on this?
Daniel: Well, I think it's quite simple. People aren't seeing the solutions to the real problems that they're facing today. So they want change. They want things that make them feel like they're moving forward in a positive direction. We had almost to a third degree that brands should take responsibility for finding innovative ways to help people make progress. So innovation is clearly a way to do that, but they want that innovation to be done in a way that makes their life easier, makes their life more rewarding.
Daniel: We saw a lot of people do see innovation in the world today. Obviously, there's lots of it. AI is a really good example of that. It's in our lives constantly. But there's a real scepticism. It's not seen as something that is going to be making -
Andrew: ‘What's that innovation for?’
Daniel: Yeah, exactly. They're not seeing value in that for them day to day.
Laura: And there's a huge amount of anxiety of purpose attached to that as well. Is it going to help us or hurt us in terms of where it's going? So, you can imagine it's a big black box that we're looking into. A lot of apprehension.
Daniel: And they're seeing a lot of value for brands. It's for someone else, but it's not necessarily for them. And on that, we did see in the research that people don't want action to be taken just for profit. They don't want to see things that seem to be just for a business's bottom line.
Daniel: It's the things that matter. And there's definitely a clear role for brands there. So we had just over two-thirds of people agree that brands should ask people what they can do to help them make progress and then take action towards that. And we saw people do get excited about new solutions from brands when they see that value in them. So the newness needs - if it's an innovative product, if it's an innovative solution, whatever it is - it needs to be thought through and it needs to stand for something. It needs to mean something to the people that you're trying to talk to.
Andrew: Okay, so there's a couple of really interesting points in there. First, it's clear from this gap in how we see our progress as individuals and how we see progress that's happening at a bigger level, that there's this disconnect between the signs of progress we're seeing - or in this case, really not seeing - and the progress we feel and want to have reinforced and sustained. So we are looking for someone or something to help us build and sustain these personal narratives of progress and success. And it feels like you're saying here that there really is a big role for innovation. If there's this idea that two-thirds - it's a pretty big number - think brands should take responsibility for finding innovative ways to help us progress, it suggests we're looking almost for that gap, that national gap, to be filled in a way by organisations innovating, but only if they can innovate in the right way.
Daniel: Innovation is change and people want change. That's coming through in all of the research that we do at the moment. People aren't necessarily happy with the status quo and they want something different.
Andrew: Yes. And it sounds like the other idea in here is that to play this important role - in walking alongside us and helping sustain our sense of progress - this innovation and the shape of innovation needs to be really focused on ways that make life easier or more meaningful or more rewarding. It really is, as a brand, the lens of innovation is almost: how do we innovate around the role we're playing in people's lives? It's the things that we provide to create that space of reward or value - it isn't necessarily about features or things like that. It's how we're making people feel about their sense of progress.
Laura: Yeah. I always think of my washing machine and there's a whole lot of buttons on there and I probably use one of them. And I think there's that element of, like, what is the most necessary? What is the most useful? Not everything you can have under the sun, but you know, those smaller incremental moments that actually matter.
Andrew: So if we're saying innovation has a pretty big role to play in creating a sense of progress for people, how do we do this well? Laura, how can a cultural perspective influence a brand's approach to innovation to make it resonate?
Laura: You know, I always say culture is context. Don't start without it. Because if you're thinking about people, and you're thinking about products and brand, and you're not thinking about the context in which you're in - again, that role that a brand can play - you've got to understand everything that sits around the consumer, not just that one-to-one interaction they have with your product or your service. Understanding the current landscape - as Dan said, there's a lot of scepticism out there, there's a lot of cynicism that has built up over time. For many years we've had tech companies or tech platforms offer pretty amazing services to get us on board. And we're starting to see a bit of a rollback of that. So that value that was there once before is being eroded. We're also seeing things like shrinkflation and stagflation - all those things over time add up to this default position in the consumer of just being quite cynical about brands and what they can offer.
Daniel: The shitification of everything?
Laura: Yes, that's the meme-speak summary of that point. But yeah, it is. It's just this idea that we're not getting what we used to get 10, five years ago from brands. So if that's the context, that's the sort of mindset that consumers are in - what do they want? They want that cut-through of just being real, of being authentic to your brand and what you stand for. When we asked who is doing it well in different categories, different brands came up. So in terms of companies that offer seamless tech solutions - it is Apple, it is Samsung. But also when we talk about community and sustainability, Ben & Jerry's also came up. And from those examples, you could suggest that we're talking about values from a political sense - but not necessarily. I think we're really talking about what is your brand DNA, and what are those values that you can consistently deliver to? That's a really important part of what consumers were saying to us.
Daniel: I mean, we are more polarised than ever. There is a lot of polarisation out there right now. And those brands - they have values. They stand for something. Do you want to talk to the political differences in the study?
Laura: This was the interesting thing, because we cut the data from gender and age and all these different perspectives. But one thing we wanted to test was, knowing that we are so politically polarised, is there a side that feels like we're making more progress or less? And by and large, the proxy we did that through was asking about your news media sources. Because also, the media that we consume - there's a huge difference in how we feel about even a political movement or figure. There's many different sides to this. So when we did that - whether you were listening to Sky News in Australia or The Guardian - on the left or right - there wasn't necessarily a different perspective on those indicators of personal progress. So, they felt progress in two years’ time - similar amounts of people thought they would be making progress. On the national side, yes, we’re a lot more pessimistic. We did ask people that are totally disengaged from news and got the same results. So what that tells us is, it's not necessarily about getting into culture wars.
Laura: Because you will be chasing your tail forever if you're trying to pick sides for a moment. It's about consistently having those values as a brand - you decide on them from day one - and letting your customers know about them, so that they also can reduce their cognitive load. They know what you offer when they come to you.
Andrew: That's a fascinating finding relative to what's actually happening in the brandscape right now - in terms of flip-flops in direction, in terms of trying to align with the general current rather than staying true to you.
Laura: And it makes sense that both sides - or everyone - feels a similar amount, because we're all pointing fingers at the other side. And the story is the same in terms of, you know, are we progressing or are we not? Well, nationally, we would probably say there's all these problems that we can point to. So everyone feels like we're not making progress as a nation. Whereas the individual - there's a lot more sort of wiggle room in that, in sort of carving your own path.
Andrew: Okay, so there's like a couple of super interesting points in there. I think first, going right back to the start of what you were saying, Laura - people want realness and authenticity. You know, that was a big theme in the first episode as well. If you want to be a brand that helps people progress, and you want to help them - in this case we're talking about progress through innovation - you first really have to achieve a level of trust as a partner people want to align their life journey with. That's what you're doing if you're letting a brand help you signal your progress, right? Progress is personal. So, that trust needs to be there for you to do that alignment. And a big part of achieving that is acting, as you said, with consistency and clarity, being true to your set of values, whatever those are, and acting on them in a really reliable way all the time.
Laura: Reliable is a great word.
Andrew: Last time we talked about how people judge the authenticity of a brand. It's not the one big hero fundraiser or the percent of your product that you say has been recycled. It's how you act in every little piece of what you do. Again, the cynicism that exists really is we're looking for multiple points to be able to stitch those together into a narrative of who the brand is.
So that kind of level of consistent, reliable behaviour is what creates that trust so that you can play this role. And again, this isn't about culture wars. It's not about what side of that spectrum you're on. It's about just consistently acting in line with whatever your values are and signalling that in a really clear way in everything you do.
If you do that, then you can play this role with people as part of their kind of journey of progress through life. And that's what allows you to be believable as an innovator.
Andrew: So Dan, let's talk more about this role of innovation in this context. We know that brands need to take a leading role in innovation and that to do this well, they need to be able to read the room. They need to know how they can help their customers best make progress. What does that actually look like in practice?
Daniel: I mean, it differs depending on what your brand is, what you're looking at. I think any innovation needs to be deeply human-centred if it's going to be successful.
Daniel: You need to look at what your customers, your employees, your stakeholders, what do they care about? What's top of mind for them today and what do they want for the future? Like Laura said, it does mean looking at culture. It does mean looking at the context that people are in and it sometimes means looking at the fringes. And then it's a question of how can you innovate in a way that is meaningful, that helps people feel a sense of progress. But then I guess the question then is what does progress actually look like to people?
Daniel: We saw three types of progress emerge through the research. They kind of fit neatly within these buckets. And I think it's a useful framing for people to use when thinking about innovations. There's personal progress – the things that help you move forward a little bit each day. It might be through optimising your daily routines. It might be well-being. So those little moments.
Daniel: Then there's collective progress, which is progress that's shared. It's with your family. It's with your friends. It's with your partner. It's moving forward together towards something.
Daniel: And then there's structural progress, which is the more sticky issues – overcoming those things and making sure that we have a national sense that we're moving forward towards something better. So exploring innovation through those lenses can help you come up with ideas that actually do have meaning and hold meaning for people.
Daniel: A good example is Kowtow. It's a brand for people who want beautiful clothes that don't harm the planet. I mean, it's a bold ambition for a small company in Aotearoa. It is a big, bold move, but they're doing it wholeheartedly. It came through in the research. They're innovating on the supply chain. They're helping people feel a sense of momentum and they're moving towards something better. But it doesn't have to be that whole organisational focus. Like it doesn't have to be a big thing, as Laura was saying, it is about those small little moves as well.
Laura: Yeah. And I think we're also seeing on maybe those smaller to like start-up sort of brands that are sharing their journey on social media. The difficulties in maybe getting a certification or the difficulties in getting distribution. I think things we probably traditionally would have hidden from consumers. But that actually is the making of a brand. Bringing people along for that journey, especially Gen Z on social media, are really rallying behind brands.
Laura: So it's not necessarily about buying from a brand, it's supporting a brand because they have allowed you into their world, which is really important in terms of progress personally, but you want to see the brand progress as well.
Andrew: Yeah. Exactly. They’re literally telling a story of progress -
Laura: As they go.
Daniel: Little steps. Financial progress came through as one in the research. People want financial progress, obviously. It's the most important area to people.
Daniel: And really that is about helping people get ahead. There's a lot of inherent meaning in financial progress and there's such an opportunity there for brands in the financial industry to innovate in a way that helps people feel like they're achieving their saving goals. It's simple, but it will be effective because it's rewarding for people.
Daniel: And talking of banks, I was reading the news a few weeks ago when the floods were in the South Island and ASB popped up and it had all of these offerings for flood support. It was immediately there, like within the first hour of the floods with all of these, what felt like very targeted support packages for people in different situations. Like that's innovating around troubling times.
Daniel: Now the way to go about getting to a solution that works is obviously very context dependent. No two brands are the same. No two people are the same. And the world is changing very rapidly these days. But thinking about how you can innovate for progress on that personal level, on that community level, at the structural level – that's how it will have more meaning – it helps people feel like they're moving forward.
Andrew: Yeah, that's super interesting. And it's an interesting idea. We know there's this strong role for innovation to help give us a sense of progress. It's a nice idea to have a framework for how we ideate, to think about how we innovate across those three types of progress or three levels of progress – the personal, the collective, and the structural.
Andrew: And Laura, you know, to me, that sounds kind of a lot like the levels we look at when we look to understand culture as well – the ‘me, we and all’. So if we kind of just smush that together and put that cultural lens across this idea of ideation at these three levels around progress, where have you seen progressive innovation kind of done well at these three levels?
Laura: I think starting off at that individual level, there's a really cute example, I would call it, of an app called Finch Care. And essentially it's gamifying living. All those tasks that kind of put you underwater – whether you're eating breakfast or taking the kids to school or thinking about making dinner – like all those sort of elements that make up your day, those smaller moments we're talking about progress.
Laura: This app is encouraging you to sort of look after this little sort of bird that is a reflection of yourself or a mirror of yourself and giving you a sense of a tap on the back when you complete these things. And Dan, I think you have the app, right?
Daniel: I don't have the app, but my friends have the app.
Andrew: Is this the one you were talking about, is turning yourself into a human Tamagotchi?
Daniel: Yeah, it's like a Tamagotchi. And you get rewards for taking care of yourself. You go for a walk, you brush your teeth, you get points.
Like it's gamifying getting by day to day -
Laura: Progress, gamifying progress! And that is, I think, a perfect example of those small wins – you know, those incremental wins that add up now to pretty big momentum in people's lives, rather than those bigger life milestones. So that's the individual level.
Laura: When we think about collective, in groups, I still think Kickstarter and GoFundMe are really shining examples – through probably the last 10 years or more that they've been around – have filled a gap where governments or big corporations haven't. It's community supporting communities, creators supporting creators. And they are filling a need of collective organising around an individual or group and investing in their progress, trying to see success in others around them that is directly going to a cause or a person that they want to see progress.
Laura :There's that sort of group level. And then at the systems level, which granted is a very hard – bureaucracy is a very hard ship to move. But one example is the private health industry in Australia. It is very complicated, as it is in most countries. But the Australian government is trying to basically take the comparison and take the cognitive load that everyone goes through in terms of choosing private health insurance providers and putting it on a four-tier colour system.
Laura: So essentially taking that thought process – the comparison of like what is good for me? Am I wasting my money or am I investing in something that is going to come back and benefit me? So any innovation needs to be anchored in people's lives, in culture. Those three examples reflect these deeper shifts. We're completely overwhelmed, we're completely overloaded with information, and we're just trying to get small things done. And we sort of want to support those around us in our community and see them progress. So there's a lot of examples of incremental progress that companies or brands are leaning into, but also kind of at that system level as well.
Andrew: Yeah, I love those. Finch Care, I love it as an example of innovation in terms of innovating the role you play in someone's life.
Laura: Yeah, it's reframing.
Andrew: Reframing it and it's actually showing people how these small acts of progress add up to a narrative of movement to sustain you, to make you feel like you're moving forward positively through life. So I think that really encapsulates a lot of the kind of idea we're talking about – what good innovation looks like when we're thinking about it through the lens of progress and success.
Andrew: So we've covered a lot of interesting ground today.
Let's try and wrap up a few of the big themes we've discussed. There's been so much interesting -
Laura: Good luck, Andrew!
Andrew: Here we go.Progress matters to us. It's central to what it means to be human. We're hardwired to seek it out. And the old milestones of success are still there, but they are getting further apart and farther away, especially for emerging generations who, again, as we said, are probably going to be more defined by the absence of these markers than the presence of them.
Andrew: So if we're to create a sense of momentum, we all find ourselves kind of leaning more into the little and often signs of progress to build a narrative for ourselves that we're going somewhere, that we're moving forward and that we have some control over our lives and control over that sense of progress. Particularly, I suppose, as the nation feels like it's kind of sliding in the other direction – whether we're talking about Australia or New Zealand or whatever side of any spectrum you're on, it doesn't feel like it's moving in the direction you'd like it to. So brands do have a big role to play here.
Andrew: Indeed, even in the context of that interesting cultural swing back towards ownership as a symbol of independence and control. And so if brands have a bigger role to play here, innovation in particular has a big role in this space. So we are looking to brands to see signs that they can help us on our quest for progress. We're looking for them to innovate ways of building meaning and reward into our progress narratives. Two thirds of us were seeking it. But it's a different kind of innovation.
Andrew: It's innovation as to the role we're playing in people's lives. It's not so much about products and features and those kinds of ideas. It's the way we turn up with people to help them get the sense of momentum and progress – which is an incredibly meaningful space to be in. But if you want to play this role, you have to demonstrate consistency and clarity in everything you do because it's all about being authentic to a set of values. If we're going to invite brands and organisations into our private world of progress, our private narrative, then there has to be trust and that's going to come from creating this sort of sense of authenticity in what we do.
Andrew: And if we are thinking about how we want to ideate and create in this space to help people, we can layer this into this three-level framework for thinking about progress as well – how we help people at an individual level, how we help people at an organisational level and how we help at a structural level.
Or, we say sometimes, me, we and all, if we're about it from a cultural currents perspective. I think there's a lot of really useful and interesting stuff in this to help us seek ways to help people on their journey of progress and kind of how we can join the conversation well by first reading the room.
Andrew: And in our next episode, we'll be building on these themes around progress and success further by layering in perspectives from behavioural science and CX. But once again, thank you Laura and thank you Daniel for your insights. It's been super interesting and it's been an absolute pleasure having you here.
Andrew: Thanks for listening to Frame, a podcast by TRA, dedicated to the art of knowing people. TRA is an insights agency. By layering perspectives from the science of human understanding, we see things that others don't – the uncommon truths. To download our full report on progress, visit theresearchagency.com/progress.
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