As cited in an article in AdAge today, Kellogg’s is removing anti-oxidant claims from its Rice Krispies cereals– another move following the elimination of the “Smart Choices” food labeling system. The FDA is also now going to also create its own front-of-pack labeling system, which will surely be as easy to read as the USDA’s food pyramid.
What about some new food sourcing guidelines??
After being in market for under a year, the FDA has ordered food companies to discontinue the usage of the “Smart Choices” food labels, citing concerns over the standards used to choose products that are included in the program.
My feelings on the issue are mixed– at its heart, I dont’ think the program was meant to do harm to consumers, and perhaps, even if included on a box of Trix, it made people more conscious of food nutritional values. Or maybe it just made them buy more and think they were being “healthy.” In either case, the program will be no-more for a while.
I am sure that many in the industry are happy (especially Marion Nestle), but hopefully a meaningful and nutritionally-beneficial program will come out of this. I think the idea is there and is good– it’s time for the food companies and the FDA to make it a reality.
PS: I know that I owe you all a few entries on Paris. It’s been nuts here, so I apologize.
So I need to have some sort of opinion.
I feel like I would be remiss not to post about Gourmet magazine being yanked from the shelves after the November issue (I don’t need to link to it because if you’re reading my blog, you probably know about this already). Working in the marketing business, I have had long standing relationships with a few people who worked at Gourmet, and I have nothing but positive things to say about them all.
That said, my own relationship with the magazine has been a tumultuous one. That’s a little melodramatic, but blogs revel in the extremes. I am a dedicated reader of both Gourmet and bon appétit. I will put that out there first. Around five years ago, I devoured bon ap like there was no tomorrow. To be honest, I didn’t like Gourmet. I thought it was too hoity-toity, with all of its edit about traveling to Italy and eating truffles in Piedmont, and going to Warsaw to eat pierogi. It was so snobbish. BA was there, like a trusted advisor, for home chefs, like me. I wasn’t going anywhere but the D’Agostino around the corner, and if I was feeling frisky, to the Grand Central Market. I could have carried my passport if I went to Chinatown, just to make it feel authentic, but for all intents and purposes, I was a land-locked, cash-strapped, twenty-something with a tiny kitchen and a moderately strong food imagination. Replete with recipes, BA was my go-to guide in the culinary world.
Then a funny thing happened. The economy crashed. Gourmet lost ad pages. All of a sudden, Flushing, Queens, was the new “hot spot.” The ad pages dropped dramatically. McKinsey knows that. But anyone who is a dedicated reader could have told you that long before looking at a P&L sheet. For us readers, this was great. We were getting: a) more relevant content; b) fewer pesky ads (ssh, don’t tell anyone I said that); and c) a better sense as to what Gourmet had been trying to do from the onset, before it got sucked into the Condé Nast “holier-than-all-other-magazines” way of operating. I became a dedicated Gourmet reader. I relished its arrival in my free magazine pile every month. bon appétit lost me along the way, at some time around its “food porn” redesign. I had gone Gourmet, and there was no turning back. Chicken liver is for oafs… I only eat foie gras from the Périgord.
And now, Gourmet is gone.
Personally, I am conflicted about this. While I will probably head back to BA, groveling with the smell of stale caviar on my breath, I will miss the feeling that I got from reading Gourmet. That said, in all honesty, I will not read it online, I will not buy cookbooks under the brand name, and I will not watch “Diary of a Foodie.” Basically, the brand will be dead to me. And life will go on. I really liked CHOW magazine, too, and we all know how that ended.
On a more professional note, I am less conflicted. I am happy to see it go. I think Condé needs to wake up and smell the roses, and I am glad that McKinsey is making this happen. The editorial was great, but great editorial doesn’t always pay the bills (unfortunately for the editors). From an advertiser’s viewpoint, the product was mediocre at best, and the disproportionately high ad pricing resulting in a disproportionately high decline in ad pages proves it. Sorry, maybe you should have negotiated rates when you had the chance.
Thoughts?
An article in the LA Times today talks about “Smart Choices”-labeled food products, and Marion Nestle, a very vocal critic about the whole thing, claims that “it’s all about marketing.”
I’m not sure I agree with her. But what do you all think?
So it’s Advertising Week here in NYC, and amidst all of the marketing jargon being thrown around, there was an event entitled “Team Earth: Empowering a Sustainability Movement.” AdAge called it “an event to seek out,” and a last-minute scheduling snafu did not get the even as much publicity as it probably deserved, but it did allow me a seat.
And, it nicely commenced at 5pm, getting me out of the office and on my way to Locanda Verde to meet BG for dinner.
Anyway, the panel was led by some guy at CNBC that I’ve never heard of. The panel consisted of the Chairman of Conservation International, Peter Seligmann, the CEO of Starbucks, Howard Schultz, and the Chairman of Wal-mart, Rob Walton. These heavy hitters in the conservation movement were talking about sustainability and how it has to play a crucial role in business moving forward.
Seligmann threw out a few interesting points. His first point was that the quality of the environment is going down. I guess we all knew that anyway, but he reiterated it. But, he said that engagement, awareness, and understanding is up, and that’s a good thing. The public only really dedicates something like 17% of its interest to the sustainability movement, which is shockingly low, considering that every person on this planet is directly affected by what we’re talking about here. He also stressed the importance of including corporations, hence his sitting on a panel with C-suite execs from two huge global brands.
Schultz, who can’t seem to catch a break these days, despite all of the advertising efforts (did anyone see the Businessweek brand rankings this week– they’re down 16% in brand value), echoed Seligmann’s sentiments, saying that sustainability will simply be part of the rules of engagement moving ahead. There is a balance needed, he said, between making money and having a social conscience. Since everyone refers to coffee as “tall” and “grande” these days, maybe he should have had a social conscience back then when he made us sound like losers when we want a small coffee.
He went on to talk about how people are willing to pay to support it and it has to be a real business change, and not just a marketing ploy. It has to be a truly integrated strategy, part of the company’s DNA, and so on. Now, coming from him, who convinced the country that four bucks is a perfectly acceptable price for a cup of coffee, I’m not sure that he can speak to “willing to pay for it” from the right perspective. If people are willing to pay $4 for a cup of coffee, they will probably still pay $4 for a very slightly smaller cup of free trade coffee. Or $4 for a smaller cup of coffee and a series of about 40 advertising panels in the tunnel between Times Square and the Port Authority. Either way, people do have a social conscience, and by paying a little extra, they think they are helping.
Lastly, Rob Walton talked about Wal-mart’s commitment to sustainability. The thing about Wal-mart is that when they talk, people listen. I personally am not a huge fan of Wal-mart. I’ve been to one once, and I didn’t enjoy the experience. I think their business practices are questionable, and I think they ruin neighborhoods. All of that aside, I do applaud them for what they are doing to drive the food industry around the world to embark upon a path to more environmentally conscious production (remember that whole “when they speak…” bit?).
Now, being the businessman he is, Walton said that what got Wal-mart involved was the opportunity to make a difference… in a profitable way. Wal-mart got you again! But, seriously, that’s the only way to make big business change their tune. At the end of the day, a business is there to make money. For any of this sustainability stuff to stick, it’s going to have to make someone some Benjamins. Even Seligmann admitted that you’ve gotta keep your feet on the ground and not keep your head in the clouds with some pipe dream. For the big guys to get involved, you’ve gotta tell them what it’s going to mean for them business wise. It it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.
Anyway, interesting stuff. Check out Team Earth. It’s like a feel-good forum for big companies.
And, no I don’t mean the professional bull riding association.
Word of mouth has again been cited as the reason for the success of a brand. This time, Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer is the winner. I think that the reason for the 25% uptick in sales is primarily due to consumption in Brooklyn alone, but I can’t prove that with any data. I just feel it to be true.
I’ve been drinking PBR since college, when the Seoul Brother and I would buy cases of beer bottles of Busch and PBR for like 10 bucks. Not to say that I’m a trend-setter, but I like to think that we were pretty far ahead of the curve on that one. I mean, that was like 10 years ago. I’m just saying.
Anyway, PBR spends nothing in traditional advertising. Zero. AND they raised prices this year. So what gives?
Word of mouth gives. That sounded dirty. But it does work. And our natural response to social pressure helps, too (I believe it’s called “social proof”) since we all seek out societal “nods” when we do certain actions, like getting totally blitzed from cheap beer. What PBR managed to do through its marketer-established alternative-cool image is convince a small segment of people that it was cooland hip back in 2004, when they started a small word of mouth campaign among bike messengers (I kid you not, that was the target) and other young drinkers . They planted the seed and let the barley grow. Then, people who were supposedly going “against the grain” are actually very much going with the grain. And falling pray to PBR’s deft marketing strategy. This is the kind of move that Zima could have tried to pull. I mean, that stuff was tasty!
