|
In The News
Daymon Worldwide Announces Comprehensive Research Study Into Global Food Culture Shifts, Powered by the Hartman Group. |
06.28.2006
“HartBeat” is The Hartman Group's FREE online newsletter, providing insight, analysis, information and strategy to give business leaders the knowledge and vision to build sustainable brands.
| NOW AVAILABLE» Pulse Report
|
Click to learn more...For more Hartman Group articles on BRANDING, click here...
05.03.2006 "Transparency: What's Really Inside the Package...the Company"
03.01.2006 "FDA Report Cards: Schooling America's Food Labels"
01.18.2006 "Cracking the Code of Funtional Foods"
06.16.2005 "Why Selling on Health Benefits Alone May Be a Losing Proposition"
06.02.2005 "What's on the Label?"
03.31.2005 "How Consumers Make Sense of Functional Foods"
01.27.2005 "Refining Our (Consumer) Understanding of Functional Foods"
Archives »
Click here for an archive of past HartBeat articles
FOLLOW US
Comment »
Print »
E-mail »
Subscribe »
digg
del.icio.us
facebook
Linked in
newsvine
reddit
twitter
friendfeed
StumbleUponProduct Labeling: Who's Doing It Right
Consumers' food purchasing decisions are becoming more and more complex. Food companies struggle with explaining increasingly complicated stories to consumers about what a food product is and how it's good - from a health standpoint.
Mainstream consumers want simple explanations as to why food products they choose are healthier, functional or otherwise not just plain old food. Evolved health and wellness consumers often want a fuller story, with more technical detail about their foods. Matching the product story to the consumer can be challenging - what works for mainstream consumers is insufficient for evolved wellness consumers, and what attracts the latter often scares off the former.
Sometimes, food companies get this right...
For example, the recent "0 grams trans fats" messaging on Frito-Lay products is right on target. Despite the fact that most mainstream consumers have no idea what trans fats actually are or how they differ from other fats, those consumers recognize that trans fats are somehow "bad" and to be avoided; and it's those mainstream consumers that Frito-Lay snack products are aimed at. An alternative would be to mark those products with "no partially hydrogenated oils," but consumers who know what partially hydrogenated oils are:
- Typically buy premium, small-label brands and products previously known to not contain partially hydrogenated oils, or
- Exhaustively read the packaging to be sure there aren't any, and
- Probably buy few mainstream snack products, anyway, and isn't worth targeting with messaging for most Frito-Lay products.
In this case, there is a good alignment between what the target market understands and thinks is important, and what appears on the product labeling. There's no off-putting mystery behind "0 grams trans fats;" it represents the absence of a known, negative ingredient for the targeted consumer.
As another example, Stonyfield Farms offers yogurt smoothie drinks that contain inulin. Inulin is a fructooligosaccharide, a rather complex carbohydrate (not to mention a highly complex word), that is also known as a prebiotic (not probiotic). Prebiotics are great food for probiotic bacteria, which inhabit the gut and contribute to digestive and immune functions. The problem is the knowledge of fructooligosaccharides, or FOS, is not common among consumers, even among most of the conscientious Mid-level Consumers that the Stonyfield brand has a solid appeal to. Wisely, Stonyfield has chosen not to emphasize FOS on product labeling (though it is explained briefly on their website), and instead, emphasizes the product as a source of calcium and inulin's positive relation to calcium absorption. Calcium and calcium absorption are key concerns to Mid-level Wellness Consumers, and in this respect the product is right on target.
As a final example, Helios Nutrition makes kefir, a cultured milk drink similar to yogurt, that advertises, right on its front panel "with FOS." Helios is a brand that appeals to those in the upper reaches of health and wellness knowledge, or the Core, who know what FOS is, making its emphasis appropriate to the target consumer. Where do you find Helios? At natural products and specialty foods storese frequent haunts of Core Health and Wellness Consumers, of course.
What Goes Wrong? (Backseat) Drivers of Product Attributes and Messaging
Where does weird-sounding, target consumer-inappropriate product messaging come from? It appears to arise frequently from an overemphasis on what seems important within a company rather than to consumers. This can result in a big gap between the knowledge required to properly interpret product function and messaging, and what knowledge a consumer actually has.
To build on the above examples, imagine trying to pitch a product to Periphery and Mid-level Wellness Consumers that advertised fructooligosaccharides, big and bold, on the front of the product. After all, that does point toward a key function of the product, right? Recently I showed some mainstream consumers, at the shelf in grocery stores, products that made such leaps between ingredient functions and consumer knowledge. Reactions typically included:
- "That sounds scary... "
- "I don't know what that is."
- "Eeeew."
- "I wouldn't buy that."
Food companies need to ask themselves:
- Is a consumer really going to understand a product in the same ways as the corporate product team that's been working on it for months (or longer)? Is what you think is the "right" way to understand a product something that your target consumer will grasp readily?
- Shouldn't the focus be more on coming up with product narratives that consumers will understand, that are driven by consumers' preexisting ideas and likely interpretations, rather than being driven by a product team already well down certain paths in what they think a product is and does?
Moving Forward
Of course, the projection of often esoteric product development team knowledge into product messaging is only one example of how internal company workings having a negative effect on how consumers receive a product. There's many other ways, including "manufacturability syndrome" that causes companies to focus more on what they have existing production capacity for than what consumers are interested in, and the "org chart mirror" where product dimensions are determined more by the historical foci of corporate departments than by actual contours of consumer markets as far as product interest and purchasing behavior.
But all these things have the same solution: More up-front involvement of consumer research in the product development process, to get it right the first time. In particular, getting product messaging right often requires a good amount of up-front qualitative research aimed at discovering how consumers will receive new and innovative products, and how best to appeal to their levels of understanding. 
