Reclaiming higher purpose renews brand energy…

Most brands with a strong higher purpose (a refined “why” that informs behaviors and decision making) got that way because the founder(s) injected beliefs from their own sense of mission.

Staying true to the founder’s core purpose/vision and retaining the brand’s deeper meaning over time can be challenging. If higher purpose is intentionally woven into the fabric of how the organization operates, the belief system can be steadfast generationally. If the mission is largely a reflection of the leader’s ethos and the company experiences regime change, the “why” can disappear in the hands of executives who manage most often for profit and loss priorities rather than refueling the company/brand belief system.

• Apple lost its way when Steve Jobs was forced out in 1985. The company suffered as a result. When he returned in 1997 the higher purpose roared back. Business boomed.

• Starbucks began with religion around changing the coffee experience, from better beans to establishing the Italian espresso beverage traditions in its unique “3^rd Place” setting. When Howard Schultz left, the “why” went with him and subsequent leadership focused on operational efficiencies and expansion. Business declined until Schultz returned.

“Why” is influential to how a brand is built and sustains – providing a true north that transcends changing conditions and cultural shifts over time by securing a devoted community of true believers. It is fundamental to how brands engage successfully with core customers. It flies in the opposite direction from commoditization pressures and an unproductive focus on the competition.

• Nonetheless “why” can be left behind if new leadership isn’t entrenched with the same point of view as the founders.

Our brush with half-baked “why” – A mini case study on reclaiming purpose

In 1949, Chicagoan Charles Lubin was trying to figure out how to send his epiphanous cheesecakes to a man in Texas enamored with his sweet, dense creations. But cheesecakes (and baked goods like them) generally didn’t travel well; thus, why the bakery industry of the era primarily consisted of smaller businesses servicing a local trading area.

Lubin began experimenting and later innovated a new brand at retail through his pioneering of flash freezing tech – a process to preserve the taste, texture and eating experience of his baked delights. As a result, a new category was established through his single-minded mission to make high quality baked goods available to a much wider audience. Reinventing the baked goods business to create widespread access was his “why.”

Lubin’s innovation was personified by creating the iconic Sara Lee brand – named after his nine-year old daughter, who for most of her life would remain hidden in the background. He was wildly successful and eventually sold his company to Consolidated Foods. The corporation renamed itself after the bakery division (Sara Lee Corporation) even though it was largely a meat products business. After the sale, Lubin eventually retired and a series of CPG experienced leadership teams came in to run the company, expanding distribution into foodservice and adding new categories to spur growth. But along the way Sara Lee lost its why.

The company was focused on volume and balance sheet considerations, not the embedded love affair with bakery creations that touch people’s lives. With a diluted soul, the business resorted to price promotions and other commoditizing behaviors to keep the volume numbers going.

As we’ve seen before when the “why” dissipates or disappears all together, the energy underneath the business often goes with it. Sara Lee lost relevance as the focus moved from consumers to chasing the competition. Performance inevitably flagged and the parent company started to consider if it was possible to divest the Sara Lee baked goods division even though their corporate identity was tied to it. Tough to do.

In a last ditch effort to turn the bakery ship around, we were retained on a mission to restage Sara Lee Bakery and recapture the qualities and meaning Charles Lubin had originally brought with him. We needed to break with the most recent past in a big way and author a new story for the future.

• How do you quickly, decisively disrupt perceptions?  You do something over-the-top that forces consumer reassessment. You create a new story and put substance underneath it. It was time to swing for the fences.

Solution: Sara Lee’s First International Symposia on Dessert

Go big or go home. We sat down with Sara Lee, the actual person, and after many hours of conversation about our plans to rescue the business her father had started, Sara agreed to become a spokesperson for the brand named after her. To properly showcase her debut, we decided to create an event to showcase a new era at Sara Lee, complete with an updated product line. It would be done specifically for the top North American food media so the story could be told as widely as possible in a credible setting.

We decided to create a symposium on dessert – in the dessert capitol of the world, Vienna, Austria – the birthplace of sweet bakery creations and traditions beginning in the 18^th century. We also knew that a media event staged in Vienna was likely to be enthusiastically attended, and over three days we would have the full and undivided attention of our media audience 24 hours a day. It would be an extraordinary opportunity to exercise great influence, a ‘must-do’ if we were going to change the paradigm of what people think Sara Lee is.

Working with Austrian Airlines, the Austrian Economic Council and the Vienna Tourism Board, we were able to secure airline seats for 56 journalists for a song, hotel rooms at the famous Hotel Imperial at a rate more like Motel Six and free access to the famed palaces that made Vienna the cultural heartbeat of the world during the time of Mozart.

We recruited the top seven pastry chefs of Vienna to help reimagine new desserts using Sara Lee products as a base, to enchant and inspire the food media luminaries who would attend. We developed a comprehensive itinerary of educational events and experiences designed to provide so many varying story angles that any media decision maker would feel they could carve their own unique narrative around the experience.

• We brought a in a food historian who charted the emergence of sweet baked goods from the Roman Empire to modern day.

• We created a section on the psychology of eating dessert revealing the cultural issues at work between American sensibilities and European attitudes on indulgence.

• We prepared a hands-on cooking experience for all 56 media, dividing them into teams to work alongside Viennese pastry experts each challenged to work with a specific Sara Lee product.

• We brought the media to the oldest operating bakery in the world, opened in 1560, to hear a presentation on the history of chocolate.

The most important facet of all though was on the opening night where the editors gathered for a special reveal – they would be meeting the real Sara Lee and Charlie Lubin’s wife for the first time. This event, fit for royalty, was staged in a palace next door to The Hofburg, the Imperial seat of the Hapsburg dynasty. The editors were to experience a curated menu based on a 18^th century royal banquet, dining on china from the royal house. Ahead of a presentation that would whisk them forward to the modern era of baked goods and the new Sara Lee brand.

After dinner a video presentation chronicled  the history of dessert – a retrospective on the birth of sweet baking traditions and its evolution over time, a way for the brand to lock in its ‘knowledge broker’ cred on bakery expertise. At the conclusion of the video the room went dark and then Sara Lee was introduced to an awestruck crowd of food journalists (there really is a Sara Lee). You could feel the electricity when Sara walked into the room. Sara spoke of her father’s legacy, mission, values and unveiled the new product line for the editors, inviting them to join a dessert fantasy experience.

• Sara Lee’s top chefs created a dessert fantasy in the adjoining gold-gilt ballroom where Viennese pastry masterpieces were arranged near and around new desserts made with Sara Lee products. The editors were challenged to determine which was which. To a one, they couldn’t tell the difference. Perceptions were changed.

For three days it was around the clock substance interlaced with dazzle, including a specially staged concert with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra at another palace in an unusual oval shaped hall where Mozart conducted his first concert when he was six years old.

From this hosted media experience, Sara Lee Bakery dined for more than a year on story after story after story about the events and tastes in Vienna. The media showcase for new products was unprecedented for Sara Lee. A reacquiring of the brand’s “why” sat at the center of the entire venture and with it a departure from the price oriented self-promotion that had been going on for years before.

• The business results were gratifying and the project was credited at Sara Lee Corporation’s annual shareholders meeting as the reason for significant improvement in the bakery division’s results.

The most important aspect of this campaign was its ability to reframe the Sara Lee brand and product experience in a relevant and resonant way. Sara went on to be the centerpiece of  brand communication for three more years before she ’retired’ to her former and much quieter life with her family.

The lesson: when the “why” is diluted, the business resorts to manipulations to create a reason to buy, and these tactics don’t – and will never – connect in the same way as purpose, beliefs and values. When Sara Lee found its footing again, it was remarkable how that change was reflected in the brand’s performance. Beliefs, deeper meaning and mission are core to creating the emotional connections that impact consumer buying decisions and actions.

• Great care should be exercised to help ensure your company’s “why” will remain steadfast and vital over time – even if new leadership arrives to carry the torch forward.

If locking in your company’s “why” resonates with you or if your organization needs to optimize its purpose and belief system, use this link to start a conversation. We promise it will be interesting and enlightening.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Doing business in the era of higher purpose and beliefs

As a brand builder focused on burnishing your organization’s most vital asset, your business goal isn’t to convince and persuade customers to buy. Consumers, weary of persuasion tactics and overt brand promotion, quickly dismiss those efforts with a simple click. To pass through the gatekeeping gauntlet, brands need to understand what consumers really want from you – and it’s not more of the same. Rather, your brand marketing goal is to inspire. You might agree motivating people isn’t easy. Thus, why you can’t build a community of committed users and devout brand evangelists by promoting improved formulations and recipes.

Yet so often we find brands preoccupied with their slightly better product mousetrap, thinking enhanced features and benefits comprise the alluring magnet to fuel growth. Not so. Instead, you are navigating in a mental and emotional ocean between the rational and the heart.

Giving people a sense of purpose, deeper meaning and belonging lie at the foundation of every sustainable brand-to-consumer relationship.

The incredible power of “why”

In the early editions of The Fast and The Furious movie franchise we witnessed the recurring testosterone-amped challenges of street racing. Inevitably, as our hero races neck and neck towards the finish line, a canister is activated next to the console that injects Nitrous Oxide into the engine. Boom, an incredible burst of horsepower slingshots our intrepid protagonist across the finish line, literally blowing the competition away.

The NOS (Nitrous Oxide System) is a secret acceleration amplifier that supercharges engine output, thus burying the other racers in a cloud of oxygenated dust. Today similar competitive advantage exists for brands that tune their value proposition with an advanced power generator of relevance and resonance. The NOS of brand marketing is a different kind of “air and fuel” chemistry, founded on an emotional alchemy of mission, meaning and values.

Just like engines of a certain size generate similar levels of horsepower, food and beverage brands focused on claims of superior taste cancel each other out because great taste is table stakes. On a technical formulation level, products in most categories are nearly identical. Competitive advantage based on assertions of technical wizardry isn’t sustainable because everyone brandishes the same wand. Literally everything we eat or drink can be reverse engineered to deliver comparable taste and texture performance.

“Why” is the catalyst for authentic relationships with your users

Here’s the news: the consumers’ worldview has changed – and relating to a brand is now fundamentally the same thing as relating to a person. When you refine and invest in brand purpose and mission, it creates an opportunity to achieve transcendence – the state of being admired – where consumers “join” your brand as members, not merely customers.

Meaning, in order to secure significant financial premiums, sustainable brand relationships must be built first on their admiration and trust of your brand. As evidence of the shift, brand advocacy is now a more important and relevant goal than loyalty.

Of note, this representation of goodwill can be isolated as a component of business value. It can result in higher margins or traffic. Moreover, deeper relationships with consumers will ultimately help reduce the cost of promotion, improving ROI and bottom-line performance. This happens because you are no longer relying on a constant (expensive) drumbeat of self-promotion to refire fleeting, fickle attention spans.

Businesses built on “why” understand that brand relationships work best on the basis of true, authentic reciprocity and humanity. Consequently, they are not superficial, opportunistic or purely transactional. In order to mine the advantages of sustainable brand relationships, marketers have a responsibility to push added meaning, trust and belief to the forefront of the relationship. This insight forms the basis for sound strategic planning.

• Consumers expect premium food and beverage solutions to meet their great taste requirement. Competitive marketplace leverage isn’t found on the factory floor. It is discovered in the hearts and minds of consumers who now care more about why you do what you do than either what you offer or even how it is made.

Mining the influence of cultural shift

Operating in tandem with a refined value and belief system is the wider influence of cultural shifts on preference and behavior.

Purchases today are largely symbolic gestures. They are flags consumers wave to inform the world around them about their lifestyle priorities – an expression of who they are that is in many ways a mirror of the cultural context swirling around them. For consideration: to what extent have you embedded symbolism and flags of meaning in how your brand story is packaged and presented to help consumers signal those values-based belief statements through purchasing your products?

Larger issues now influence food culture precipitating changes in what consumers are looking for in brands. The store checkout lane today has evolved into a form of voting booth where consumers cast their ballot in favor of a better life and world.

What do they want? Are we helping them with what they want?

More sustainable choices:

One of the most powerful cultural influences of the era we live in is the emergence of conscious consumption – a realization that our eating and purchasing decisions have a consequence. People are learning about the relationship between food production and carbon emissions impact.

• Climate change is upon us and with it comes a sensitivity to what goes on behind the curtain of our carbon-heavy food system.

Recently in Chicago, for five straight days a grey haze and smoky odor blanketed the city, sending air quality to “worst in the world” status – all due to Canadian wildfire smoke that traveled south and wouldn’t dissipate. Wildfires are occurring at record breaking levels now. These global climate events are a recurring theme.

People were advised to stay indoors. To avoid breathing the outside air given its hazardous particulate content. Meanwhile unrelenting heat waves in the south impact farm and crop viability while helping sponsor conditions that encourage deadly tornados. All of this serves as real-world evidence to everyone that climate change impacts are among us.

The outcomes of these environmental incidents and increasingly erratic (dangerous) temp and weather conditions is a cultural shift towards preference for eco-responsible and sustainable choice, although in many cases brands haven’t made it any easier to identify what is a credible carbon-friendly option.

Health, wellness and a desire to reassert personal control:

Latent pessimism reinforced by daily media reporting has most people believing the future is less certain and that conditions beyond their control may impact future quality of life. Humans resolutely look for ways to add control when everything around them appears chaotic. This has served to amp the importance of investments in personal health and wellness. This is a move to create physical (and emotional) resilience in the midst of events that suggest the environment is suffering at the hands of policies and behaviors which inflict various forms of climate damage.

No longer just a weight management motivation, healthy living is a lifestyle and “survival” choice that helps people reacquire a sense of control over their wellbeing. Gym visits, the explosion of Pilates classes, cycling exercise studios and online therapists. Similar to how consumers increasingly see the connection between food choice and sustainability, efforts to improve personal and mental health are cultural mandates increasingly embraced by a wider swath of the population.

Experiences over consumption for its own sake:

Culinary and environmental tourism, chef-inspired food and wine events, even dangerous expeditions to the deep ocean floor, serve as reminders that experiences offer a form of expectation magic that has surpassed the former thrill of the consumption economy.

We have managed to pack and stack storage facilities with the worn-out treasures of “buying stuff” – evidence that years of acquiring has left families with mountains of extra clothes, furniture, equipment and credit card debt. “Things” as evidence of elevated status and success no longer hold the same allure.  We have exhausted materialism and replaced the void with interests in adventures that reward our emotional desire for transcendent and novel experience.

Modern brands as coach, guide, advisor and enabler

All of these evolutionary changes in behaviors and desire provide one of the most positive, significant and vital opportunities for brands to acquire a valuable role in their consumers’ lives. Your brand’s number one job is to help your users on their life journey. To provide value that extends beyond the utility of the product you sell.

• How incredible is it that consumers have arrived at a place where advice and guidance are key to achieving their goals. Can we help provide it? Can we step into the breach to be an enabler of their wishes and interests? Can we impart wisdom and tools they can use to improve their lives?

Yes we can! If we finally decide that improved relationships are key to business growth more so than product feature/benefit selling. This is the challenge of the age and one, if you choose to accept it, that can result in a deeper relationship with your users founded on delivering deeper meaning and value.

• Here is a link to our one-page overview of these shifts and changes. Please take a moment to click the link to read. It may serve as inspiration for a deeper conversation with us about ways to map an improved future for your brand and business.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

The influential role of respected voices in building credibility

Risk-averse consumers now look to brands to provide credible validation and verification of the promises they make and assertions about product performance and benefits.

No surprise brand trust is at an all-time low among consumers, and also at an all-time high as a front-end requirement for any authentic relationship between consumers and the brands that matter to them. Trust is elusive, hard to win and has a short shelf life. It stands to reason why trust should be a critical fixture in the brand go-to-market strategy. Goes without saying, trust cannot be invoked or claimed, it must be earned through tangible actions.

Strategic deployment of respected and credible voices

Repeatedly Emergent has found significant benefits for client brands and their trust equity when we involve outside, respected, trusted third-party experts to help bring added credibility to messaging, media and content. Here are some remarkable examples of this in action.

Exposing the presence of fake Italian cheese

I was seated in a small conference room next to Neil Schuman’s office at Schuman Cheese corporate headquarters in Fairfield, NJ – there at Neil’s request to discuss a shocking revelation about the U.S. Italian cheese category. It’s important to note Schuman’s father invented the U.S. Italian cheese industry in the late 1940’s and since then this family-owned company has grown to be, by far, the dominant market share leader in the business.

Neil guided me through a thorough and vexing download on the presence of fake, mislabeled, fraudulent and adulterated Italian cheese in the category his company created. As category captain, Schuman believed his organization had a responsibility to shore up the integrity of the business, but was frustrated at every turn by intractable industry practices that worked to solidify the hold of adulterated cheese makers. For 10 years he had attempted to rid the category of these shameful practices but to no avail, so he turned to us for help.

I explained there would be no way to carve out the cancer of mislabeling practices without serious leverage that created risks for the companies, about 10 of them, which were doing it. I talked at length about the power of a media spotlight shined on this dark practice, as a path to creating substantial risks for those involved. If enough retail buyers were concerned by “outing” the fake products on shelves, then and only then, would buyers shut down the purveyors of cheap, adulterated versions of favored Italian stalwarts like the King of Cheeses, Parmesan.

This couldn’t be a trickle of attention. It meant a big investigative story on a global platform reaching a wide audience. To get there, a fact-based, well-researched case had to be presented in a highly credible way.

We launched an Italian cheese industry integrity tour in Wisconsin, the center of the nation’s cheese industry, to bring in the validation of the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association, the state Dept. of Agriculture, food science experts and others to form a coalition of third-party voices who could lend their perspective on why the presence of adulterated products was bad for consumers and bad for the industry.

We broke the first fake cheese story in the Milwaukee Journal business section, and then moved it to industry verticals for their reinforcement of the Italian cheese category blight. That portfolio of intense and consistent coverage was repurposed to support a credible conversation with Bloomberg News about launching an investigation of fake cheese conditions and the impact on unknowing consumers.

Bloomberg agreed on the merits and conducted an independent study and test that corroborated the presence of fake products on grocery shelves. When their story broke, we moved it to Buzzfeed and from there syndication touched off a global media tsunami about the presence of mislabeled, adulterated cheese. The outcome was abrupt – with retailers turning away from those making cheap knockoffs. Critical to success of the media strategy was the trusted, respected voices of third-party expert sources who validated and substantiated the story premise.

Helping re-position a restaurant chain from smoothie shop to healthy lifestyle brand

Jamba Juice invented the fruit smoothie restaurant business at scale. Due to the emphasis on real fruit ingredients the chain enjoyed a form of healthy halo. However, truth be told some of the recipes were steeped in sugars and the nutritionals were hardly a hallmark of truly healthy beverages.

After providing an analysis of shifting consumer trends towards healthy living, we convened the leadership team to reimagine a different course for Jamba. Our mission to help the brand re-position itself as a healthy lifestyle choice, with a new slate of better-for-you products around a new story of nutritional contributions from fruit, veg and added protein ingredients. This was as much a cultural shift for the company internally as it was a refashioning of their brand position, menu board and brand voice.

We went to work identifying and recruiting a team of the most respected outside, third-party experts in the nutrition and dietitian community, to join the Jamba Healthy Living Council as both advisors to the organization on product reformulation, and also creating content and communication that positioned the brand as a coach and guide on healthy living best practices.

The team also conducted workshops internally to help key headquarters staff fully understand and appreciate the value proposition for change and improvement through a move to embrace healthy living. The Council was also engaged to help the company navigate to a new channel, providing secondary school foodservice operators with a menu of better-for-you beverages. The drinks envisioned would be a tasty, kid-friendly vehicle for delivering mandated daily serving of fruits and vegetables in a form young people loved. It was a strategy to burnish brand reputation while helping develop the next generation of Jamba customers.

The Healthy Living Council members participated in online video creation, editorial media, social channel content and other platforms including conventions to spread the news of change and healthy product bona fides now taking root at Jamba – a remarkable transition for a company intent on creating a new future for itself based on higher purpose and deeper meaning.

Bringing transparency to the pet food industry

Pet food can be a mysterious journey for consumers with the constant drumbeat of imagery invoking steaks, beautiful salmon filets and whole chickens on product packaging. The marketing implies that a small brown nugget is in fact a stand-in for the same proteins people consume at the family dinner table. However, how pet food is actually made and the ingredients sourced have, for the most part, remained obscure behind the factory curtain.

Champion Petfoods, makers of the superpremium Orijin and ACANA brands, was unique by virtue of its long-standing commitment to source proteins from local farms and fisheries within driving distance of its kitchens. Champion in fact used fresh and frozen meat or fish in its formulations and claimed such on its packaging.

We felt this story was under-leveraged in an environment of growing consumer interest in transparency. We believed this could be leveraged in a proprietary way for Champion. Working with their marketing team, we created the Champion Transparency Council. The Council was designed as a consortium of outside respected voices in the Veterinary community along with real pet-owning brand fans who were also knowledgeable about pet nutrition.

The Council members were given full access to Champion’s U.S. manufacturing facility to see and witness every aspect of pet food creation from ingredient intake to package filling. Additionally, Council members toured the nearby farms and met with the farmers and ranchers who raised or fished the proteins used in Champion’s recipes. Indeed, they even went fishing to secure the catch that would later go into the pet food.

• We asked them to create content and report on what they had witnessed, without filter or interference from Champion. The goal: an honest, eyes-open transparent assessment from their observations. The candid reports on the company’s practices and operations provided personal validation of Champion’s claims in real-life, tangible terms.

We facilitated interviews across the spectrum of relevant pet media to give Council members a forum for sharing what they had seen and heard. They were featured speakers at Champion’s trade show activations. Social channel content based on their observations was produced and amplified. The Transparency Council became a dominant voice in pet business trade media extolling the commitment to full transparency in an industry with a decided lack of that form of candor and openness.

Proof, verification and validation of promises distinguished Champion among consumers and retailers as a truthful, mission-based company in a category where quality claims go mostly unsubstantiated.

The role of third-party experts in brand communication

You want consumers to trust you, to believe you, to accept the assertions you make. Yet the world at large works against this with near daily reports of obfuscation, half-truths, misstatements, recalls, and outright lying that demonstrate some businesses’ lack a moral high ground and customer-first ethos.

In this uncertain environment with entrenched skepticism, strategy demands a conscious drive to create trust. Trust is earned not claimed. The role of outside expert voices works on two levels:

• To observe and validate what you want people to know about how you do what you do.

• To provide guidance, coaching and education to consumers on their journey to betterment and self-improvement from those with the respected bona fides to offer credible, useful help.

This is equally powerful in the earned media arena as a quote-able source engine for top level press which, on larger stories, must check the veracity of story details and scope with knowledgeable experts.

Are you intrigued by how this approach might elevate and enhance your brand’s reputation and credibility? If so, use this link to ask questions. We’re happy to provide perspective on how this strategy can be successfully deployed to earn greater trust for your business.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Matter to someone or risk mattering to no one…

According to Stanford University, the computational power of AI is doubling every three months, helping to catalyze another transformational scientific revolution. The impact is everywhere, all at once. Equally rapid-fire shifts in cultural behaviors and conditions mandate a move to focused marketing over anything remotely resembling a broad brush. These two fluid developments are evidence of a pace and speed-of-change that are unprecedented and thus requires more vigilance from business decision makers.

Narrowing, specializing, customizing, individual-izing

Dear CEO and CMO – it’s time to identify a priority core customer audience and go all in. The era of mass markets and mass media serving a homogenous population is officially gone forever. To what extent is this reflected now in the business and marketing plan?

Let’s take a brief look at a few recent sea changes impacting the future of marketing and business strategy:

• In 2034 Americans over the age of 65 will outnumber those under 18. Notably, an increase in life expectancy of just one year adds $38 trillion in annual global GDP. Meantime the birthrate in the U.S. has now fallen below replacement levels.

• Over a recent 10-year period, household wealth of 65 to 75 year-olds increased 54% while the wealth of 25 to 35 year-olds declined by 11%. Gaps are growing.

• The top 10% of American families hold a whopping 69% of total wealth. The bottom half holds only 2.8%.

• Remarkably, the baby boom generation is 75% white. Contrast that number with Gen Z which is 52% white. By 2044, the majority of the U.S. population will be non-white.

• 35% of the U.S. population age 25 to 50 has never married – compared to 9% in 1970. Young people increasingly are deciding not to marry, not to have children, not to own autos and are delaying home ownership. More impact to come.

• The search for deeper meaning and purpose is rising around a frame of values and beliefs. It is replacing the traditional role of religion. Fewer than half of Americans now identify with a church. (Contrast this with the increased concern and interest in socially responsible actions and behaviors on the part of brands and businesses).

• The number of teens who say they see their friends on a regular basis has dropped by 50% since the 1970’s. While 31% of Gen Zers characterize their mental health as bad. Troubling development.

Source: Deloitte

Pervasive uncertainty caused by the Pandemic, war in Ukraine, mass shootings, dramatic climate change impacts, racial tensions and economic gaps widening between haves and have nots, has unleashed a burning desire for the twin anchors of true purpose and deeper meaning. Fear, risk and compromised views of the future are producing a void in search of greater fulfillment.

• To say the least, what matters, motivates and occupies consumer time and attention is rapidly changing. Who will help them?

Never before in the history of modern business and marketing strategy have brands had a greater opportunity to earn a position as consumer coach, guide, mentor, knowledge broker and enabler on their life journey. Filling a vacuum left by declining relevance of institutions and larger social circles.  But only if business values and soul are tethered to a higher purpose, mission and belief system that puts the welfare of consumers ahead of self-interest; now table stakes for trust creation.

Dawn of a marketplace populated with subsegments and microsegments

The age of tribal shared values and interests is upon us, driven by technology that helps curate the flow of information, ideas, even community which more closely align with our own world views and lifestyle preferences. In this environment, brands will be more successful by narrowing and focusing their appeal to specific attitudinal segments than attempting to be all things to all people, in service of mass markets that, frankly, no longer exist.

Consider these active lifestyle tribes:

Sustainability Warriors	Itinerant Travelers	Real & Fantasy Sportsters
Culinary Artists	Family Fans	Home Improvers
Pet-life Pals	Music Mainliners	Serial Daters
Fashion Forwards	Kitchenistas	Vinophiles
Social Activists	Dining-Out Denizens	Tech Nerds
Micro media mavens	Outdoor Adventurers	Wellness Wonks

Everyone is in search of community with like-minded people who share passions and interests, yet so few brands make a concerted, creative effort to doggedly court them with relevant content and experiences.

One glance around the food and beverage marketplace and you’ll notice a teeming landscape of niche brand market specialists who, enabled by the collapsing barriers of gigantic scale that at one time characterized the mass market paradigm, are carving ever more refined and single-minded voices that resonate with specific market subsegments. The call to action for larger CPGs is no less compelling to prune and narrow-in on the most engaged and potentially faithful audiences by casting your lot with the lifestyle clans most likely to believe.

Find brand traction by becoming an enabler

You want your brand to matter to an audience of devoted fans and evangelists. The opportunity to create this level of resonance escalates with strategic decisions to spotlight your voice and efforts as an enabler and educator on their specific lifestyle interests. People believe they are unique individuals, a market of one if you will, in search of brands that matter to their curated worldview and tuned belief system.

What human-relevant purpose should you be mining?

What activities and experiences will draw them in?

What images best express an affiliation with how thy see themselves?

What words will resonate?

What information do they seek to improve themselves?

How can you best mirror their wants and desires?

What stories should you be telling?

How do you cloak your brand in authenticity and genuine (relevant) values?

How can you demonstrate through actions that you care about their welfare?

Planning steps in response to these developments

It can feel counter-intuitive to narrow your voice and story on specific subsegments of engaged consumers. However, this is precisely the requirement to create relevance with consumers who now belong to a unique tribe.

The heavy user, the brand fan, the category evangelist, the knowledgeable player – these individuals offer the greatest chance at mattering. Broad appeals focused on “awareness” goals won’t serve the mattering imperative, and thus your brand can be commoditized over time and bought mostly on price because category options are seen as interchangeable.

Take for example the culinary artist…

There is a cohort of people, both male and female, who find the kitchen to be their favorite place in the home. Emotional connectivity abounds in their devotion to culinary exploration, cooking-as-emotional-outlet with self-esteem derived from tasty outcomes. They like celeb chef interactions in part because of the techniques they observe and their desire to replicate the same sophisticated flavor profiles. They buy higher quality knives.

How can you feed their need for kitchen exploration?

How can you double down to become a source of ideas and training?

What experiences can you arrange to engage their gustatory desires?

What constitutes moments of surprise and delight you enable to gain their faith?

Can you help them relax with foodie vacation ideas?

What new kitchen tech should they know about?

What voices can you bring they respect, love and admire (borrowed equity for your brand, too)?

How can you build a community of sharing and opportunities to showcase their food solutions with peers?

The list here is nearly endless. It constitutes a deep dive into their lives while serving as coach and guide. In doing so you earn their trust and loyalty. Your brand begins to matter to them and becomes integral to how they define themselves. Your brand can become celebrated, talked about and admired.

The path to this level of engagement is paved with self-less appreciation of who they are, manifested now in how you show up in their lives to make a tangible difference.

Don’t you want to do business this way? So much more is going on here than quarterly price promotions and end caps. Within your marketing team should be lifestyle and insight experts who deeply understand your customers’ interests, needs, wants, aspirations and to use that data to inform strategy on how the brand shows up in their day-to-day lives.

• You no longer need to depend on banging people over the head relentlessly with self-promotional messaging they ultimately ignore. Now you’re firing on all of the relevance and resonance cylinders founded on constructing an authentic, true relationship.

This is the future of marketing in a micro-segment world. It’s not about aggregating eyeballs, rather about making certain customer cohorts are the center of your universe — and working backwards from there. To the degree you can inspire people, you earn a place in their lives that helps make your brand irreplaceable. Persuasion isn’t the game. Helping, leading, guiding is the new operating paradigm.

Go narrow. Go all in.

If you find this concept compelling and worth deeper exploration, use this link to start an informal conversation about mapping a better, more focused future for your brand and business.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

We’re nearly out of time to slow emissions juggernaut…

The moment has arrived for the food and beverage industry to upgrade sustainability performance and answer System 3 (supply chain) emission challenges. The incentive to act now: bottom line business growth benefits can be secured through authentic, credible strategies to fully execute a climate-responsible transition plan. Later in this post we will reveal the number one barrier to achieving business benefits from sustainability investments.

Why now?

According to the latest alarm bell report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we’re on pace to burn through our remaining carbon budget (500 gigatons) by 2030, potentially placing the Paris Accords’ 1.5˚ Celsius ceiling beyond the world’s grasp. The U.N. states outcomes of unabated global warming could be catastrophic with every proportional degree of warming past the Paris Accords threshold.

The impact of our fossil fuel economy has already transformed the planet at a pace unrivaled in human history. The U.N. report characterizes carbon mitigation efforts to date as “woefully inadequate.” As such U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres is demanding that developed nations such as the United States eliminate carbon emissions by 2040, a decade earlier than the rest of the world.

• More than 40 percent of cumulative carbon emissions have occurred since 1990. After decades of disregarding the warnings, delaying policy changes, or making the tough choices to curb emissions from our industrial food system, the window to solve the climate crisis is closing.

Past the Paris Accords ceiling, impacts get extreme

Left on our current emissions pace, scientists claim global temperatures could rise by 3.2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. What would follow is melting arctic ice sheets that cause sea levels to rise by several feet, extinction of hundreds of animal species and displacement of millions of people from southern hemisphere regions no longer able to sustain an acceptable quality of life.

The issues are systemic in part because the world has shrouded itself in fossil fuel energy use and a food system churning out affordable proteins that come with a hidden yet steep environmental cost. Our current infrastructure supports buildings designed to use gas for heat. Cars and trucks for the most part remain gas powered. Public policy encourages the fossil fuel energy sector while struggling politically to invest in a more sustainable future.

• Energy industries double down now on fossil fuel source development
• China is on pace to add more coal-fired power plants
• Methane emissions compound as ruminant animal populations (cows, sheep, goats) grow to keep up with rising protein demands

In short, we find ourselves on a carbon-paved superhighway in the fast lane, zooming past the 1.5˚ Celsius off ramp – hurtling towards a point of no return, even though we face irrefutable evidence about the outcomes of not applying the brakes. Chaotic weather patterns, severe storms, wildfires, droughts, dwindling fish populations, the spread of infectious disease emerging from climate-disrupted biodiversity impacts – all indicators it’s time to summon the political courage to change direction.

Can the food and beverage industry help lead the shift to a sustainable future?

Yes.

If we muster the will and mettle to execute on pledges for change required to help the world reduce emissions by 50 percent over the next eight years. A recent report from Boston Consulting concludes emerging low carbon technologies in food creation give us the best chance of measurably reducing greenhouse gas from food production. Friederike Otto, Climate Scientist at the Imperial College London, recently said “We have all the knowledge we need. All the tools we need. We just need to implement it.”

An eco-system of regenerative agriculture commitments, adoption of emerging precision fermentation food technologies and efforts to minimize consumer eating patterns that favor ruminant animal products are needed to help curtail the food system carbon footprint. To the extent companies make assurances here and monitor performance against System 3 supply chain emissions, we have an opportunity to pull back from the brink of severe economic and social shocks pouring from a hotter planet.

• Business reasons for implementing these changes are compelling as consumers increasingly want to vote their sustainability values in the checkout lane. Sustainability investments can be good for business. However, there are barriers to overcome on the path to business benefit.

Silo-ization of sustainability programming

All too often we run across organizations in the food industry that inadvertently silo their sustainability investments by treating it as a department down the hall, cut off from other areas of the organization vital to making the investment payout as a business generator.

Sustainability is a strategic initiative the organization needs to answer from the C-suite level on down, not as a “right thing to do” effort, rather a business imperative the organization embraces as a core organizational mission and higher purpose. Sustainability executives and marketing teams should be working together to close the loop and inform all stakeholder audiences of carbon mitigation goals and milestones.

The #1 deficit in sustainability readiness performances is….

Since we launched the Brand Sustainability Solution platform in early 2021, Emergent has deployed an online Self-Assessment Questionnaire to help food, beverage and retail organizations better understand where they are on the path to sustainability best practices. Our database of self-assessment results reveals one consistent weakness across nearly all  company survey participants.

To achieve business benefits from sustainability ventures, integrated communications tactics must be employed to inform stakeholder audiences of what the company is doing to address sustainability challenges. In the absence of these strategic communications initiatives, brands can’t get credit for the investments they’re making or the improvements they’re realizing.

Thus, the loop is not closed with constituent audiences. Simply stated: sustainability performance is a brand preference driver in a marketing environment where consumers seek alignment between their beliefs and values and the brands that matter to them. All-too-often the sustainability team operates in isolation, and activity there isn’t integrated with marketing programs and assets that help customers of all segments understand what the organization is doing.

• This weakness has popped to the surface often enough that we are compelled to flag its importance here as “the missing link” to creating positive business outcomes from sustainability strategies.

Sustainability programs anchored to carbon footprint improvements can’t operate successfully in a vacuum. If we’re going to make the significant moves necessary to avoid condemning future generations to the invasive risks of a hotter planet, the entire effort must be a top-level priority for the company as a whole – with all hands-on-deck to help implement and communicate.

If you think your organization would benefit from an audit on sustainability readiness best practices, use this link to launch an informal conversation on evaluating the state of sustainability in your company. The solution set will invariably tap into everything, everywhere, all at once.

Download our emerging food tech education strategy guide…

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to the Emerging Trends Report.

Why we unleash the power of emotion to inform business outcomes…

What drives people to make the choices they do? What is it that causes us to prefer one brand over another? What are shoppers actually, truly thinking? Until now, since no one had can come up with a scientifically tested, verified answer to those questions, brands reflexively plowed ahead using the same strategies and techniques as they always have. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

However, the laws of attraction for one brand over another are locked up in the consumer’s often misunderstood brain.

• Now thanks to neuro-imaging research (known as fMRI), we have unprecedented insight into how emotions – such as generosity, greed, fear and well-being – impact brand selection and purchase decision-making.

Why is this insight so important? In our multi-channel, always on digital world, people are yanked, tugged, pelted, pushed, prodded, reminded, cajoled, whispered at, overloaded, and overwhelmed by an unrelenting stream of in-your-face product communication. The result? Snow-blindness.

Through behavioral research we can confirm that brands will most likely fail to engage when they rely on functional attributes of products – bigger, quicker, cheaper, more powerful, faster acting, or greater selection – rather than focusing on connecting to the consumer through deeper meaning. Storytelling strategies miss the mark when brand minders concentrate on only a part of the human behavior system – for example pressing hard on competitor brand weaknesses – only to leave the consumer’s emotions out of the equation.

Why do we continue to default to the time-worn approach of barking the benefits as if on auto-repeat? The answer starts with each of us. Literally everyone enjoys thinking of themselves as a rational being. We nourish and clothe ourselves. We go to the office. We think to turn down the temperature at night. We download music. We go to the gym. We handle crises – like missed deadlines, a child falling off a bike, a friend getting sick, a parent dying, etc. – in a mature and evenhanded way. Thus, we erroneously believe we’re reasoned analytical, logic-driven decision makers. Well, we’re really not.

In truth, the other part of our minds not governed by rational thought is flooded with cultural proclivities rooted in tradition, fear, how we’re raised, and a host of other subconscious influences which rise to apply a powerful but invisible influence over the choices we make. And the secret to enrolling that part of the brain – emotion.

“Emotions are the way in which our brains encode things of value, and a brand that engages us emotionally—like Apple, Harley-Davidson, and L’Oréal, just for starters—will win (in the marketplace) every single time,” reports Martin Lindstrom, author of the neuromarketing treatise, Buyology.

Roughly 85 percent of the time the brain is on autopilot. It’s not that we can’t think – rather our subconscious minds are a lot better at informing our behavior (including why we buy) than our conscious minds are. We are hardwired to defer decisions and actions to the sub-conscious and we don’t even realize we’re doing it.

Mirror Neurons are always operating in the brain

A classic example, we tend to subconsciously imitate what others around us are doing. Think about how other people’s behavior affects our shopping experience, and ultimately influences our purchasing decisions. Mirror neurons override rational thinking and cause people to unconsciously imitate – and purchase – what is in front of them.

Or our brains build a story that we believe. We may see models in fashion magazines and want to dress like them or make up our faces the way they do. We watch the rich and famous driving expensive cars and lounging in their lavishly decorated homes and ruminate, I want to live like that.

Lindstrom provides a common-place and relevant example: “A shapely mannequin wearing hip-hugging, perfectly worn-in jeans, a simple summery white blouse, and a red bandana stops you in your tracks. She looks great—slim, sexy, confident, relaxed, and appealing. Subconsciously, even though you’ve put on a few pounds, you think, I could look like that, too, if I just bought that outfit. I could be her. In those clothes, I, too, could have her freshness, her youthful nonchalance. At least that’s what your brain is telling you, whether you’re aware of it or not.”

We rely on almost instantaneous shortcuts that our brains create to help us make buying decisions.

Is the decision rational? It may seem that way as a choice is made, but it wasn’t, and not by a long shot. In a nano-second and below your conscious radar an inner conversation is occurring. Lindstrom again provides an iconic example:

“I associate Skippy with childhood…it’s been around forever, so I feel it’s trustworthy…but isn’t it laden with sugar and other preservatives I shouldn’t be eating?…Same goes for Peter Pan, plus the name is so childish. And I’m not buying that generic brand. It costs 30 cents less, which makes me suspicious. In my experience, you get what you pay for…The organic stuff? Tasteless, the few times I had it…always needs salt, too…Plus, didn’t I read somewhere that “organic” doesn’t necessarily mean anything, plus it’s almost double the price…Jif…what’s that old advertising slogan of theirs: “Choosy Mothers Choose Jif”…Well, I am a fairly discriminating person…”

That entire evaluation happens in an instant and below conscious thought, based on deep-seated experiences, acquired knowledge, cultural bias and perceptions we hold close over time.

When emotional connections are the priority

Brain-scan studies confirm our heads are hardwired to bestow upon some brands an almost religious significance and as a result we forge binding loyalties that keep us coming back over and over again.

Imagine the power of fear in bringing actions to bear on a benign and unsexy category like home safety. We were tasked with creating a new residential alarm product category for First Alert, the smoke alarm brand leader. The task was centered on the leading source of accidental poisoning fatalities in America – carbon monoxide (CO). This household hazard is odorless, colorless, tasteless, completely invisible and early symptoms are identical to the onset of flu.

Sounds like an impossible task doesn’t it. In part because we know people invariably believe that hazardous events like this “will never happen to me” – not in my back yard. We conducted deep dive research with married couples who had children in an effort to understand where the levers of reception and action could be tapped. We learned that if their children were at risk from an invisible menace that would impact kids faster than adults, they would act quickly to mitigate the problem.

We created a name for the threat that made its invisibility an attribute – “The Silent Killer.” We built the campaign around a real family from Maine who lost their teenage daughter to an accidental poisoning event in their home. It could have been prevented if an alarm had been present. The parents for their part wanted to help educate other families to help them avoid the one thing parents fear the most: loss of a child to a preventable accident. In this case, the alarm is the only way to know invisible CO is present.

The story was powerful, emotional, personal and real. We did not devote any of the narrative to product features or technology. It was instead focused entirely on a heart-rending story that ended with a call to action to protect family members by installing an alarm. The campaign was so successful the new First Alert CO alarm business went from zero to $250 million in sales within 14 months of launch. City governments stepped in to write laws requiring carbon monoxide alarms in homes. National news covered The Silent Killer safety hazard. Local TV news showed people in lines around the block outside their hardware store looking to get an alarm. Thousands of needless deaths were ultimately prevented.

The power of emotion to move people to action cannot be underestimated. The dynamic exists in virtually every product category you can think of. It’s counterintuitive, however, to the traditions of focusing story on product features and benefits. Yet we’ve seen over and over that when how human beings operate holds sway in decisions regarding communications, the subconscious becomes a powerful asset on the road to preference and purchase.

Without it, we’re talking to ourselves in what is inevitably a snow blinding experience for the consumer who avoids the message.

Curious about learning which emotional triggers might be most compelling for your users?

Share your observations or questions here. Use the this link to start an informal dialogue on emotion-based marketing.