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.

Awareness drives preference for sustainable choice

After 15 months of collecting data from a wide variety of companies that participated in our Sustainability Readiness assessment questionnaire, we can confirm the most common area of shortfall and weakness in sustainability performance is communications.

We’ve consistently encountered a disconnect between yeoman efforts by companies to improve their environmental and emissions outcomes, but too often without the integrated communications strategies that effectively tell that story to consumers and stakeholders.

It may be due to pervasive silo conditions where sustainability teams work separately from marketing, or the more intentional ‘greenhushing’ out of fear any sunlight might expose sustainability practices to criticism. However you slice it, without a robust, integrated communications strategy, it is virtually impossible to convert sustainability investments into related sales and share growth for the very reason people aren’t aware of what the brand has accomplished.

Building sustainability awareness

Without top-of-mind awareness your brand’s sustainability story isn’t considered. Awareness is also elusive and fleeting. It can be here today and gone tomorrow; thus, why continuous investments are required to keep your sustainability story front and center with the audience most likely to resonate to your environmental mission.

To be clear, aggregating eyeballs as the ultimate (and only) goal could overshadow some of the most important principles governing consumer engagement and consideration. Your brand’s higher purpose should inhabit every strategic decision you make when organizing an effective awareness-building strategy.

Note: be sure to check out the best practice example at the end of this article.

Earlier in my career while at Ogilvy & Mather, we always considered awareness purely in mass media terms, balanced with the twin towers of reach and frequency. In those days it was about hammering home a message in as many channels as budget would permit, as many times as the available media dollar could acquire. Tonnage in media spend was a thing and the share-of-voice advantage went to larger spenders. Hangover from this era of brand message carpet bombing still, unfortunately, exists.

Mass media is a relic. We have clear digital advantages today that level the competitive voice playing field for smaller brands and budgets. Social channels also enable a much closer, deeper relationship and dialogue with specialized consumer tribes. We can accentuate the best practices of audience focus and message customization because broadly targeted appeals in mass channels no longer apply.

Here we weigh in on Ten Steps to Better Sustainability Awareness to engage and endear your stakeholders.

1. Be where your audience is

Sounds a little like water is wet, but we often find that insight research doesn’t get the respect or attention it deserves. It’s how we get underneath the media consumption habits and preferences of a brand’s most prolific users. Hunches and assumptions here can divert outreach priorities down the wrong channels. Your goal is to emphasize the media they consume most often. You have to probe to know what that really looks like.

2. Show why you’re committed

The relationship you are trying to build with people is based on solving sustainability challenges and operating as a mirror to their beliefs and values on the journey. Your brand should be positioned as an enabler of their sustainable lifestyle aspirations, as well as an educator focused on helping them determine sustainable choices. Relevance to their environmental concerns is key to engagement and it will always be about them and not brand self-promotion, touting good corporate citizenship accolades.

3. Create “useful” branded content

Every time you solve a sustainability barrier or enable an aspirational activity people care about (you have to study to know what those activities might be) you earn trust, the most important component of any brand-to-consumer relationship. The litmus test for your content is its usefulness in helping or enabling your audience on the path to a sustainable lifestyle. Your consumer is always the story hero and the role your brand plays is always as coach and guide.

4. Take advantage of the publishing platforms

You should be present early and often in the right channels, depending on your category and audience priorities. YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, TikTok and Facebook can be addressed in optimized content that best fits the format of each platform. How you show up ought to be distinctive of your brand voice and personality – and focused on engagement, not re-treading old mass-marketing and self-promotion tactics.

5. Humanize your brand sustainability story

No corporate-speak or science-driven dissertation please. Instead present a human, conversational voice. If you’ve done your homework on brand archetype and narrative, your highly differentiated persona will shine through. Emotion is imperative and sustainability is an emotion-driven subject. This is a time to amplify your beliefs, values, commitments, standards and informed opinions on relevant sustainability performance goals and its value to your users’ lives.

6. Be a mirror

People like to see themselves in your stories, so hold up a mirror to them. Employ language they use (you have to know them to speak to them effectively). Your goal in storytelling is to generate a reflection of their concerns and motivations. It’s easier to talk about yourself, but that’s almost always going to lead to a disconnect because it means they are no longer the hero of the story. Determine what their sustainability concerns are, then speak to those priorities.

7. Storytelling

Stories are 22 times more likely to be remembered than fact telling. We love stories because we can see ourselves in the characters. We can relate to fears, struggles, challenges and triumphs. Wrap key messages inside stories where people can see themselves. Fact-based downloads won’t have the same stickiness and emotional staying power.

8. Focus on social media channels

Proof. Validation. Verification of what you want people to believe. Social media can be a rich trove of shared experience and advocacy. The voices of users carry more credibility than what your brand claims. You should encourage and facilitate sharing in the social platforms your customers use most often. Brand-created content should focus on education, help and emotion ahead of promotion.

9. Leverage your expertise

As a subject matter expert, you have a forum and a platform to be the knowledgeable guide. Elevate your voice and perspective on the larger more compelling sustainability issues your audience cares about – and then weigh in. Podcasts can be an excellent channel for this type of communication.

10. Harness editorial credibility

Beyond the digital paid advertising platforms of pay-per-click and paid social, editorial media placement is a powerful tool to deploy because it is inherently more trusted and credible. It stands as a form of education and information vs. straight promotion. Editorial requires focus on the problem solving and thus newsworthy aspects of what your brand has accomplished.

The Promised Example: sustainability awareness and education in action

Putting some of our Ten Steps to Better Sustainability Awareness to work, Emergent recently produced a sustainability education and information forum for food industry stakeholders.

(Read on to learn how this valuable content will be available to you.)

Here’s how it worked:

Current reports on the progress of the food industry’s sustainability transition planning show a gap between intention and measurable outcomes. To help bring the food and beverage industry further along the continuum, we recruited a panel of experts from some of the most influential organizations leading sustainability readiness and improvement.

Our theme: “Sustainability and the Future of Food” began as a live presentation at the Food Marketing Institute’s industry executive gathering, the MidWinter Executive Conference in January 2023. Here senior food industry leadership teams, both CPG brand and retailers, gathered to focus on key issues facing the industry in the year ahead.

Our experts included sustainability executives and senior executives from the leading organizations mapping the future of sustainability performance including PepsiCo, ADM, Change Foods (an emerging new technology player in precision fermentation tech), The Good Food Institute, the alternative protein’s industry association, and the team at Boston Consulting Group that produced landmark studies on the growth and potential impact of sustainable food technologies.

The sustainability messaging focus:

• Elevate understanding of the foundational reasons why the global food system is a significant contributor to climate threat (not sustainable), and the innovative, novel solutions that will forever shift where food comes from (future of food) and how it is produced.

• Reveal the foundational elements of sustainability best practices. Discuss how organizations can address the complex requirements for new standards, policies and systems required to decarbonize their businesses while offering consumers healthier, better tasting, affordable and sustainable food solutions.

• Introduce the face of new food production technologies now taking shape that are not dependent on carbon heavy, inefficient and vulnerable legacy supply chains to create the proteins necessary to nourish a growing global population.

• Inspire a path forward for evolutionary change that will maintain the U.S. food industry’s historic global leadership in bringing new solutions to the most challenging conditions the food industry has ever faced; addressing a sustainability mission that must be achieved to avoid the economic and societal impacts of future climate damage.

Emergent then extended the panel discussion to editorial media, with the speakers recently reprising their stories on readiness best practices and emerging technology for a two-hour, four-part video on best practices and the future of food. The series was produced in collaboration with Food Navigator. The videos will air in weekly installments early this summer at Food Navigator’s website.

The food industry’s sustainability concerns and activations are ramping up as consumer sentiment and interest is already steps ahead.

What are your next moves?

If you think it’s time to refresh your sustainability awareness- and engagement-generating strategies and investments, use this link and let’s talk about how best to design improvements.

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

New report confirms ESG impact on business outcomes…

The consumer’s growing concern about sustainability and the environmental impact of food products is translating into behaviors on the path to purchase. A new study released by Glow, a Nielsen IQ research partner, affirms that ESG performance is impacting brand switching, preference and purchase.

• Glow reported their calculations that a brand with $500 million in sales and a Social Responsibility Score (SRS) that is 10 points higher than a similarly sized competitor, can expect to secure an additional $25 million in revenue over three years, on average.  

Glow’s study verified consumers are exercising choice by “shedding” brands that don’t meet their sustainability expectations, while also moving their allegiance to products that are more closely aligned with their values. In sum, consumers are increasingly regulating their purchases to operate in sync with their beliefs about environmental responsibility.

Sustainability driven brand switching – how much and which categories

The percentage of consumers switching brands based on their assessment of devotion to more sustainable behaviors and policies ranges currently between 30 and 40 percent. The categories where switching is occurring most often include:

Meat and seafood

Pantry (pasta, rice, condiments, oils)

Frozen

Pet

Bakery

Dairy

Don’t ignore the business driver – communications

The research also flagged that some brands aren’t getting the sustainability performance recognition they deserve, and thus aren’t seeing an impact on business outcomes. This happens because their environmental story isn’t breaking through. Glow’s report is a rallying cry for food brands to work harder to close the gap between rising consumer expectations of ESG commitments and actual progress towards credibly fulfilling and activating the brand’s sustainability story.

• Emergent’s recent Brand Sustainability Solution analysis of 25 food, beverage and lifestyle brands and retailers’ sustainability readiness, showed an almost universal weakness tracing back to sub-optimal communications efforts. Sustainability communications outreach to close the loop with consumers is missing or tepid. Read: not effective.

Glow’s study revealed the top five channels where consumers prefer to learn about ESG commitments:

1. News media
2. Product packaging
3. Advertising
4. Brand web site
5. Social media

News media scored highest because of its perceived credibility as a trusted third-party source. Packaging also tracked high given it’s a shelf-ready, shopper-facing place to get information. The most important on-pack claims to consumers were animal welfare, environmental impact, social responsibility and sustainable packaging.

According to Glow:

• Nine out of 10 consumers believe it is important for brands to act responsibly in their environmental policies and actions.

• One out of two consumers say they have changed brands based on their perceptions of ESG performance.

• 78% of consumers say brand purpose and values play an important role in their purchase decisions.

• 79% claim they are more loyal to brands with a clearly defined higher purpose.

• 85% believe it’s important for companies to act responsibly about climate impact.

• One in five rank ESG and sustainability in the top three purchase considerations alongside price and quality.

• Despite the challenges of inflation, sustainability commitments also provide a compelling reason not to trade down, especially among Millennial consumers.

Glow’s study analyzed the impact of 13 different ESG characteristics on consumer behavior. In the food category the most important considerations are:

1. Reducing emissions and climate change
2. Respecting natural resources (like water)
3. Protecting wildlife and eco-systems.

This study verifies what we at Emergent have been reporting now for over a year, that sustainability and environmental policies and commitments have formed one of the most important foundations of marketplace competitive advantage for the foreseeable future.

• Consumers are voting their preferences in the checkout lane and make decisions on the brands they prefer based on their perceptions of sustainability readiness.

When sustainability communications is just a quarterly progress report

Importantly, strategic communications cannot be underestimated in its relevant role to close the deal and convince consumers. And this goes way beyond regurgitating complex and often confusing scientific data points. Creative outreach works to connect investments in sustainability readiness progress with audiences most likely to act on that information. The absence of strong communications usually occurs when the sustainability team is not connected to the marketing team, or it operates as a stand-alone silo and isn’t integrated into the main go-to-market strategic plan.

• The Glow study validates that sustainability commitments, policies and performance isn’t just “talk” as far as consumers are concerned. It is impacting the “walk” of what goes in the shopping cart and gets purchased.

In our view, when organizations understand and act to secure the business benefits of sustainability investments, we will see more meaningful progress on the path to emission reductions and a healthier planet. And businesses will see consumer reciprocation in the form of enhanced brand preference, purchase intent and product movement. Sustainability is a business builder.

If you believe your sustainability strategies and communications could use fresh strategic eyes and a creative lift, use this link to start an informal dialogue around your questions.

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.

Novel protein likely to leap ahead of other emerging food tech…

It is time for the food and beverage industry to pay closer attention to an emerging food tech category that is highly likely to change the course of how food is created. It arrives at a time when our current food system is increasingly critiqued as an actor in the climate impact drama.

• At the end of this article, download our Emerging Companies to Watch list in this exciting evolutionary story.

The next great disruption in food creation

We are about to witness a wholesale transformation of where our food comes from and how it is produced – the first major sea change of its kind in 10,000 years since animals and plants were first domesticated. What’s at stake? No less than our planet’s health, impacted by decades of obscured mistreatment from an industrial food system that contributes roughly 24% of climate warming greenhouse gases – more than all types of fossil fuel powered transportation combined. For many this is a jolting discovery.

Dawn of the low carbon food system

Advances in bioengineering have served to refine a centuries old technology we know as fermentation. A familiar process used in some form for a millennium to brew beer, craft wine and create cheese and yogurt. This evolved tech is employing uniquely programmed microbes (micro) instead of animals (macro) to create high quality, healthy, great tasting proteins like meat, eggs and dairy.

The tech leap for food lovers: these new proteins are bioidentical to the animal version. That means virtually indistinguishable in taste and eating experience, while eliminating things people don’t want such as cholesterol, lactose and antibiotics. Moreover, they come to us at a fraction of the environmental emissions impact of livestock farming and its drastic over-consumption of limited water and land resources.

Precision fermentation may also work to leap over some of the shortcomings in plant-based products that retain a higher taste hill to climb because the proteins are not identical to what they’re trying to replicate. Their recipe goal is to mimic and simulate the flavor and mouthfeel of animal versions. They strive to do this by using plant-based ingredients and other food science wizardry to recreate textures, chew, even the bloody juice of a burger patty. The plant-based industry currently chases consumers who believe the eating experience may be close but is just not a full analog of what they expect from the meat and dairy products they crave.

Consumers are changing

Most of us grew up with deeply engrained, idealized and nostalgic beliefs about food. In its most authentic and revered form, it is always sourced from the soil or raised in a verdant pasture. For eons we’ve paid homage to an impression that real, nutritious food is an outcome of things we harvest on a family farm, delivered with as little adulteration as possible.

Moreover, in the past food science was often viewed skeptically as a precursor to over-processing and manipulating food ingredients – or creating not-in-nature versions of same in the laboratory. This reached its apex in the reduced calorie and fat wars of the 1990s where food science made addition by subtraction infamous via food engineering – sugar and fat removed and replaced with other artificial ingredients as glorified in the fat-free cake and donut craze.

Sense of urgency flipping the paradigm

The historic friction between science and nature is evolving now as consumers become aware of the relationship between industrial food production and climate change, its impact on scarce resources, the link to animal welfare issues and looming food scarcity challenges as world population accelerates.

People are coming around to see science as part of the solution, not a menace to be avoided. In a recent study by The Hartman Group on the future potential of precision fermentation technology, they describe the tech as a powerful advancement. Due in part to its familiarity with consumers, more so than cellular meat technologies that require a sophisticated and somewhat complicated explanation of how it works.

• Familiarity is important to adoption and trial because it feels less risky to people who are systemically driven to avoid risk in their food purchase decisions.

According to Hartman, millennials’ (born between 1981 and 1996) openness to the idea may comprise the ideal core “early adopter” audience for precision fermentation food products.

• 67% of millennials now believe science and technology may offer the best hope to address climate change.

• 62% agree science and tech innovations can help make food more sustainable.

• 62% believe foods made this way would be healthier.

In short, they believe this new approach to food creation may transcend the limitations and excesses of the current food system. In fact, Hartman states 84% of this cohort say they would be likely to purchase precision fermentation made products, and half would be willing to pay more for them.

Part of the comfort level (easier to grasp) consumers have with fermentation is its legacy use in beer, wine and cheesemaking. Additionally precision fermentation is already in our lives, used for decades to make insulin, vitamins, and the enzyme rennet that causes dairy milk to coagulate and separate into curds for cheesemaking.

The path to market for precision fermentation

Hartman’s research revealed that 50% of consumers are already looking for products that prioritize sustainability and animal welfare in how they’re created. Further when asked about what will influence their preferences and willingness to try these new foods, safety (60%) and taste (59%) scored almost equally as top priorities followed by healthy (53%).

The study showed the top three environmental benefits they expect from this emerging food category:

1. Reducing greenhouse gas – 38%
2. Minimizing other forms of pollution – 37%
3. Merchandized in sustainable packaging – 29%

Size of the prize

Hartman forecasts a potential market of 132 million consumers by 2027, with millennials most likely to replace all or most of current products with new precision fermentation versions.

The adoption curve follows a familiar path for new premium CPG food and beverage categories:

15% are ready to go

11% will be easily convinced

14% will be convinced with clear benefits

This falls in line with existing research and numerous case studies that confirm in any emerging premium CPG food business, approximately 14% of the addressable market will be early adopters – those less concerned with risk and more drawn to being first-in to try new products. Breaching the chasm between early adoption and mainstream acceptance is the marketing challenge of the ages and requires a carefully formulated strategy of validation, verification, channel management and calibrated expansion aimed at reaching the right audience segment at the right time in the right place.

Overly ambitious extensions too early into the wrong channels, retail locations or foodservice environments can set the business up for retrenchment when audiences less enthralled with the deep sustainability story and for whom price is king, may not be ready to push aside their habitual choices. Perceived risk is a hurdle that needs to be flattened.

Emergent marketing guidance

What will be required to nurture these new brands to fame and fortune? Education, education, education and more education.

How is it made?

Will it be safe to eat?

Will it taste good?

How is it better for the environment?

Will it be healthier for me?

Is it affordable relative to the product it will replace?

What about allergens?

The narrative should be built around what Hartman calls the “intersection of good for me and good for the planet.”

Food is an emotional category – we eat with our eyes, we respond to perceived deliciousness because we crave great taste experiences. We are drawn to the familiar. Thus, the language that’s used, the narrative story that’s created should avoid descriptions that are founded in scientific and technical lingo.

The experiences of respected voices in the culinary world, the outcome reports in social media from early adopters all coalesce to provide an eco-system of credible proof of satisfaction and value. This is NOT the time for old-school CPG claims and ad tropes that glorify self-promotion of features. This is your opportunity to employ new strategies founded in generating trust, belief and a heavy lean on values and deeper meaning.

• Your story focus is the consumer and their journey, and how these new products will help support planet health as well as personal wellbeing.

This may well be the most exciting adventure to arise in the food industry since homogenous audiences and mass media created a gigantic market for packaged food and beverage in the 1950s. Importantly, it also offers a viable solution to the planet crisis we’re in and a path to correct an unsustainable food system in a manner that will also help solve how we will affordably feed 10 billion souls by 2050.

If you’re interested in launching a conversation about strategies to nurture, grow and set these new brands up for success, use this link to start an informal conversation with us. If you’re interested in our take on the brands to watch and collaborate with as this story unfolds, use this link to download our Emerging Brands to Watch list.

Paid influencers might be a problem

When a key marketing ‘best practices’ principle continues to be validated time and again, you start to regard it as fundamental and credible guidance. Once again, we’re seeing new evidence that consumers question the veracity of brand content created by paid influencers, while simultaneously embracing the comments and experiences of real-world users.

How can this be? It’s simply a matter of trust. Those motivated by a profit agenda are viewed as less objective and trustworthy than those without underlying financial self-interest. Career endorsers are often seen as paid shills or at least they have the appearance of same to consumers.

What is the litmus test for trusted communication?

Communication that comes from sources:

1. Without any hidden or potentially compromising (paid hustler) agenda
2. Whose behavior is informed by simple honesty and factual integrity
3. From voices that put the concerns and needs of others ahead of their own self-interest

In a recent Marketing Daily report a new consumer study, “The State of User Generated Content” from EnTribe, reinforces the credibility gap between trusted sources and paid influencers.

• 64% of consumers say they follow their preferred brands in social channels.

• 63% of consumers complain about the frequent appearance of influencer content in brand social posts.

• 85% of consumers believe influencers are inauthentic or unrelatable.

• 85% say they prefer to see content from citizen users.

• 84% believe user generated content drives brand trust.

• 77% of shoppers say user content makes them more likely to buy.

• 65% say user content makes them more loyal.

Never underestimate the power of trust

Let’s face it, consumers find it difficult to believe the claims and assertions made by brands. Why? Because true or not they believe companies will inevitably put their self-interest and profit motives ahead of their own welfare. In the consumer’s mind paid influencers suffer from a similar compromise of ‘never bite the hand that feeds you.’

Who do consumers believe or at least accept more readily as truthful and honest assessors of brand integrity and performance?

Each other – consumers will believe their peers before they embrace the brand’s own statements. That said, when trust breaks out it may also benefit the genuine acceptance levels of what a brand conveys on its own.

Editorial, non-paid media – say what you will about fake news, for the most part people continue to think that journalists are objective observers who attempt to unearth facts and evidence to confirm or deny what brands claim.

Credentialed experts with science, medical or academic backgrounds – individuals whose professional reputations are built on a hallowed ground of objective evaluation are perceived to have skin in the game and something important to lose should their recommendations turn out to be a fabrication.

Of course, just like restaurant reviews can be skewed because of a bad night in the kitchen, there is no such thing as unassailable, 100 percent bank-able opinions from any quarter. That said, the body of evidence weighed in sum will tip the scale one way or the other.

Why is trust so important to belief?

The always-on Internet and 24/7 reporting cycle have put every brand in every category inside a glass house. Anything than can be known, will be known – sooner or later. Too many trips into bad behavior land and trust fractures from half-truths or outright misinformation have caused a societal-level sense of caution and skepticism about what companies convey.

Here’s the antidote to trust fractures:

Actions speak louder than words. What a brand does – the actions it takes – can serve as evidence of its integrity and corporate soulfulness.

A brand’s devotion to a higher purpose and evidence of this belief system tend to project an aura of honesty and values-driven code about how the business is run and what the leadership team prioritizes.

Want to be trusted and believed? Then operate that way by putting the consumer’s welfare, wellbeing, priorities and needs ahead of company self-promotion interests. Selflessness is seen as an admirable trait in human behavior and when brands act this way (and are even willing to openly admit when they make a mistake) it helps cement consumer trust.

What do we know…?

• That trust is the fundamental grist underneath any real relationship that works. It is true in life and in human relationships as much as it is in the give and take between people and the brands that matter to them.

Without trust you have an intractable problem. With embedded trust you have an opportunity to secure belief and engagement. Trust is never claimed. It is always earned. User generated content supplies the verification.

Trust is a strategic and organization-level consideration that should be baked into the foundation of any business and marketing plan. Should guidance on brand trust-building best practices be of help to you, and how to translate that into compelling communication, use this link to start an informal conversation about your questions.

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