Don’t play in someone else’s sandbox

What we’re about to discuss here is vital to brand marketing best practices and sustainable business results.

Most of the time brands and businesses focus their marketing on being better than X. When you are better than X your brand identity is linked to a competing brand. This is a trap. Being better is actually worse. Being different is better than better. Why? Because superior products often lose to brands that dare to be different.

When better silently runs the show, your storytelling is always focused on features and benefits. Some may even strive to be the best – which is really “better” dressed in a suit. Example of a “better” expression: “more” is a slippery slope to feature selling. More control. More perks. More of magic ingredient X. You’ll find hidden under every feature benefit message there is a “better” snare.

• It’s a misguided, if all too common, principle that inevitably focuses the conversation on competitive benchmarks and comparisons. It is an endless cycle that leaves real consumer traction and engagement unattended – because the story always makes the brand the hero and not the consumer.

Better brands are never about product features and benefits, and consumers no longer buy them anyway. That’s table stakes. Instead, people are attracted to deeper meaning, aligned values, higher purpose and are magnetically drawn to different. Your brand should offer a point of view, express opinions and bring a vision of the future.

Rule number one: in compelling brand storytelling the consumer must always be the hero of your narrative. Your brand should avoid competing with the consumer for the hero role. Every consumer, every day wakes up believing they are the hero of their life journey. Your brand’s proper messaging role is as coach, guide and empathetic enabler of their journey.

Stronger brands always focus on being unique, not better

Strategic brands say and do things differently

They hew a unique tone

They often carve a controversial path

They see the future through a different lens

They operate with a belief system

The belief is the benefit

Great brands are always founded on beliefs

You may think that users care about better. However, you just haven’t given them something greater to believe in. Shifting the story spotlight takes the glow off of your competitor – who incidentally really doesn’t matter to your future prospects and growth.

It isn’t easy to be different. It takes incredible discipline and the support of your leadership team not to fall back into feature/benefit selling. Strategic strength springs from a well-defined understanding of who you are as a brand and company, and what you want to become over time.

Following the path to different

Here are some examples of how you can embrace different in your strategic game plan.

1. Create a new category

Historically and traditionally skincare and make-up brands conveyed that beauty is always applied. It exists on the exterior as an aspirational expression of status seeking and attraction. More enlightened brands have arrived to flip the script by attaching a broader vision of what beauty is and how it manifests. Instead, real beauty comes from within.

Beauty evolves as a coalescing of better health, fitness, spiritual growth and is inclusive of different body types, ages and lifestyles. The brand voice morphs to focus on wellbeing, happiness and growth rather than the singular application of a product. This different view authors a unique voice that carries added relevance and value to its audience of believers in a more validating life view.

Category creation is the ultimate move to inject different into brand strategy and positioning.

2. Move from product utility to lifestyle association

All too often product communication is devoted to specific technologies, formulation superiority and benefits of same. The product and brand are always the authoritative voice. Instead, moving to a lifestyle brand strategy enables personal authority. Great lifestyle brands insert themselves into important moments and experiences sought after by users. These are often situations and memories that echo the brand’s deep belief system – it’s “why” rather than what or how.

Yeti is an iconic example of a brand enrobing itself in a cloak of lifestyle experiences that celebrate outdoor adventures and enable the freedom of the soul in nature. Yeti is not selling coolers and tumblers. It’s singular devotion to breathing life into the emotional experiences of lifestyle association endears itself to its audience of evangelists and ambassadors. Yeti’s deeper meaning separates and elevates it from other brands who offer similar products.

3. Change the story focus

Most brands talk up themselves incessantly. It’s always about who we are and what we do. There is self-reverence and promotion. All about me. Instead of revealing yourself to the customer, how about revealing the customer to themselves. Stop expressing who you are and start talking about the customer – their aspirations, interests and needs.

Most hotel brands focus on their properties to extol design, amenities, services, architecture and location. Here are our features. Frankly the entire conversation is nearly generic brand to brand and separated mostly by price class.

Along comes Airbnb to completely violate the rules and tropes of travel brand communication. Rather than say look at who we are, they flip the lens around to say I see who you are. It comes from a different view of what travel is and how it can be experienced. Belong Anywhere is a unique concept that makes the customer and user experience paramount. The brand becomes an enabler of a unique experience – a coach and guide on a different and more human way to experience travel and destinations.

4. Change the reality

Disruption can be a useful tool when it reorients what people take for granted. The goal is to help people find and accept a new reality. Everything we thought we knew about __________ is wrong. This is how to do it (understand it) right.

The emergence of sustainability strategies and a new understanding of the role our food system plays in climate change is a reality-changing condition. Most people don’t think of food as a contributor to global warming. A brand that steps fully into conscious consumption and the commitment to improving sustainability bona fides creates a game changing story for consumers – and potentially a transformational view of how food should be created.

Similarly, what we think we know about health, wellness and aging is ripe for a makeover. Creating a new reality is a road to difference, uniqueness and sought-after guidance. The new paradigm of belief positions your brand as arbiter of a new way of thinking, doing and believing.

Different is the Holy Grail, let’s look for it!

It is time to back away from being better or best to refocus your marketing and messaging energy on radical differentiation. Best practices in this area inevitably leads to refinement of brand belief systems and adding deeper meaning to who and what you are as a brand and business. Collectively, if you can do it and stick to it, your brand will benefit from a new era of transcendence and value to users who come to you for better and more lasting reasons than a product feature.

If this discussion stirs some thinking and questions in your mind, and you’d like to get those ideas on the table to ponder with some like-minded thinkers, let us know. We’d love to think with you about how this thinking can be applied to your brand and business. Here’s a link to start an informal conversation.

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

Confronting the immutable truths ahead

This report is ultimately a call for renewal of purpose and commitment to sustainability policies, principles and behaviors that consumers are increasingly demanding. It is also a roadmap for alternative food technologies to regain momentum after a period of honest reassessment on the fundamentals of taste, nutritional composition, price and brand sustainability narrative.

Stay tuned for more guidance – but first a look at the current conflagration.

Two steps forward. One step back.

At the moment we are in the midst of a tug of war on sustainability commitments and performance. Despite mounting evidence of environmental trouble, some organizations over inflate their progress (greenwashing), while others green-hush by downplaying practices or abandoning them all together.

Progressive large food industry organizations like ADM and PepsiCo continue to lead the charge, working to secure improvements at the farm level. Others such as McDonald’s, who earlier addressed their ESG commitments head on have receded, horns pulling inward. Further some brands tempt a flame out on the path to redemption by intentionally hiding the ESG candle of achievement, preferring to operate in the dim shadows away from public or media attention.

We inquire: what’s going on here

We are confronted daily with the epic impacts of climate change. The situation is worsening. Evidence is all around us that carbon emissions and the resulting planet warming outcome is playing havoc with the balance of nature. Yet political considerations remain powerful deterrents to some organizations, apparently afraid of special interest criticism or concerned their current actions will be deemed subpar by climate watchdogs.

The fossil fuel industry tries to preserve the status quo by casting doubt on the efficacy of climate science. Some political groups snarl over “woke” capitalism even as our global “Rome” burns around us as violins play Emperor Nero style.

In a recent Fast Company article about current disinformation tactics taking aim at the plant-based meat industry, Sara Aniano, an analyst at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, was quoted stating, “Anything that strays from what’s deemed natural, primal, or masculine is automatically deemed dangerous. Innovative food products are seen as a dystopian consequence of leftist politics.”

Yet we know this July was officially the hottest on record for planet earth.

Our food system already represents nearly 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all transportation systems combined. Increasingly, people believe companies have an obligation to address and mitigate System 3 (GHG) emissions now rather than wait for any future regulatory mandate. Moreover, there are only 7 more harvests on the run-up to 2030 as we face the prospect of irreversible climate change impacts if emission reductions aren’t realized.

Meanwhile “fake it ‘til you make it” greenwashing gets harder to pull off as deep knowledge about credible sustainability best practices becomes more pervasive among media and consumers. No matter what, the in-parallel denier criticisms are getting more difficult to defend in the midst of real-world crisis after crisis related to climate change impacts that manifest in floods, droughts, hot oceans and wildfires. The reality of climate turmoil is at humanity’s proverbial front door now.

What comes first: the sustainability chicken or the egg?

Stated another way which must come first, actions taken by brands and business to mitigate environmental impacts? Or second, the universal acceptance of these remedies as normal, practical, required and sought after by every conceivable audience and constituency a business might encounter?

• Can you be a responsible sustainability transition plan implementer, and also present your organization publicly as a neutral Switzerland on the climate policy-making front?

No.

“One of the most important and challenging missions that I think one company could try to do, which is basically to replace animal farming as the primary source of protein production for humanity, is very much the reason why we started the company,” said Andre Menzes, CEO of alt. chicken protein company, Tindle Foods.

Despite Tindle’s enviable progress, why the current backslide for plant-based meat?

The media flourish over “plant-based meat for meat lovers” saw the Impossible and Beyond Meat businesses rapidly accelerate; both brands hoping to jump the normal new category creation arc and leap instantly into mainstream acceptance. This required attracting consumers who are more price sensitive, more demanding on taste and less “environmental issues” motivated at a time when inflation was running up the prices of groceries right and left.

Weaknesses in the brand story around the reality of “healthier” (sodium?) left the door open to  “highly processed” attacks that stole precedence over the earlier perceptions of meat-like eating experience. Hype machinery ground to halt when declining sales performance tarnished the golden meat-from-plants goose. Revenue for Beyond Meat plunged 30.5% in the second quarter this year, prompting CEO Ethan Brown to call (finally!!) for more education on their better-for-you improvements and sustainability bona fides.

So is plant-based a fading fad? Absolutely not. This is a blip as brands optimize and improve taste, the ultimate decider on marketplace traction alongside input cost management to finally reach pricing parity.

• Plant-based must win more fans.
• Precision fermentation deserves its protein game-changing shot.
• Cultivated meat will earn its time in the shining retail sun.

Why? We simply can’t continue to endlessly add more animals as the primary source of protein in our diets. Animal meat on the menu isn’t going away. However, the composition of our dietary decisions and choices should adjust. Improvements from new protein technologies that come at a fraction of the environmental impacts of conventional food creation deserve our support.

Still, it’s a noisy fickle environment right now…

Why are companies afraid to plant their sustainability flag in the sand?

Escalating impacts surround the planet begging for mitigation attention.

Consumers increasingly demand action from business to solve the sustainability crisis.

Plant-based takes a step back amid criticism of its formula composition bona fides.

(Heavy sigh)

Landing on the side of the angels

• What is the essential truth here? For one, our food system is an actor in the carbon emissions build-up. The impact of global warming is escalating, and you can see the tipping point on the horizon. Food technologies that answer the crisis with a fraction of conventional food system carbon impacts are coming but desperately need more investment to close the last mile to commercialization.

• Sustainability performance matters. Science-based LCA level analysis of carbon footprints should be happening everywhere because you can’t know where you’re going until you know where you are. Boulder, CO based Meati, with its novel mycelium-based meat products, is already in retail distribution with an eye-opener on replicating the eating experience of muscle meat cuts of chicken and beef. Their story is a sustainable solution.

• Brands that look to help address the food and beverage industry’s carbon footprint are operating on the side of the angels and should do so fearlessly knowing the consumer is going on the journey with them. We have little time to solve the industry’s climate impacts so special interests should put down the quill of complaint and take up the mantle of participating in advancing change, not resisting it.

Guidance in the months ahead

• Taste and price optimization are job one. It’s table stakes for growth.
• Investments in Sustainability education for consumers and stakeholders should get more energy and funding, right now.
• We have ample data and evidence that sustainability readiness commitments backed with consumer-facing outreach to inform stakeholders of this progress is a recipe for balance sheet benefits and marketplace competitive advantage.

Can we climb back on the horse of wisdom knowing these shifts are vital to keeping our planet safe, and to nourishing people affordably in the future?

Sustainability isn’t a hassle, it’s a business-building opportunity if we play our collective cards right.

Your brand can make a difference. Yes, sound strategy is needed. Linking sustainability expertise with marketing know-how is a loop that must be closed to gain business benefits from climate-responsible performance.

• Let’s renew our vows at the altar of sustainable best practices. Time is not on our side, and we have policy ground to cover in a relatively short span of time.

Can we agree change is needed and desirable? We have a responsibility here to protect the future for our families and many others coming in the decades ahead. We have designed the recipe for success. We need to implement and keep at it as we move from friction around the birth of new ideas to transformation while new behaviors take root.

If you believe further guidance and fresh thinking on the path to sustainability performance excellence is in order, use this link to ask questions or start an informal conversation. We’re here to help.

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

How to use strategy correctly for over-the-top success and growth

The word “strategy” frequently shows up in marketing plans, yet all too often actual strategy is missing in action, misapplied or simply misunderstood. Here we will clear the air on building the right strategic foundation. It is the difference maker in creating successful business outcomes.

Ultimately you want to build the brand standard that other companies benchmark against.

• The brand consumers talk about
• The known innovator
• The one referenced in best practice case studies

Note: we’ve created a one-page summary of Emergent examples of strategy in action you can view or download at the end of this article.

In the absence of a strong strategic platform, a business will inevitably drift. Due to this constant state of uncertainty, all marketing “bets” will be consistently hedged. Competition is fierce and in the absence of real strategy companies are often relegated to tactics consisting of endless rounds of episodic cost reductions and various kinds of profit sapping price promotion.

Frankly it’s all too common…

Many businesses

• End up contending with positioning confusion
• Struggle to stand out resulting in higher levels of media spend
• Realize uninspiring profit margins
• Users don’t really care about the brand proposition that much
• Hence switching on deal is rampant as adjacent brands are seen as interchangeable

What is sound strategy?

Strategy describes what you do differently. It is instruction and a guide on separating and elevating your business in a new category you create while authoring new rules to govern.

Sound strategy –

1. Enables bravery
2. Commands an emotional response
3. Delivers clarity and passion
4. Because it is grounded in a sense of conviction
5. Focuses on where you are going and especially why
6. Provides evidence of how you are different
7. Informs every action you take

Higher purpose and mission are ultimately a path to differentiation

Forever and a day we’ve been advocates of deeper brand meaning, values and purpose, for the very reason it is a solid path to improved strategy. After all, what is business but a system designed to deliver value. To increase the value you collect, you increase the value you give. A unique value, such that consumers aren’t getting it from anyone else.

Our job at Emergent, as strategic guide and coach, is to help you define what that “why” is while pushing the edges of differentiation outward. Strategy is creating “different” because your systemic enemy is sameness.

Myth #1: Strategy is never about being better than X

You don’t compete.

You don’t compare.

You don’t define your bona fides against the other guy’s offering.

You’re not pursuing the same customers with a similar product and a similar story, a recipe for declining profit over time due to ever-present commoditization. As we’ve said, sound strategy is creating difference. Better isn’t different. Better is the same, “but we try harder.” This is not a sustainable path and is a slippery slope to similarity. Instead, your goal is to provide value that “competing brands” don’t.

Myth #2: Sound strategy is complicated, sophisticated and data driven

Strategy is NOT a cold-blooded scientific download.

Some believe the path to improved strategy is served through dense technical analysis in an attempt to “manufacture” rightness. Great strategy is steeped in meaning, passion and conviction. This is the fuel that pushes great brands to go further, harder, deeper and braver than others. Their goal to always over-deliver on their promises.

Myth #3: Strategy is actually improved marketing communication

A tendency in our field is to conflate strategy with messages, tag lines and ads. Strategy isn’t a message, rather it’s guidance and statement of what the business does and why.  Communicating a similar offering more creatively isn’t a lasting proposition and forces media spending levels upward to maintain baseline awareness of same.

“Different with a strong why” is naturally alluring and attracting. A great strategic platform inspires meaning, belief, membership and advocacy. In the end it is a blueprint for how the business operates top to bottom – springing from your “why” – founded in deeper meaning and differentiation. This will help you better define the right product mix and inform a compelling brand narrative.

Charts and graphs can’t replace imagination

Strong strategic ideas are more like life in general, rewarding boldness and distinctive concepts over reductive reasoning. Here’s a connect the dots moment: ultimately, people are the consumers of your strategic concept. Just remember people are irrational. Decisions are never made based on consideration of analytical, fact-based arguments.

That’s why you want to go with the strategy that gets your heart racing. It will impact what you do, how you organize the business and inform communication that engages and inspires others to join you on the adventure. If it just seems “sensible” it’s probably wrong.

You are looking for the unique value only you can deliver.

We’ve assembled Emergent examples of strategy in action in a one-page summary available for you to view or download from here.

If you believe it’s time for fresh strategic thinking, use this link to ask questions or open an exploratory conversation. It is an important discussion to have and one that ultimately can help transform your 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.

Often undernourished and under-served, strategic weaknesses create disconnects…

Every dollar invested in marketing is precious and ideally should be delivering a 10x return. Yet disconnects abound; engagement is often elusive and sales outcomes look more like getting lucky at the gambling table than a sure bet.

What’s wrong?

Most often the story isn’t right because the strategic game plan underneath is sub-optimal. It isn’t crafted to achieve consumer relevance and resonance. We discover the brand’s higher purpose, mission and values – what it stands for – isn’t fully leveraged or properly dialed in as a core strategy. Moreover, the brand story often isn’t really about the consumer – their needs and aspirations. Instead, it is focused on self-promotion of product features and benefits.

What happens when you put sub-par messaging into your communications channels?

• Your marketing investments begin to operate like a dice roll.
• Business outcomes curiously mirror the fate of the category’s rise or fall.
• Breakout advances in market share and velocity are more difficult to secure and so it’s back to the drawing board for further contemplation.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Investing time and thinking on the fundamentals of strategy and how your brand is packaged and positioned within the frame of its purpose – your “why” – can serve as a strong strategic guide for everything that comes after it in the marketing plan. Your top goals are to…

1. Tell the right story (mission-driven brand as coach, guide and enabler).
2. The right way (always heart over head to consumers as hero).
3. To the right audience (targeted to potential brand advocates and ambassadors).
4. In the right places (social, content and editorial).

The drawing board always owns the outcome

In the absence of world-class work on strategic thinking and refinement of what your brand is about, how it is positioned, defining what’s your unique purpose is and how you’ve accounted for radical differentiation – the brand communications effort is going to inevitably be more focused on “activity” – hitting singles and grounders rather than home runs.

Higher Purpose is magic

Simple Mills, an extraordinary higher quality brand of better-for-you crackers and baked goods, began its ride to fame by blending health and nutrition with taste using better ingredients. More recently the brand has found its higher purpose via a deep dive into sustainability readiness, commitments and performance. Their investments in regenerative agriculture are an iconic example of how food brands can establish themselves credibly as the sustainable choice.

Aqua Cultured Foods is pioneering the transformation of the sustainability challenged seafood category with products that replicate the seafood eating experience, but no fish involved in their creation. It isn’t a plant-based play to “mimic” fish, rather the deployment of precision fermentation to create an authentic analog to seafood without the fish. The environmental story here is remarkable and married to culinary experience. It is a compelling narrative.

Bond Pet Foods (client of Emergent) is about to transform the pet food industry with precision fermentation made proteins that come at a fraction of the environmental impact of animal-based ingredients. Meat, meat and more meat play a dominant role in most premium brand recipes throughout the pet industry. The story of feeding Fido without inadvertently damaging the environment is a significant shift for an industry with an intractable greenhouse gas emissions challenge. Sustainable pet food is about to become a reality.

Pepsico moving left and right throughout its system to address regenerative ag practices across its supply chain, while simultaneously making commitments that 100% of its packaging will be recyclable, compostable and biodegradable by 2025. The company understands the role of supply chain in emissions performance and is working to address challenging issues there. In a recent interview Denise Lefebvre, Pepsico senior vice president of R&D said, “we are prioritizing, investing in and expediting projects to build a more circular, inclusive economy.”

The path to sound strategy

Asking and answering better questions leads to improved thinking about strategy and brand mission.

Here are ten examples we use in planning:

1. What do you stand for?
2. How relevant and differentiating is it?
3. How compelling and credible is it?
4. What promise are you making?
5. Do you have the right products to deliver on that promise?
6. How are they positioned to deliver on your promise?
7. Are corporate goals and objectives aligned with the mission?
8. How does this impact your most important sources of business growth?
9. Based on this, who are your most valuable customers?
10. What should customers believe to help you achieve your goals?

Sound strategy can be served from a seemingly crazy idea

At one point in time Molson beer, Canada’s largest domestic beer brand, was suffering greatly in the U.S. import beer market. Molson had sold distribution rights to another U.S. brewer who proceeded to park the brand in its import portfolio and let it flounder there unsupported. Share declines were inevitable. The Molson leadership team stepped in and repurchased the distribution rights, formed a joint venture with Coors for distribution, and created a new company, Molson USA (MUSA), to handle marketing and sales.

Having formerly represented Molson’s chief competition, Labatt Blue, we pursued Molson and won the assignment to help MUSA rebuild the brand. Improved strategy came into play as we worked to enhance brand relevance and awareness. It’s important to note that in the beer business, distributors and wholesalers play a decisive role in the fortunes of any brand working to refuel growth, especially one with an uninspiring report card.

• Molson did more than 80% of its US volume in nine markets close to the Canadian border. To gain momentum the brand needed to extend its footprint in other high velocity import beer markets. To do that we needed to do something dramatic that would capture the attention of distributor decision makers in other key import beer destinations.

Molson Chiller Beach Party in Miami

Want to demonstrate brand legs and relevance? Move 1,400 miles south of your core territory into one of the nation’s most important import beer markets and generate traction. Molson Chiller Beach Party was an event concept built around iconography of snow and ice, with a heavy helping of an electronic music concert (The Chemical Brothers). But how could we capture the imagination of the industry while engaging young adult import drinkers in Miami?

We did something a little crazy but informed by a sound strategic mission: We wanted to generate awareness across the nation with a modest budget, and then push that effort directly to distributors. Stay with me on this – we put 270 tons of snow on Miami Beach in July. Surprisingly the machinery to do this exists. We rented a satellite video production truck and brought a video crew to the beach. Using large hoses and cameras pointed skyward, we filmed what appeared to be a freak snowstorm on South Beach. We asked young people (the target audience) nearby to join in the fun and make snow angels and snow men while attired in their bathing suits (proof its real snow).

Meanwhile we edited a 60-second video news package in the truck entitled “Freak Snowstorm in Miami.” At 2:15 pm we released a story and photos to Associated Press on the project. At 3:00 pm we uploaded the video package to satellite distribution ahead of 6 pm newscasts. Molson signage existed in the footage. Our goal to secure voiceover that the snowstorm was staged by Molson Beer as part of a concert event. The video news package was unique enough to get aired in over 100 markets. We quickly assembled a highlight reel of the news coverage around the U.S. and moved it to distributors as part of an on-premise promotions incentive package.

Molson’s business results turned around in the US supported by a novel move to generate news coverage a beer brand would normally never receive. We helped demonstrate how the brand was working to attract attention (among prime consumers of import beer) in a market far from its traditional home turf. What may have looked like a one-off consumer facing event strategy was in reality a move to gain investment priority from distributors.

Strategy, purpose, mission – and results

Asking the right questions, looking at the brand and business at its fundamental foundation of what it stands for and how best to elevate and differentiate it from others in the competitive set, can lead to outsized business results.

Oh one other thing, the Molson video and AP photo package was gobbled up by Miami news media. The resulting wave of attention drove thousands to the Chiller Beach Party and accounts nearby who were all featuring Molson products – happy distributor.

If you think it’s time for an evaluation of your strategic game plan and brand outreach, use this link and let’s connect.

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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.

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