Consumer-centric strategy wins every time…

Wine is a unique business characterized by literally thousands of competing brands all packaged and presented similarly. Where marketing is often built around vineyard and winemaker stories, sprinkled with a dose of influencer reviews from a narrow cadre of respected bloggers, writers and wine-centric publishers. Unlike the beer world where some larger brands can afford to spend heavily on consumer pull, for the most part, wine is a trade push story built around trial in on-premise channels while courting volume sales in the off-premise (liquor stores, supermarkets and specialty).

Brand awareness and equity is just a completely different conversation in the wine category. Here, consumer reviews and experience are likely to be crucial to fueling word-of-mouth. In the super-premium end of the category, mainstream marketing tactics can often hurt more than help by diluting the perception of “discovery,” uniqueness and artistry.

That said the wine business is also rich in storytelling material around terroir, viticulture and oenology. Yet despite the differences in such distinctions as soil condition, microclimates and the styles of winemaking, a pervasive “sameness” exists in the presentation of brands at retail.

In the end, wine leans into a very self-reverential form of communication. We have a saying here at Emergent: the brand that gets closest to the consumer wins. If you work backwards from that premise with wine, it doesn’t take long to see the storytelling value of drawing upon consumer experience and context with these brands.

Most often, that setting is about the marriage of wine and food.

Early in my agency career, I had the honor and privilege of representing Chateau Ste. Michelle winery at the time, a boutique vintner of premium wines in what was an emerging industry in Washington State.

Baptism by wine…

For a home chef like me, working with Chateau Ste. Michelle winery was a dream assignment – an opportunity for an immersive education about wine making from the masters of this unique artisanal industry. Initially, our focus was on telling the Washington Wine Story. The wine-growing region of Washington State roughly parallels the latitude of the winemaking areas in Bordeaux, France – so we worked to draw similarities in climate and soil conditions that would favor the creation of exceptional wines, especially their Cabernet Sauvignon.

It was a form of flag wave in a business preoccupied with Napa Valley notoriety.

Then something extraordinary happened that provided a real-world lesson in consumer relevance driving business outcomes.

Ste. Michelle’s owner, the U.S. Tobacco Company, decided to grace its small winery operation with a unique and unexpected parent-company “gift.” Ste. Michelle was to become one of nine title sponsors of the Statue of Liberty Restoration, an enormous public/private partnership enlisting some of the world’s largest corporations as primary contributors.

The question came in from the management team at Ste. Michelle, what are we to do with the Statue of Liberty Restoration sponsorship among all of these Fortune 100 companies? These are organizations with deep pockets to spend leveraging the connection! How would this be made viable for the wine business? Was there any path that would net a benefit to the winery and come at an affordable cost?

The outcome of a considerable team planning effort was a unique and innovative idea to produce a cookbook based on the immigrant experience and the cuisines they brought to this country from other lands. Wine and food is already married. A culinary approach would be consistent with the brand’s imagery and resonate with the consumer’s experience.

We started to build on the concept – the cookbook could be made available free for a donation to the Statue of Liberty fund. It could be purposed as a store level promotional incentive for wine buyers to take the brand, along with displays promoting the book offer. We could use the book launch as an innovative platform for media outreach.

Chateau Ste. Michelle – “Tastes of Liberty”

To this day, I am still struck by the courage and tenacity of Ste. Michelle’s management team led by then president Allen Shoup and chief winemaker, Bob Betz. The cookbook was to be done first-class in keeping with Ste. Michelle’s premium image – so a commitment was made to coffee table quality. The risks were palpable given the book would be offered free for a $25 donation to the Restoration Fund.

“Tastes of Liberty” literally swam in gorgeous, emotion-generating food photography and began with a very human anthology of the immigrant experience at Ellis Island. While wine pairings were present, every effort was made to assure the book would not be just a brand advertisement. It was to be editorial and faithful to culinary inspiration from cover to cover.

Wine buyers loved the unique idea and execution. They were astounded at the value of the ‘free-with-donation’ offer. Equally so, editorial media were awestruck at the quality of the recipes and the way it was presented. One magazine did a six-page, center-spread story on it. It was a successful venture in many ways and the risks Ste. Michelle took were amply rewarded as the brand secured national distribution.

While a case study example of integrated execution, the light bulb moment here is wine and food’s relevance to people and to their experience with the product. Culinary wasn’t in the background, it was a primary agenda with great care taken to assure the taste experiences matched well with characteristics of each varietal.

Yet today, so many wine brands only nod to food with a recipe tab at their web site. Going deep into culinary unleashes the magic of what happens when consumer experience and brand are aligned.

Yes you can (and should) talk about your soil, your French oak barreling, but taste done within the marriage of wine and food elevates this experience to the dinner table. And to a place consumers respect and recognize emotionally.

In the end, “Tastes of Liberty” was a storybook effort by a team of collaborating players on both agency and client sides. And evidence, once again, of what can happen when imagination, consumer insight and strategy coalesce.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to our blog.

Food consumption is going home.

The latest consumer survey report from Benenson Strategy Group (BSG) nailed the shift we’ve seen emerge recently: Seventy-seven percent of consumers “almost always” prefer a home-cooked meal rather than a restaurant option. According to the survey, twice as many consumers routinely eat home cooked rather than restaurant food.

It’s a significant change to be sure. We’ve watched the annual creep of food service spending for years as home food consumption lost ground. Consumers seemed content to abandon the kitchen in favor of outsourced meals. All those pots and pans sitting in the cabinet gathering dust as people often favored ‘do it for me’ —especially in the growing fast casual sector.

Well, not anymore.

A kitchen renaissance is in full swing as mealtime moves home and consumers increasingly look for food preparation ideas and menus they can do themselves. From scratch cooking to meal kits and supermarket prepared foods, it’s a mélange of everything. From full-on culinary exploration to time-sensitive partial prep solutions featuring fresh, often farm sourced meal kit menus — all are unfolding in the home kitchen.

So what happened?

We call it emergence of The Wholesome Life — an overwhelming desire for control and authorship over higher quality food experiences. At the crux of this change is a realization that consumers care deeply about managing freshness, ingredient decisions and using foods they believe are simple, clean and less processed.

Consumers, by the way, defined clean eating in the study as:

• Free from pesticides – 63%
• Free from added hormones – 49%
• Food that is all natural – 47%
• With no added sugars – 38%

Food Navigator’s coverage of BSG’s study outcomes described this in cultural terms as “a desire to eat fresh, wholesome and ingredients they (consumers) can both pronounce and customize to fit their unique dietary needs.” BSG Partner and survey author Danny Franklin reports a rapid climb in interest for “greater control, greater transparency and a greater perception of authenticity.”

Also at work here: realizing and preserving the emotionally-satisfying experiences of serving loved ones and maintaining (and honoring) family time. Right along side the relationship-burnishing benefits runs the passion for a healthier lifestyle, aided to a great extent by higher quality, real food options now prepared at home.

Home is indeed where the heart (and palate) is…

This shift home offers an extraordinary opportunity for food brands and retailers to build more meaningful and relevant relationships with consumers. Whether the motivation is better-for-you eating, satisfying a creative passion to experiment with new cuisines, or facilitate social experiences with friends and family, brands and retailers can become partners and enablers on this journey by offering useful, helpful guidance on:

• Menus
• Healthier preparations
• Snacking ideas
• Shopping lists
• Cooking techniques
• Kitchen hacks
• Kitchen tool advice
• Flavor enhancements
• Special occasion planning
• Global cuisines
• Food and beverage pairings

There’s virtually an endless array of opportunities to help feed this preference and behavior, and in so doing, brands can earn a place at the table alongside consumers and their passions around food.

Especially exciting, we think, is the chance to build video content that satisfies the need to know more — served with a big helping of emotional impact because food is such a visual feast. You can almost taste it, right?

So, when are you coming over for dinner?­­­­

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to our blog.

Fresh is the final frontier…

We believe that consumer insight should inform strategy. So we place a great premium around here on monitoring behaviors and cultural trends in the food business.  Even more so now that food retail is at a crossroads with e-commerce accelerating rapidly to compete for more shopping occasions.

Emergent recently examined a series of reports from the Food Marketing Institute and research company The Hartman Group, profiling shopping trends in the grocery retail business.

We’ve identified 10 developments worth watching as the food retail business continues to transform amid the growth of consumer preference for higher quality, more authentic and real-food products.

1. Of millennials, 43 percent are now shopping online for groceries at least occasionally, up from 28 percent in 2016 – a 15-point climb in one year!

2. Most of this growth is coming from households that shop online routinely, and thus are already comfortable with e-commerce transactions.

3. Important to note millennials are more likely, however, to buy packaged products online rather than fresh and perishable items.

4. Gen-Xers with kids are more likely than other cohorts to actively use grocery store apps.

5. Millennials with kids are more likely to participate in grocery store social networks.

6. Millennials are more concerned about CPG and retailer:

Honesty

Openness about animal welfare

Ingredient sourcing

Social responsibility

They are apt to make judgments on the basis of ethics and sustainability practices.

7. Twenty-three percent of grocery shoppers claim to avoid GMOs, mostly for health related reasons, ‘naturalness’ and a desire to know exactly what’s in a product.

8. Top three reasons consumers prefer locally sourced products:

Fresher –                               72 percent

Support local economy –   65 percent

Better taste –                        54 percent

9. Seventy-six percent of grocery shoppers think a home-cooked meal is healthier than out of home meal options.

10. Households with kids have the highest adoption rates for retailer prepared meal solutions; two out of three households purchase them at least occasionally.

Most impressive is the speed of change we’re observing in the food marketplace, and the need for retailers especially to work smarter. This is done by embedding uniqueness and differentiation in their banner brands, and creating immersive experiences for shoppers in both online and bricks and mortar environments.

For retailers and CPGs still vying for transactions, it’s critical to realize that consumers have changed the rules. Those brands and banners that embrace connecting to shoppers in ways they find more helpful and meaningful will earn the business and their loyalty.

More specifically, the path to consumer engagement is shifting and healthy lifestyle is driving this transformation. Emergent is a specialist in leveraging this insight to grow food businesses. We bring the latest insights and innovative strategies to help food businesses navigate the new consumer landscape.

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to our blog.

When we started Emergent, it was based on an overwhelming body of research and evidence that food & beverage industries are in a state of transition – and in need of new, fresh, refined and more relevant business-building solutions.

Of all the conditions impacting change, from the demand for transparency and clean labels to fresh foods – healthier lifestyle is the dominant driver of the consumer desire for improvement in food and beverages.

Evolution makes healthy all-inclusive

In the past, ‘healthier’ was an addition-by-subtraction model based on removing “bad” things – like sugar, calories and fat: so-called diet foods. Quite often, taste and eating satisfaction were also eliminated. This approach was bound to be problematic because it existed in conflict with the human inclination for indulgent food experiences. Guilt only goes so far.

As the concept of healthy started to shift, due to pervasive changes in U.S. food culture, the proposition started to look more like addition by addition. Healthy was about real, fresh, authentic, higher quality, less processed foods – more so than food science wizardry. The definition of healthy became more inclusive, broader and lifestyle-oriented.

In a manner of speaking, the concept of healthy morphed to become more three-dimensional. People decided they want higher quality foods, beverages and lifestyle products to go along with their overwhelming desire for a higher quality life. The key insight: consumers came to understand that the quality of what they put in their bodies and what they do are connected directly to their happiness and wellness.

In sum, we’ve encountered the premiumization of everything.

When we first formed Emergent, we believed our agency – devoted to mining this insight and bringing fresh thinking to the table – should become the leading voice and guide in this period of change.

Clients have come to Emergent seeking expertise to navigate these seismic changes. Some examples from our case studies page:

• Transforming Jamba Juice from a smoothie shop to a healthy lifestyle brand
• Helping Schuman Cheese expose food fraud in the hard Italian cheese category through True Cheese
• Leading local grocery chain, Potash, in its transformation to fulfill consumers’ new healthy and culinary preferences

Food & beverage brands are feeling the impact today

Large cap CPGs have been losing ground for years. We know that new, emerging, purposeful brands are gaining traction and attention in kitchens across America – and so now we witness the next wave – a true food renaissance taking place around us.

1. People are coming back to the kitchen, looking to exercise their creativity and control over preparations and quality of ingredients.

2. We’ve entered a period where transparency, health and wellness, safety and authenticity drive purchases more so than the food marketing stalwarts of taste, price and convenience.

3. We know the founder backstory and commitment to a real mission beyond the product itself is a critical component of the new brand marketing playbook. We’ve developed a new proprietary planning model that reflects this understanding – one that demands fresh thinking of how brand relationships are formed and thus how communications should be created.

Over the last five years, our clients have recognized that we at Emergent…

Are experts in this space; our services are aligned with answering these changes.

Help legacy brands re-stage and new brands accelerate. We understand the consumer and how they think, how they behave and how they consume information.

Create traction in a changing retail environment and are on point with where the world around us is headed.

Emergent has predicted changes in the food culture landscape over the years. These changes are now driving the new realities companies are facing as they reassess their growth strategies.

Contact Emergent to learn more about leveraging these food culture trends to your advantage.

Editor’s Note: I would be remiss in this anniversary message to not share my thanks and deep appreciation to those who have made contributions on our path. Thank you to our clients, my top-notch leadership team, our staff and specialty teams, and friends of Emergent. Here’s to many more! – BW

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to our blog.

Showing is more important than telling

Marketing expert Bernadette Jiwa recently wrote: “Harley Davidson’s most powerful marketing isn’t the details about engine size, speed or low-end torque that’s written in the brochure — it’s the stories riders tell about the feeling they get when they ride one. And often your most effective marketing may not even be done by you.”

Most efforts in food marketing will begin with telling consumers about facts and features that go into the product: its recipe, nutritionals, superior ingredients, preparation steps and taste claims. But the days of assertion marketing are at a close, as consumers move away from anything that looks like self-promotion and overt selling.

Food is experiential and cultural

Food – its preparation and enjoyment – is a social, cultural phenomenon and symbolic statement of what people would like the world to believe about them. People have connected the quality of what they put in their bodies TO the quality of their lives. Equally, they’ve discovered the benefits of flavor and experience achieved through improved cooking, preparation techniques, and the quality of the fresh ingredients they use.

The paradigm for successful food product marketing can be summed up in three equally important pillars:

• Sharing = forging communities
• Showing = inspiration
• Guiding = education

In terms of effectiveness and impact, consumers’ experiences, reviews and testimonials are most compelling. It is their assessment and comments that drive belief and trust.

Community development and activation cannot be underestimated as a fundamental strategic component of the food brand marketing plan. It is mission critical to create the forums and opportunities for consumers to provide their testimonials and feedback. It is their words that fuel and validate what marketers want the world to believe.

Thus, user-generated content (UGC) is paramount. It’s important to enable and encourage consumers to share photos and videos of how they use and enjoy your brand. Make it easy to upload; create incentives to do so.

What’s the marketers’ role?

You already know we live in a content marketing world. So, the kind of content you create is key to creating the levels of engagement you expect for the funds you invest.

Guiding, coaching and teaching should be the driving force behind your content marketing plan. This is what it will look like:

• Instructional and educational video on creative ways to use your product
• Content that answers questions
• Content that inspires creativity
• Content that celebrates home cooks, food enthusiasts and their stories

This kind of marketing puts the brand in league with the consumer as a partner and facilitator of their lifestyle passions. Nothing you do will outshine the benefits of acting as tour guide to a healthy lifestyle, and showcasing the culinary ideas that make food experiences transformative and memorable.

Talking “at” consumers will not be more impactful and powerful than the sharing of their own experiences and your efforts to showcase uses and ideas relevant to their interests and culinary goals.

In sum, put the consumer at the center of your go-to-market strategies and work backwards from there!

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to our blog.

My very first clients in the agency business were food companies. I was baptized in the world of CPG brand building and the power of awareness and message repetition to move business outcomes.

The changes in food culture and consumer behavior have taken their toll on the realities of marketing best practices, forcing changes in strategy and execution. As the definition of what constitutes quality has dramatically shifted (along with it a precipitous decline in relevance for many iconic brands) veritable unknowns have driven a lasting wedge into consumer preferences.

What’s sitting underneath this phenomenon is telling:

1.  Consumers are more passionate and engaged than ever in food and what goes on in the kitchen and around the table.

2.  People have connected dots between the quality of the foods they consume and the quality of their lives. Their core values have altered in the face of significant food culture changes.

3.  Food is now seen as a key to good health, happiness and lifestyle enjoyment. But how quality and good-for-you are defined is quite different.

4.  Demand for transparency, better sourcing, simple real-food ingredients, craftsmanship in production and honest labeling have shifted the focus to product pedigree. It’s experience over branding imagery and cinematic storytelling.

In the early stages for new businesses, brand takes a back seat to differentiated product experience, and operates mostly as a navigational tool. Thus, in many respects the “product is the marketing.”

Product symbolism is now the guide to messaging strategy. Communication of this product symbolism is focused primarily in highly networked social channels where early adopters share their finds and experiences. This feeds folklore and legend about consumers’ experiences with the product. Discovery is part of the surprise-and-delight proposition.

In this way trust is created not by brand image but by virtue of the product itself being separated and elevated from other mainstream options in its category. Unaided awareness levels are not key to initial success here. How the story is told in earned and owned media, rather, is absolutely vital.

Bare Bones Broth Company – an example of cultural relevance and aligned story

Disclosure: We’ve done project work with this company. Bone broth is an emerging category that on one level represents a culinary upgrade to its lower-end cousins in broth and stock. Bone broth brings a substantial new celebration of product news as a nutrient dense, savory hot beverage – one that could eventually become the healthier alternative to a morning cup of Joe.

Photo credit: Bare Bones

Bare Bones signals its cultural relevance through its enhanced protein delivery, plus higher quality, sustainably-sourced ingredients like grass-fed beef, cage-free chicken, organic veggies and a zero food waste mission.

The beverage experience is differentiated as a good-for-you savory option delivering proteins, nutrients and collagen, while the culinary promise offers greater flavor depth and richer sensory outcome to mainstream stocks in sauces, soups and braising.

The brand has low awareness, but at this stage that is less important. It is the devotion of the brand’s owners Katherine and Ryan Harvey to high quality ingredients, a more complex, culinary-inspired recipe and authenticity in manufacture that sets the stage for initial growth. How and where the story is told will impact their trajectory, as will packaging communication and tapping into other food culture appropriate experiences to anchor Bare Bones’ relevance.

Four Watch-Outs

1.  For emerging brands – ingredient or process compromise in service of lower price point runs the risk of sabotaging the very core of differentiation that drives the experience and social media conversation. So too, legacy brand owners must be careful in bringing their food-making, cost control expertise as not to upset the quality commitment now fueling growth.

2.  Additionally, channel selection is part of the equation – putting the brand in the right place where consumers shop and hunt for these new experiences. Placing the product in the wrong channel may lead to a social/economic disconnect, unhealthy pressure on pricing, loss of momentum, and eventual delisting.

3.  Thus, driving scale must be approached strategically. Patience is required. In service of rapid growth metrics, over-extending the brand too early beyond its core category and competency can lead to failures and misdirected resource investments.

4.  Protecting the mission ethos, participation of the founders and quality commitments that sit underneath the business is paramount.

Appropriate Investments

1.  Improved package design – many of the new brands in their early stages suffer from lack of experience in how optimal package design can telegraph their story. And so, it can be improved for stronger shelf communication.

2.  While media scale may not be an issue, the quality of earned and owned communication nevertheless is a thing. Often entrepreneurs are already time challenged in sourcing ingredients, expanding manufacturing and growing distribution. Assumptions that anyone ‘can do the marketing’ is simply not true. Topflight help is needed with experienced hands.

3.  Insight research has to sit at the head of the table where larger food or savvy equity ownership can assess the challenges and opportunities. Brands grow on the basis of relevance and meaning to their core users. Understanding the core values and desires of consumers requires insight research, directed by those with strategic skill sets in mapping strategy. Basing the business and marketing plan on hunches and assumptions is an invitation to more misses than hits. Hope is never a strategy.

4.  Wringing out inefficiencies – scaled food organizations have know-how in sourcing and manufacturing that can help improve cost structures and enhance margin benefits for all players involved. As stated earlier, this must be done without compromise to the quality and mission story.

The best advice we can offer investors is to help, support and add value short of pushing too fast on scale or disrupting the experience that is the engine driving emerging brand success.

Can legacy brands pivot in the midst of cultural shift?

The subject of another story to come…

Looking for more food for thought? Subscribe to our blog.