Quality and craftsmanship has a new form of expression

Fairfield, New Jersey-based Schuman Cheese, a market share leader in the U.S. Italian cheese business, recently announced the cheese industry’s first product trust mark – True Cheese®. It is intended to provide validation and verification that products bearing the seal are true, real and correctly labeled.

Full disclosure: We represent Schuman and played a role in developing this program.

The backstory here is important: The Italian cheese category in the U.S. has been rife with adulterated and mislabeled products for decades. Operating behind a curtain, economically motivated food fraud has existed primarily because more profit can be extracted by diluting (and then misrepresenting) the quality of ingredients. This practice is followed by some less principled players despite the fact the entire process is illegal. What’s labeled “Parmesan cheese” in some cases just isn’t.

It is indeed a rare thing when a leading company jumps into this arena to address a well-established form of misbehavior. Schuman is an exceptionally principled organization run by a passionate CEO in Neal Schuman, who sees the existence of adulteration as a bona fide blight on quality perceptions of the category they lead.

There’s a new sheriff in town: the mindful consumer

So yes, True Cheese represents a verification of products displaying the mark that, indeed, they are correctly made, using the right ingredients and properly labeled – validated by an outside third party testing organization (Covance Food Solutions).

That said there’s another very important story at work here…

Millennial consumers, 90 million strong, are exercising their strength and numbers in new and interesting ways in the food industry. They are helping usher in a new era in food brand marketing shaped by different perceptions and values, and driven by new behaviors in purchase motivation.

For decades food brands went to market believing taste, price and convenience messages were the only real motivating purchase drivers. A comprehensive consumer study announced earlier this year by Deloitte and the Food Marketing Institute, documented for the first time considerations such as safety, transparency, social impact and health and wellness are taking the lead in food purchases.

Numerous ethnographic studies released over the last three years by The Hartman Group, show a seismic shift in the population across all age and economic segments, towards preference for higher quality, responsibly made and authentic food experiences.

This is the age of the mindful consumer. They look just as hard at a company’s beliefs and visibility to their supply chain, as they do to label integrity, and sustainability claims. They are quite capable of quickly separating self-reverential statements of taste superiority from legitimate proof points of what goes into the product and how its produced (having something quite important to do with aforementioned quality expectations).

So now, True Cheese becomes a new way to step into a more reasoned and “mindful” conversation about quality and craftsmanship. Proof the product was made with the right ingredients. Proof it is actually Parmesan and not a cheap imitator. Moreover, it’s a gateway to conveying the quality of the milk used, as well as the practices and standards followed at the dairy farm, and a commitment to integrity and tradition in cheese making.

Served up in a manner both relevant to and appropriate for a consumer who is actually interested, engaged and cares about these very things.

What’s at stake here is trust, the most important and occasionally overlooked often under-played component of achieving brand traction and growth. This is especially important in an era when consumers are in complete control of any brand relationship.

Achieving trust is not easy when reports of integrity violations hit the headlines routinely in nearly every aspect of life. People want to believe. They also want to know WHY they should believe.

Thus, a trust mark isn’t merely about assurance, it is also about how to separate and elevate a brand by verifying the story that sits underneath its creation.

Products from one brand to the next may follow similar processes and approaches to how things are made. Technology superiority is both hard to achieve and nearly impossible to sustain. But brand integrity and communication are own-able – in part because it is a mirror held up closely to the values and beliefs of the organization that espouses it.

The world is hungry for this kind of reassurance. True Cheese helps usher in a new conversation.

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We are witnessing the emergence of a new digitally informed consumer, a more thoughtful and intentional human who puts real reflection into their purchase decisions.

1. They contemplate perceived impacts on health, the environment and social responsibility.
2. And the influence of their actions, decisions on family, the community and the world around them.
3. They look for value added attributes (purposeful mission) from brands and weigh if there’s alignment with their own principles and beliefs.
4. Their purchase decisions are largely symbolic; visible evidence of what they want the world to perceive of them and their lifestyle choices.
5. They want to make considered and more informed choices of the products they buy.

This experienced, media savvy cohort is rapidly becoming a diploma-carrying Master of Media Consumption – able to filter and discern useful content from masked selling. The availability of deep troves of information to anyone anywhere has resulted in agile, media-shrewd screen searchers who quickly curate what’s important to them – simultaneously discarding anything deemed as brand hype or veiled persuasion. Consumers are either found or lost based on the relevance of your communication to them.

For food and lifestyle marketers, the dilemma is crystal clear: it’s no longer enough to push the product-centric message out there. Even using social platforms and pay-per-click tactics to identify and confront consumers with a brand message based on their digital behaviors.

Whatever stack of SaaS tools might be bolted together in an effort to aggregate eyeballs and access media channels, the same challenge exists: the conscious and conscientious consumer’s frequent use of the ‘skip’ button. The consumer is in complete control.

Brand-as-Mentor Communication

Our study of this consumer has revealed an interesting need that brands can fulfill. Consumers have a recurring, ongoing requirement for guidance, encouragement and insight. This is what the best brands do – they counsel, advise and recommend.

• Brands in this mode can create communities of like-minded people for the purpose of sharing stories and ideas.
• Education can be offered on subjects of intrinsic interest to customers, helping enhance their ability to improve and more fully engage their passions.
• Experiences and events can be created that bring their interests to life.

Where does this leave the marketer? We think in a perfect position to assume the role of coach and valued advisor. The question begging an answer: how can brands offer useful guidance on the consumer’s journey?

Yes, this is a job for content marketing!

“Content marketing is the only marketing left,” said Seth Godin. His assessment is a telling reflection of the relentless migration from selling to helping, from persuading to listening and serving.

• It should be noted, this consumer who works routinely to get behind the corporate velvet rope and understand the details of ingredients, sourcing, integrity and company purpose, is attracted to brands that are a reflecting pool of their lifestyle preferences.

This should be qualified: content is not long-form product advertising or some facsimile of it. It is grounded in relevance and respect for the consumer’s concerns. Content marketing is a form of infotainment and reporting that engages based on the audience’s interests, more so than pushing product features.

There are clear challenges and barriers to doing it right because marketing and content priorities can occasionally fight with each other. How, you ask?

Emergent as Brand Mixologist

What happens when you attempt to put informing and educating in the same glass as pushing transactions? Minneapolis firm Clarity Cloverdale Fury recently described this scenario as an incendiary clash of agendas.

It’s a delicate balance: the blend and mix of communication in service of the company’s efforts to grow business while also acting in support of the consumer’s best interests and needs. Proportions matter. Tone and words are important. Subject is critical. Relevance is a litmus test for meaning.

Emergent employs a message map and insight-based personas system to help blend the brand into consumer relevant conversation. We have learned from experience this provides the right mix, teeing up the opportunity for mentorship while putting the brand in league with consumer lifestyle needs. We are strategic engagement and content marketing mixologists.

The challenging questions food, beverage and lifestyle brand marketers should answer: How can a brand communications platform be developed around a role of mentor and guide? What kind of content can be created that puts the brand in the position of educating and advising consumers on their relevant lifestyle interests that intersect with the business category?

Done right, and you can step beyond the ‘skip’ button and into the role of trusted ally.

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