How focus and pruning leads to growth

Since the Industrial Revolution, bigger has been viewed as better in the food and beverage business.

Bigger usually suggests more powerful – more capable of dictating the behaviors within a product category plus an ability to unleash a torrent of assets that work to overwhelm smaller competitors. In marketing, the common denominator in media strategy – even in the era of fractured and splintered audiences – is the lure of cobbling together scale. The motivation for scale might be the sheer balance-sheet magnetism of dramatic market projections driven from a belief that “all things to all people” is still a workable business model.

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This is our fifth and final installment of Emergent’s “2015 Emerging Food Trend Forecast” series covering the top four food and beverage industry mega-trends for this year and implications for brand marketing and communications.

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Consumers are not targets, they are people to build relationships with.

Brands must become more human. Now what…?

By Bob Wheatley

I apologize. This post is a bit soapbox-ish. Can you feel the exhorting wind up? Well. Here goes…

There’s a saying: old habits die hard(er). For some businesses that’s a godsend as consumers come back again and again, if for no other reason than the intractable benefits of habit. It’s also true in default marketing behaviors, but these days with decidedly more frustrating results.

It’s harder than ever to market to consumers. The typical “build a positioning platform, message test and run it out there through every relevant channel” is harder to make stick. Why? Consumers work overtime to avoid contact with attempts at persuasion or anything that resembles it.

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