Food Ingredients
Live healthier with the new Mission App from Whole Foods
For all you foodie app junkies out there, and you know who you are! … check out the new “Mission App” from Whole Foods.
Hats Off to Whole Foods … this app is a really strong example of both mobile application and peer-to-peer communication … and another reason that my iPhone looks so used and beaten up. From a marketing point of view, apps like this one further elevate and extend the Whole Foods brand … certainly this app is a perfect manifestation of the Whole Foods mission.
The Mission App allows users to earn badges for taking steps toward various goals. There are more than 70 “missions” for you to choose from. Within each is a checklist of foods to eat, things to do, even movies to watch. All designed to educate and push you out of whatever rut you’re stuck in. When you successfully complete all of the requirements within a category you earn a badge. You can share your badges with friends via twitter, facebook or email.
Personally, I’m not going for any badges. For me, the usefulness is the Tips section … it offers more than 300 tips across nine subject matters: Cooking, Fresh & Frugal, Green Living, In the Store, Nutrition, Storage, Time Savers, Your Wellness and a kind of strange group called Worth a Try. I’ve found many of the tips to be helpful, especially those in Cooking and Storage.
Fun, succinct and social. Oh, and free! Available for iPad, iPhone and iPod.
The Lay’s® Locavore Alert … a real potato farm could be coming to your town!
High noon at the Lay's event in Chicago
Looking for the elusive Canola plant
There was a recent report on genetically-modified Canola from NPR. Typical NPR stuff with one exception—the reporter talked about the Canola plant. Plant as in organic item that grows in the ground, not a building that processes raw materials to produce Canola Oil. Canola oil comes from the rapeseed plant. By the way, the word rape comes from a Latin word meaning turnip. The word Canola is an acronym standing for Canadian Oil, Low Acidity. It was a smart branding decision as no one is going to purchase a product with the word “rape” in it. Come on NPR, do your homework.
If You are Going to Serve Food, Learn to Cook
I spent part of this week at IFT, which is the show for food technology. Many of the companies that were there had ingredients to promote, and did so with sampling. A fine strategy if you want to prove your ingredient doesn’t affect the taste of foods, but one caution—learn to cook and bake. A good half of the samples weren’t tasty and some were borderline inedible. As one marketer pointed out, they don’t sample their ingredients because their company isn’t in the cooking business. Smart.
Too bad the company that put out the really bad buffalo chicken nuggets didn’t bother eating them. Would have saved me and a lot of passersby the trouble of throwing these out.
Why you need an American Agency
For any number of products, the US is one of the top markets in the world, hence the desire from companies all over the globe to sell into the US. From herbal teas to the most obscure B-to-B widgets imaginable, you can’t escape good foreign advertising.
It’s good foreign advertising because it works well—I am assuming—in the country of origin. But here, not only does it fall flat, the attempts at Americanization range from dumb to laughable to insulting. That’s not to say the American companies haven’t committed their own international faux pas. Ad books are littered with the legendary stories of “Coke adds life”, “Fly Leather”, the Chevy Nova and “It Takes a Tough Man to Raise a Tender Chicken” (actually, it’s a tough village). It’s probably safe to assume that most American companies have learned their lesson by now and at least hire a localization firm, if not another agency.
But the international hits keep coming. Lately, I have seen trade ads for German companies who spell America and other words with a “k”, English copy written by non-native speakers that doesn’t read well in English and my new favorite, above. I think it’s a weight-loss tea. You can’t see it, but their slogan is “Just Drink It”.
Viral Gets Nestle … The Palm Oil “Incident”
Yes, it’s great when viral advertising takes hold, isn’t it? Nestle Amsterdam achieved “viral advertising icon status” with its fake Jesus commercial (see previous blog posting). Nestle corporate achieved “viral advertising wrath”, big-time, by attempting to remove a viral Greenpeace ad linking Kit Kat bars to climate change from YouTube . “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Société des Produits Nestlé S.A.”
What chaos! What a backlash!
Activists, outraged consumers and digital geeks all united in the thrashing of Nestle throughout social media outlets. Many were incensed by Nestle’s use of palm oil, purchased through Sinar Mas—a company with one of the worst environmental records and linked to illegal deforestation. Others were angry that a corporation would violate the basic tenets of social media by banning someone else’s video.
Nestle’s rather benign and rarely visited Facebook page was barraged with comments ranging from generally to aggressively nasty comments and other creative expressions of the Kit Kat and Nestle logos. Nestle further dug themselves into a hole by threatening action against copyright violators.
As the online frenzy moved to the terrestrial world through protests and events, Nestle finally took it seriously and on May 17, issued a statement that Sinar Mas is no longer part of their supply chain. However, Nestle does still purchase palm oil from Cargill, which is supplied in part by Sinar Mas. So, the online discussion continues and the anti-Nestle throng continues to multiply.
I like to talk with our clients about emerging consumer demands for transparency … and provide a gentle warning that the days of the passive consumer are over. This trend has steadily grown over the past couple of years, as consumers started scrutinizing company practices in addition to the nutrition labels.
Sustainability is also a huge topic on the minds of consumers, increasing considerablyly as purchase criteria for both foods and supplements. And companies can’t disrespect this; consumers have ways of peeking behind the curtain and are not shy about voicing their findings loudly, clearly and globally.
For those who haven’t seen it, here’s a link to the Greenpeace video as well as info on Nestle’s announcement to discontinue with Sinar Mas.
