This Foodie Friday, I’d ask for an extra minute of your time so you can watch the commercial below. It encapsulates our business thought perfectly:
I’d say that the spot is less about “big” food than it is about authentic food. Real food, made with the same ingredients you’d find at home or in a farmer’s market. It is yet another manifestation of consumers being sick and tired of lies and their desire for authenticity. In case you hadn’t noticed, consumers are buying a set of values over a simple brand logo or image these days. I found this quote from a marketing blog which I think states it well:
The demand for authentic marketing is a reaction from consumers based on decades of deception and deceit from organizations with slick marketing campaigns and smooth interactions with the media. From cigarette manufacturers, food producers, banking and more recently, automotive, the public has become less trusting of the messages shared by corporations. What the public really craves is this: honesty.
You might think that you don’t have this issue, but it goes beyond your products themselves. For example, how authentic is your social media? Are you letting the consumers do the talking in their very real voices or are you heavily editing comments? Have you ever bought followers or likes to make your content appear popular rather than allowing your content to draw consumers to your brand?
Consumers are sick of photoshopped images, “editorial” that’s nothing more than an ad, and “astroturfed” virality. The age of making products less expensive to produce while making consumers less safe or healthy is gone. Maybe we ought to factor in the customer’s long-term viability as we think about “cost effectiveness” since their lifetime values certainly will decline if we shorten their lifetimes. Do you like that notion?
Consult Keith 