A report last week from the Federal Trade Commission found that the makers of soda, fast food, cereals and other products spent $1.6 billion in 2006 on marketing aimed at children and teenagers.
…While almost $500 million a year is spent on soda advertising, only $11 million is spent on ads for fruit and vegetables.
I’ve always admired Coke’s marketing. And, like most big companies, it has been careful to be genuine when making specific claims. Yes, it is lifestyle-centered and romantic, so it gets carried away – but that is what has made it such a majestic brand. And you don’t normally have big companies make ridiculous claims they can’t stand by. They are too smart for that. Alas, Coke has now come out with the preposterous claim that its formula has "no artificial ingredients."
Say that again? The drink is a definition of artificial. Tasty. But artificial. Without getting into whatever secret ingredients that are over-processed by definition, and without getting into carbonation, you need to go no further than one of its core ingredients: High fructose corn syrup (HFCS). HFCS is a definition of a man-made chemically-created compound – no matter what lobbyist may try to dupe is into confusing us and harming our health – to the point that HFCS doesn’t even get absorbed by the liver and bypasses it, forming fat directly, and contributing to obesity.
It is embarrassing that an institution like Coca-Cola would be part of an effort to destroy the meaning of "all natural." And to contribute to America’s obesity and diabetes epidemics through misinformation.
What do you do when your formerly fun and irreverent brand has been threatened by months of media criticism over alleged corporate missteps? Regardless of where you stand on whether Microsoft tried to manipulate Yahoo or Jerry Yang missed an opportunity to drive shareholder value (or far harsher assessments including this one from Joe Nocera – and the counter-reply from the "fake Steve Jobs"), if you are part of Yahoo’s management – you need to get your team’s spirit back up, and you need to re-focus the world on the deep base of greatness and funk you’ve established over the years.
In a quirky way, this is exactly what this video, which is getting a lot of play and coverage, such as here, is achieving.
Whoever came up with this move at Yahoo deserves a lot of praise.
I like these quotes from our very own Phil Walotsky on this week’s issue of Food Business News:
"Healthy snacking is very hot," said Phil Walotsky, spokesperson for KIND Fruit + Nut bars, PeaceWorks Holdings, New York. "Where we see a great deal of our growth is adoption by casual consumers who look for a healthy option with emphasis on taste and natural ingredients. We’re finding that nutrition bars are being used less as an activity-specific food — for example, something you only eat after a workout — and more people are adding them as a staple of their diet."
And:
"We also believe consumers will continue to become more educated about the food they purchase, and will reward companies that produce healthy snacks that reflect their more discerning desires, tastes and values," Mr. Walotsky said. "Consumers will continue to look for products that are less processed and foods that don’t contain suspect ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils, and instead turn to foods with integrity that taste great and provide real nutritional value."
Over the last few weeks, the High Fructose Corn Syrup Lobby has begun a spin campaign to try to confuse consumers into thinking that HFCS is no different from other natural sugars, but studies including one from the University of Texas last week (and one from University of Florida three years ago) have confirmed that fructose causes fat build-up at unusually high levels and with unusually damaging consequences.
Consumers are increasingly demanding that manufacturers replace high fructose corn syrup with natural alternatives, such as cane sugar, agave syrup, or as in the case with KIND, honey and glucose. Research has confirmed that High Fructose Corn Syrup is more fattening than other sugars like sucrose and glucose. And high fructose corn syrup is cheap and concentrated, but hits the blood stream faster and is at least a partial culprit for the obesity and diabetes epidemics taking over.
In spite of the Corn Industry Lobby and their efforts to confuse consumers, after decades of manipulating Americans into higher consumption, including by lobbying to impose tariffs on imports (such as healthier alternatives like raw cane sugar) that compete with HFCS, people are wising up.
Interesting cultural observation: in the US, people take one cent or one dollar off to create a perception of value: an iTunes song costs $0.99, not $1.00; a KIND Bar retails for $1.99, not $2; a jacket is on sale for $199 instead of $200. In Great Britain, that "discounted" valuation is a sign of poor quality and is not used. A product costs 1 pound. If it is going to be less, it goes down to 0.79 – 79 pence. Almost nothing is ever sold for 0.99 or 1.99 in the UK, and certainly also not for 99 or 199 pounds. It’s rounded numbers. Telling of the entire business personality of these countries.
Pom Wonderful did something, err, wonderful for the food industry by fighting to uphold the standards of the category in which it leads, pomegranate juice, to the point of successfully suing unscrupulous new entrants who tried to ride on its coattails by marketing lower grade products as if they were the real thing:
"Consumers buy the products to gain the health benefit – if that is not present then there are problems for the category. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should be more active in this area but we all know how under resourced they are. We are trying to protect the integrity of the category." Rob Six, spokesperson for Pom Wonderful
"Purely Juice", a company that claimed to sell purely pomegranate juice that was in fact primarily cane sugar and corn sweetener was ordered to pay $1.5mm to Pom.
The category for healthful snacks where KIND leads gets similarly hurt when consumers are duped into buying "natural" "nutritional" and "energy" bars whose ingredients contain refined sugars like high fructose corn syrup and refined flowers and hydrogenated oils, contributing to the diabetes and obesity epidemics overtaking America. Similar enforcement action should follow for companies – big or small – that manipulate what it means to be "all natural" and "healthful."
I was struck at this Fancy Food Show at how many companies are starting to tie their new products to commitments to give donations to social causes.
You’d think that is great and to be encouraged, but I was quite turned off, because it was so clear that to a lot of these companies it was not a true mission with sincerity of purpose, but a shallow gimmick.
The concept of "we donate X% of our profits to Y Cause" is being manipulated to the detriment of efforts that are sincere and real. I wish some third party organization fostering transparency in socially responsible business behavior would audit/inspect claims in this field.
I asked a few of them which organizations they donated to, or how much they had donated, and most said, "well, we are not profitable yet, so we haven’t donated anything." [And some had been in business for a few years already]
Isn’t it unethical to claim you are donating something when you are not? Ok, you are not profitable yet? And you can’t find it logical to donate something? Then you are not entitled to make the claim that you are donating!
