Daniel Lubetzky

Pom Wonderful just came out with a new product that seems sooo weird to me – coffee drinks with pomegranate juice – but you can’t say they are not extraordinarily innovative and that their marketing is not at the cutting edge and refreshing.

Copywriters will admire the site: http://healthybuzz.com/

The product reminds me of when we launched many years ago at PeaceWorks the Raging Raspberry Chipotle sauce from Azteca Trading Company – which flopped for many reasons including that the flavors were a bit too "ahead of their time" (a year or two later a ton more Chipotle-infused spreads came into the market, but they eventually also died out).

But POM has such an awesome marketing muscle, has been such a remarkable leader in the food industry, and consumers seem to be looking for "buzz (energy) plus health," that this could be a big hit.  On the other side it could hurt POM’s parent brand – which I associate with all natural fruit, not with coffee.

I am curious how consumers will react

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.

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Today we received some samples of interesting products from Turkey: fruits stuffed with nuts.  I thought they were great possible additions to our healthy snacks family – minimally processed, all natural, flavorful, just sun dried.  But it was funny (and sad) that in informal focus groups, most consumers were turned off by the look of the dried figs and encrusted walnuts.  Ok, dried figs and walnuts may well look like coarse mummy brains as some of my team members were saying.

  But it seems like some people are getting too used to over-processed artificially created surfaces that are smooth, brightly bleached and homogenous.  It is interesting that, while there is a huge backlash against these overly-processed products, some consumers have almost gotten hypnotized into expecting factory-bland looks, without recognizing the health implications.  It is almost as if we are being conditioned to expect the factory look, rather than the natural.