Surf the natural wave

More and more con­sumers reject foods with an exces­sive amount of addi­tives. There is instead a strong demand for “nat­ur­al” foods.

The trend can be said to have start­ed in 2008, when the jour­nal­ist Mats-Eric Nilsson, in his book The secret chef, “revealed” that ben­zine is used in the man­u­fac­tur­ing of mar­garine. The trend is today dri­ven by blog­gers, youtu­bers and oth­er influ­encers with many fol­low­ers. And tra­di­tion­al media enhance the effect by pub­lish­ing reports on the “cheat­ing” meth­ods of the food industry.

Even the great must adapt

A cur­rent exam­ple of how influ­encers dri­ve the trend and tra­di­tion­al media enhance it, is the anti-prize Årets mat­bluff [the fake food of the year].

The prize is award­ed by the con­sumers’ asso­ci­a­tion Äkta vara [the real stuff], found­ed by Mats-Eric Nilsson – the jour­nal­ist who set it all about.

In the begin­ning of the year Årets mat­bluff was award­ed to Lätta, after a good 30,000 par­tic­i­pants had placed their vote. The moti­va­tion was:

The clas­sic light mar­garine Lätta claims to con­tain rape­seed oil and but­ter­milk in sev­er­al places on its pack­ag­ing: ‘Made with Swedish rape­seed and tasty but­ter­milk’. It is also dec­o­rat­ed with rape­seed flow­ers. They enhance the fact that it’s made in Sweden. Only in the fine print on the back you can read that the main ingre­di­ent, apart from water, is the far more long-hauled, and for both envi­ron­men­tal and health rea­sons, dis­put­ed palm oil.

The prize was wide­ly cov­ered in Swedish media; Sveriges tele­vi­sion, DN, SvD, GP, Sydsvenskan, Aftonbladet, Expressen, Metro, DI and in a range of oth­er tra­di­tion­al media.

Årets Matbluff has been award­ed every year for the last ten years. And the effect? Two thirds of the final­ists have either changed their recipes or have sim­ply been tak­en off the market.

Consumers take ingredients seriously

That such a large part of the final­ists in Årets mat­bluff have been refor­mu­lat­ed or tak­en off the mar­ket shows the strength of the tsuna­mi-like wave of con­sumers exert­ing their pow­er. Further proof can be found in the many stud­ies that have been undertaken.

According to mar­ket research com­pa­ny YouGov’s annu­al studie of Nordic con­sumers’ per­cep­tion of food, cli­mate and health, half of them wor­ry about the ingre­di­ents in foods.

Another study studie, com­mis­sioned by the asso­ci­a­tion Äkta vara, shows that 93 per cent of con­sumers have reject­ed foods based on them con­tain­ing too many additives.

A studie per­formed by Sifo, the Swedish mar­ket­ing and opin­ion research com­pa­ny, shows that 62 per cent of Swedes found that the amount of addi­tives in foods was rather or quite impor­tant when buy­ing food. The only thing con­sid­ered more impor­tant was the sug­ar content.

Natural – a relative concept

Natural or not, it’s in the eye of the behold­er. What one per­son con­sid­ers nat­ur­al; anoth­er may con­sid­er unnat­ur­al. Just take for instance sweet­en­ing with stevia.

Stevia is a plant. With few excep­tions the plant itself is not allowed to be used as sweet­en­ing. But, the sub­stances that are respon­si­ble for the sweet taste – ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides – are allowed to be extract­ed and used. Does that make ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides natural?

Yes, in the sense that they exist in nature and are not cre­at­ed synthetically.

But no, if you ask Livsmedelsverket, the Swedish Food Agency. Why? Well, because they are extract­ed, which is tech­ni­cal­ly a process.

But what do the con­sumers think? Some say heck no, as ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides are extract­ed in a process. But most prob­a­bly agree that ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides are as nat­ur­al as reg­u­lar sug­ar – but not as unhealthy.

The fact is that reg­u­lar sug­ar is also extract­ed. In a process that is very sim­i­lar to how ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides are extract­ed. So why then, is sug­ar con­sid­ered nat­ur­al? That is a ques­tion for anoth­er article…

This is the natural trend

You can’t get away from the fact that food and drink go through some kind of process as they are pro­duced. Consumers are not so naïve that they believe any­thing else. But more and more want to avoid such prod­ucts that they con­sid­er arti­fi­cial. They pre­fer prod­ucts from a nat­ur­al source. That is what the nat­ur­al trend means.

Be proactive. Not reactive.

The nat­ur­al trend caught on ten years ago. There are still no signs that it will fade. The demand for the nat­ur­al is most like­ly here to stay. It is a real­i­ty that your com­pa­ny has to relate to. Resistance is futile.

I am assum­ing that your com­pa­ny has already made some adjust­ments. Perhaps replaced one ingre­di­ent with anoth­er from a more nat­ur­al source. Or you write cit­ric acid instead of acid­i­ty reg­u­la­tor, or use com­mon names instead of E-numbers.

That’s all well and hope­ful­ly enough at the moment. But there’s no rest for the wicked. Natural is a mega­trend. Under its umbrel­la a whole range of oth­er fast trends come and go. Trends that your com­pa­ny needs to adjust to. That is why you need to keep up to date on what influ­encers say and what con­sumers demand.

But why stop there? Why only be reactive?

The nat­ur­al trend gives you an oppor­tu­ni­ty to be proac­tive: to strength­en your brand, take a stand, cre­ate dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and moti­vate a pre­mi­um price.

Strengthen your brand

A brand is so much more than a name, a logo or anoth­er “mark” that is pos­si­ble to reg­is­ter. It is most of all the promise that con­sumers think the brand represents.

Take for exam­ple Paulúns. If you ask con­sumers who buy their prod­ucts what they asso­ciate Paulún with, they will prob­a­bly say that the food is healthy but tasty, made with nat­ur­al ingre­di­ents and com­plete­ly with­out addi­tives and sug­ar. The descrip­tion they give is Paulúns brand.

Paulún is a strong brand, as most con­sumers who choose their prod­ucts have a clear and most­ly coher­ent view of what it stands for (I assume).

But is Paulún a known brand? I would think not par­tic­u­lar­ly. If you ask the aver­age per­son to name all the brands they asso­ciate with cere­als, müs­li, crisp bread, bis­cuits, pas­ta, soups etc. there prob­a­bly won’t be many who’ll say Paulún.

In oth­er words, strong and known is not the same thing. So, which is more important?

Both are of course impor­tant. But it’s no use to have a known brand if it’s not a strong brand. In that case it’s bet­ter to be less known but strong among those who do know it. Like Paulúns.

The point of a strong brand is spelled prof­itabil­i­ty. Brand ori­ent­ed com­pa­nies are twice as prof­itable com­pared to those who don’t pri­ori­tise their brands. This is proven by the brand researcher Frans Melin in his research project Brand Orientation Index.

The nat­ur­al trend gives you the pos­si­bil­i­ty to strength­en your brands by tak­ing a ver­bal stand for the nat­ur­al, against the arti­fi­cial, syn­thet­ic and unnat­ur­al. And to take an active stand in show­ing you mean what you say by using ingre­di­ents from a nat­ur­al source.

Take a position

The posi­tion a brand has is the space it occu­pies in the minds of con­sumers, rel­a­tive to com­peti­tors’ brands. With tar­get­ed and tena­cious mar­ket com­mu­ni­ca­tion a brand can become top of mind with consumers.

Pandy was start­ed in 2015 by stu­dents who found a gap in the fit­ness mar­ket. They describe their prod­uct as a “low sug­ar and high pro­tein snack for the con­sumer that seek guilt-free indul­gence”. With a con­se­quent and per­sis­tent mes­sage they have tak­en this stand with the fit­ness con­sumers. Others could try to take the same stand, but Pandy has a head start which makes it dif­fi­cult for com­peti­tors to take over.

The demand for nat­ur­al foods cre­ates new posi­tion where “ingre­di­ents from nat­ur­al sources” is com­bined with oth­er appre­ci­at­ed qual­i­ties. Find such an unfilled posi­tion, and claim it with your brand. It will serve as a pro­tec­tion against competitors.

Create differentiation

Differentiation is one of Michael Porter’s three gen­er­al strate­gies. It means doing some­thing dif­fer­ent than every­body else, and earn­ing the cus­tomers who appre­ci­ate, above all, what you do differently.

Coca-Cola did some­thing dif­fer­ent whey they in 2014 intro­duced Coca-Cola Life in Sweden. Instead of using just sug­ar, as they do in Classic, or to replace it with arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers, as in Zero and Light, they replaced a part of the sug­ar with a sweet­en­er from a nat­ur­al source. The com­pa­ny’s Swedish CEO said at the time that the rea­son for this was to “meet changed lifestyle trends”.

By dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing the brand Coca-Cola Life as a “coke drink with less calo­ries with a sweet­ness from nat­ur­al sources”, Coca-Cola tried to grab a posi­tion for the brand.

Coca-Cola’s intro­duc­tion of Life in Sweden was a brave attempt at rid­ing the lifestyle trend for foods from a nat­ur­al source. The drink is no longer sold in Sweden but it still serves as an exam­ple of how you can catch on in the nat­ur­al trend through differentiation

Motivate a premium price

The foods your com­pa­ny man­u­fac­ture prob­a­bly have equiv­a­lent prod­ucts made by oth­er dis­trib­u­tors. If your prod­ucts are not dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed clear­ly enough com­pared to oth­er pro­duc­ers’ prod­ucts, if you haven’t tak­en a defend­able stand, and don’t have a strong brand, then the like­li­hood is great that you are stuck in the low price trap. Not an envi­able situation.

What is envi­able is the posi­tion Kung Markatta has on the mar­ket. They get twice the price for their chewy coke bot­tle sweets with nat­ur­al aro­mas, com­pared to what Malaco gets for their coke bot­tle sweets with (unnat­ur­al?) aromas.

So what is the con­clu­sion? Consumers are pre­pared to pay a pre­mi­um price for what is con­sid­ered natural.

Of course ingre­di­ents from a nat­ur­al source cost more than equiv­a­lent ingre­di­ents that are pro­duced syn­thet­i­cal­ly or through “unnat­ur­al” process­es. But as con­sumers are will­ing to pay con­sid­er­ably more for food from nat­ur­al sources the mar­gins are still high­er, despite more expen­sive ingre­di­ents. Not a bad deal, in oth­er words.

But of course, it takes a strong brand, known for its posi­tion which means a dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion with ingre­di­ents from nat­ur­al sources.