Trends that affect your company

HMT, the Healthy Marketing Team (HMT), is locat­ed in Malmö, or “Greater Copenhagen” as they call it. They are a con­sul­tan­cy that helps food com­pa­nies such as Oatly and Bayn to sharp­en their mes­sages on nutri­tion, health and wellness.

In 2019, the HMT’s Global Gamechangers 2019 report was pub­lished. I have read the 90 page report. Among many oth­er things it describes the nine­teen trends that affect com­pa­nies in the food and health sec­tor. It cov­ers not only what is hap­pen­ing now, but why it hap­pens and how you can use it to devel­op your brand.

The 19trends have arisen and are dri­ven by meta-trends. These are changes that occur over a long peri­od of time, and which slow­ly but com­plete­ly change the rules of the game. That’s why they are called game chang­ers in the report. Six game chang­ers are identified.

My idea is to here explore the six game chang­ers and the nine­teen trends they give rise to. But before we start our jour­ney, let’s equip our­selves with a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what trends and meta-trends are.

A trend is a trend is a trend? No?

When tabloids and mag­a­zines write about new trends it usu­al­ly isn’t a ques­tion of trends at all, in the aca­d­e­m­i­cal sense of the word. It’s rather more or less guess work on what is hip and not. That is not the kind of trends we’ll cov­er here.

With trend we mean a sta­ble and long-term change in soci­ety regard­ing e.g. econ­o­my, demo­graph­ics, val­ues, inter­ests or con­sumer pat­terns. In any case this is how the ency­clopae­dias put it.

In their book Practical Business Intelligence*, Linda Genf and Johanna Laurent describe the term like this:

A trend is a long-term change in a cer­tain direc­tion. It has move­ment, it increas­es or decreas­es. It has a his­tor­i­cal devel­op­ment and is ongo­ing. A trend is not some­thing that will hap­pen. It is hap­pen­ing now. A trend can also be proved by sta­tis­tics, exam­ples or oth­er quan­ti­ta­tive or qual­i­ta­tive examples.

Trends run for longer than you think

Trends are long-term. Even the so called short-term trends. A cycli­cal eco­nom­ic fluc­tu­a­tion is an exam­ple of a short-term trend, no mat­ter that it may go on dur­ing sev­er­al years.

Medium-term trends run over a decade or more. An exam­ple of a medi­um-term trend is that more and more con­sumers are buy­ing goods and ser­vices online.

Many of the trends cov­ered in the HMT report are prob­a­bly medi­um-term trends.

What cre­ates and dri­ves short- and medi­um-term trends are usu­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant changes that occur slow­ly but sure­ly dur­ing a very long time. For exam­ple, urban­i­sa­tion. These changes that feed oth­er changes are called meta-trends, pop­u­lar­ly also called mega trends. These are the kind of trends that HMT call game chang­ers.

From daredevils to dilly-dalliers

We are going to look clos­er at the six meta-trends (or game chang­ers, if you like) that HMT has iden­ti­fied. But first let’s look at how trends spread.

You have prob­a­bly heard of ear­ly adopters, con­sumers who catch on ear­ly, dri­ven by an insight pos­sessed by only a few. Early adopters make up 13-14% of all con­sumers. They are the first to embrace the new, despite the fact that it almost always leads to prob­lem and dis­rup­tions for them.

That last bit is not always entire­ly true. Two to three per cent of con­sumers are will­ing to hop on the train even ear­li­er. These are the dare­dev­ils who so strong­ly believe in an idea that they are will­ing to put up with almost any­thing. They are often a part of cre­at­ing the trend. That’s why they are called inno­va­tors.

A large amount of con­sumers are open to new trends and show an inter­est in them as soon as they become aware of them. But to be aware of and inter­est­ed in is not the same as to embrace. They are keen to try, but won’t run the line until “every­body else” is also doing it. They make up about a third of all con­sumers and are col­lec­tive­ly named ear­ly major­i­ty.

A large part of con­sumers are not at all as keen. Some will embrace the idea when it becomes too incon­ve­nient not to. They are called the late major­i­ty and make up about a third of all consumers.

We are now left with the lag­gards. Actually this is all too kind a descrip­tion. Like lud­dites they resist every change and stub­born­ly refuse to accept the new until they are forced to do so by cir­cum­stances. About 16% of con­sumers belong to this group.

Spreading innovation

This descrip­tion of con­sumers is a free inter­pre­ta­tion of the late Everett Roger’s descrip­tion of man’s will to embrace inno­va­tion. He was a pro­fes­sor in com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­o­ry and soci­ol­o­gy, most known for his con­tri­bu­tion to sci­ence with his Diffusion of Innovations.

Already in the late 19th cen­tu­ry they stud­ied how inno­va­tion spread. But the research only caught real speed in the 1930s, when it was inves­ti­gat­ed hybrid corn ker­nels were accept­ed by farm­ers in Iowa.

Studies show that the time it takes before peo­ple embrace an inno­va­tion is a nor­mal dis­tri­b­u­tion (blue curve in the fig­ure). This is why Everett Rogers in the begin­ning of the 1960s sug­gest­ed that the 2.5% who are quick­est to embrace a new tech­nol­o­gy should be called inno­va­tors, the 13.5% fol­low­ing should be called ear­ly adopters, the next 24% ear­ly major­i­ty, the fol­low­ing 34% to be called late major­i­ty and the last 17% should be called lag­gards.

The accu­mu­lat­ed num­ber of peo­ple who over a time embraces an inno­va­tion describes an s-shaped curve (yel­low in the fig­ure). This shows how the mar­ket share of the inno­va­tion is grow­ing. At first hes­i­tant­ly when only inno­va­tors and ear­ly adapters board the train. Then at full speed when both ear­ly and late major­i­ty comes on board. In the end phas­ing out as it’s most­ly lag­gards left on the platform.

Innovations are more than inventions

It’s easy to think of an inno­va­tion as an inven­tion of some­thing tech­ni­cal. That is what we usu­al­ly mean. But inno­va­tion can also be a new idea, or a con­cept. And these are spread in the same way.

One exam­ple is the spread­ing of the idea that it’s good to top up with intesti­nal bac­te­ria (pro­bi­otics), and to feed these (pre­bi­otics). Another is the real­i­sa­tion that not only those with dia­betes can ben­e­fit from damp­en­ing the fluc­tu­a­tions in blood sug­ar. And a third exam­ple is that the thought that pro­tein enriched foods are good for “reg­u­lar peo­ple” too, not only those who want to build muscles.

A connection between spreading and trends

The yel­low curve in the dia­gram above describes not only how the mar­ket share is grow­ing. If you stop to think you will realise that it also describes the devel­op­ment of a trend. It is the growth of the inno­va­tion’s, or of the idea’s, mar­ket share that is the trend.

When the mar­ket share grows faster dur­ing one peri­od than dur­ing the pre­vi­ous peri­od of the same length, we have an increas­ing trend. When it grows slow­er we have a decreas­ing trend.

The con­clu­sion is that inno­va­tions or ideas can cre­ate and dri­ve trends.

Trends of the kind that HMT cov­ers in their report are dri­ven by under­ly­ing ideas. It’s these ideas that HMT calls game chang­ers. These are the trends we are going to take a clos­er look at, and the 19 trends they drive.

I. Food for health and well-being

In the Japanese cul­ture they are of the opin­ion that food serves three pur­pos­es. Food shall give nour­ish­ment to sus­tain life. Food shall have taste, smell and tex­ture that pro­vides an expe­ri­ence. And food shall change phys­i­o­log­i­cal qual­i­ties in a pos­i­tive direc­tion (fur­ther to pro­vide nourishment).

So it is not strange that the con­cept func­tion­al foods was coined in Japan. It is used of food that is pro­duced with the third pur­pose in mind.

The con­cept was first used in 1984 in a Japanese sci­ence project to sur­vey the effect dif­fer­ent foods have on peo­ple’s health. But it took more than ten years for the con­cept to spread. This hap­pened at a con­fer­ence in Singapore where the aim was to unite Asian food cul­ture and knowl­edge with that of the West’s.

Perhaps it can be seen as the begin­ning of the meta-trend which HMT describes as “food for health and well-being”. The trend is the way East Asian think­ing is spread­ing to the rest of the world. More and more peo­ple are mov­ing from con­sid­er­ing food as fuel to see­ing it as build­ing rocks for bet­ter health and well-being.

According to HMT this meta-trend dri­ves four “reg­u­lar” trends:

1. Probiotics 2.0

Consumers’ inter­est in good bac­te­ria is mov­ing from the gen­er­alised to the indi­vid­u­alised. They look for prod­ucts that add the bac­te­ria (pro­bi­otics) that your body needs or prod­ucts that help these bac­te­ria thrive (pre­bi­otics).

2. Live to exercise, exercise to live

Ever more peo­ple see a fit body as a part of their per­son­al­i­ty. This means an increased inter­est among a wider range of con­sumers, in pro­tein enriched food and func­tion­al foods, for e.g. focus and recovery.

3. Sugar sensible

Consumers are mov­ing from accept­ing arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers as a replace­ment for sug­ar, to demand more nat­ur­al solu­tions giv­ing a more even blood sug­ar with­out com­pro­mis­ing on taste or tex­ture. A good solu­tion is sweet­ened fibres: Sweetening from a nat­ur­al source attached to dietary fibres and with the right texture.

4. A mental advantage

More and more con­sumers are inter­est­ed in foods that are nootrop­ic, or con­tain psy­chobi­otics. Nootropic foods con­tain sub­stances that increase your men­tal capac­i­ty. Psychobiotics are healthy bac­te­ria (pro­bi­otics) or sup­port for such bac­te­ria (pre­bi­otics) that has a favourable affect on mood, moti­va­tion and learning.

II. People are getting more numerous, older and richer

When Jesus deliv­ered his ser­mon on the mount he shared the globe with an esti­mat­ed 0.3 bil­lion peo­ple. During the first half of the 19th cen­tu­ry we were up to about a bil­lion. Somewhere between the Beatles split­ting up and ABBA win­ning the Eurovision Song Contest we passed the four bil­lion mark. At the turn of the cen­tu­ry we were six bil­lion. Only ten years lat­er anoth­er bil­lion peo­ple had been born. In just a few years’ time Earth will have a pop­u­la­tion of eight bil­lion people.

And we get ever old­er. In the mid­dle of the 19th cen­tu­ry the aver­age life expectan­cy in Sweden was about 40 years. Now it’s more than twice that. And the num­ber of peo­ple who have reached their 60th birth­day in the world has dou­bled in the last thir­ty years.

We are also get­ting rich­er (even if some get there quick­er than oth­ers). For instance, the world’s total BNP is more than twen­ty times as large today as it was a hun­dred years ago (in today’s money).

So we become ever more numer­ous, ever old­er and ever rich­er. And it goes on. According to the UN there will be 9.8 bil­lion peo­ple in the world by 2050. 2.1 bil­lion will be old­er than 60 years. And the mid­dle class­es will make up about a third, accord­ing to the invest­ment bank HSBC.

This will, accord­ing to HMT’s report, dri­ve three trends:

5. Let the children lead

More and more health con­scious par­ents, want­i­ng to make the most of their chil­dren’s ear­ly years, are try­ing to find new ways to give them super healthy habits. One of these ways is to involve the chil­dren ear­ly on in cook­ing to encour­age them to exper­i­ment with taste and tex­ture, so that they will be open to all kinds of food.

6. Pro-aging

How the old­er gen­er­a­tion views aging is chang­ing. More and more are invest­ing in their health. They want to remain active as long as pos­si­ble so they can enjoy life as much as pos­si­ble. They see them­selves as health con­scious con­sumers rather than aging con­sumers. Also the weak­er of the elder­ly put a focus on qual­i­ty of life.

7. Gender roles are (not) dead

The idea that there are gen­er­al gen­der spe­cif­ic needs in the mat­ter of health is con­sid­ered more and more out­dat­ed. Focus is instead on the needs of each and every indi­vid­ual. At the same time what socio-cul­tur­al group a per­son con­sid­ers them­selves to belong to, their iden­ti­ty, becomes more impor­tant. Consumers pre­fer brands that assert their iden­ti­ty. One such iden­ti­ty on the rise is female empow­er­ment.

III. Resources will be scarce

We have ploughed up a bit more than a third of all arable land on Earth. Farming uses more than two thirds of all the water we bring to the Earth’s sur­face. And the glob­al food and bev­er­age sys­tem, from field to super­mar­ket shelf, counts for a third of all the green­house gasses – more than trans­port, heat­ing, and light­ing does togeth­er. On top of this we throw away a third of all the food man­u­fac­tured in the world. This is not just a waste of food; it is a waste of land, water, ener­gy and of course busi­ness opportunities.

For most peo­ple there is no doubt that pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of food can­not go on like it does today. As a con­se­quence more and more con­sumers and com­pa­nies make prac­ti­cal and con­sid­er­ate choic­es that con­tribute to stop this neg­a­tive devel­op­ment. This is the dri­ving force behind two of the trends in the HMT report:

8. Eating activism

The devel­op­ment goes from a few prin­ci­pled activists dri­ven by a strong con­vic­tion, to many who make prac­ti­cal and con­sid­er­ate choic­es that con­tribute to stop the neg­a­tive trend. For exam­ple, while there is only one in one hun­dred Swedes who con­sid­ers them­selves a veg­an, one in four eat a veg­e­tar­i­an meal at least twice a week. Companies make con­tri­bu­tions too. For instance more of them make use of and refine by-prod­ucts from their food production.

9. The superiority of plants

The atti­tude to veg­eta­bles is mov­ing from being a healthy addi­tion on your plate to being the most impor­tant thing on your plate. An exam­ple is the inter­est in plant based “meat” – mean­ing prod­ucts that look, smell and taste like meat but are entire­ly made entire­ly of plant pro­tein. Another exam­ple is the increased demand for veg­e­tar­i­an ready meals and snacks.

IV. A natural and transparent manufacturing process

The man­u­fac­tur­ing of foods has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly dur­ing the last one hun­dred years. From bak­ers’ appren­tices who with their naked (and prob­a­bly dirty) feet tread­ed dough for the first fresh bread of the day, to food tech­ni­cians in white coats over­see­ing how enzymes dur­ing high pres­sure and with nick­el as a cat­a­lyst, makes chem­i­cal won­ders that con­sumers can eat.

The prob­lem of this fast evo­lu­tion is not that foods in gen­er­al have become bad or worse, but that the process from field to super­mar­ket has become incom­pre­hen­si­ble to the aver­age con­sumer. They find the man­u­fac­tur­ing process unnat­ur­al and what is pro­duced arti­fi­cial, less healthy and per­haps even haz­ardous. An expres­sion for this is the fear of E-num­bers. Some con­sumers con­sid­er them dan­ger­ous, when in fact they were actu­al­ly estab­lished to ensure the safe­ty of foods.

Consumers want food to be made from nat­ur­al ingre­di­ents and in a nat­ur­al process. This is a trend that has been grow­ing for some time now.

We who work in the food and bev­er­age indus­try know that “nat­ur­al” is a rel­a­tive term. Yeasts do the same “nat­ur­al” job in the bread pro­duced today as they did a hun­dred years ago. The dif­fer­ence is that there are no dirty appren­tice feet that tread the dough.

But to just point this out is not going to help. What is need­ed is increased trans­paren­cy. A trend that goes hand in hand with the demand for natural.

These meta-trends are what is dri­ving the three trends men­tioned by HMT in their report:

10. The process is the product

A prod­uct is much more than what the con­sumer takes home from the super­mar­ket shelf. It is the entire expe­ri­ence of the prod­uct. Previously expe­ri­ences were shaped by the prod­uct itself, its price, pack­ag­ing and place, its mes­sage in adver­tis­ing, and what oth­ers said about it. But now there are a lot of oth­er things affect­ing a con­sumer’s expe­ri­ence. They are ask­ing: What is it made of? Where is it made? What were the con­di­tions? How was it made?

You can no longer hide the naked truth. Stand up for it. Own it. And use it to cre­ate sto­ries that engage the consumers.

11. It is alive!

Bread that looks fresh years after the best before date is con­sid­ered unnat­ur­al and unwant­ed. The oppo­site, food with live bac­te­r­i­al- or yeast cul­tures, are con­sid­ered more nat­ur­al and some­thing desir­able. The inter­est in food made with tra­di­tion­al meth­ods, that includes live organ­isms, is increas­ing. Just take the pop­u­lar­i­ty of sour dough bread, for one. Another is kom­bucha, made by adding bac­te­ria and yeast to tea brewed with sugar.

12. The food (r)evolution

Consumers avoid things that are con­sid­ered unhealthy or cause prob­lems. The free-from idea has been pop­u­lar for a long time. Free from sug­ar, gluten, lac­tose… add the unde­sired sub­stance of your choice. But now con­sumers demand the inclu­sion of dif­fer­ent sub­stances. It could be healthy things, like pro­tein, vit­a­mins, min­er­als etc. But also things that make the food more enjoy­able. Do remove the sug­ar, by all means, but don’t change the taste or texture.

V. Technical innovations give consumers power

We are cur­rent­ly under­go­ing a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion in soci­ety. This means that old and famil­iar approach­es and meth­ods slow­ly but sure­ly are being replaced by com­plete­ly new ones. Approaches and meth­ods that pre­vi­ous­ly have not been pos­si­ble but now, thanks to dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of infor­ma­tion and process­es, are.

Information dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion means that infor­ma­tion that was pre­vi­ous­ly stored and trans­ferred in the shape of paper doc­u­ments and the like, is now stored and trans­ferred as dig­its (zeros and ones). An exam­ple is the infor­ma­tion on foods, that three decades ago was usu­al­ly just avail­able on print­ed prod­uct sheets, but are now sent to and stored in a data­base, from which, among oth­ers, the FMCG busi­ness­es can retrieve the information.

Process dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion means a change in com­pa­nies’, branch­es’ and mar­kets’ man­ners of oper­a­tion and busi­ness process­es, made pos­si­ble by infor­ma­tion dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion. One exam­ple is com­put­er pro­grammes for diet and menu plan­ning that com­pose nutri­tious meals with infor­ma­tion from the above men­tioned database.

Of course the food and bev­er­age indus­try is great­ly affect­ed by the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Most cer­tain­ly as the trans­for­ma­tion means that more and more pow­er is moved to con­sumers. This results in four trends, accord­ing to HMT:

13. The experience is everything

Two thirds of mil­len­ni­als share a pic­ture or video of their food before they grab their fork and knife. The behav­iour is an expres­sion for a human need for expe­ri­ences, and the need to share these with oth­ers. In its sim­plest form it is about giv­ing con­sumers an expe­ri­ence worth sharing.

14. My clan online

The dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion has made it eas­i­er for con­sumers to find like-mind­ed in blogs, pods, vlogs and Instagram accounts, and in the com­ment fields for these. And among par­tic­i­pants in forums and Facebook groups. It cre­ates new are­nas for meet­ing and shar­ing your expe­ri­ences and knowl­edge. And this, in turn, cre­ates new risks and pos­si­bil­i­ties for food and bev­er­age com­pa­nies for bad and good PR respectively.

15. Convenience is a lifestyle

Smartphones and apps like Swish [the Swedish app based pay­ment sys­tem] has made life more con­ve­nient for most peo­ple. And years after “smart homes” were first men­tioned we are start­ing to see signs of them becom­ing a real­i­ty. Smart speak­ers is a start. Soon, 5G will make the “inter­net of things” pos­si­ble, and quick­ly there­after we’ll have blockchains. This affects the food and bev­er­age indus­try, with new pos­si­bil­i­ties as well as new demands. And not only tech­ni­cal ones. Convenience takes many shapes, for exam­ple; increased shelf life with­out giv­ing the appear­ance of an arti­fi­cial prod­uct. Or pack­ag­ing that is easy to re-use or recycle.

16. Trace yourself

Digitalisation enables per­son­al­i­sa­tion. Personalisation means that the behav­iour of indi­vid­u­als is traced, to lat­er be used to pre­dict what the con­sumer desires. Depending on the means this may be expe­ri­enced as any­thing from desir­able to offen­sive. The trend is increased usage of per­son­al­i­sa­tion, as it gets more and more accept­ed and even expect­ed. This trend also affects the food and bev­er­age indus­try. Consumers want ever more foods adapt­ed to their own needs, and they are expect­ed to become more will­ing to, in exchange for per­son­alised prod­ucts, to do tests or use apps that col­lect data.

VI. Science for a smarter future

In East Asia it is con­sid­ered nor­mal to think of food as med­i­cine and the oth­er way around. What we eat should pro­vide us with ener­gy as well as and pre­vent disease.

That is not the case in the West. We draw a sharp line between food and med­i­cine. Food is nutri­tion. Medicine is a cure. Full stop.

But the line is no longer that sharp. The East Asian way of see­ing things is bring­ing the idea that food does not only con­tain nutri­ents but also sub­stances that may have a med­i­c­i­nal effect. The inter­est in such foods is increas­ing in con­sumers who want to pre­vent and alle­vi­ate. In the pub­lic sec­tor it is seen as a pos­si­bil­i­ty to reduce the cost of health care. The pro­gres­sion is slowed, how­ev­er, by EU’s strict reg­u­la­tions for health statements.

According to HMT the increased inter­est dri­ves three trends:

17. The root to healing

In East Asia con­sumers can buy plant based mix­es that alleged­ly have a pos­i­tive effect on your health. Some may con­tain as many as a cou­ple of thou­sand dif­fer­ent sub­stances sup­posed to affect dif­fer­ent parts of your body. As an exam­ple turmer­ic, gin­ger, leafy greens and berries are used to reduce low grade inflam­ma­tion. The inter­est in these mix­es is increas­ing in the West, and more and more of them will under­go west­ern evaluation.

18. Food therapy

Consumers’ inter­est in how food con­tributes nutri­ents for the body to stay and become healthy is on the rise. They are not look­ing for mir­a­cle cures, but rather a diet that con­tributes to pre­vent, or be a part of, a way to alle­vi­ate your spe­cif­ic health prob­lems. They are seek­ing a more holis­tic solu­tion that inte­grates func­tion­al foods in a diet based on nutri­tion­al science.

19. Longevity

We live ever longer. A com­mon denom­i­na­tor for a long life seems to be a good diet – rich in vit­a­mins, min­er­als and fibres. But the mod­ern diet is low on micronu­tri­ents – min­er­als and vit­a­mins which we need in minute amounts, like iodine and vit­a­min A. This could lead to an inabil­i­ty to heal, and to chron­ic dis­ease. To enjoy a long life you need a good diet and per­son­alised supplements.

Read more

Whew! that was a long jour­ney we just took togeth­er. We have looked clos­er at six meta-trends affect­ing the food and bev­er­age indus­try, and we have acquaint­ed our­selves with nine­teen trends dri­ven by these meta-trends.

The six + nine­teen trends are described in detail in the report HMT’s Global Game Changers 2019, pub­lished by Healthy Marketing Team (HMT) in Malmö. The descrip­tion above is not from their report, even if it has of course been used as an inspi­ra­tion and a source, so any and all pos­si­ble mis­takes are mine, not HMT’s.

Perhaps you’re won­der­ing if there is any­thing left to read in the HMT report. Absolutely! It con­tains much more than we have looked at here. First and fore­most the report pro­vides a more in depth pre­sen­ta­tion of the trends, includ­ing sug­ges­tions for how to har­ness the pos­si­bil­i­ties that the trends present. More than a hun­dred exam­ples of brands that made use of the trends is cov­ered. Six of these are analysed more thor­ough­ly with HMT’s method. Furthermore, four con­sumer seg­ments that can be described as ear­ly adopters of the trends are presented.

You can read more about the report, and down­load a sum­ma­ry, on HMT:s web­site.

Author: Thomas Barregren