Young and hungry – but not at all costs

The game plan for prod­uct mar­ket­ing has changed in recent decades. Today’s con­sumer groups are ‘believ­ers’. And this is espe­cial­ly true for young adult consumers.

– In prin­ci­ple, the area of food and health is a reli­gious mar­ket. Facts belong to yes­ter­day, and facts are true only if it is in accor­dance with your own reli­gion. Instead, we are attract­ed by prod­ucts that tell us somet­ing about our health or beau­ty, in a way that is con­sis­tent with our own con­cep­tu­al world, says Peter Wennström, CEO of The Healthy Marketing Team, an inter­na­tion­al con­sult­ing com­pa­ny, spe­cial­iz­ing in con­sumer com­mu­ni­ca­tion and brand posi­tion­ing in the area of food and health.

Commandments for success

At the same time, young gen­er­a­tions are demand­ing. Therefore, to meet suc­cess with your prod­ucts, it is cru­cial for food com­pa­nies to under­stand in-depth which gen­er­a­tion con­sumers are con­nect­ed to. The con­di­tions for mar­ket­ing today are fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from ten, twen­ty years ago.

– A big dif­fer­ence is that every­thing is search­able and thus trans­par­ent, says Peter Wennström.

Therefore, there are sev­er­al com­mand­ments to live up to as a food com­pa­ny: Be con­sis­tent in your com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Know care­ful­ly what require­ments the con­sumer places. Understand the consumer’s lifestyle and ‘reli­gion’, and know what con­flicts you need to resolve with­in it.

– And you need to know what role your brand has in the big pic­ture. It’s not just your prod­uct that should be eat­en. Your brand should also be eat­en, says Peter Wennström.

Generation Z are gamechangers

And those who pri­mar­i­ly want to believe in and eat your brand are today’s young adults. Those belong­ing to gen­er­a­tion Z. ie born around the turn of the millennium.

Unlike ear­li­er gen­er­a­tions, they do not belong to a youth cul­ture that is sep­a­rate or iso­lat­ed from the par­ents. They are influ­encers over gen­er­a­tional bound­aries. And they affect the agen­da today.

Think about Greta Tunberg. She is a Swedish cli­mate activist who demands the world’s lead­ers. The look in her eyes is seri­ous. She inspires and mobi­lizes young peo­ple around the world. She irri­tates world lead­ers and is at the same time a hero in the eyes of many – com­plete­ly cross-generational.

She is a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of gen­er­a­tion Z. The young adults who were born from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. They are marked by the time after the attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, and the cli­mate cri­sis. They are pas­sion­ate about mak­ing the world a bet­ter place.

Generation Z are gamechang­ers.

Affects the parents

The thing is that these young adults are lis­tened to. Their par­ents have involved them in the major­i­ty of deci­sions. This applies not least to the food, which should be sus­tain­able and healthy.

– The par­ents are so-called curl­ing par­ents. When the child says ‘I do not want to eat sausage any­more’, it is not the child’s prob­lem, but the par­ents’, which links the refusal to meat eat­ing direct­ly to the child’s psy­cho­log­i­cal needs. As a tra­di­tion­al par­ent, you want­ed to give your chil­dren food and nutri­tion, but as a curl­ing par­ent, you want to meet the child. There is a con­flict with­in the par­ent, and there­fore, the chil­dren of today have more influ­ence of the adults buy­ing habits, than ever before, says Peter Wennström.

These young gen­er­a­tions are lead­ing change at all lev­els. Generation Z has a sus­tain­abil­i­ty approach that per­me­ates their entire con­sump­tion and eat­ing patterns.

– By tra­di­tion, the girls, like their old­er sis­ters, are health con­scious. But the boys of this gen­er­a­tion are not far behind, says Peter Wennström.

Believe and know

Peter Wennström tells about the con­sumer seg­men­ta­tion his team has done, togeth­er with a research group at Lund University, which is based on the belief in food.

– The study’s work­ing name was the church of healthy eat­ing. It was clear, that young con­sumers judge facts based on what they believe, rather than on facts. In the study, we want­ed to map out what kind of “health reli­gions” they professed.

In this way, Peter Wennström and his team were able to iden­ti­fy four dif­fer­ent seg­ments (reli­gions) in the group, all of which can be described as healthy believ­ers, unlike pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions of healthy eaters. With the help of the new seg­men­ta­tion, it will be eas­i­er to under­stand and com­mu­ni­cate with the new gen­er­a­tion of consumers.

– Communication must be done in entire­ly dif­fer­ent ways today. Older gen­er­a­tions watched the same TV chan­nel, and we gained the same knowl­edge, that is, a sin­gle, fact-believ­ing world­view. The young adults, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion Y (mil­len­ni­als) and the younger gen­er­a­tion Z, live in their own media silos, says Peter Wennström.

Digital natives

The devel­op­ment of who owns the facts have changed entire­ly from the start of the Internet, and even more so from 2007 when we were intro­duced to the iPhone. After that, we entered a new world of communication.

Throughout grow­ing up, gen­er­a­tion Z has lived with the Internet and social media. They are dig­i­tal natives who alter­nate between the phys­i­cal real­i­ty and the dig­i­tal, and they expe­ri­ence no dif­fer­ence between them.

– Today we have social media, that cre­ates and strength­ens our diverse world­views. Therefore, these gen­er­a­tions live in dif­fer­ent worlds, depend­ing on what infor­ma­tion they choose. You can choose your facts, and what you are inspired by, in mar­ket­ing about food and health, is gov­erned by your own world­view. This is here we can help our cus­tomers, to devel­op the right prod­ucts and sto­ry for their brand, says Peter Wennström.

Food is an identity marker

Food is one of the most promi­nent iden­ti­ty mark­ers among young peo­ple. It is what you eat, or rather what you do not eat, that shows who you are and what you stand for.

Living sus­tain­ably and health­ily are essen­tial val­ues. Generation Z is asso­ci­at­ed with eat­ing more veg­e­tar­i­an meals. The con­cept of veg­e­tar­i­an­ism is a lifestyle cause and an indi­ca­tor of how one relates to diet, health, con­sump­tion and sustainability.

– They can per­ceive them­selves to be veg­e­tar­i­an, and describe them­selves as veg­an. But they are not con­sis­tent, and there­fore impact­ful. They can cheat by eat­ing a piece of meat every now and then. However, they would nev­er admit that they are not veg­an, says Peter Wennström

Labels are extreme­ly important.

– Your food is your iden­ti­ty, and it becomes your reli­gion. And it’s about sat­is­fy­ing your own needs, explains Peter Wennström.

Ethical labels

Being able to change labels on them­selves has prob­a­bly played a sig­nif­i­cant role in increas­ing the num­ber of flex­i­tar­i­ans among young peo­ple, believes Peter Wennström.

– Everything is about iden­ti­ty, and food choic­es are an active part of cre­at­ing iden­ti­ty. Brands are, there­fore, sig­nif­i­cant. From our research, we have cre­at­ed the con­cept of foods that talks. The food, ie the com­pa­ny behind it, must com­mu­ni­cate clear­ly to reach out, he says.

But when it comes to com­mu­ni­ca­tion with con­sumers, noth­ing has changed.

– We land in psy­chol­o­gy and social psy­chol­o­gy. The lat­ter point, social psy­chol­o­gy, weighs more heav­i­ly among young con­sumers. Many of them ask the ques­tion: How do oth­ers look at me when I buy this prod­uct ?, says Peter Wennström.

For Generation Z, the prod­uct is val­ued in two ways, he explains.

– Either it is insta­gram­able, or it is neg­li­gi­ble. The neg­li­gi­ble prod­uct is called eat and for­get.

The younger gen­er­a­tion also does not cook unless it is expe­ri­ence-based. In that case, they can just as eas­i­ly eat some­thing quick­ly and simply.

– We also see that the mid­dle cat­e­go­ry of food is on the way what we might call a dull or every­day food. The younger gen­er­a­tion would instead go out and eat, says Peter Wennström.

Urban nomads

The real world is now orga­nized around the dig­i­tal, and that means we are more often in motion. We are always on our way some­where. Like urban nomads. As soci­ety changes, it also affects the way we eat.

The new flex­i­bil­i­ty has giv­en rise to a phe­nom­e­non called snack­i­fi­ca­tion. Meals become like tem­po­rary points of attach­ment in our mov­ing lives.

 

But snack­i­fi­ca­tion should not be con­fused with the tra­di­tion­al small snack. In the new small-eat­ing cul­ture, we expect more of every­thing; more sub­stance, taste, qual­i­ty and nutri­tion than a pure fruit or sand­wich can offer on the way between two meetings.

– We are increas­ing­ly aware of what we eat, and more of us want to eat well. Snackification is about mini-meals. Liquid mini-meals are also a trend. The snack­ing may well con­sist of juice, smooth­ie or some­thing hot to drink, says Peter Wennström.

We carry our conflicts

Generation Z, how­ev­er, skips the plas­tic lid on the cup, straws and every­thing else about pack­ag­ing that is not per­ceived as durable. That’s because today’s con­sumers car­ry a vari­ety of con­flicts, and they have to be dealt with. The dis­putes are divid­ed into sev­er­al areas; local vs glob­al, fast vs slow, eth­i­cal vs selfish.

– A food pro­duc­er or mar­keter needs to under­stand where the con­sumer is. And it is cru­cial to help the con­sumer to find their way, says Peter Wennström.

Environment and convenience combined

He tells about the stud­ies his com­pa­ny HMT has done at soft drink man­u­fac­tur­ers in England. He dis­cov­ered a clear con­se­quence linked to con­sumer con­flicts. In a big city like London, fresh water is not avail­able every­whre, and the con­sumer is forced to buy water in plas­tic bot­tles. This is no longer a sus­tain­able con­sump­tion pat­tern for a lot of eth­i­cal­ly dri­ven con­sumers. They got bad con­science. But they are aware that they do not have a choice. Therefore, they require the man­u­fac­tur­ers to take their share of the responsibility.

– The soft drink man­u­fac­tur­er han­dled it all by open­ly con­firm­ing that there is a con­flict in buy­ing water in a plas­tic bot­tle. But the com­pa­ny also told, that they are switch­ing to recy­clabe plas­tic, and that they active­ly are work­ing on recy­cling sys­tems, which allows the envi­ron­ment and con­ve­nience to walk hand in hand, says Peter Wennström.

Transparency is crucial

Transparency and con­flict man­age­ment of this kind is cru­cial for gen­er­a­tion Z. They rate not only the prod­uct but the con­sump­tion itself. The feel­ing of what the prod­uct – and the brand – con­tains, promis­es and deliv­ers, deter­mines a buy.

For com­pa­nies, this means that they have to keep what they promise, both in terms of mar­ket­ing and, such as, eth­i­cal work­ing con­di­tions. We should not for­get that gen­er­a­tion Z is truth-seek­er and that they can mobilize.

Transparency describes today’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion land­scape. Companies can­not bury the head in the sand. You have to talk about conflicts.

– The trans­paren­cy must be total. When it comes to brand­ing, one must sup­port iden­ti­ty as far as pos­si­ble. You have to ask ques­tions such as: What is the pur­pose of con­sump­tion? What pur­pose does my brand have ?, says Peter Wennström.

Positioning of your brand

Each gen­er­a­tion con­sists of sev­er­al sub­groups, or tribes, with dif­fer­ent val­ues and needs. To under­stand how the groups dif­fer, you also need to under­stand and be able to relate to this. What makes them upset, engaged – or indifferent?

– Today, the ques­tion of how to build your sto­ry around your brand is extreme­ly impor­tant. It can be a sto­ry about the envi­ron­ment – and you can tell it in many ways. The same goes for using tra­di­tions, ethics or sci­ence. What you tell us about your brand is your brand posi­tion­ing, says Peter Wennström.

And to reach the young adult gen­er­a­tions, eth­i­cal brand posi­tion­ing is, if pos­si­ble, more impor­tant than ever. Still, gen­er­a­tion Z has not tak­en over the stage, but they have come out into the work­ing world and are already a buoy­ant group. If they still live at home, they have par­ents who buy what their young­sters want. It won’t be long before they take over both man­age­r­i­al and polit­i­cal positions.

The mar­ket is chang­ing and trans­paren­cy rules.