Is TV's Big Food Gravy Train Being Derailed?

Shoppers who increasingly want fresher more natural and less processed foods with fewer preservatives or artificial ingredients are wheeling their carts past the mainstay pantry staples that Big Food has been hawking since the days when Ritz sold housewives on whipping up a dish called Mock Apple Pie yep apple pie without applesOr to rephrase a saying from the quotMad Menquot days it39s harder and harder to get the humans to eat the human food That means indigestion for those who benefited from the billions of dollars spent each year on advertising marketing and promotions by Big Food stalwarts such as Campbell Soup ConAgra General Mills Heinz Hormel Foods Kellogg Kraft Mars PepsiCo Smucker and Unilever The huge profits Big Food made peddling prosaic products money shared with agencies and media outlets kept the gravy train on track for decades but the end it appears is nighBig Food is quotreally going to face some challenges going forwardquot Lucie Greene worldwide director of the Innovation Group at J Walter Thompson said in an interview after a recent presentation at the agency39s New York headquarters on food and drink trendsConsumers are telling J Walter Thompson Intelligence that they believe quotBig Food is not acting in our interestquot she added which is especially worrisome at a time when consumers particularly the members of the prized Millennial demographic group quotare prioritizing food as a key category to spend money onquotOne issue is that thanks to the Internet and social media platforms quotpeople are really connnecting the dotsquot Greene said and are more readily able to figure out what goes into their food and where it comes fromThat39s also giving shoppers the opportunity to track down quotniche brandsquot that compete against the familiar fare in Big Food39s larder she added which in the past may have been difficult to find The result is a more level playing field for say the ketchup mustard and mayonnaise made by Sir Kensington39s a brand billed as quotmore refined because it39s less refinedquotAnother way that outofthemainstream brands are getting a boost against Big Food They39re being embraced by retailers trying to address how fast shopper preferences are shifting For example the first three pages of a Target circular last month were devoted to quotBetter choices for all a collection of products that are organic nontoxic nonGMO and morequot Among the niche brands featured were Angie39s Annie39s Ben ampamp Jerry39s Cascadian Farm Ella39s Kitchen Evol Happy Family Kind and Plum OrganicsThose who attended the J Walter Thompson presentation were able to sample such niche fare as no waste salad with ingredients like broccoli stems four kinds of pickles including watermelon rind and mustard seed coldpressed juices and bacon fatwashed Bloody Marys The best offering was of course the union of vodka and baconMaybe it39s not too much of a stretch to liken Big Food to traditional television and to compare smaller niche brands to the streaming upstarts that are disrupting Big TV among them Amazon Prime Hulu Plus and Netflix Just as traditional television isn39t dead neither is Big Food but both certainly are confronted with an imperative to adapt or face the consequencesHere39s a warning for Big Food as it searches for answers Think twice about a strategy of cooptation that many firms are resorting to aka if you can39t beat 39em join 39em by having 39em join you For instance among the quotbetter choicesquot on sale in that Target circular Plum Organics is owned by Campbell Soup which also purchased the popular niche brand Bolthouse Farms while Annie39s and Cascadian Farm are part of General MillsThe list goes on ConAgra took over Alexia Foods Unilever Ben ampamp Jerry39s Groupe Danone Stonyfield Farm Perdue Farms Niman Ranch and Hormel Applegate FarmsWoe to any Big Food behemoth that screws around with the smaller brand it acquires Another effect of the Internet and social media is that consumers can share opinions about the products they buy and complain to the world if they feel a Big Food parent is hiding its ownership of a niche brand or worse is changing the formula so it39s no longer authenticAsk AnheuserBusch InBev which wrecked Beck39s beer by tampering with the recipe when it moved the brewing from Germany to the United States Drinkers noticed the difference and demanded refunds which the company is providing through the settlement of a classaction lawsuitThat39s why Greene said she advises quotultratransparencyquot as the best policyIt39s certainly food for thoughtThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageMyersBizNet management or associated bloggers

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Is TV's Big Food Gravy Train Being Derailed?

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Stuart Elliott

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