Food and beverage brands must rethink brand strategies
A new whitepaper from Hartman Group Inc. says food and beverage companies are finding themselves in a perfect storm of disruption as consumer’s evolving tastes, values and personal identities are changing how they perceive a brand’s image and its values.
Hartman Group’s ‘Rethinking Brand Strategy in a Shifting Landscape’ finds that the debates roiling North American markets around health, nutrition, food costs – and issues such as food packaging, cultural values, and brand trust – are reshaping how brands will need to interact and communicate with customers going forward.
“The traditional brand playbook – built on mass messaging, broad targeting and one-size fits all product strategies – is no longer enough,” the study says.
Instead, to reach consumers today food and beverage brands must be “culturally tuned-in, consumer intimate, channel smart and adapt quickly to both upstream disruption and downstream demand.”
Culture is not something that today’s consumers take lightly. It shapes how people define who they are and what brands they gravitate towards. The study finds that 73% of consumers say trust in a brand increases if it authentically reflects their cultural values. Brands that fail to do so, that come across as outdated or irrelevant to a consumer’s cultural values, will find it very hard to connect with such consumers.
Take for example food. While everyone needs to eat, for a greater number of consumers, food also represents cultural capital, carrying with it heritage and history. Consumers now look at food as a way to connect with their cultural and historical identity, say buying locally sourced foods or health-focused foods, and thereby reinforcing their identity through their food choices. Others wish to use food to experience other cultures, to widen their food palates with new flavours and kinds of foods.
Some 82% of those surveyed in the Hartman study said they wanted their food and beverage providers to align with their values. This will put greater emphasis on brands to go beyond today’s demographic targeting and instead focus on connecting with the values of the consumers they are trying to reach.
This means also finding new ways to connect with consumers that go beyond traditional e-commerce and advertising. Hartman Groups says some 73% of consumers told them they have discovered a new food or beverage through non-traditional channels. That includes social media, creator content, online marketplaces, apps and pop-ups that introduce new foods and beverages to consumers in the communities where they live and work.
“To drive meaningful growth and lasting relevance, food and beverage brands must adopt a future-forward strategy rooted in cultural awareness, deep consumer understanding and channel optimization—meeting people where they are today and anticipating where they’re headed next.”
