WALKING THE TALK -
The food industry is undergoing a major shift, with companies responding to growing consumer demand for transparency and products that put health and sustainability first. A new announcement from The Dannon Company provides yet another example of how brands are taking action and tapping into public-private partnerships to stay on par with the changing landscape.
COLLABORATION -
The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) has launched a new pilot program in Bogota, Colombia, designed to provide consumers with nutrition and physical activity guidance and education to empower consumers to make more informed food-purchasing decisions.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
Being dubbed the “Holy Grail” of directories for sustainable paper and packaging, Canopy’s updated Ecopaper Database now features more than 450 printing and writing grade papers, office stationery products and packaging with high recycled, agricultural residue, alternative or Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) fiber content.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Approximately 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted around the world each year, putting unnecessary strain on natural resources, needlessly producing greenhouse gas emissions and contributing to climate change. Two startups in Australia and the US are working to change that with the opening of a rescued-food supermarket and the launch of a technology that turns food waste into nutrient-rich fertilizer.
Perishable food rescue organization OzHarvest has opened Australia’s first ever rescued-food supermarket — The OzHarvest Market — in Kensington, Sydney.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
DanoneWave, the newly combined entity of WhiteWave Foods and Danone’s dairy business, has been incorporated as a public benefit corporation in the U.S. With more than $6 billion in revenue and 6,000 employees, DanoneWave will be the largest public benefit corporation, which is a corporate structure intended to operate in a responsible and sustainable manner. A public benefit corporation is managed in a way that balances shareholders’ financial interests and the benefits it brings to people, the environment and broader society.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Building on its commitment to provide support to coffee growers around the world, Starbucks Coffee Company has announced that it will deliver 100 million healthy coffee trees to farmers who need them by 2025.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
Following its announcement that it is the only national restaurant brand that doesn’t use added colors, flavors or preservatives — artificial or natural — in any of the ingredients it uses to prepare its food, Chipotle Mexican Grill has launched a new ‘As Real as It Gets’ campaign celebrating its commitment to using only real ingredients.
The ad spots see actress Jillian Bell, actor Sam Richardson and writer, actor and comedian John Mulaney ‘get real’ about their desires, fears and secrets as they kick back inside a burrito-shaped lounge.
PRESS RELEASE -
In support of Alcohol Awareness Month, HEINEKEN USA (headquartered in White Plains, NY) announced April 4 various programs and initiatives that promote responsible drinking and moderate alcohol consumption.
Every April since 1987, the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Inc. (NCADD) has sponsored Alcohol Awareness Month to increase public awareness and understanding, reduce stigma, and encourage local communities to focus on alcoholism and alcohol-related issues.
Heineken® is an industry leader in this space and was the first brand to include responsibility messaging on its packaging. HEINEKEN USA is continuing this commitment with the following initiatives:
SUPPLY CHAIN -
As consumers increasingly demand to know more about their food, transparency is becoming a top priority for brands. Providing information not only about ingredients, but where and how ingredients are produced is becoming common practice — and those who abstain from such actions are at risk of falling behind.
PRESS RELEASE -
Coca-Cola Bangladesh yesterday announced the extension of its Women Business Centre (WBC) project to the third phase in two upazilas of Jamalpur district.
In the third phase of the programme, it aims reach 20,000 additional women within 2018, taking the total count of women beneficiaries to 40,000, Coca-Cola said in a statement yesterday.
The main aim of the project is to contribute to the wellbeing and resilience of 40,000 women through economic empowerment, according to the statement.
NEW METRICS -
As with most industries these days, companies in paper and packaging know that their customers — be they publishers, fast food companies or office suppliers — want to buy products that are deemed sustainable. They know that millions of dollars can depend on whether their products can meet this threshold.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Transparency is increasingly becoming a food industry standard, with more and more brands sharing information regarding supply chain and nutritional content with consumers. This new wave of transparency is also joined by a greater focus on creating products that are made with “clean” ingredients derived from natural sources. Since the launch of its “Food as It Should Be” campaign back in 2014, Panera Bread has been sharing its journey towards serving only “100% clean” food.
LEADERSHIP -
Community initiatives constitute a crucial component of the transformation taking place in Detroit, which has seen its fair share of difficulties following deindustrialization. And the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (MUFI) is one of them.
PRESS RELEASE -
Heineken has won the Excellence Award Health & Wellbeing at the first
‘Nudging For Good’ Award Ceremony for This One Is On Us.
A ‘Nudge for Good’ is how a brand, on the basis of consumer insights, makes it easy and desirable for people to change behavior or habits and adopt healthier and/or more sustainable ones.
WASTE NOT -
Food waste is increasingly garnering attention from governments, businesses and private individuals as its impact on both environmental health, food security as well as bottom lines — companies that invest in reducing food waste can expect a 14:1 ROI — are increasingly researched and understood.
COLLABORATION -
We’re inundated with signals of the severity of the water crisis on a daily basis. Reports detail the extent: a staggering 2.8 billion people already affected by water scarcity. Authorities ban water-intensive activities at home, and stories describe the profound implications of severe water stress for people around the world: waterborne diseases, famine, migration, violence.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -
Tackling food waste continues to be a top priority for the food industry and local governments, and two new initiatives in the UK and Canada present important opportunities to reduce environmental impacts while improving public health.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Twelve of the world’s leading cocoa and chocolate companies have agreed to collectively work towards ending deforestation and forest degradation in the global cocoa supply chain, with an initial focus on Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. The agreement commits the participating companies to develop and present a joint public-private framework of action to address deforestation at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP23) meeting in Bonn, Germany in November 2017.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
A wave of efforts to increase transparency and ethics in complex global supply chains in recent years has not only unearthed grave ongoing issues, but a groundswell of private sector commitments to address them. Two that have risen to the forefront of concern for multinationals are deforestation and human rights abuses.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
As Georgetown University linguistics professor Deborah Tannen says, “We tend to look through language and not realize how much power language has.”
We rarely realize it, but language is the lens through which we form perceptions about people, places and products. From my involvement in corporate marketing, I know that companies and advertisers are keenly aware of language’s power for consumers.
Marketing specialists pore over focus group data and behavior studies to understand what makes consumers tick, carefully selecting words to evoke emotions, motivate us and shape our tastes. The right phrasing can make a world of difference.