DIGITAL FOOD MARKETING
HOORCOLLEGE 1
How can we improve our marketing/communication to sell better/become greener?
work sessions
What is food marketing?
PPT: “In the first category, marketers communicate through an array of speech-based
practices that included both traditional advertising (billboards) and broader
promotional strategies (YouTube, Facebook)”
Everything related to the food cue is a marketing message. It is always possible to
skip the advertisement after exposure to the brand. If you do not see the brand, it is
not a marketing message. Before: billboards just a message. Nowadays: online
Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok. Not only offline, but also online your attention is
hijacked. This is a significant different way to sell and advertise your product, it is a
different attention.
Q: How does Instagram advertisements differ from advertisements on bus stops?
Online, you are already taking in information so the advertisement is less intrusive. It
is a state of mind. Online, you are in a flow and are not aware of time. Also, online
your advertisements are personalized. There are different cognitive processes going
on while being exposed. Online is much more effective, people are more vulnerable
to the information they are exposed to. Billboards nowadays are empty, because it is
not effective. People have a positive association with social media and therefore it is
a lot more effective.
What is food marketing? (2)
-PPT-
They try to add value to a product. You need to start developing the narrative. They
use marketing strategies to add value to the brand. For example: RedBull Gives
you wings, they try to sell this. They sponsor Max Verstappen and other extreme
sports, which makes you associate RedBull with all these special things. The drink
does not become more special, only your perception of the drink.
Marketing mix
Product
Price
Promotion
Place
Product
The product of the marketing mix refers to the goods and or services that the
company will offer to the consumer. A company can achieve this by either creating a
new food product, or by modifying or improving an existing product.
Price
Price elasticity is important, that is why it is hard to sell healthy food. Unhealthy
foods are cheaper to buy. -PPT-
Promotion
Promotion is broad. It defines everything a company does to sell the products that
they have. We are most interested in promotion in this course. <Video about tricks
advertisers use to make food look delicious>. When you want to eat healthy, you
should look at the ingredients on the back. Unfortunately, most people do not do this.
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,The companies can do with the front of the package whatever they want. The back
has to be communicated correctly. If they read it, do they understand it? Do they do
this on a regular basis?
Q: Is it useful when people do not read the back? What are we doing?
Place
Place refers to the distribution and warehousing efforts necessary to move a food
from the manufacturer to a location where a consumer can buy it. It can also refer to
where the product is located in a retail outlet. –They do the same for children, for
children’s product they put the products on the eye height of the children.
Three (or four) phases distinguished (SEE PPT)
- Fragmentation phase – end of 19th century
o People were farmers and ate their own food. Countries were divided
into numerous geographic fragments for food sales because
transporting food was expensive, leaving most production, distribution
and selling locally based.
- Unification phase (end of 19th – mid 20st century)
o Use cars, trucks and boats to sell products in other regions. Therefore
the price was lowered and the production upscaled. They started to
communicate this: For example: CocaCola is American, how to sell in
Europe. Marshall plan: buy American products because America
needs their loan back. -PPT-
- Segmentation phase (1950 - to current)
o More effectively distribute food, you can freeze food and it is longer
edible. Now we can export products worldwide. Machines from China,
Cups from Bangladesh, Beans from India.
- Personalized/tailored phase (2010 – to current (according to Frans))
o Social media, increased computer intelligence, AI and algorithms, pc’s
have more capacity and energy to see who the consumer is and how
they can be persuaded
o Sell more effectively, collect more information about people to know the
consumer better. Neuromarketing for example; what parts of the brain
are activated when seeing a commercial? If you see something that is
rewarding, you are motivated to get the product. You want foods to be
rewarding. They are using eye-tracking to know how the advertisement
is being received. Also AI is being used more rapidly.
-PPT-
Objective Food Marketing
Q: You are a shareholder at Heineken. What do shareholders want? A: Next year, or in
five years, you want to get more out of the money you have put in. Q: How does
Heineken do this? A: They invest this money to sell more, they are obligated to sell
more because they have to pay the stakeholders back. They can only do this if they
make profit. They have to make more profit every year to let the stakeholders know
that their investment is credible.
The company has to sell more every year. It is a capitalistic game, the companies
have to sell more every year because of the stakeholders. As a consequence: 50/60%
of the population is obese. We need to change the system in order to become
healthier. There are 10 very large companies like Unilever; all these big companies
are linked to many more smaller companies. Nestle, CocaCola, Unilever, Danone,
Mars, Mondelez, Kellogg’s, PepsiCo, Associated British Foods, etc. They do not care
that it makes the consumers unhealthy; they want their salary.
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, -PPT-
Blue Zones
How can we try to promote healthy behavior? Blue Zones places in the world
where they eat specific things and do specific things where people become very
healthily old. Most of them are islands. They have their own environment. What do
they do?
Life lessons
- Move naturally
- Right outlook
- Right tribe
- Eat wisely
o Plant based (not produced)
Food marketing spent 99% of their marketing on unhealthy foods. Only <1% is spent
on fruits and vegetables. -PPT- top 10 most obese nations: Islands that are depending
on America for foods. The unhealthy foods are easily accessible and these foods are
subsidized. It is impossible for them to make healthy decisions because they are part
of America.
By law: fabricants are obligated to put the information on the back. We assume that
people are smart and will read this; but it does not work like this. There is also
communicated for example where the fish is caught; this is very small in the back. In
the front they put something attractive like the fish is from an Ireland, “Produced in
Ireland”, but in the back you see that the fish is from India. The package was
produced in Ireland.
Very different ingredients and packages in the poorer sides of Europe. This because it
is less expensive; they put unhealthier ingredients in the same can in Eastern Europe.
Every product has to have a date marking. In the UK you have ‘best before’ and ‘used
by’. Guaranteed that it is save to eat, but afterwards you can still eat it. You should
have a look, then smell, then taste. You can detect if it makes you sick. You will know.
People actually read ‘best before’, think it is not well anymore and they throw it away.
This leads to food waste 40% of the food is thrown away but should have still be
eaten. Best before: decide yourself.
Solution: how can we improve this? This was difficult and impossible.
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