Why Its Time To Start Educating Consumers
Well I love my cats almost more than myself. And yes I feed them the good natural stuff too, without preservatives and probably better for humans than most of the crackers at my local supermarket.
Turns out that the unfortunate pet-poisoning incident has been a boom for natural and organic pet food makers. Much like the boost the alar scare of the 1990’s provided to the industry the pet food debacle reminded NBN that people believe that the food they’re buying for themselves as well as their pets is just okeley dokeley.
Regardless of diabetes epidemic, the obesity epidemic (or is it a pandemic) people are struggling and between work and taking care of the kids and visiting Mom and the endless commercials proclaiming COKE IS IT and Lean Cuisine is better than sex, when its all said and done the status quo is where it’s at.
Natural foods are too expensive goes the whiny song and dance and who’s too blame for that point of view dear readers, well it’s you and me (unless of course your one of my consumer readers, in which case ignore this berating)because we haven’t done our jobs.
While we’re not suggesting that industry start scaring the pants off of John and Suzy Dadmom don’t forget that things aren’t so great, even when everyone is talking about natural organic.
What you ask, is NBN talking about? Well you seen when Time Magazine believes that there is no evidence that conventionally grown produce harms anything or anyone and when big CPG’s continue to create more and more foods that are so processed they almost resemble plastic, its time for leaders like Whole Foods, United Natural, Hain and others do more than just worry about their stock price.
Clif Bar and Kashi are the major exception to the otherwise lackadaisical efforts of the industry in educating consumers. And no we don’t count Whole Foods lovely posters hanging inside their stores. That’s preaching to the converted.
Kashi’s terrific Day of Change campaign offers powerful encouragement to individuals to pledge what they will take on in their own health. We love it. This simple yet powerful marketing tool provides invaluable encouragement to people who sign up on the website, creates insane customer loyalty all while remaining true to the vision of the pioneering company founders Phil and Gayle Tauber, who started the company decades ago because they just couldn’t stand seeing people eating such crappy foods and getting so fat.
So lets not wait until another scare boosts sales. Its time for the heavyweights of the industry to take charge and remind people that even when your pets aren’t poisoned and your apples aren’t alar-ed that the food supply just isn’t as ‘hunky dory’ as you think it is.