Juicy Info

Buying good quality, locally reared meat has undoubtedly gained popularity on the shopping list in recent years. A combination of meat scandals, concerns over animal welfare, celebrity endorsements (think Hugh F-W) and a more genuine care for what we put in our bodies is championing demand for quality, good tasting meat. It may be pricier, but there are many who see value in going premium.

Enter…The East London Steak Company delivering the best cuts of steak direct to your door

Now there are not many food products that can achieve the wow factor, even before you’ve eaten them. Innocent has done it quite well, but really I can’t think of many products that interest me on the packaging front, especially in the food/foodservice department.

For me The East London Steak Company is one of them. In terms of an out-of-the-box experience, it is up there with Apple in my mind. Not bad for a slice of steak. Here’s why:

• All the meat is individually wrapped with a printed label that includes the customer name (lovely personalisation) plus useful information such as date it was packaged, used by date etc…
• Each slice of meat has a ‘provenance card‘ telling you exactly when the meat was killed, the farm it came from etc…
• It’s all in recycled paper/cardboard boosting my ethical halo
• It comes in lovely box that feels a bit like unwrapping a present

To me all these elements demonstrate real authenticity, but also the love and care put into getting the meat to my doorstep.

I suppose one of the key takeaways here is just how important food packaging can be to delivering a customer experience. Design is becoming such a more integral part of the product today and its great to see it translating into the foodservice world.

Here are some pics:

Would love to know if you have any examples of food/drink products that wow you in the packaging department? Or even outside the food industry.

We all know that consumer-generated content dominates on the now ubiquitous video channels like YouTube and Vimeo, but marketers are making much more use of video content as well.

Recent research from eMarketer highlights the growth of video content by corporations and marketers and highlights that in some verticals, like retailing, it is no longer a luxury but a necessity to have video content online.

• Forrester reports that over two-thirds of the top 50 US online retailers now have video content, up from less than one-fifth in 2008. But it’s not just the marketing dept doing all the work.

• One-third of Fortune 500 companies are now doing some kind of video blogging. (Sourced from same eMarketer article)

A critical transition seems to be the creation of ‘video content’ as opposed to just ‘video advertising’. For years now we’ve had TV ads and virals on the web, but with the ‘social web’ developing at a pace, marketers are exploring other ways of using video as content to engage, inform and entertain.

One example I quite like is from Strada, the Italian restaurant chain. Strada uses video content to show us how to re-create their recipes at home. Step-by-step tuition is given by its top development chef on how to make a range of  Strada recipes by following the video online.

Not only do these videos connect us more intimately with the brand and its products, but they encourage more time to be spent engaging with the brand.

And you know it works! I now know how to master the art of making the best bruschetta al pomodoro.

An extra benefit is accessibility and shareability. You can download the videos via iTunes to watch on the iPod or iPhone and then share them with your social networks.

Do you have any other examples of video content – as opposed to advertising – that works for you?

If you’re in the business of marketing in any shape or form, I’m sure you know just how important it is to understand and harness the megatrends impacting your business.

The infamous BCG (Boston Consulting Group) has been studying the megatrends shaping our worlds for a number of years. It defines this simply as those elements that “hold the power to reshape the landscape of economic opportunity and risk.” And there are many that continue to exert tremendous impact…

According to BCG, 62 of the 78 megatrends it monitors continued to grow during the recession in terms of influence on markets worldwide. Many bearing heavily influence on the performance of multi-million dollar industries.

Trends that have strengthened:

• Technology: Growing online usage; transition to mobile
• Health and wellness: driving organics; nutraceuticals
• Demographic shifts: ageing population in developed economies; middle-class growth in rapidly developing  economies (RDEs)
• Downsizing consumption: trading down

Overall, BCG highlights two ‘cluster trends’ that are pivotal to many industries:

• Asian ascent: Underlining the rising power of RDEs, growing consumer affluence and the power of companies within these economies
• E-migration: Reflecting the fast migration of commerce from physical to online channels. This is obviously a biggy in terms of the extent to which it is quite rapidly reshaping industries, not least publishing.

The full BCG Focus report is called Megatrends: Tailwinds for Growth in a Low-Growth Environment. More details on how to get hold of a copy here.

Recently, I’ve been trying to adopt more of a River Cottage experience when it comes to eating. For those of you unfamiliar with the phenomena, it was created by the now well-known British foodie, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingshall.

The essence of River Cottage centres on creating really tasty food with fresh, sustainable, seasonal and local food, ideally grown in your back yard. There is undoubtedly a big ethical slant in the RC approach, but its first and foremost about dumping the convenience foods for more homemade food to create a more enjoyable food experience.

Despite grocery budgets still taking a beating, there is an undeniable shift in attitudes towards people wanting to eat better, and taking time to enjoy it properly, even if they can’t afford the organic option.

Of course this is by new means anything new. Most baby boomers and gen X’er was brought up on spending a lot of time around the table, dedicating time to food and the social experience of ‘dining’.

But over the past few decades, changing lifestyles have put an ever greater focus on convenience eating. So it’s good to see the good old times returning to a degree… for me it’s about restoring an element of authenticity to eating. And it really is worth the effort.

Eat Slow Britain is a new book from Alastair Sawday, which encapsulates the essence of enjoying  food when travelling. The book outlines special places to eat, inspirational chefs, organic producers…celebrating the very best of food experiences when on the move and encouraging us to take time to enjoy it.

Oh and if you’re interested…Today I enjoyed the delights of ‘lemony courgettes on toast’ and my tastebuds are still tingling. The recipe was taken from Hugh’s ‘River Cottage Everyday‘ book.

Some interesting stats out today looking at the rising popularity of herbal supplements in the US. Research from the American Botanical Council shows that amid recession, US consumers’ appetite for herbal additions like cranberry and echinacea have resulted in pretty robust sales growth – up 5% in value terms for 2009 and the strongest growth rate in ten years. Not bad performance given the troubled economic waters State-side.

Whilst the swine flu epidemic in spring 2009 undoubtedly played a part, a lot of it comes down to the influence of a more mainstream interest in health and wellness, desire for more natural remedies and a requirement to self-medicate for treatment and prevention of ailments.

Older consumers (boomers) are noted to have become more ‘obsessed’ with their health and wellness, playing a role in this market.  The report all suggests that in some cases, Americans that have lost health insurance may have been electing supplements instead of ‘costly prescriptions.’

Hi – just a little note to apologise for lack of content on the blog. It’s been a crazy few months due to some personal issues. Rest assured, Juicy is very much alive ‘n’ kicking, even if I’m flying at half mast on the social media front. We’ve been working on some great projects and focusing on keeping our clients happy. Big thanks to all my lovely clients for their support.

Suzie

These days there is no room to hide if you’re a company of any magnitude that dares not to be transparent about how you do business right across the value chain.

We are in an era where ‘corporate social responsibility’ (CSR) is paramount in business and there is a growing body of evidence that supports this trend. Last year a poll across 15 countries by the Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International found that half of consumers are ‘active ethical consumers’ demanding companies to act responsibly.

Increasingly, we are migrating to companies that take a proactive approach to putting information out there, showcasing the good and how they are overcoming the bad. It’s a trend gaining traction across different industries and regions of the world as more companies seek to become more transparent as a way of building trust with their customers.

So what is CSR exactly?

Wikipedia has a lengthy definition, but this part seems to hit the nail on the head:

…”the deliberate inclusion of public interest into corporate decision-making, and the honoring of a triple bottom line: People, Planet, Profit.”

CSR is by no means a new trend, not by a long shot. Forward-thinking companies like The Body Shop have put CSR at the core of their business for years. But today there is a clear impetus to focus more on CSR and an even greater need to communicate these corporate intentions in an honest and authentic way.

Some of the factors driving today’s CSR agenda as reported by CSR Asia:

• Growing environmental consciousness in the face of climate change
• The growth in brand and company conversation via the social web
• Government regulations are forcing greater compliance – particularly in relation to climate change
• Corporate governance has become big on the corporate agenda driven by ‘a new breed of socially responsible investor’
• Reduced trust in corporations has also been widely reported following the financial crisis

Communicating the CSR policy

Aside from ensuring that you can actually follow through in your intentions, perhaps one of the most important challenges is how to communicate these CSR values to stakeholders. This has big consequences for the humble corporate website, the traditional ‘go-to’ place for corporate content.

As a researcher I spend a lot of time using company websites, so I’m familiar with the standard format. Over the years, I’ve noticed an obvious transition towards CSR content becoming more centre-stage – either on the home page or on specific microsites – but the social web is propelling further movement.

Last week, Best Buy re-launched a new type of corporate site (in beta of course).

As stated on the new site at www.bby.com its pledge is to provide ‘All the news from the brands and operations worldwide of Best Buy Co Inc”. The site is definitely no substitute to its main corporate website, which has product information and investor relations and is very much in beta. But I can see they are trying to create a clearer picture of who Best Buy is, what they are doing, how to communicate with them and the people behind the business.

This seems to be another tool in its social armoury. Best Buy has been proactive in embracing in the social web, introducing its Twelpforce and crowdsourcing ideas with its Idea X platform.

As you may be aware, there’s a growing band of discussion around what some contend as ‘the death of the corporate website’ as we know it. I’ll point you in the direction of Simon Mainwairing who delivers a poignant analysis of how corporate sites will change as they are “replaced by their social equivalents.”

Perhaps the transition has already started? Love to get your thoughts.

Every now and again a really great new resource pops up that has that wow factor for me. In an online world of so much information, it’s becoming increasingly harder to find real quality content that is unique, so it’s great when you stumble on something really juicy.

Just today I was reading that 95% of ‘new news’ content originates from traditional media sources. The US research by Pew also found 83% of this news was repetitive. I can relate to this on one level, but for me and I think many others, there is much value in reading different perspectives on news. In fact, some of the most interesting insights come from the comments rather than the news content itself. That’s the beauty of social media for me, you get a rounded perspective.

A few months ago ‘The Next Great Generation‘ #tngg popped on to my radar and its since become one of the top RSS feeds that I will always read. TNGG aims to inform us about the Generation Y cohort – often called digital natives, millennials, generation next – and is categorised as the generation after X – 18-25 year old young adults – an important target for B2C marketers.

As you may know, a rudimentary Google search will reveal thousands of sources on Gen Y, and some amazing research is produced across the world. What sets TNGG apart is that the content is written by Generation Y.

Set up by Edward Boches of Mullen the TNGG blog brings this audience to life, talking about the issues that matter to them, looking at work, leisure, and life in general. It’s a candid approach, real, often confronting misconceptions and spoken in their own words, not marketing terms. It is social media commentary and consumer insight in its most raw and original format.

For me, the content is not only relevant to my needs, but it adds real value. I welcome the next great generation of content and insight resources like this, which look at doing things differently. Fresh, exciting and useful content.

I spend a fair proportion of my time exploring travel and tourism trends, looking at different regions and aspects of this international industry.

One thing is for sure, travel and tourism is a mega trend – an aspirational leisure and business requirement for an increasing proportion of people worldwide. The growth in middle-classes in the big major economies like China and India is a driving force in particular. Whilst the recession has undoubtedly stemmed demand globally, predictions by the likes of UNWTO and WTTC show it has massive long-term growth potential.

After a very difficult year in 2009, the travel and tourism market is in much need of capitalising on key trends to drive both volume and value growth. On my info journey, I stumbled on this set of predictions by the Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG), compiled by their European consumer insights director.

If travel and tourism is you’re field – it’s worth reading the full article, which has some thought-provoking insights.

Here’s a snapshot:

• Travel loyalty: A big trend in 2009 as travellers return to tried and tested locations/establishments bolstered by branding. Desire for value over price has made loyalty schemes more popular, just as we have seen in retailing with coupons. Set to continue in 2010 as consumer confidence remains fragile.

• Always on: Technology is becoming a bigger part of the experience for travellers, before they go when researching, on-the-go and when staying in hotels. 2010 will see more use of technology and social media to keep travellers informed and raise the bar on experience. As technology becomes more ingrained in our lives, I anticipate the proportion of ‘flashpackers’ (travellers with gadgets) will continue its ascent.

• Luxury snacking: I touched on the trend of consumers rewarding themselves with smaller treats in the latest edition of Juicy Mag (see consumer section). In travel, it manifests as the ‘quick fix indulgence’ such as weekend breaks or seeking more luxury elements as part of a package.

• Bleisure travel: Combining business and leisure trips started taking off in 2007/8. Again a focus here on gaining value from combined trips.

• Staycations: Growth in domestic tourism set to continue in 2010, especially for the leisure and family market and the budget-conscious.

• Pop-ups and third spaces: Following in the footsteps of retailers and consumer brands, travel brands are expected to move into experiential territory. The article predicts pop-ups at music festivals, sporting and outdoor events. On the flipside, there is a suggestion that hotels could open up to become ‘third spaces’ a la Starbucks. IHT plans to position their hotels as location to gather and network during British Tourism Week in March this year.

• Creating more choice: Pointing to the need for increased choice at breakfast, there is an underlying trend here to provide better choice, customised to individual needs. IHG is set to introduce low glycaemic index menus for business travellers who need to maximise productivity.

• The next hotspots: For business and leisure travellers, IHG predicts growth potential in the Eastern Mediterreanean, Commonwealth of Independent States, Turkey and for unusual parts of the Middle East.

• Female business travellers: Touching on customisation is the need to cater better for female business travellers throughout the travel experience.

• Productivity: In the business travel market, emphasis is on making the most of business meetings, since they are happening less frequently. Check out IHG’s Sleep Advantage product, set to roll out in Europe across 2010.