Ingredient Romance

Bob’s Red Mill, the Oregon-based grain and flour company, has launched Bob’s Better Bar, a line of snack bars featuring the company’s famous oats. Flavors include: Peanut Butter, Jelly and Oats, Peanut Butter Banana and Oats, Peanut Butter Chocolate and Oats, Peanut Butter Coconut and Oats, and Peanut Butter Apple Spice and Oats.

Bush’s Best, the Tennessee-based canned bean company, has launched a line of snacks based on their famous legumes. Bean Chips combine their navy beans or black beans into tortilla-like crisps (Chile Lime, Sweet Mesquite or Sea Salt), Crisp Roasted Chickpeas are toasted beans coated in seasoning (Sriracha Lime, Roasted Garlic and Black Pepper), and Bean Dips are what you’d expect (Original and Black Bean).

So What?

Well, we should have seen this coming. For years now, in an attempt to emphasize the naturalness and simplicity of their products, the CPG industry has been falling all over themselves to make ingredients the heroes. Today, if you look at a chip bag, more real estate is spent talking about the provenance of the stone-ground corn or the maker of the cheese than the chip. Likewise, ads for a new ice creams give more air time to the cream and Tahitian vanilla beans than the ice cream itself. If you are a consumer in today’s marketplace, you’d be forgiven for thinking that an ad for potato chips is really an ad potatoes due to the over emphasis on the latter.

If you a marketer or developer at Cargill, Bush’s, King Arthur or Simplot (I know you’re on the distlist!), your time is now; use your credibility and authenticity to take centerstage.

However, if you are traditional CPG (i.e. don’t own a raw ingredient company), let’s have a chat.

You need to romance your craft. While current trends compel you to use precious copy talking about ingredients, in the end it’s the magic that happens in your factories that will keep you relevant in the long-term. You need to balance difficult to defend messages about “whole almonds, real maple syrup and Saigon cinnamon” with ownable ways that you bake, blend, form or strain these ingredients to make your product special. You must start focusing again on the differentiating aspects of your product that are under your control and the expertise your company brings. Otherwise you’ll see your market share slip as commodity companies use co-packers to climb the value chain and private label offers all of the same ingredients in a product half the price.

How might you market who you are in an ownable way?