The links between food waste, obesity, the environment, and marketing
One of the biggest contributors to obesity and environmental degradation in the past 35 years has been the increasing sophistication of all facets of marketing to create an environment where highly processed and energy dense food is easily available to those living in developed countries. Although it is typically argued that lifestyles have become more sedentary over this time, it is pretty clear that consumers have been encouraged to eat more through highly sophisticated marketing activities, including supply chain management (e.g., easy access to convenience and processed food), pricing (e.g., reduced costs, better “value” and longer perishability of processed foods), as well as integrated advertising campaigns, to purchase and consume foods that provide a high fat, high sugar, and high salt “hit”.
It’s hard to see how something like the “free” bike scheme being launched in Melbourne is going to be at all successful.
A report in The Age tells us that “users will pay a membership fee – $2.50 a day or up to $50 a year…” But, and here’s the killer, if a bike isn’t returned within half an hour, then people will be penalised heavily ($20 after two hours, and $370 after 10 hours). Add to this, the requirement for people to bring their own helmets, the danger of riding bikes in a very un-bike-friendly city, and the need to pre-register, as a marketer, I can see that in its current form, in this particular market, it is doomed to fail. read more…
Do you want fries with your maths homework?
I did live in hope that we would not go the way of US schools, but I guess it was always going to be a bit difficult to resist. News that “leading educators” (are these official titles?) are willing to back sponsorship of schools by food companies such as McDonalds, and other commercial brands, puts children at more risk than being exposed to what Institute of Public Affairs executive director John Roskam says will be “five minutes of advertising a day”.
Of course, numeracy and literacy programs are critical, but at what cost?
Research published in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour challenges the notion that major trips to the supermarket are the best opportunities to create unplanned purchases. Jens Nordfalt found that those little fill-in trips that we take during the week, are likely to result in many unplanned purchases. What Nordfalt found was that, on average, unplanned purchases will account for a greater share of the total bill for a fill-in trip, than for a major trip (which contradicts much of the established thinking around how we shop).
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NB. This is an excerpt from an earlier posting.
So… this little article I wrote got picked up by ABC Unleashed (which is great), spread around the world on Google News (which is also great), and suddenly lots of people wanted to say stuff (which was the whole point of it). Some of it was thoughtful, considered, erudite; some of it was extreme, rash, ill-conceived; a small amount was just rude (which is disappointing, but expected). Such is the postmodern world.
Most people came to the debate with an opinion on the skit, but not really an opinion on the piece – which is fine. Some didn’t seem to have understood my point, which could be a fault of my writing (although others did get my point), but still felt compelled to make a comment about it, and/or postmodernism. The mere fact that so many people felt compelled to, and could, comment on the issue strengthens my argument that the whole saga is representative of postmodernism. I did notice that the Herald-Sun website comments were up to 1086, with a very particular perspective coming through – read them here.
I decided to write a response on the ABC site to much of the comments, because I think part of the whole postmodern thingy is about discourse – rather than some “idiotic moron” (this is a comment from one of the posts) having a “rant”, and then expecting it to represent some absolute truth.
Some of the comments I found funny were from contributors who assumed the term “Discuss” meant that I would then compile the comments, and give a final decision on what the answer was (or maybe people wanted me to give them a grade – High Distinctions all round). All very modernist, don’t you think?.
You know, I really struggle when somebody asks me to define postmodernism. The thing is that by its very conceptual nature, postmodernism surely can’t (or even should) be defined. But I usually come up with something lame like no absolute truths, or postmodern is not modernism, blah, blah, blah…
But last night, on Australian TV, I think we experienced postmodernism in all its tumescent glory.
You see, there was a TV show that was on for more than twenty years, back in the seventies, eighties and nineties, called Hey Hey, It’s Saturday. It was cancelled in 1999, mostly because of sagging ratings, but also because the channel executives decided that Australia was ready for a different form of entertainment (this was back when the people who ran TV stations knew about TV, not money). One of the sequences on this program was called Red Faces, where amateur performers could get up and perform in front of an in-studio, and Australia-wide audience.
Reports from SMH and other news outlets are advising that Kraft has responded to consumer “outrage” at the name of Kraft’s new product, iSnack 2.0 (is this Kraft’s Vista?), and decided to re-visit the competition to name the new product. This time, it will be a popularity vote – in the style of Australian Idol – another opportunity perhaps to raise the profile of the new product. Of course, iSnack 2.0 was a dumb name, but the amount of column inches (online, on TV and on-paper) devoted to this issue has been extraordinary.
Obviously Australians feel very strongly about this particular brand name, and while I predicted it would date pretty quickly, I am surprised that Kraft have responded in this way, and so swiftly. To some degree, a smart marketer would have been watching how sales of the product went once the new named product hit the shelves, rather than responding to the outrage on the internet and twitter.
Such is the internet – this is hilarious. I can’t believe the amount of energy that the launch of this product has generated. I have been assured that this is not a viral campaign organised by Kraft.
Maybe, just maybe, the whole thing is part of the new TV series about to be broadcast on the ABC, Hungry Beast… did anyone watch Media Watch last night? I wouldn’t put it past Andrew Denton. Even if it isn’t, it proves his point.
It seems Kraft are leaving their options open to change the name. According to a report in The Australian today, Kraft spokesman Simon Talbot said, ”We are currently monitoring the social networks – the product is embedded, but I couldn’t comment on the name.”
