The Food industry is important and worthy of more serious debate

I love food, it's a fascinating topic which cuts across borders,Geo politics, ecology, history,culture,trade,economics, farming, animal welfare ,and more....

I am lucky enough to have spent almost all of my marketing career in the food business across different countries and food categories, but there were times when it felt certainly less glamorous than working in other sectors, not to be mentioned at social gatherings....

Over recent years howeverI have tended to jump in and defend it from the increasing media negativity surrounding it,despite its shortcomings.

So let's start with the important stuff...food is literally a matter of life and death;the latest smartphone , app, handbag, car and so forth are not...does any other industry come close to that?

On the flip side there are a few criminals in our industry who deliberately peddle dangerous or even potentially deadly chemicals passed off as food products to innocent people around the world. Such acts should in some cases be treated as attempted mass murder by the authorities, which might just act as a deterrent.

The vast majority of food companies do not ,contrary to some articles you might see in the media , set out to deliberately harm the health of their consumers...that would be a stupid business model, surely, apart from the ethical issues.

Food stories in the media too often seem to be presented as scare stories, placing insufficient share of the responsibility on the consumer who chooses to buy and consume ,or the need for good education at home and in schools.

Similarly, stories are often not properly supported by robust ,proven scientific data...in the last month alone I have "consumed" scare stories about the risk of arsenic poisoning from eating rice( see my earlier blog on this topic) and about how vegetable fats are making "us " all ill...or how we are all being pretty much force fed sugary fizzy drinks....

Let's have more education,more qualified nutritional and dietary advice,more balanced reporting, more personal responsibility along with choices , and of course true corporate social responsibility .


If you are interested enough then fact check the data in your country about the popularity of" free from" foods ( no gluten, dairy ,sugar etc.,)and compare with the incidence of medically diagnosed intolerance....It makes interesting reading ,certainly here in the UK. I read an article just yesterday about this in the Times about the number of people in the UK claiming to be Lactose intolerant versus those actually professionally diagnosed...

There are other issues as well....

The scientific and unscientific communities both seem to change the goal posts and advice with alarming regularityabout which foods or diets are good or bad for us...people are getting confused,too much noise.


Equally seriously, how to stop good,edible fresh food being scrapped or dumped in order to meet absurd "beauty pageant " appearance criteria from customers, or to artificially bolster market prices instead of ensuring farmers can simply get a fair reward for their hard work..

So food industry, we do important work and also sometimes trivial work (OK, chocolate is pretty serious for me, if not truly existential), but could we do much more ..isn't that what so called "purpose based" businesses should be doing?

Where's the Brandbuilding/ marketing angle on this? Responsibility towards the long term welfare of our consumers and our planet is both the right thing to do as well as the best business strategy...just look at the the gushing feedback for Unilever and it's ethical business model following the recent failed take over attempt...

Your brand is your whole company...get real about business ethics

At what point do corporations get real about all the Happy Smiley stuff , and where does the responsibility lie for corporate ethics ? I certainly don't mean simply having a beautifully crafted tab about corporate social responsibility or similar "Feelgood of the day" on the corporate website .

Is there any joined up, corporate level evaluation of this stuff , should there need to be an Ethics Director on the board, or should everyone in positions of power be able to flag and stop " bad behaviour"?

Recently we all saw the video rant of the Boss of Uber;this week I read an article on the BBC about foreign Truckers working in the UK for months at a time away from home and on low wages based on pay rates in their home countries, which are insufficient for them to live decently on in the UK ...and it made me think of the behaviours of the companies using this type of working arrangements ,and that somewhere this has been sanctioned by bosses with apparently little or no regard for the welfare of their workers or sub contractors. Conditions for workers in developing economies is of course a similar issue,as are issues of animal welfare in countries with different standards....

I worked more than thirty years ago for a firm where every year,starting as a junior manager I had to sign an ethics policy document which meant that not only was I not allowed to do anything illegal or unethical or indeed ask anyone else to do similar , but that there was an anonymous phone number in Head Office to report any such attempts for any employees to use if necessary.

Let me just put a few contemporary Buzz words out there:

Purpose, Corporate social responsibility, inclusion/ diversity in the workplace,
Environmentally friendly( energy, bio environment ,emissions, recycling and waste reduction),the Gig economy, zero hours contracts...

What do they mean overall if your business behaves unethically in just one area ?

I'm not for instance suggesting closing down all factories in emerging economies as a panacea , but people up and down the supply chain need to be treated with fairness and dignity....and fairly rewarded.

I recently heard the UK managing director of a large fmcg firm complain for instance that standards of health and safety , quality assurance and employee conditions expected by UK retail customers from their private label suppliers simply didn't exist where his product raw materials came from,and that the cost of applying UK standards to his business model was culturally as well as economically unviable....with potential job losses in several countries.

Finally ,here's my "Brandbuilder" point....your brand is your whole company, your whole supply chain, how you treat your workers, your animals, your suppliers, local tax authorities...not just the shiny end product. Make sure this subject is on the agenda of every board meeting.....and on the objectives of every functional team.

The responsibility for good corporate governance should lie with each and every one of us, as employees,bosses and as consumers. It ultimately risks damaging not just people but also profits if businesses fail to properly address the wellbeing of their employees.

And just maybe for some it should be keeping them awake at night ...

Does m&a activity need more checks and balances?

In the current political economic and financial environment with continuing access to low interest debt there has been a recent spate of large merger projects, some of which have succeeded eg PSA takeover of Vauxhall/Open brands from GM, together with some that have failed like Kraft Heinz proposed takeover of Unilever.

It seems as if the underlying rationale behind these two projects which are not atypical highlights the current push to consolidation, cleaning up balance sheets eg offloading burdensome employee pension obligations and the pursuit of "synergies"...eg the inevitable loss of jobs as capacity is rationalised.


Within this it seems there is little talk of top line growth or even serving consumers better, and let's not even go near the notion of the Purpose Economy ..


To my mind these examples are pretty much pure financial transactions, and it seems to me like todays m&a might be the reincarnated persona of those Bad Boys ,the bankers who precipitated the global economic recession, the effects of which will be felt for a generation at least...

So should m&a be subject to closer scrutiny pre approval ( BHS refers)...?

Who's in charge here .?

Another boring blast from the past , or a call for pragmatism ?
During the early part of my career local brand managers were exhorted by their bosses to behave like business unit General Managers , and take overall ownership of every aspect of their brands, from sales forecasting and other supply chain disciplines through the four P's including advertising and promotion. Honesty requires me to say that particularly for multicountry brands this was the cause in some companies of brands with little or no consistency in brand identity, sometimes justified by different local consumer needs, often not.. In this era some companies practised a comparatively light touch approach to ensuring consistency of brand identity, with local teams still enjoying a good measure of input in all aspects of the marketing mix, albeit with some centralised coordination and oversight.

Critically a notion of the primacy of the local market still had meaning...

At some point in the 90's I think it became the custom to begin the increasing fragmentation of the job , with brand equity considerations and control transferred definitively from local teams to global or regional marketing teams.

At this point the local brand marketing teams were left essentially with local so called brand activation roles , eg picking from a menu of centrally prepared options for promotion, new products, and comms. The obvious benefits of a more centralised approach included subtantial cost synergies , as well as providing for greater consistency of international brand strategy and brand identity...

The consequences however unintended at the sharp end in the local market are the risk that the brand becomes further removed from the local consumer,lowest common denominator blandness, that success is more dependant on skilful internal relationship management between local and central teams;and finally for me personally the bigggest bugbear , that the appeal ,reward and role of local brand management is somehow diminished , with the reduced autonomy that comes if the local team no longer has full use of the marketing toolbox ......

Today I see the brand management role being fragmented further and further ,as new specialisations make their presence felt and new departments spring to life: Digital and Innovation being the most talked about...and don't start me on automation either please....

So my question is who's in charge nowadays, and does any one person actually have a holistic view of the brand in the local market?

p.s :My speciality subject is food , where local tastes and habits vary widely and do matter; there may be less of a local issue in other fmcg product categories of course...

The mirage of Direct to Consumer sales..or licks to bricks to clicks

Recent press releases and articles continue to stress the Utopian future vision for brand owners of direct to consumer relationships and sales. The reality is as always is more nuanced, and that there is no single solution , because current consumer behaviour demonstrates how much they have already embraced multiple shopping channels.

Nestle for instance recently announced they now have 5% of their sales direct, with faster growth rates than offline channels...to me that means in food at least they are just about keeping pace with on line food sales....

If you step back from the hype and consider the evolutionary curve of selling to consumers you might plot the journey thus: "From licks to bricks to clicks" Starting with mail order (licking stamps)-》 to retail outlets both fixed and mobile -》to online ,the odd one out is actually the retail store as it is the only one the consumer has traditionally had to leave home for,even if that is not the case today of course.

Those either side of retail stores in this evolution have therefore often in fact had direct sales..

The difference in today's debate is that is the manufacturer/ brand owners are trying harder to go direct and cut out the traditional middleman,in order to trouser the extra margin... I mean to have relationships with each and every one of their consumers.

Now in the age of supposed consumer indifference it is worth asking to what extent consumers actually want to have direct relationships with brands.... Secondly brand owners will surely need to develop additional new /non core competencies in consumer contact on a massive scale..?

Finally is it not the case that future has already arrived , and that multi channel shopping is simply a must have to meet consumer need states and existing behaviours.... Believe the hype?

Another day ,another food scare story.....

You may well have become aware in a seemingly never ending series of food scare stories that food is dangerous , not just unhealthy... most food apparently... and especially the foods you love... It has also become apparent that most food companies are actually trying to kill us all, by stealth, and that marketers are evil incarnate. In addition to the run of the mill stories about "Processed food" last night I watched a pretty balanced ,evidence based expose about the dangers of a pretty much basic and unprocessed food, which also scared me .......the culprit this time is ... rice, and I share this with you in a sense of public service announcement. Apparently arsenic occurs naturally in rice , and can cause Arsenic poisoning if eaten in sufficient quantities daily over time ,and if not cooked in a particular way which reduces the Arsenic level....but which is probably not much known or used by rice eaters, certainly none I know. Now I don't know about you , but I wonder if all the rice eating cultures of the world knew they should give up eating rice, immediately, or change the way they cook it? More worrying how did previous generations survive.? Are today's rice eating peoples all really Zombies? Unfortunately the programme last night didn't deal with these rather more exciting and important questions....

Bravery or stupidity at Work?

When does Bravery in one's work life become stupidity ? It seems to me that there is a world of difference between how Bravery is viewed in the corporate as opposed to the entrepreneurial world. I have worked with people who had to show physical as well as psychological bravery simply to take paid work in cultures where eg traditionally women are not expected to ... one woman telling me she was regularly verbally abused in the street for working , wearing trousers,driving a car, you name it . I have often in my own cozy yet cutthroat corporate career got myself into hot water by acts of intellectual independence, telling it like I saw it , as opposed to simply going with the party political line..no doubt harming my development prospects.Brave or stupid , bad team Player? I always felt I was being paid to think, to lead, and as such it was my duty to express my opinion,back it up with data and experience, and then execute to the best of my ability ,whichever way the decision went. Bravery at work can sometimes bring a lot of problems....take whistle blowers, those who shine a light on illegal ,dangerous or unethical behaviours ;one rarely reads about them being rewarded, generally it seems they actually seem to get punished somehow.... Conversely was I brave or stupid to take the chance of my first international posting , without any guaranteed parachute or way back ?A lot of good people are too cautious to risk this step , which for me was in many ways the most rewarding period of my career. I'd be equally amazed if I was the only person to have wrestled with staying or quitting a company without having the next move lined up..is it brave to go or Stupid? Similarly I have carried on pushing unpopular innovation projects in the face of apathy or negativity from higher up the decison making chain ; in a corporate context this is a short cut to failure ,irrespective of whether the idea itself was a potential winner.Bravery or stupidity? In a classic,corporate career context then maybe I have been naive or stupid,certainly not brave. Conversely if you are an entrepreneur or visionary then one of the overarching qualities you need to display is a willingness to be brave, to challenge conventional thinking head on, and keep on whatever the challenges that prevent you realising your vision. So, as we approach that time of year where some people will be hanging on,in jobs they don'the really love ,just for the year end bonus or the uncertainty of change in a difficult job market what advice can I Offer? Would I do different if I was starting out again? Your life , your career, your decision...