A buffet of tips from *Michelin-starred food and drink marketers

I’m Hannah Bowler, senior reporter covering the brand marketing beat for The Drum. We have just finished a weeklong spotlight on Food & Drink by interrogating the biggest agencies and CMOs in the sector to learn what's giving them their edge. OK, they don't actually have Michelin stars. But they should have!

The most notable trend was how differently people and brands are thinking about healthy eating. Chief marketing officer at Britvic, Cindy Tervoort, for instance, said that obesity, calorie counting and HFSS are no longer dominating conversations around healthy habits. “Low calorie is still extremely important, but now you have to look as well at unprocessed, clean and natural plant-based products, health benefits and functionalities,” she said.

The notion of healthy eating becoming more complex permeated most of our coverage. For example, the fear of overly processed foods is a contributing factor in the decline in the once buoyant fake meat market. This is interesting because the category was initially grown by an increase in vegetarians and vegans, many of whom went meat-free for health reasons. Are you starting to see the paradox here?

Another example can be seen in the bourgeoning functional drinks market, which owes some of its growth to booze rejectors. No longer are people moderating their alcohol consumption or switching to Heineken 00, now they are searching for pre-and probiotics, adaptogenic roots, “functional” mushrooms, cannabidiol (CBD) and nootropics. There’s a lot to choose from.

Meanwhile, the demand for healthy ingredients is sneaking its way into all sorts of product packaging and marketing. Now any old product is listing its vitamin content and claiming its health benefit.

And then there’s the final bit of food no one likes to talk about, and here we are, talking about it. The gut health market is burgeoning, with brands and marketers capitalizing on the public’s growing understanding of how their gut affects the rest of their health. Brands like Zoe, The Gut Stuff and Bio&Me have all cropped up in the past couple of years, catering to this new customer base obsessed with probiotics, fermented foods and eating the rainbow. And, of course, we spoke to them all. Now THAT takes guts.

Thankfully, healthy eating wasn’t the only topic covered in The Drum’s focus week. Where would be the fun in that?

Consumers seem to be lapping up wacky food collaborations, especially when those collabs mix luxury with regular old food. Taco Bell put Truff’s truffle sauce on its menu, a bottle retails for $18, and Pringles partnered with The Caviar Company for $140 crisps and caviar kit.

Todd Kaufman, vice-president of strategy and partnerships at Beanstalk penned: “The gourmand/luxury brand achieves wider recognition and distribution at a larger scale, the heritage brand earns a cool factor and reintroduces itself to consumers. The partnerships create cultural topspin that is designed to fuel engagement with each brand’s core.”

Celebrities and influencers creating their own food and drinks brands is another key trend in the category. We’ve got the likes of KSI and Paul Logan’s Prime energy drink to Gillian Anderson’s G Spot and Ed Sheeran’s hot sauce, Tingly Teds. But ever wondered how a celebrity with zero experience in the food and drink world can bring these products to market?

The Drum investigated just that by tasking an innovation lab to create a Drum-branded snack. The outcome was a retro toaster strudel. And no, they’re not available to buy. We ate them all. Sorry. But we were smart enough to document the journey here.

Retro food was another common thread throughout the focus week. In the UK think Fish Fingers, Walls Viennetta, Dairylea and Potato Waffles. As a 90s child I’ve been hyped to see the return of Müller Corner’s Mississippi Mud Pie flavor. Camilla Yates who is strategy director at Elvis dug a little deeper into this trend finding comparisons to the 2008 recession. “Looking back on the past with rosy sentimentality seems to be a way to make ourselves feel safe when faced with uncertainty or fear about the present or near future,” she said. There is some advice though for marketers looking to play the nostalgia card. Just don't add too much, or you'll spoil the recipe.

Yates added: “Ensuring household names can simultaneously balance nostalgia with current cultural relevance is of key importance when ensuring the brand’s present and future effectiveness.”

And finally, during the week, Lyle’s Golden Syrup announced a rebrand. For those not in the know, it boasted the oldest branding on record and featured a dead lion, some bees and a sprinkle of Bible verse. That sparked some outrage and also opened up conversation about new tradition.

Thanks for reading, I’m off to eat some a potato waffle covered in fermented kimchi washed down with a can of sparkling CBD blood orange water now. A real palate cleanser.

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