A new mindset for plant-based food businesses
Former Nestlé executive Miguel Serrano explains how brands can stand-out in the plant-based category, and the role value proposition plays in winning the trust of consumers, suppliers and investors
Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come, and this is more than ever true for every business in these unprecedented times. Today, I see the dawn of a new mindset based on a higher innate purpose and the plant-based food industry’s pioneering role to become a real catalyst for a new leadership paradigm.
We are all craving to feel safe and cared for, and yearn to feel this unwavering trust in ourselves that companies and organisations are by default making us grow, thrive, and evolve. As a consumer, we also want to believe in the brands, and not feel that we are deceived and tricked into consumption.
If we close our eyes and listen to the planet calling to be healed, we can’t deny the beginning of a new era – plant-based foods are already built upon it, carrying the seed of this new beginnings.
Plant-based food is the perfect place to explore this new leadership mindset and create a new form of building businesses, thriving beyond competition and linear strategies. However, players in this category need to go beyond the buzzword and be transparent and real.
The plant-based consumer
Generally speaking, the consumer is increasingly looking for a new, healthier, and force-for-good lifestyle. Mindfulness and plant-based food is a logical choice for more and more people.
In particular, the values of inclusivity, transparency and sustainability are key for millennial, Gen Y, and especially Gen Z consumers. They choose friends, jobs, products, and food that suit their lifestyle and pay into their value system and beliefs. They are light-hearted and look for real purpose and authenticity.
If you want these future consumers to connect emotionally with your brand and become part of your tribe, you need to be transparent and authentic like never before. But watch out – they are well educated and see right through you if you are faking it.
The market has been growing exponentially in the past five years – something that the food industry has not experienced in decades. Consequently, a myriad of new players and formats are entering this low-hurdle category at unparalleled speed.
Alternative protein investments are soaring. In the US alone plant-based meat, egg, and dairy companies have received $2.7 billion in venture capital investments in the past decade – 45% of the capital was raised in 2019 and Q1 2020 alone according to The Good Food Institute. So, we can anticipate this segment will get even more crowded in the coming years.
Let’s get real
Having built with my team at Nestlé the biggest plant-based brand in continental Europe, Garden Gourmet, I have witnessed many companies applying a conventional approach and old-world thinking, driven by unconscious leadership and applying substandard marketing strategies.
In one of my former companies, we understood the importance of purpose early on. One day all marketers and leaders received top-down mandatory instructions to specify and add a purpose into all our brand’s DNA. Many of us spent more than six months debating with prolific creative agencies about the wording of the brand manifestos.
The exercise, however, defeated the purpose of the purpose. A purpose must be real and sprout from within – anything else is fake, and employees and consumers will not buy into it.
Let’s be real and stop the buzzwords. Let’s dive deeper and open ourselves to feeling the purpose and identity within ourselves, overcoming our inner fears. Only genuine identity will make you stand out in this crowded new food categories.
Building trust with consumers, employees, partners, and shareholders require nothing more than telling the truth even if it is not perfect.
Unearth your true identity
I began a journey practising everyday presence and stillness, shifting the focus from outside to inside and allowing myself to be me detached from everything. Other people attain the same insights in sport, nature, hobbies or other activities.
I asked myself three questions: who am I? Who am I when I’m at my best? And who am I at my full potential? I went through a humbling process of grateful self-forgiveness and re-connected to my deeper innate purpose – and it now defines who I am as a leader and how I guide, advice and develop individuals and businesses in an empathic, empowering way.
It is essential to living this process yourself first before reaching out to others.
How do I know this is true and not nonsense? The real indicator for me was a feeling of joy, light-heartedness, and an inner sense of direction. So, if you sense this feeling of joy in what you discover inside yourself, you can unmistakeably trust it as real.
From this rejuvenated inner self-perspective, we can ripple it to the new world of plant-based food and other industries. That will allow us to create innovation ecosystems and sustainable value that reaches the new consumer.
From the perspective of an investor, we need to help our businesses to become new and feel much deeper than the vision statement on a website. We can reinvent our leadership approach and ways of working to collaboration instead of competition, creating safe spaces instead of maintaining a culture of fear, and fostering inner growth instead of consuming our employees to a burnout-level.
We can introduce new elevated governance processes, simplify more, and avoid buzzwords to align everyone onto clarity and action. There is a unique opportunity to use your new food business as a real force for good for all.
The full potential
From a technology, regulatory, or sensorial perspective, the hurdles to enter the plant-based markets today are relatively low. Very few patents or IPs related to this novel food category create a distinctive, uncopiable competitive advantage.
Nonetheless, it is only a matter of time before your market position is weakened. Only if you have the hygiene factors such as taste, quality, and product safety in place, combined with your ownable brand purpose and new leadership energy, will you shine.
Beside an elevating purpose, we still need the conventional marketing and consumer focus to succeed in the market.
I’m surprised how little time we spend on the consumer during discussions at alternative protein workshops and conferences. Topics such as technology, ingredients, bioengineering processes, and regulation seem to be much higher on the agenda than the consumers and their pains, needs, desires and expectations.
For plant-based food to grow to its full potential, we need to scale-up, and become a regular part of flexitarians diets and not only focus on the vegan or vegetarian lifestyle.
We need to put the consumers at the heart of everything we do. R&D, technology, and product development should be at their service only.
The value proposition of plant-based products
Let’s not forget that the broad base of consumers does not know enough about alternative protein food. They don’t really understand what plant-based nor alternative protein is, not to mention lab-grown meat. The few that have heard about it do not know where to find it. Do I find dairy alternatives next to the milk and yoghurts, or is it in the health sections in-store?
If they eventually find it, what is in the ingredient list? For example, the label of almond milk is fairly clear despite missing the organoleptic or functional properties of cow milk. But look at the veggie burger – it looks like a hamburger; it tastes close to an average beef patty, but it’s not! So, what the heck is it then? And is it healthy and good for me?
This lack of understanding calls for the plant-based food industry to educate, inform and earn consumer trust through transparency and clean labels. How else could you possibly reassure them?
Also, how do you make sure that you offer food that meets the consumer’s needs, including:
- 100% plant-based
- High in protein
- Lower fats
- Better unsaturated fats
- High in fibres
- Fully recyclable
- Fairtrade
- Local and seasonal
- Containing B12 vitamins
- Less salt
- Less sugar
- No preservative or colourant
- Allergen-free
- Gluten-free
- Organic
- Fast prepared
- Fresh
- Produced with a low carbon footprint
Can your product deliver on key value propositions ranked by importance to the consumer in the above list and taste heavenly with minimal calories and at a price point they will buy?
The above list is value proposition chaos. Many players are unable to bring priority, structure, and discipline into that chaos. We see all sorts of combinations on-pack and in their marketing communications, which truly do not always make sense.
A value proposition is a promise by the company to the consumer, committing to the specific values of the brand or product if they choose to buy it. As an example, if you claim something like “proudly producing high-quality vegan food since 1958” or “we are the leading provider for XYZ”, it might be interesting to know, but it rarely engages with consumers since it is not addressing their needs, let alone enhancing their quality of life – the only reason companies and brands exist!
The brand story builds on real understanding
Once we combine the innate purpose with a deep understanding of our consumers’ priorities, we can start to craft our compelling, ownable stories for the market. To prioritise the value propositions is not an easy task, but a base for success.
In the past 15 years, I have successfully worked with an exceptional science/data-driven tracking agency that helped bring order in this value proposition chaos with a scorecard-based approach across conventional and plant-based food businesses in various European, US and Asian markets.
For smaller budgets, we have developed a more pragmatic, yet still on-target approach whereby we collect in a workshop the existing knowledge, observations, expertise, and intuitive intelligence of the key people of the different value streams across the organisation.
The first thing we do is to identify the key themes or priority pillars. For instance, in plant-based food, you could say cost, protein content, environmental, and taste are your priority pillars. Your company may decide on other priority pillars based on your innate purpose such as animal welfare, feeding the world, and pure convenience.
There is a huge benefit for your team to discuss in-depth and determine which pillar is from your consumers’ perspective the most relevant, the second, the third, and so on.
Quantify to convince and convert
The next step would be to go into each pillar and define the supportive arguments. For instance, in the environmental pillar, you may specify the percentage of carbon dioxide emissions compared with milk production, including landfill, water/energy consumption, local sourcing, and full packaging recycling.
The key is to phrase the arguments in a quantified way. For example, “100% of our packaging is fully recyclable and by 2025 will be 100% plastic-free.”
Transparency means that you also can share your commitments and improvement plans. Taking a humble approach here is key, as no player in this field can claim it’s 100% sustainable on all levels.
Then, summarise all value pillars in one sentence, and synthesise all value pillars once again into one overarching statement. It will become your overarching value proposition containing the most important elements of your products or services.
You can now brief your creative agency to develop your ownable big idea and creative campaign that reflects your differentiated positioning. Then, choose the adequate media channels according to messaging and budgets.
Most importantly, be uncompromisingly consistent and disciplined in the execution. Global consumer products companies spend 40%-60% of their marketing budget with ‘nice’ food images and shallow taglines in irrelevant channels. It is time to get real value for your money.
Leadership that inspires
In my 30-plus years of business-to-business-to-consumer experience, I’ve learned that a solid strategy is important, but what really matters is an inner wholesome and meaningful execution.
In this new era of alternative protein nutrition, it is essential to be disruptive because the category is a new game with a new set of parameters. It requires us to give the best of ourselves, overcoming the inner fears to live our full potential in a new togetherness. We are just one decision away from creating our organisation based on our innate purpose and transforming the world by changing ourselves first.
We need the courage of a warrior to say yes to our inner feminine principles of inner creation, intuition, community, and collaboration.
The people out there are yearning for a new leadership cutting the real from the fake, creating safe spaces and guiding us farther with more elevated KPIs. Let us carry out this leadership in the world and inspire others to follow. I am at your disposal to ignite this process with you – sustainable success will inevitably be ours.