16894: Big Food, Big Tobacco, Big Trouble.

 

Advertising Age reported on a lawsuit charging big food companies emulate Big Tobacco; that is, packaged food corporations deliberately make addictive products promoted by marketing campaigns targeting children and minorities.

 

Not sure why the lawsuit is only attacking packaged food manufacturers versus also going after brands like Mickey D’s. After all, it could be argued McNuggets and McRibs are the equivalent of menthol cigarettes.

 

Lawsuit alleges major food makers knowingly used Big Tobacco tactics

 

The makers of Oreo, Pop-Tarts, Slim Jim and other products face a lawsuit over childhood disease

 

By Ally Marotti

 

Packaged food giants face a lawsuit alleging that they knowingly make addictive products that cause illnesses such as type 2 diabetes and target children with those products.

 

Food and beverage marketers named in the lawsuit include Coca-Cola Co., Conagra Brands, General Mills, Kellanova, Kraft Heinz, Mars, Mondelēz International, Nestlé USA, PepsiCo, Post Holdings and WK Kellogg Co.

 

Pennsylvania resident Bryce Martinez filed the lawsuit on Dec. 10 in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court. The lawsuit alleges that Martinez developed type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease when he was 16 because he frequently ate the companies’ products.

 

Martinez “is one of many casualties of defendants’ predatory profiteering,” the complaint says. “(He) is now suffering from these devastating diseases, and will continue to suffer for the rest of his life.”

 

The lawsuit comes as the spotlight is turning upon the ingredients in some of the country’s most popular packaged food brands. President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has broadly critiqued processed foods. He has vowed to remove them from school lunch programs and disallow them from being bought with food stamps.

 

Kennedy has specifically discussed the harms of high-fructose corn syrup and processed grains. If his nomination is approved, he will oversee a department that has partial oversight of Americans’ diet through the Food and Drug Administration.

 

The lawsuit filed in Pennsylvania earlier this month targets ultra-processed foods, which it says are “industrially produced edible substances that are imitations of food.” They contain little to no whole food, and have come to dominate the American diet since the 1980s, the lawsuit says. On average, children now derive two-thirds of their energy from ultra-processed foods.

 

The lawsuit points to the rise of type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease, which “had been largely confined to elderly alcoholics,” in children. It ties the increasing prevalence of such diseases to the 1980s, when tobacco companies bought major U.S. food companies. For example, tobacco company Philip Morris bought Kraft Foods in 1988.

 

The tobacco companies then “used their cigarette playbook to fill our food environment with addictive substances that are aggressively marketed to children and minorities,” according to the lawsuit.

 

The lawsuit alleges that the companies that make ultra-processed foods are “well aware of the harms they are causing and (have) known it for decades. But they continue to inflict massive harm on society in a reckless pursuit of profits.”

 

Representatives from each company did not respond to a request for comment. The exception was Conagra: Its spokesperson declined to comment on pending litigation.

 

The Consumer Brands Association, a trade association that represents many of the country’s packaged food companies, said in a statement that such companies adhere to FDA standards and “deliver safe, affordable and convenient products that consumers depend on every day.”

 

“Americans deserve facts based on sound science in order to make the best choices for their health. There is currently no agreed upon scientific definition of ultra-processed foods,” Sarah Gallo, senior VP of Product Policy, said in a statement. “Attempting to classify foods as unhealthy simply because they are processed, or demonizing food by ignoring its full nutrient content, misleads consumers and exacerbates health disparities.”

 

At its heart, this lawsuit is a product liability case, said R. Mark McCareins, a clinical professor of business law at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

“The cost of doing business in the U.S., with our civil justice system, are suits like this,” he said. “The fact that somebody filed a lawsuit does not mean that … the companies did anything wrong, and they are more than free to defend themselves.”

 

In such cases, attorneys typically must prove causation—in this case, did the ultra-processed foods cause the diseases—and that the companies knew about the harm. Typically, expert testimony is vital.

12853: ROI=Return On Idiocy.

Advertising Age reported Mondelez plans to increase spending on advertising and consumer support, dumping a much bigger chunk of budget money to digital. In explaining the decision to invest more heavily in digital, Mondelez Chief Growth Officer Mark Clouse said digital usually costs less than traditional media but delivers twice the return on investment. Hey, Clouse should talk to Kraft Director of Data, Content and Media Julie Fleischer, who will tell him that content gets four times better ROI than advertising. Has anyone in accounting ever figured out the ROI for employing idiotic blowhards like Clouse and Fleischer?

Mondelez Raises Targets for Ad Spend and Digital Media

Oreo Maker’s Other Goals Include More Healthy Snacks and Online Sales

By Jessica Wohl

Mondelez International announced several new targets Thursday including plans to increase spending on advertising and consumer support and allocating a much larger percentage of its total media budget to digital.

The efforts, announced by Chief Growth Officer Mark Clouse at a Barclays conference, come as the maker of Oreo cookies continues to cut costs and sets plans to reinvest some of those savings into areas such as advertising and consumer support.

Mondelez is under pressure to find savings and show improvement in its plans, due in part to investments from activists Nelson Peltz and Bill Ackman and slowing growth in emerging markets.

Among other cost-cutting moves, Mondelez confirmed to Ad Age in August that it is planning organizational changes in its North America marketing department that will go into effect at the beginning of 2016, but would not say how many layoffs could be involved.

Now, Mondelez is increasing its emphasis on advertising and consumer support, which includes working media and non-working media such as production costs, along with consumer promotion costs related to incentives such as coupons, contests or sweepstakes. The company’s advertising and consumer support does not include in-store promotions or slotting fees.

On July 30, Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden said spending on advertising and consumer support increased to more than 9% of revenue in the second quarter, and suggested that spending would continue to rise in the latter half of the year. At that time, he said higher advertising and consumer-support spending trimmed second-quarter adjusted profit by about four cents per share.

Mr. Clouse said Thursday Mondelez plans to increase advertising and consumer support to over 10% of revenue, which would be up from more than 9% in the second quarter and from more than 8% in 2014.

The company is also moving more of its spending to digital, which Mr. Clouse said typically costs less than traditional media but has twice the return on investment. By 2018, Mondelez expects digital media to represent around 30% of its total media spend, about double the rate from the end of 2014.

One of the other goals announced Thursday is a push to have 50% of the portfolio be in the well-being space by 2020, up from more than 33% currently.

“Consumers want ingredients that they recognize and if it’s on our ingredient line, a consumer should be able to find it in their kitchen,” Mr. Clouse said.

Over the next five years, Mondelez plans to focus 70% of its new-product development push on well-being areas while working on reducing levels of saturated fat and sodium and increasing whole grains, removing artificial colors and flavors on many brands. Still, the cookie and chocolate maker is not abandoning indulgent areas.

“I’d like to clarify one important element,” Mr. Clouse said. “We’re not turning everything into health food. Indeed, there’s a proper place for treats in a balanced diet.”

Another goal is to grow e-commerce from less than $100 million in revenue to as much as $1 billion by 2020. Mondelez already has Buy Now buttons on digital media platforms across 25 markets. It is also pushing unique products to drive e-commerce purchases. For example, later this year it will sell Trident gum with Star Wars characters on bottles, but some versions will only be available online.

12784: Honey Maid Disabled Diversity.

Adweek spotlighted the latest Honey Maid commercial that is offensive on so many covert levels. The Adweek story stated, “Honey Maid has become one of the most famous brands embracing such diversity in its ads…” Plus, Mondelēz International Portfolio Lead for Biscuits Gary Osifchin declared, “The ‘This Is Wholesome’ campaign launched in March of 2014 and has been committed to featuring a cross-section of the American family. From a same-sex couple and single dad, to a mixed-race military family, a blended and an immigrant family, the sweet moments between a disabled aunt and her niece are just another example of Honey Maid’s commitment to feature real American families and the wholesome connections they share.” Talk about bullshit on a biscuit. Mondelēz International is allegedly devoted to diversity, with a manifesto on inclusiveness that reads like a Hallmark poem. Yet the company conspires with a White advertising agency—Droga5—where exclusivity reigns. How many same-sex couples, mixed-race military families, immigrants (beside David Droga) and disabled people are members of the Droga5 clan? Hell, how many ordinary minorities are in the fold? Mondelēz International’s hypocrisy is shameful. And for Droga5 to position itself as a progressive, humanitarian enterprise is despicable.

12129: Fearless Is Scary Stupid.

The New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott reported on an Advertising Week panel titled: Fearless—where advertisers were encouraged to be edgy risk-takers.

“Being fearless is the only answer right now,” declared Mondelez SVP CMO Dana Anderson, because “if you play it right up the middle you really don’t [accomplish much]. If it’s not good enough to tell somebody about, then it’s not good enough for you.”

Okay, but Mondelez is hardly fearless across the board. And a lot of the work for its brands—including the Honey Maid shit trotted out as an example—is closer to being scary versus fearless. Sorry, but the borrowed interest employed for Honey Maid is patronizing, self-absorbed dreck that jumps on emotional bandwagons already driven to death by other advertisers.

The bigger issue with the panel’s theme is the highly subjective nature of being fearless. Letting a digital agency, for example, produce videos and TV spots is not displaying fearlessness, but rather, foolishness. Ditto allowing traditional adpeople to pontificate on digital. Additionally, employing agencies like Droga5 is risky—as their output is wildly inconsistent—yet not fearless. It’s closer to being reckless. And handing the reins to in-house hacks is mindless. In short, agreeing upon a universal definition for fearless is no longer possible in a multimedia, multidiscipline industry featuring multiple levels of taste and talent.

It’s easy for Anderson to challenge her panel audience to be fearless, especially when the overwhelming majority of the attendees were probably sycophant agency partners or self-delusional peers. But when someone—particularly a traditionally conservative client—thinks they can standardize what it means to be fearless, be afraid. Very afraid.

Besides, Anderson should know that any fearless advertising for brands like Honey Maid will never match the ROI of simply posting S’more recipes online. Plus, persuading parents and their children to eat such toxic, unhealthy garbage is downright frightening.

12053: Kraft’s Obvious Content Success.

Advertising Age reported Kraft Director of Data, Content and Media Julie Fleischer declared her company gets four times better ROI from content than advertising. Well, no shit—although, hopefully, other brands won’t look at the statistic and suddenly think marketing dollars should be shifted from advertising to content creation. A brand like Kraft inherently offers content that the public is literally and figuratively hungry for, primarily in the form of cooking tips and recipes. In Kraft’s case, there’s no way advertising will ever beat content’s ROI. The challenge for the overwhelming majority of brands is that there is no inherently relevant and valuable content to present to the public. And trying to force content and conversations on people leads to lousy ROI and worse. Hell, look what happened when former Kraft brand DiGiorno pizza tried to be relevant on Twitter. All of which makes Fleischer’s declarations and best practices obvious to some and useless to most.

Kraft Says It Gets Four Times Better ROI from Content Than Ads

Food Marketer Offers Best Practices for Content Marketing

By Jack Neff

Kraft Foods has been doing content marketing for decades—its 18-year-old Food & Family magazine once mailed free to one in 10 U.S. households was later converted to paid circulation and is still beats such titles as Food & Wine, according to Julie Fleischer, the company’s director of data, content and media.

But it was only two years ago, when Kraft split from Mondelez, that the company really started getting its act together in content, said Ms. Fleischer in a keynote speech at the Content Marketing World in Cleveland on Tuesday. Kraft now generates the equivalent of 1.1 billion ad impressions a year and a four-times-better return on investment through content-marketing than through even targeted advertising, she said.

Ms. Fleischer, the Content Marketing Institute’s “Content Marketer of the Year” for 2014, said one key to Kraft’s success has been thinking of content in some ways the same as paid advertising.

Ms. Fleischer calls the approach “relentlessly pursuing worthiness.” But she said Facebook and other social media actually have led many marketers to de-value content by thinking of the distribution as free.

“It’s not about putting something out every day to be part of the conversation,” Ms. Fleischer said, adding that Kraft believes brands shouldn’t post content they don’t deem worth of paying to distribute.

“The days of free organic reach are rapidly coming to an end,” she said. “If you wouldn’t spend money behind it, then why do it? It’s shouting into the wind without making a sound. How many of us are guilty of being slaves to a calendar or posting cadence?”

Other keys Ms. Fleischer sees to success in content marketing include:

Market to individuals, not segments

Kraft tracks 22,000 attributes of the more than 100 million annual visitors to its websites and has merged its content and data-management platforms. The data is used to power the increasingly individually addressable advertising Kraft does through its programmatic media buying, which Ms. Fleisher eventually expects to account for the majority of the company’s buys.

Pay attention to trends and apply them quickly

If Parmesan roasted potatoes and green velvet cupcakes are doing well organically on Pinterest, then Kraft adds them to beta tests for promoted pins as well.

Realize that content and advertising are inextricably linked

Content outperforms advertising in terms of engagement, Ms. Fleischer said, “but relevant content programmed strategically with your advertising makes your advertising work harder for you.”

11786: Honey Maid Made Controversy.

From USA TODAY…

Diversity reaches new levels in Honey Maid ads

By Bruce Horovitz, USA TODAY

America’s biggest brands are at an advertising crossroads, and the new diversity that their ads project has suddenly emerged as one of society’s most visual — if not incendiary — flash points.

And it’s about to explode.

It began with several recent, high-profile diverse TV spots from two multibillion-dollar brands: a Cheerios spot staring a biracial girl with white mom and black dad; and a Coca-Cola spot featuring minorities singing America the Beautiful in their native languages. Both went viral and left trails of social media venom in their wake.

On Monday, Honey Maid will jump on the diversity bandwagon with a far-reaching campaign by the 90-year-old graham cracker brand that raises the use of diversity in mainstream ads to a whole new level.

In one 30-second Honey Maid ad, viewers will see everything from a same-sex couple bottle-feeding their son to an interracial couple and their three kids holding hands. The ad also features a Hispanic mother and an African-American father with their three mixed-race children. And there’s even a father covered in body tattoos. This is not some shockvertisement for Benetton. It’s an ad for one of America’s oldest and most familiar brands. The people in it are not actors, but real families. The message of the ad: These are wholesome families enjoying wholesome snacks.

It’s a brand new, multicolored, multisexual world of advertising. Major mainstream brands are plowing ahead and all but ignoring the expected social media blow-back, with one eye on demographics and another on survival. “The big brands are coming to the conclusion that diversity in America is inevitable,” says Andrew Erlich, a cross-cultural psychologist, consultant and author. “This horse has left the barn.”

Nor will that horse return any time soon. Some 37% of Americans are minorities and will likely reach the 50% mark by 2044, says demographer Cheryl Russell. Marketers are simply responding to the math, she says. “I call it the one-third rule,” she says. “When you exceed one-third of the population, you have political and economic power that far exceeds that level because you can make coalitions with a majority.”

Advertisers are simply reading the demographic numbers — and reacting. Whatever a traditional family used to be, it is no longer. One in 12 married couples in the U.S. are interracial. American women now make up 40% of primary family breadwinners. And only 62% of children live with their two biological parents.

“As a brand, you don’t really care who buys your product,” says Jo Muse, chairman of Muse Communications, one of the nation’s first multicultural agencies. “You just want them happy — and you want them to know that you see them.”

For the Honey Maid brand, which is owned by Mondelez, maker of Oreos, Ritz and Chips Ahoy, it’s about an almost century-old brand of graham crackers trying to reinvent itself as a product with both cultural and snacking relevance. For a generation of Millennials, who, unlike Boomers, were not raised on graham crackers, it’s an attempt to give the brand some cultural cred.

“This is a recognition that the family dynamic in America is evolving and has evolved,” says Gary Osifchin, senior marketing director of biscuits for U.S. Mondelez. “We’ve evolved, too.”

That evolution began in 2011, when executives took a long, hard look at the brand. A decision was made to move well beyond boxed graham crackers and make the brand far more relevant for snacking. So the brand created Honey Made Grahamfuls — graham cracker sandwiches filled with yummy stuff. That’s also about the time it stopped using high-fructose corn syrup — and began to promote that change.

Then, it brought Teddy Grahams under its label and started making the Teddy Bear-shaped treats with real fruit.

After years of stagnation, sales grew double-digit for the past two years, and now the brand is approaching $500 million in sales and even has eyes on ultimately becoming a $1 billion brand, says Osifchin.

Now, it’s all about appealing to a new generation that looks and acts different. All of this demographic change, the new Honey Maid ad implies, is just as wholesome as the brand itself.

“No matter how things change,” says an off-camera narrator in the ad, created by the agency Droga5, “what makes wholesome never will.” The camera then shows quick images of the gay couple with their infant and the mixed-race family out walking while holding hands. It also shows images of the folks eating Honey Maid crackers. The narrator then continues: “Honey Maid everyday wholesome snacks. For every wholesome family.”

No matter what their skin color or sexual orientation, “these families that we portray all have wonderful parent and child connections,” says Osifchin.

Clearly, mainstream brands are adapting to a new demographic reality. Executives at Coca-Cola declined to comment for this story. But General Mills executives say the reason for the mixed-race casting in their recent ads is simple. “We wanted these Cheerios ads to represent today’s families,” says Camille Gibson, vice president of marketing for Cheerios.

Now, Honey Maid is doing the same. “We want to be a brand that is current,” says Osifchin. “No matter how things out there in the world have changed, the enduring value of wholesome connections between parent and child have endured.”

11353: John Winsor Is An Asshole.

John Winsor is at it again. His latest Digiday column is titled, “Agencies Are to Blame for Deferred Payments”—a critique based on the recent moves by Procter & Gamble and Mondelez to lengthen the time they take to pay their agencies. Admittedly didn’t bother reading Winsor’s perspective. After all, here’s a fucking idiot running a shitty crowdsourcing shop who doesn’t even feel obligated to pay everyone submitting concepts. Winsor is revolutionizing hucksterism.

11301: Mondelez Mumbo-Jumbo.

Advertising Age spotlighted Mondelez Agency Scout Debra Giampoli, who offered dos and don’ts for shops seeking to work with the food giant. Hey, given the company’s commitment to diversity, one might think Mondelez would hire lots of minority firms—and frown upon White agencies that continue to perpetuate cultures of exclusivity. Instead, the advertiser appears to prefer Premium Crackers.

How a Small Agency Can Land a Big Client Like Mondelez

Agency Scout Debra Giampoli Offers Up Her Dos and Don’ts

By Maureen Morrison

Landing a big client can seem impossible when you’re a small agency. But companies like Mondelez International are always on the lookout for up-and-comers.

At Ad Age’s Small Agency Conference in Portland, Ore., Debra Giampoli, the agency scout for Mondelez, shared tips on how to get her attention. Here are some of her dos and don’ts:

Do have a story to tell. Make sure your shop has a compelling story about who you are and what you do. If you want to punch above your weight, have more than a capabilities deck to show.

Do know how to articulate your strategy and talk about your work. “The bar is just as high for small agencies as it is for big ones,” Ms. Giampoli said. Great work is every agency’s best calling card, she added.

Do invite prospective clients to your office. Ms. Giampoli said she likely wouldn’t work with an agency whose space she hasn’t visited.

Do make yourself visible. Approach marketing executives through mutual connections, conferences or writing white papers on interesting topics. “If you’re really good at what you do, I will find you… When you do get found, have a great story to tell” about who you are and what you do.

Don’t cold call potential clients without doing your homework. Ms. Giampoli said she won’t work with an agency that hasn’t researched her role and what she values in agencies. If you are going to cold call, she said, the only chance you have is if you’ve done your homework.

Don’t send out LinkedIn invites if you haven’t met. Ms. Giampoli said she guards her LinkedIn connections closely and only accepts requests from people she knows personally.

Don’t bother with newsletters. Ms. Giampoli said she rarely reads agency newsletters, even from shops she loves.

Don’t expect a meeting to lead to an immediate assignment. “I don’t believe in love at first sight,” said Ms. Giampoli, likening her process to dating in that she usually doesn’t have a project in mind when contacting an agency. “I might meet you and like you a lot, but that doesn’t mean that something’s going to happen quickly.”

Don’t be a general agency with a mediocre offering. Ms. Giampoli said it’s far better to be a shop with a smaller, more specialized offering than a jack-of-all-trades without anything compelling.

But even if Ms. Giampoli – or other executives like her—doesn’t know much about your agency, don’t feel like being small is too big a hurdle to working with a large client. “I get emails from small agencies all the time apologizing for being small…Don’t apologize for being small.”

11138: Madison Avenue Takes Its Time Too.

On May 6, Advertising Age reported Procter & Gamble would lengthen the time the advertiser pays its advertising agencies to 75 days. Now the trade publication says Mondelez will extend its payment terms to 120 days. Of course, advertising agency executives are crying foul, whining that the monetary mandates are unfair and even unethical. As if fairness and ethics are embedded in the DNA of a typical adperson. Most BDAs draw out payments to freelancers and vendors too—and the shops will likely stretch things out further in response to the new processes from P&G and Mondelez. Besides, 120 days is less than the blink of an eye compared to how Madison Avenue has taken its sweet time delivering on diversity.