'Back to Normal' or a 100% reduction in meat imports?

                                                    Advert in The Times Saturday May 4th 2013

Sunday Times 5th May 2013

Tesco store within days of beef crisis

All is changed, changed utterly, 

A terrible beauty is born....

                                                     W.B. Yeats

Opportunities for all brands in a horse-meat crisis?

Anyone who believes that the current crisis is about meat-ingredients needs to re-examine the small print.... What we are witnessing is a fundamental challenge to the meaning of branding, that assumed guarantee that a branded product contains what it says on the tin, no less and occasionally a little more, in a world where every little helps...

One of the first past the post, the Savvy Consumer, lost faith in intermediaries a few years ago. She learned never to outsource her purchasing decision-making to marketers or shopkeepers, ever again.., instead demanding demonstrable value-for-money before handing over a penny... Her lack of trust and purchasing insight has now extended all the way back up the supply chain, and discovered horses in a field...

Can we blame her for never trusting any of us again...?

The meat crisis has converted us all into savvy consumers, and therein lies the opportunity...

Essentially, those brands that are prepared to deliver what it says on the tin, plus a little more, in quantities and of a quality that meets or even exceeds consumer expectations, now have a clear run...

That old-fashioned combination of Product, Price, Presentation and Place, packaged harmoniously to meet created expectation are all that is required to be better than many alternatives, in these unprecedented times..

When ingredient-cost increases can no longer be absorbed, and retailers refuse to budge, the answer is to eliminate attributes now superfluous to consumer need, rather than substituting inferior quality in attempts to short-change a savvy consumer by cheating on brand delivery.  In other words, if the product does not need a handle, its removal will not be missed, and the cost goes down...

Reverting to meeting a combination of the consumer's functional and emotional needs, better than the other guy, then becomes a basis for NAMs to build a similar 4P proposition for the retailer.

Rocket-science it ain't...

Horses for courses - an exercise in brand devaluation?

The multiple horse-joke reaction to the burger-meat scandal has tended to obscure the real issues involved:
- patently, it is no laughing matter, especially for the most important stakeholders, the consumers...
- brand integrity, the fundamental reassurance that allows consumers to avoid the need to personally check the contents of the tin before purchase, has been seriously compromised...
- market segmentation, the process of tailoring a brand to consumer taste is about informed modification of ingredients, not the misleading of the consumer via artificially low price-points...

Anyone in any doubt as to the extent of the damage need only walk the aisles, and observe the focus on white meats, the subtle references to local sourcing of red meat ingredients, and the reduced uptake in the burger section.....

....and these are still early days, while retailers are exploring alternative arrangements.

Essentially, this all goes back to a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of branding, and an under-estimation of consumer sophistication in terms of their ability to evaluate what they are getting for the money. Given that much of the brand experience is 'enjoyed' in the home, a disappointed consumer may not choose to articulate their dissatisfaction at point of purchase, but simply switch brands, or even worse, shop elsewhere, pausing only to tell their friends on the way....

If we accept that these savvy consumers are very capable of picking up subtle content-downgrades, then it calls into question the ingredient-answer to a perpetual freeze on price increases, a 'secret' compromise of quality.  The use of horse meat or indeed any other 'filler' is but one example of how an obsession with cost control can compromise brand equity, be it supplier or retailer...

Moreover, as any experienced brand owner knows, consumer praise operates on 1:10 odds, while criticism is given 10:1 every time a brand disappoints...

Finally, should anyone be left with an impression that this is simply about meat...it might be borne in mind that any reduction in pack size or amount of ingredients is in danger of straying onto the same consumer-disillusionment territory...

The issue is hard-won, easily lost brand integrity, whatever the odds...