From healthy to well'thy - insights regarding the new definition to health

The consumers in the rich part of the world appear to experience even growing pressure. You may think it has something to do with the conflicts around the world, the pressure of finding work-life balance or climate change. All those things probably hold true... but in addition there is a challenge of a more personal and physical matter.

The mother of a friend described the situation vividly following a recent visit to Thailand. At a popular Scandinavian hotel she witnessed mid-aged Scandinavians in their prime. Their beautiful toned bodies, bulging muscles and tight six-packs were on show by the poolside while watching their young kids having fun. Being of an older generation and with different priorities she was amazed by their healthy and toned bodies. But beyond the surface she also noticed that in their beautiful healthiness, they did not look or seem particularly happy.

This was an insightful observation which I've since thought about it whilst working on the creation of a deep understanding of consumer needs and insights related to health.

What remains as an important consumer health need is of course the long-standing impact of a healthy lifestyle. The feeling of being able to turn-back the clock and live longer. Another reason for embarking on a healthy lifestyle is the impact that good nutrition has on energy levels and on the ability to handle everyday life. And thirdly of course the want to ‘look-good’ and perhaps lose some weight. However, beyond these typically vocalized health needs and reasons emerged a more unarticulated ‘meta’ need. I would claim that this need has the power to change the view on health and the health foods territory as a whole. And perhaps this ‘meta’ need is the one with the strongest impact on the people by the pool in Thailand. This ‘meta’ need is to show your status in society through a healthy looking body. We call it ‘Health is the new status symbol’ and in the terms of Maslow it can be summed-up to ‘self-actualization by looking truly healty’.

I am convinced that this strong desire to demonstrate ‘status through health’ will have a strong impact on the food industry. It probably already has when you witness the strong growth in categories such as health snacks and the many launches of protein yogurt. In the fashion world Marc Jacobs has dropped 15kilos and is now selling his version of a sport on the catwalk. Swedish retail giant H&M has opened up their own sport stores well aware that ‘Health as the new status symbol’ is desired state that sells. It is only a matter of time until retailers give health foods an even larger share of space.

Out goes the envy of the Oligarch flexing his Rolex or the ‘beauty fake’ of Hollywood quick-fixes. In comes a desire and praise of the toned bodies of international sportsmen and sportswomen. Never before have such serious effort, time and money being spent on personal trainers, health foods, running gear, bicycles and health retreats. Health is the new status symbol – and for the food industry this realization will open up many opportunities. But let us try to be a bit more cheerful than the Thailand crowd in our endevours to achieve status through health.

What's a trend anyway?

It was a few weeks back in time and it was just another morning on the tube. I was on the way to work, somewhat bored when I came across Metro. Browsing through the pages I spotted this article about the very cool fashion designer Mathew Williamsson. Unfortunately I'm not the proud owner of any of his garments but despite my relative ‘untrendyness’ I've still somehow grasped that he is übercool by the more eloquent fashionistas out there (the ones that somehow squeeze in thoughts about fashion into their lives = not me). Now, the thing that grabbed me with the article was not so much Mathew's sayings regarding fashion as such, but rather the things he said about trends. In his übercool way Mathew proclaimed that "trends are out" and he said something around 'modern women not buying into the idea of trends any longer since they rather focus on individuality and identifying their own style'. I don’t know how well these perspectives go down in the fashion industry, but his views somehow stayed with me over the last few weeks while I’ve had the opportunity to attend some trends seminars and read a few trend papers. Being updated on trends is part of the job of picking up 'new', fresh thoughts to guide and inspire innovation. And trends are also an important perspective to future-proof directions I already work on. But following Mathew W’s perspective and being fed all these 'trends' I'm trying to get my head around what I actually think about trends. So far I've come to the following conclusion: What we call trends are reflections of big shifts in human emotions linked to reality. And those emotions are in turn linked to shifts and changes in the world around us. In the higher steps of the hierarchy of needs our needs shifts little by little based on external stimulus. As needs shifts and people or companies witness this shift, we start to witness reactions. Some reactions are pure withdrawal ‘no it’s not happening’ or ‘no, it won’t affect my business’ or simply ‘it’s too frustrating to even think about it’. Others reactions are future focused and proactive. It’s those reactions that result in innovation – both breakthrough and incremental. So, to my view the so called trends that we so often refer to, are simply clusters of reflections of the innovations that are already occurring. And we are only able to create these clusters when the stream of innovation is so wide so it can actually be seen and synthesized. Which is actually when the trend and the change in people is already happening. Thus, my belief is that to fully understand trends and to understand how to capitalise on trends, one needs to start with mega shifts in the world and to start to extrapolate on those shifts to try to understand the impact they will have on human needs and human emotions both in the longer- and the shorter-term. Of course, it still makes a lot of sense to follow the ‘trend’ reflections synthesized in presenentations and power points, but be aware that they are ‘here and now’, already happening and soon in a store near you. So to be able to capitalize on them you need to act fast.

Tesco unveils upgraded value range

Gosh - it certainly isn't easy to find some space to write anything these days. I am on maternity leave - now with two little kids in the house. It is magical but it has also been quite a change to handle the switch from one to two. And the change has certainly resulted in very few moments for myself so far.
But I do want to share an interesting newsflash that I read today. This time about Tesco, one of the worlds largest and most innovative retailers. Tesco is the king of private label branding and now they've upgraded and rebranded their low cost, low frills Tesco Value range. The Value range has been part of the Tesco offer for a very long time. This portfolio of blue and white striped products was launched more than twenty years ago and includes products across all categories and grocery aisles.

Now the Value range that we have seen so far is history. During these years of recession and European economic turmoil Tesco has decided to update and upgrade the Value portfolio. Its revamped look and feel is developed to add higher quality associations. And the new brand name of ' Everyday Value' should demonstrate that this is more than a design upgrade. Tesco has reviewed the entire portfolio and upgraded the range of products with more modern, desirable food whilst getting rid of nasties such as MSG across the whole range.

It may seem a bit surprising that Tesco has decided to do this change now - at a time when one would assume that many Brits would be bargain hunters and rather interested in the 'old' Value range. But I think that Tesco is right on track with this change - and maybe it should have happened sooner. I assume that this move is based on a long-term decline in sales of the Value range and that the 'old' Value range wasn't seen to reflect positively on Tesco as a quality brand and grocery chain.

Behind this I also believe that this move represents a longer-term change in western society. Consumers have become more quality and health aware. And to only focus on 'cheap' and 'bargain' isn't enough anymore. Fewer are prepared to make the trade-off between cheap, empty calories and nutritious food.  When producers or grocery chains focus on this single-minded message of 'cheap' it comes with negative associations to 'bad quality and bad for me', resulting in declining sales of the cheapest products in store... 

So it is interesting to see that the largest Swedish grocery chain ICA just launched their 'Basic' range concept. A range that is... well, basic... It's red and white clinical exterior doesn't appeal to anyone with an interest in food or nutrition, but is solely focused on the cash stripped bargain hunters. I would not be surprised if ICA looked west when developing this range, inspired by the 'old' Tesco Value look and feel. So, given the Tesco move away from this focus it will certainly be interesting to see how well this line of products is being received in Sweden.

Youth boosts egg sales in Sweden

Fri Köpenskap reports today that it is the swedish youth who boost the latest sales increase. for eggs. Apparently last year swedes ate 71m more eggs than the previous year! That's a bloody lot of eggs! And it is a sales increase of 5%, the highest in many, many years.

So, what stands behind this development? Why on earth do the swedes eat more eggs? Well, You Gov were commissioned by Svensk Ägg (Swedish Egg organisation) to explore the reasons why in what appears to be an 'only' quant exercise based on 1024 interviews. The very quant answer is apparently that more and more swedes eat egg for breakfast. Almost one in four claim to eat more eggs today than a year ago (this is not the easiest thing to measure - since it is hard to put an estimate on past behaviours!). In the age group 18-29 23% of respondents claim to eat more eggs today than a year ago. In the older age group 50-65, 17% claim to eat more eggs than a year ago. I want to know more. So, do a couple of groups as well will ya and let us know the reasoning, behaviours and attitudes that lie behind!

Are these the worst food trends of the noughties?

Came across this list when I checked around for trends... It's an article by Simon Majumdar on The Guardians website.

He has summarised his worst 10 food trends of the last 10 years. The list includes:

10. Slates, smears, commas and skidmarks
9. Small plate dining and international tapas
8. Cheap cuts at cut-throat prices
7. Underground pop-up restaurants
6. MasterChef
5. Molecular gastronomy
4. Gastropubs
3. Seasonal and local
2. Bloggers
1. Chef as brand extension

Well written and a good list too. The funny thing is that a lot of these so called 'trends' are just emerging trends in Sweden...

10 most important consumer trends for 2010

Excellent trend analysts Trendwatching have summarised the 10 most important consumer trends for 2010. It's very interesting reading - so do take a look!

I had the privilege of attending one of their briefing seminars in London a few years back and ever since then I've been a big fan. Rainer Evers and his trends team all over the globe do a great job synthesising, analysing and presenting the themes that will have a great impact on how we live and consume tomorrow.

Nestlé will use only sustainable palm oil

The Grocer reports that Nestlé has promised to use only sustainable palm oil from 2015. Nestlé includes palm oil as an ingredient in many of its confectionery and dairy products - in fact, the baby porridge that I feed my baby with every day has palm oil as one of its ingredients. Not something that I am very proud of... But you cannot find a single baby porridge without palm oil on the retail shelves! So what should a poor mother do? Well, at least Nestlé promises to use only certified-sustainable palm oil from 2015.

I am pleased to hear those news. But to make a difference to the environment in the long term more companies need to do much more to reduce the amount of palm oil they use or at least ensure that they buy their palm oil from sustainable sources. And consumers need to wake up to frequent use of palm oil in everyday products. In Sweden this is not yet a debate - but hopefully it will be a debate soon and hopefully this debate should ensure that companies buy only sustainable palm oil from that point forward.

Fresh and fast Mexican fast food...

Soon I will visit London again and I do look forward to all things about London right now. The smells, the sounds, the food and the large supermarkets that contain all that marvellous international foodstuffs...
During my last visit I noted that there were quite a few new 'fresh style' Mexican fast food places around but unfortunately I did not have the opportunity to try any of them. With 'fresh style' I mean healthy, balanced and yet good fast food and not the old style greasy taco places of the 90's. I actually read about the success of a fresh fast food restaurant called Baja Fresh on the West Coast in the US some years ago. And the London development seem to follow the Californian development - only a few years later. So, I certainly look forward to checking out those places in London in a bit more detail this time. And I'll certainly try to spot some other new developments too.