Organic goes mainstream
The benefits of organic food are multi-fold: to health; to the environment; and increasingly to suppliers and employees. Figures quoted by the Soil Association in July, show that these benefits are being increasingly recognised by consumers: they tell of unprecedented growth in organic consumption, for example
- The UK organic market growing 30% in the last year on the previous year (10 times the rate of the mainstream food and drink market)
- The number of people knowingly buying organic rising to 2 out of 3 people
- Within this, the proportion of those from lower SEGs (ie C2DE) buying organic also increasing.
Much of this success is down to the strength of the products, although such performance is not unproblematic, given recent reports that point to competitive pressures on suppliers to dilute standards to cope with demand.
Marketing within the organic sector has also been developing quickly. For example, Green & Black's has established itself as a premium brand, based on the high quality cocoa that organic delivers in this context. Yeo Valley has used the idea of its organic local farming culture to develop an appealing health-/fun-/child-orientated brand personality, which is in keeping with mainstream dairy category 'rules', and has consequently achieved huge success.
The most successful strategies therefore strive both to normalise organic-ness and to capitalise on the benefits of organic in relation to the current competitive context, without weakening the brand's strong organic values, as illustrated by both of the cases quoted above. If organic brands are to survive and prosper in the future, they cannot rely on their organic status alone: they need to compete with the multi-nationals head on and continue to develop and deliver excellent products to consumers without losing their integrity, whilst ensuring that they clearly communicate the comparative benefits and attributes of products within the context of the current 'language' and expectations of the category.