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February 27, 2015

General Mills Shifts To Organic To Align With Consumer Behavior

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(Photo: “Annie’s Homegrown,” by flickr user Mike Mozart via Attribution 2.0 License)

Major companies are embracing the natural and organic food movement. Take for example General Mills: According to Business Insider, the brand recently acquired Annie’s, an organic food company, for $820 million. With an acquisition such as this, General Mills plans to take its organic and natural food business from $600 million to $1 billion by 2020.

This is a major shift for big food companies who in the past have been able to rely on selling heavily processed foods that are often cheaper to produce and have a drastically different brand platform than health conscious products. In order for food industry giants to make this shift they will need to align their brand and marketing with their changing products. Traditionally, natural and organic food customers resonate with slightly different marketing tactics than those consumers who are less health conscious. Marketing for natural and organic food is less flashy and focuses on the actual product rather than hokey gimmicks. Brand messaging such as the vision of the product, where it comes from and what the company at large stands for are all features often seen in organic and natural food marketing. General Mills may have to step away from advertising campaigns like Buzz the Bee for Cheerios and the Pillsbury Dough Boy and implement a more genuine product-focused messaging platform.

According to Food Navigator, a result of General Mills’ shift in focus includes the rolling out healthier changes to several of their best selling products such as Yoplait Yogurt with 25% reduced sugar and Cheerios with all five varieties becoming gluten free by summer 2015. Infusing this new brand attribute to all of General Mills’ products is essential to keep up with consumer needs, buying behaviors and to position General Mills brand as a health considerate company.

General Mills isn’t the only brand making changes to their products. According to Food Business News, Nestle USA will also start making changes to its products. By the end of 2015 no artificial colors or flavors will be found in their products, including Butterfingers, BabyRuth and Nestle Crunch bar, to name a few. It will be interesting to see if and how this change to in major company products will be articulated through their respective brands and what kind of advertising will come as a result of these changes.  The bottom line is, now more than ever it is important for the food and beverage industry to keep track of consumer buying behavior and adjust products and advertising accordingly.