Health conscious trend has ‘Big Food’ rethinking brand strategies

If obesity is the new smoking, "Big Food" brands aren't making the same mistakes as "Big Tobacco" a generation ago.

After all, it doesn't take a Surgeon General to see the correlation of Big Macs to bigger waistlines. Eating or drinking too much of the wrong things aren't good for you.

On that the medical experts, the politicians, the consumers and even, so it seems, food and beverage brands, can begrudgingly agree.

How these brands tackle this, ahem, expanding issue will likely add momentum to the health conscious trend in America; a trend that is witnessing franchise chains like Anytime Fitness growing at a faster rate than McDonalds in its heyday.

And just recently, two Big Food brand stories broke of dietary marketing significance.

Arkansas-based Tyson Foods, the second largest food production company on the Fortune 500, announced the acquisition of a 5% stake in Beyond Meat, a startup plant protein company in El Segundo, California.

It is widely acknowledged that vegan diets are healthier: lower in calories, saturated fats and cholesterol … certainly more so than the Tyson Foods brands like Jimmy Dean sausages and Ball Park franks.

Tyson is certainly no stranger to the lighter side of protein delivery, with lightly breaded or Grilled & Ready brand chicken strips, but this marks a first in the "alternative-foods" category.

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It's a savvy move, considering 3.2% of U.S. adults follow a vegetarian-based diet, according to a 2008 report by the Vegetarian Times.

Could this mean a greater emphasis on plant protein fare at Burger King, McDonalds, KFC and Wendy's (all big Tyson Foods customers) in the near future?

Probably. Fast food may at last become healthier food after all.

The second Big Food brand story is actually about Big Soda giants Coca-Cola and PepsiCo concerning a paper published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine citing the brands' sponsorships of at least 96 national health organizations.

That's nice, except the report also mentions that while they were supporting health research, these brands were also lobbying against public health bills intended to reduce how many sugary sodas people drink.

This is sort of like having your Coke and drinking it, too.

It's no secret that the soda category has been under relentless assault and, as a result, sales have eroded. Vending machines get pulled out of high school cafeterias and mayors and city councils go after anything larger than a 16 oz. cup.

Coca-Cola has attempted to mitigate the losses by line extensions into other beverage categories and waters as well as sweetener alternatives, while at the same time launching a corporate brand campaign extolling its well-rounded product offerings including its Minute Maid juice brand.

One can be certain that the give-and-take marketing strategy by Coke and Pepsi revealed in the report would have been better left unrevealed, if the soda giants had their way.

As the co-author of the report, Dr. Michael Siegel observed, "Clearly, the soda companies are using sponsorship of medical and health organizations to promote their public image, mute the support of these organizations for policies like soda taxes that would decrease soda consumption, and in the long run, to increase soda consumption.

“Sponsorship is a well-recognized marketing strategy whose primary function is to increase the bottom line: improve company image and increase product sales," Siegel wrote.

There is no doubt that health care and healthier lifestyles are a major point of discussion and debate in our society. The 1960s and ’70s saw the beginning of the decline in smoking in the U.S., but not without the tobacco lobby challenging the science of its harmful, cancer causing effects.

While today, surprisingly almost a quarter of adults still smoke, the new concern is that fully one third of all Americans are obese — bringing with it a whole host of maladies that no one disputes.

Food and beverage brands like Tyson, Coca-Cola and Pepsi shoulder a big role in fostering a healthier marketplace of nutrition. Changing over 100 years (in Coca-Cola's case) of product history while maintaining profitability in a shifting market is a vexing challenge.

How well they do that will determine their brands' favorable or unfavorable perception and viability with the next generation of consumers.

Paul Friederichsen is a partner in The Blake Project brand consultancy and is a contributing writer to the New York Daily News.