When it comes to marketing sometimes the best ideas come from outside of your category. As busy food and drink marketeers, all of us can be guilty of being ‘too close’ to things; too close to your own business, too preoccupied with your competitors, too focused on the short-term; next week’s sales, this year’s profits. Sometimes, the secret to transformative growth comes from an unlikely source. Sometimes you have to force yourself to look outside your category.
Irish dairy producers in general and Irish dairy ingredients producers, in particular, could do worse than look at the new marketing campaign for Unilever’s Dove. Yes, that’s right, the global skincare and body-wash brand may hold to key to unlocking growth for Irish dairy and helping our producers push our exports up the value chain.
Dove’s new global campaign focuses on their brands’ ‘microbiome gentle’ properties; built in ingredients that are kind to skin and help protect your skin microbiome. Dove are even marketing body-washes with probiotics that help replenish the microbiome. Why is this interesting to Irish food? Because the emergence of microbiome as a word that consumers finally understand could open up opportunities for the marketing of a range of functional benefits from our dairy ingredients producers.
Science around our gut fauna, including bacteria is referred to as our gut “microbiome”, has been a focal point of so much of our science communities’ work in recent years. The balance between goodies and baddies in the microbiome and the nature of organisms therein have been proven to have a significant and diverse impact on human health. Unsurprisingly the presence of certain bacteria have been connected with gut issues such as Crohn’s disease, Ulcerative Colitis and Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
The work of UCC professors Ted Dinan and John Cryan has identified the gut microbiome as a key contributor to a range of mental health issues including stress, anxiety and depression. There is a sizable body of evidence and literature that make a compelling case for this gut-brain connection and according to The Psychobotic Revolution (Anderson, Cryan, Dinan 2018), their effects can be as powerful as Prozac.
Bord Bia’s recently published Future of Functional Food and Beverage playbook identifies the gut health space as an area ripe for innovation opportunity and, specifically, we have identified “Harmony” between gut and brain as a territory for Irish food and drink producers to target with new products over the coming years. This study also identifies a range of plant-based innovations from the US, in particular, that are targeting the gut/brain connection.
Scientists at Teagasc Moorepark Research Centre, Cork and the APC Microbiome Institute, University College Cork have also found that grass-fed dairy has several nutrition advantages. They carried out a thorough study which demonstrates the many advantages that dairy produced from pasture-fed cows holds over those derived from their indoor counterparts, from both a compositional and nutritional perspective
Our dairy ingredients industry has completed significant work on the area of probiotics and stability of same over the past number of years. However, we are yet to see industry developing products specifically targeting the health of consumers’ gut microbiome. Perhaps the fear is that consumers don’t understand or even demand products targeting the gut microbiome.
Now that one of the worlds’ biggest non-food consumer brands is driving the concept of “microbiome” into the public consciousness, it may be time for our ingredients producers to target this area of functional benefit. Maybe it’s time for Irish dairy to ride on the wings of a Dove…
References
Anderson, S., Cryan, J., & Dinan, T. (2018). The Psychobiotic Revolution. United States: National Geographic Society.
Bord Bia (2018). The Future of Functional Food and Beverage Playbook
Heyman, Jay H. (2018). All You Need is a Good Idea! How to Create Marketing Messages that Actually Work.
Lucas, Grace (2018). Gut thinking: the gut microbiome and mental health beyond the head
Unilever (2019). https://www.dove.com/uk/stories/tips-and-how-to/washing-and-bathing-tips/an-introduction-to-skin-microbiome-from-dove.html#
