Ogilvy
Gloria Gibbons, Ogilvy Health Wellness Practice, at Ogilvy on Wellness Conference, Sept. 26-27, 2017
Today Steven A. Cahillane steps up as CEO of Kellogg, the global cereal and snack company, as previous CEO John A. Bryant steps aside. This appointment telegraphs Kellogg’s commitment to evolve from junk food to health food thanks to Cahillane’s bona fides in the health and wellness market as he comes from Nature’s Bounty, a well-regarded global manufacturer, marketer, distributor and retailer of vitamins, nutritional supplements, sports active nutrition and ethical beauty products.
After leading a company like Nature’s Bounty, which the company claims is “committed to supporting wellness in all its forms,” Cahillane is expected to bring that wellness focus to Kellogg, a company with brands like Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Krispies that are antithetical to the wellness community.
Coinciding with this appointment by Kellogg of a leader in CPG wellness, Ogilvy, the global marketing communications firm, has just completed a two-day conference in London, Ogilvy on Wellness, where a research study entitled “The Wellness Movement Pioneers” was released to a diverse audience from pharmaceuticals, healthcare, technology and marketing. Hosting that event was Gloria Gibbons, Global Practice Leader for Ogilvy Health Wellness Practice, organized to help brands navigate this rapidly evolving wellness market. I reached out to Gibbons to discuss Kellogg’s selection of Cahillane to lead the company into this space, as well as opportunities in wellness for other CPG brands.
“Steven Cahillane is obviously someone who built his career on the understanding that lifestyle and physical health are one,” Gibbons says. “Kellogg’s portfolio that aims at families and given these facts: 1) that our children are expected to live to 120 years; 2) that we are what we eat; and 3) that people are hardwired at an early age by the foods they eat, what an amazing opportunity Cahillane has in front of him. He can really deliver against his principles by moving to Kellogg.”
Kellogg under Cahillane may have an uphill battle to gain credibility with today’s wellness-minded consumer, but ironically it actually represents a return to Kellogg’s roots, which at its founding in 1906 the W.K. Kellogg Company saw its flagship Corn Flakes as “better-for-you breakfast foods.” But the way the industrial food industry has evolved, health and wellness has largely been sacrificed to taste, efficiency and reduced cost, with consumers; health suffering. The Ogilvy report states, “Industrial food production has us hooked on sugar and salt. These once rare (and fought over) commodities are baked into our food supply. Globally, more than 2 billion people are overweight.”
The question for Kellogg’s and other CPG brands is whether they can break their addiction to health-destroying ingredients in favor of more healthful options. Gibbons believes they have to for the sake of the future of these companies. The wellness movement, after all, is consumer driven and consumers will have what they want. “We are all going to be living longer. We want to have as healthy a life as possible. And consumers are taking it on themselves to do it, for themselves and their families” Gibbons states. “The food and beverage industry must be focused on this.”
For CPG brands, wellness becomes a new rung on the corporate responsibility ladder, not just that its manufacturing processes don’t pollute the air or water, but that the foods produced don’t pollute the body as well. “There is a corporate responsibility for these companies to help the customer live a better life. The consumer is more demanding, with great confidence and savvy,” Gibbons notes. “Brands can’t just add a wellness message. They have to have something innately good in the brand experience. They can’t kid us anymore.”
In this industrial food age, is becoming a “wellness brand” a realistic, achievable goal? Gibbons believes CPG brands must have a wellness dimension, but that the idea of a “wellness brand” isn’t particularly useful. Rather, the idea of “wellness” needs to part of every brand’s DNA and consumer experience.
“As we look at the wellness space through the lens we are building now, recognizing the stress consumers endure in their 21st century lifestyle and changes in consumer behavior, all brands may need to engage in this space,” Gibbons asserts. And wellness consumer products go far beyond the usual suspects – consumables like food, beverage, beauty and pharmaceuticals – to electrical goods, automobiles, architecture and design. “You can engineer or reengineer brands from something not quite so healthy to something healthier.”
Article source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2017/10/02/kellogg-looks-to-wellness-market-for-corporate-health-and-more-cpg-brands-must-follow/