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VIDEO: "Considerations for Marketing Vertical Farm Food Products To Consumers"
Science Cafe is organized by the OptimIA project team funded by the USDA SCRI grant program
"Considerations for Marketing Vertical
Farm Food Products to Consumers"
Dr. Bridget Behe
Michigan State University
This presentation 'Considerations for Marketing Vertical Farm Food Products to Consumers' was given by Dr. Bridget Behe (Michigan State University) during our 26th cafe forum on January 12th, 2021. Indoor Ag Science Cafe is organized by the OptimIA project team funded by the USDA SCRI grant program.
Cafe Archive & QA Forum
Our archived Indoor Ag Science Cafe page on OptimIA website now has a forum function! Please click on presentations of your interest and ask your quick questions. Notifications come to us and we should be able to respond promptly.
Submit Your General Questions for 'Indoor Ag Sci Queries'!
Please submit your questions (anonymously if you wish) about sciences and technologies of indoor farming to this submission site. Any questions are welcome! The site is always open for your questions. Selected questions will be discussed in our future Indoor Ag Science Queries series.
Indoor Ag Science Cafe is organized by the OptimIA project team funded by the USDA SCRI grants program.
Previous café recordings are available on the OptimIA project website.
Please contact for more info: kubota.10@osu.edu
Upcoming Cafes:
February 23rd, 11 AM Eastern - 'Indoor Farming in Mexico: Current Status and Opportunities' by Karla Garcia (Microgreens FLN and HortAmericas)
March 30th, 11 AM Eastern - 'USDA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grants Program Overview' by Dr. Steven Thomson & Melinda Coffman (USDA NIFA SBIR)
Interested in giving a talk to share your thoughts and experiences? Please contact us!
Upcoming Courses/Events:
January 27-29, 2021 (accessible through March 15)- 'Workshop - Improving Production via Listening to Plants' Ohio State Greenhouse Management Workshop online
February 18 - March 10, 2021 - 'JPFA Online Training Course on Plant Factories with Artificial Lighting (PFALs)' Japan Plant Factory Association
Bowery Adds Associates to Marketing and Sales Operations
Bowery, the modern farming company, has made two key executive hires to oversee the company’s marketing and sales operations. Katie Seawell (formerly of Starbucks) and Carmela Cugini (formerly of Walmart) have joined Bowery as the company’s Chief Marketing Officer and EVP of Sales, respectively
Bowery, the modern farming company, has made two key executive hires to oversee the company’s marketing and sales operations. Katie Seawell (formerly of Starbucks) and Carmela Cugini (formerly of Walmart) have joined Bowery as the company’s Chief Marketing Officer and EVP of Sales, respectively.
The hires are in support of broadening consumer awareness for the brand and increasing retail distribution.
Katie Seawell spent more than a decade at Starbucks Coffee Company, where she held a variety of leadership roles within the marketing and product organizations including driving brand campaigns, developing go-to-market strategies & integrated marketing campaigns and product innovation. Most recently, Katie was SVP of Siren Retail Operations, leading the launches of the Starbucks Reserve Global Roasteries including Starbucks market entry into Italy.
In her new role as Chief Marketing Officer, Katie will lead the company’s marketing team, spearheading initiatives to build Bowery’s brand and consumer reach in existing and new markets. Katie will also partner with the agriculture science team to lead Bowery’s innovation strategy, providing insights on consumer produce trends to make sure the company is fulfilling the wants and needs of its consumers.
Carmela Cugini joins Bowery with experience across e-commerce retail, consumer packaged goods, financial planning and sales with organizations including Walmart, Jet.com, PepsiCo and Merrill Lynch. Over the last three years, Carmela was Vice President and General Manager of Walmart’s US e-commerce team, leading online grocery and focusing on accelerating growth strategies across Walmart’s e-commerce and Jet.com.
Prior, Carmela spent 13+ years at PepsiCo and four years at Merrill Lynch, holding key leadership positions across various functions including sales management, sales operations, key account sales, business development, revenue management strategy, marketing and brand development. As EVP of Sales at Bowery, Carmela will take the lead on growing its network of retail partners and distribution channels as Bowery expands into new markets, while educating grocers on the benefits of indoor-grown, pesticide-free produce.
Bowery is the modern farming company growing food for a better future by revolutionizing agriculture. By combining the benefits of the best local farms with advances made possible by technology, Bowery’s indoor farms create the ideal conditions to grow the purest produce imaginable. BoweryOS, the company’s proprietary software system, uses vision systems, automation technology, and machine learning to monitor plants and all the variables that drive their growth 24/7.
Bowery controls the entire process from seed to store, and Bowery farms use zero pesticides, 95% less water, and are 100+ times more productive on the same footprint of land than traditional agriculture. Bowery produce is currently available at select Whole Foods and Stop & Shop stores in the Tri-state area; Brooklyn Fare, Westside Market and Foragers Market in NYC; and online through Peapod, AmazonFresh and Jet.com. Additionally, Bowery is featured at sweetgreen, and on the menus of Tom Colicchio’s New York restaurants Craft and Temple Court.
In December 2018, Bowery announced a Series B fundaise of $95 million led by GV (formerly Google Ventures), bringing Bowery’s total funding to $122.5 million. Notable investors in this round include Temasek (the global investment company backing companies leading change for the future of agriculture), Dara Khosrowshahi (CEO of Uber), Almanac (the fund of David Barber, co-founder of Blue Hill), Jeff Wilke (CEO of Amazon Worldwide Consumer), Henry Kravis (Co-founder of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.), First Round Capital, GGV Capital and General Catalyst.
CEA Advisors Announces International Collaborations
March 20, 2019
CEA Advisors, Fospan Worldwide and Canna Pro, global players in Horticulture are pleased to announce that they have finalized their agreement to collaborate on cannabis related business opportunities. These industry heavyweights are joining forces to provide marketing, sales, consulting and technical support to the global Cannabis industry.
CEA Advisors is a major player in the global indoor farming industry. For the past 10 years, they have designed and built state of the art custom container farms for commercial clients such as growers, food manufacturers, pharma manufacturers, universities, government agencies, schools and non-profits worldwide. They are also the designer and manufacturer of Growracks®, an industry standard plug and play vertical production system in use worldwide. www.growtainers.com
Fospan Worldwide SL, headquartered in Barcelona, Spain is an experienced solution provider of Horticultural services to the medicinal and recreational cannabis industry. The registered Dutch- Spanish company also acts as a distributor for many of Europe’s top Horticultural products including their proprietary LED product, Magnus Lights by Parus. Fospan Worldwide’s management boasts of many years of industry experience and the successful completion of high-profile Cannabis projects in Denmark, Switzerland and throughout Europe. www.fospan.com
Canna Pro, a division of Pro Horticulture Inc has spent years designing and building premium indoor cannabis facilities & light deprivation greenhouses for growing high yielding healthy crops. They are a global cannabis entity with strategic partnerships in Canada, USA and Europe. Canna Pro has assembled a team of all-stars bringing tried and true cultivation methods mixed with the perfect dose of cutting-edge technology. They’ve built greenhouses and growrooms all over the globe and work closely with their team of HVAC engineers to provide the optimum indoor environments for rapid growth of healthy plants. www.cannapro.co
Pushing The Boundaries of Creativity In Fresh Produce
These days image is everything in the fresh produce industry, as consumers become more brand conscious and aware of what they are eating and where the product comes from, not to mention how sustainable it is. Specialists agree that the brand stories and images conveyed on the packaging are of paramount importance.
Igor Moulder, Creative Director at Virtual Hub design agency has been in the business for many years and has seen how much things have changed. “When I started in the fresh produce industry in 1996 it was run by big companies who were slow to move on global consumer developments. Around 15 years ago things changed rapidly when growers started to market their produce.”
“It used to be only the technical qualities of the carton which growers had to think about. However, when growers became more aware of marketing their own products it really opened up the market, and the brand story and end packaging became really important. Modern consumers need to trust a brand and trust the quality that goes with it. They also like to know the story behind the product – where does it come from, is the supply chain transparent, what is the situation with regards to ethics and sustainability, etc.?”
Originally from South Africa Igor has worked with some of the best-known companies designing logos, website, brochures etc. One of his long-standing clients is Cool Fresh.
“Cool Fresh has built a credible story behind their fruit and are also strongly promoting corporate responsibility by supporting large-scale educational, sport and community development projects in South Africa. This gives back to the communities and gives the consumer a good feeling when buying the product.”
“Today, digital marketing and fresh produce need to get together, as there is a big gap to fill. Most people use mobile phones to search these days, so the fresh produce industry needs to become mobile friendly. The fruit sector has been slow to move but things are changing. Having said this, we cannot just rely on digital - print and old-fashioned networking are still important. You can have 1000 friends on facebook but it means nothing if it cannot be turned into sales. People are still people and need to see things and feel emotions. There is lots of emotion behind buying fruit and we need to give this to the consumer while still providing price and quality to the retailer.”
According to Igor it is a case of juggling time and money when designing a new brand. The grower has to like it, it has to be within budget, it has to be acceptable to the retailer and it has to be appealing to the consumer.
Corporate identity is very important, and most companies like to stick to the same logo and style. This year Igor worked on a new concept with Cool Fresh where communicating the company’s strategy was given a whole new look, whilst keeping the old logo but almost hiding it under the new corporate message. “The idea was that if nothing changes, people stop seeing ‘the real message’ after a while. Cool Fresh wanted to create something different and create a talking point, while still maintaining a very clear corporate and strategic identity and message. This was certainly the case with the company’s ‘Connecting Fresh’ approach to this year’s Fruit Logistica in Berlin.”
Igor admits that his ‘out of the box’ style does not fit every company. Yet, in the very competitive retail and consumer world it is important for any brand owner to stand out amongst the competition. Igor believes that innovative fresh produce companies should look at how branding and marketing is done in the fashion business. Igor closes: ‘The Dutch call it ‘gluren bij de buren’. Take a look at how other sectors are managing their marketing. Do not be scared of trying new things!’.
To view Igor's portfolio click here
Igor may be contacted on igor@virtual-hub.net
Publication date : 2/22/2019
Author: Nichola McGregor
© FreshPlaza.com
"Successful Brand Structure And Promotion Are Key To Market Success"
The two greatest influencing factors in the competitive fruit trade are price and brand
Joy Wing Mau blueberry brand promotion
"The annual import volume of fruit into China has been around 4 million tons in the last 3 years. The average annual fruit import value was around 5.5 billion USD. This volume, however, only accounts for 3%-5% of the volume in China's fruit market.
There is still great potential for imported fruit in the Chinese market, and in high-end markets in particular. There are several reasons for this situation. First, the disposable income of Chinese consumers continues to increase every day, as does their awareness of healthy foods. Second, China takes advantage of great trade relations with numerous countries to open the doors wide to a variety of imported fruits.
Of course, the world economy suffered from fluctuations caused by a number of factors. This could have its short-term effects on the Chinese market, but I think that it will not have any lasting, structural influence." This is according to Li Liang of Joy Wing Mau Group.
"The two greatest influencing factors in the competitive fruit trade are price and brand. The continuous increase in living standards in China mean that some previously high-end, expensive fruits have become relatively common products.
Take for example Red Globe grapes or Royal Gala apples. Some other fruits, however, are new in the market. Their novelty attracts the attention of consumers and wins their praise. These new fruits are in a luxurious position of high-quality, expensive fruits. This is the case, for example, for domestic Shine Muscat green grapes, imported Muscat grapes, and Rockit apples."
"Apart from this, branding has become one of the most important ways for consumers to recognize various fruits in the past few years. Several larger trading companies have recognized this development and stepped up the pace of branding in the fruit industry. Zespri kiwifruit, for example, has become the first choice for many consumers looking for kiwifruit.
Envy established its name as one of the high-quality apple brands. Joyvio has established a similarly effective brand for high-quality blueberries. It is particularly important in the multi-layered fruit market of China to establish a unique brand and carry out effective promotional activities. Joy Wing Mau spent many years of industrious effort in the construction of brand structure and brand promotion. They achieved great results in today's fruit market."
"One expression that vividly describes the Chinese economy is that 'Chinese economy is not a small pond, but an ocean.' Although China's fruit trade has felt the effects of the Sino-US trade war in recent years, the overall fruit consumption in China continues unchanged. Consumers still demand high-quality fruit, especially consumers from the rapidly growing middle-class. People have growing standards for healthy food. We are more than optimistic about the future of the fruit import and export industry in China. Joy Wing Mau Group will continue to work hard for the integration of global fruit production core areas and the vast Chinese consumer market. We will bring high-quality fruit from all over the world, and simultaneously promote great Chinese fruit abroad."
Li Liang
Joy Wing Mau Group
Publication date : 2/18/2019
© FreshPlaza.com
I’m Pretty Sure You Don’t Want To Miss This….
iGrow News Branding Sessions Go Live This Friday
iGrow News Branding Sessions are going LIVE this Friday at noon PST to show you How to turn your business into a strong brand
We all know that in today's world having a good product or service is not enough. How many of you working hard to offer great products and services but don't get the results you desire?
It's all about marketing and brand awareness.
That is why In this free webinar, Chief Strategist & Owner of D Branding, Dino H Carter, will teach you how to use branding to grow sales and brand awareness.
The webinar will be live on YouTube. Subscribers will get a link to the webinar before the webinar will start.
>>> 1-CLICK REGISTER HERE! <<<
If you want to learn what big brands use, so you can get more high-quality customers to buy your product or service, this free training is for you.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
The 3 elements for a successful brand that will save you money
How to develop an authentic brand personality that fits your customer
How to sell without selling and why is it so important
Learn The Branding Secrets And Frameworks Big Brands Don't Want You To Know
iGrow News and brand consultancy, D Branding, have teamed up to support indoor farming businesses by supplying valuable knowledge that will help them grow market share, brand awareness, and engagement.
Learn The Branding Secrets And Frameworks Big Brands Don't Want You To Know
In a series of newsletters over the next few weeks, Chief Strategist & Owner of D Branding, Dino H Carter, will teach you the difference between brand thinking and business thinking, how successful brands use the brand as a management tool, what is your brand strategy and how to create one, why logo design is not branding, and what are the steps you should take to insure your business success.
Dino has over 20 years of experience in many facets of marketing, from PR for Levi's and merchandising for MTV, to marketing, creative and consultancy for Cannabis businesses. He has lived and worked in Europe, The Middle East, and the USA, has a BA in Management & Communications, and a unique and comprehensive approach and in-depth understanding of the interaction between brands, consumer, and commerce.
Learn more about Dino
START BY DOWNLOADING THE BRAND BUILDING WORKSHEET
Download the free worksheet
On November 2018 MG Magazine Published An Article Written By Chief Strategist of D Branding - Dino H Carter
As someone with extensive experience, Dino knows how important brand thinking is for an industry that grows so rapidly like the Cannabis industry.
Here are some of the highlights:
The foundation of every company is its brand. No matter how booming the industry or what a company produces, if its brand is not solid the business will find surviving—much less thriving—in a competitive environment difficult. Make no mistake: The cannabis industry is becoming more competitive by the day.
So, what is a brand? Is it the company’s logo? A product’s name?
It’s neither.
Brands are intangible. Logos, product names, packaging, marketing, advertising, and customer service are some of the tangible assets that help build a brand. The brand itself is much more: a “feeling” customers associate with a service or product; a concept, an idea…an experience.
For your business to become a brand, it must develop a personality beyond its products and services, and that personality must align with consumers’ wants and needs. Who are your customers? What benefits do you deliver to them? How do your products and services make them feel about themselves? As you consider your brand, focus outward; see your brand from consumers’ point of view. Remember: They have all the power. They probably can buy products very similar to yours whenever they want, wherever they want, and for a price with which they feel comfortable. What—besides the nebulous and ubiquitous “high quality”—makes your brand so special they should buy from you? Even the smallest companies can build a strong brand with devoted customers simply by creating an identity that resonates with their target market.
Your brand isn’t about your company—it’s about who your customers want to be. Nike’s brand, for example, has less to do with shoes than with excellence in sports. Check out the company’s ads sometime. You won’t find the benefits of the product in big, bold type. In fact, you may not even notice the product at all. Instead, you’ll see action shots of professional athletes doing what they do best. Nike’s customers don’t buy shoes—they buy a dream.
(to read the whole article click here)
Business Owner:
If you don't get good results from your marketing activities
If you don't get the business results you desire
If sales are down
If you are launching a new product in 2019
You should work on your brand strategy. Book a free consultation call with Dino H Carter, Chief Strategist of D Branding.
Click here to book your free session now.
People Don’t Buy Products, They Buy Better Versions of Themselves
What Apple, Samsung, and Starbucks learned from Pepsi
What Apple, Samsung, and Starbucks learned from Pepsi
Photo by John Fornander on Unsplash
The year was 1957, and Pepsi — like many of the youth at that time — was dealing with an identity crisis. Despite efforts from marketers, Pepsi was being outsold by its biggest competitor and perpetual market leader — Coke — by a factor just shy of six to one, even as it was selling at half of Coke’s price. It wasn’t the product that was lacking, it was that Pepsi’s brand ethos — indecisive and directionless — was a fragmented shell of what it would need to become to take on Coke.
At the time, Coke was unrivaled, having succeeded in convincing the American public that they’d captured everything good and wholesome about American life within the murky confines of a glass bottle. This clear transcendence of the competition was not unlike Apple’s; like devotees react viscerally to a green speech bubble in iMessage, so too was it that, to anyone who embraced the deeply American traits of exceptionalism, community-mindedness, and of course, Santa Claus, consuming anything other than Coke would’ve been considered heresy.
Coke even affiliated itself with Santa Claus. Photo by Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG/Getty
In 1963, Pepsi hired a young advertising executive named Alan Pottasch to address the issue. Pottasch’s task was, to put it gently, difficult. He was to reinvigorate a brand competing against one of the most successful of all time, a product that not only outclassed Pepsi in every consumer-driven category, but was also — chemically — nearly identical. And so Pottasch made a decision that would later become iconic — as he put it, “…to stop talking about the product, and start talking about the user.” Here is Tim Wu in his book, The Attention Merchants, on the decision:
[Pottasch] thus conceived of marketing Pepsi without reference to its inherent qualities, focusing instead on an image of the people who bought it, or should be buying it.
For the first time in history, a brand decided to promote the type of user that purchased a product as opposed to the product itself. Beyond that, Pepsi promoted the idea of an entirely new generation, one free from the manipulative, consumerist messages being perpetuated by the mass media. (It was, after all, the 1960s.) This group would come to be known as “The Pepsi Generation.”
The Pepsi Generation was revolutionary because it was the first time a brand convinced people to purchase their product by focusing on the type of person that doing so made them. No generation before had ever so vocally longed to transcend themselves — to escape the consumerist mindset and achieve truly independent thought — and thus Pepsi’s message, drink our product and do exactly that, reached the perfect group at the perfect moment.
Here’s Wu quoting Pottasch on the success of the campaign:
“For us to name and claim a whole generation after our product was a rather courageous thing,” Pottasch would later remember, “that we weren’t sure would take off.” But his intuition would prove correct. “What you drank said something about who you were. We painted an image of our consumer as active, vital, and young at heart.”
Over the next decade, Pepsi — as a result of the Pepsi Generation campaign — gained significant market share on Coke. And while the campaign was revolutionary, the recipe for its success was simple. As Wu points out, “Desire’s most natural endpoint is consumption.” In other words, the campaign simply reimagined what people desired. This generation longed to escape consumerism, and the fact that Pepsi convinced them to do so by embracing it — purchasing a Pepsi, after all, is about as consumerist as it gets — is a testament to the genius of the campaign. Those who bought in and became a part of the Pepsi generation were searching for a new way to feel, rather than a new beverage to drink. Pepsi’s genius was that it found a way to be both.
The profundity of the Pepsi Generation campaign is twofold. First, its success reinvigorated a brand on the verge of being knocked out in an early round by one of the greatest competitors of the 20th century — Coke. Second, even decades later, it is nearly impossible to find a brand that has not used the strategy Pepsi pioneered: selling not a product, but a better version of ourselves.
Consider Apple. To be an Apple user — at least in the era of Jobs — was to “think different.” Critics might laugh at that characterization of an Apple user now, given the homogeneity and ubiquity of Apple products, especially among the wealthy. But those critics would miss what Apple didn’t: people don’t buy products because of what those products do, they buy products because of what they can do — or what they imagine they can do — with them. This idea even permeates Apple’s retail strategy. Apple employees will never show you how a product works, rather they will let you use it, forcing you to familiarize yourself with the product, yes, but more importantly, yourself in its presence. A diverse range of product options to choose from, after all, will never be as captivating as a homogenous product that turns you into a superhero — and Apple has the latter in spades.
The silhouette is nothing if not an invitation for you to imagine yourself in the context of the iPod. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty
Samsung learned this the hard way, dogmatically focusing as they did for the longest time on promoting the features of their products, as opposed to the person you could be by using them. Now they avoid talking about the speed of their processors or the depth of the blacks in their screens because 99% of people don’t care; what they do care about — selfishly — is what they will become — “makers, directors, creators,” in the words of Casey Neistat — if they use a Samsung product. The message? Be like us. The solution? Buy a Samsung.
Samsung even reworked Pepsi’s initial genius, realizing that it is as powerful to portray the person people aspire to be as it is to portray the person they aspire not to be — in Samsung’s case, the brainwashed Apple user who never makes the switch. The consumer who finally does is the one Samsung shows in their commercial, “Growing Up,” the better version of the “Apple Sheep,” portrayed leaving behind those who foolishly opt for the iPhone, the clearest among them a scowling man with the iPhone X’s trademark “notch” etched into his hairline. The message? Don’t be him. The solution? Buy a Samsung.
Samsung’s “Growing Up” ad.
Itis far from just tech companies, though. Adidas and Nike both do it, the former with a similar line of thinking to Samsung’s, and a similar list of influencers. Starbucks does it by crafting beverages like the Unicorn Frappuccino, a drink that famously and unsurprisingly “looks better than it tastes.” While a poorly-flavored but photogenic drink wouldn’t have sold in prior generations, to this generation — our generation — it does. Why?
Similar to how Pepsi understood they would never compete with Coke on product alone, Starbucks understands that in 2018, it is less about the drink itself than it is about who the drink makes you — on Instagram, and thus in real life. And regardless of what you think about us millennials — narcissistic, selfish, vain, outspoken — one thing is abundantly clear: as a result of social media and the Internet, our generation is more conscious of how we are perceived — by friends, family, colleges, jobs, hell, even people we’ve never met — than any other generation, ever.
Social media is well-understood to be contributing to identity politics, but I’d argue it’s contributing to something deeper: identity paralysis. This condition is one in which we have a forced awareness of how everything we say and do — even the seemingly inconsequential, like the shoes we wear, or the airline we fly — reflects on us. It follows that our generation would also be uniquely drawn to brands that make us feel how we want to feel about ourselves, even as how we want to feel about ourselves is often nothing more than how we want to be perceived externally. Like Starbucks with the Unicorn Frappuccino, we prioritize external perception over just about everything else. The social media market, where we live now, demands a focus on visible characteristics — which are, by their very nature, external — from designer drinks, yes, but from individuals, too.
Given all of this, I propose that analysts routinely overlook how people feel in the context of a brand when considering the value of a company. This “statistic” isn’t discussed on earnings calls and there is no way to measure it on a balance sheet. But perhaps that’s because it has only begun to matter; Pepsi, after all, was the first company in history to market itself by promoting the image of consumer that drank it, as opposed to the product itself — and that was only 50 years ago. Since then, consumers, aided by social media, have become far more conscious of who they are in the context of the products they use than even Pepsi could’ve imagined. In this society of ultra-conscious consumers, successful brands will be those that make consumers feel the way they want to feel about themselves.