Brands are the vital ingredient of health drive

The government’s anti-obesity Change4Life campaign has been trying to get people to change their eating habits since it launched at the start of last year, but research by Kantar Worldpanel – which has been seen exclusively by Marketing Week – indicates that progress is slow.

Kantar’s study shows that 21% of consumers now choose food because of its healthy qualities – up from 11% in 1995. However, although people may aim to eat more healthily, the survey suggests that consumption of fat and salt is on the rise. Calories per pack are also increasing steadily up to an average of 638 (see stats on page 24).

This means that the onus will be on brands to communicate a healthy eating message, suggests Giles Quick, a director at Kantar Worldpanel. Reformulation by food makers is the most effective way to reduce the consumption of saturated fat, salt and sugar, he adds.

Trying to persuade people to eat less or switch from a biscuit to an apple as a snack, as Change4Life tries to do, is more challenging than making preferred products healthier. “It is quite hard to change eating habits dramatically. Building on existing purchasing habits and behaviour means that reformulation is the most successful way,” says Quick.

Food marketers have the additional challenge of making sure that a reformulation doesn’t turn off customers, adds Quick. “Manufacturers are facing quite a difficult situation. I think it is absolutely critical that the product retains the same taste credentials.

“Having worked with Walkers, I know the great lengths that [parent company PepsiCo] went to when switching from one oil to another to strip out some of the saturated fat from its core brand. It took quite a time because it was really anxious to make sure the same taste quality was delivered,” he explains.

Walkers switched to a lower fat oil in 2008, using Gary Lineker in TV advertising to talk about this ingredient change the same year. The reformulation was also communicated on-pack, which Quick says is the best place for marketers to promote information about ingredient changes. “Your core purchaser is going to buy it as normal and then see on-pack that it is better for them,” he says.

About 10% of products are reformulated by brands each year, which has helped consumers reduce their salt consumption. For example, the amount of salt in chilled ready meals was reduced by 4.6% between 2008 and 2009, and table sauces saw a 3.3% reduction in salt over the same period.

This has contributed to a 6.3% overall reduction of salt in processed foods between 2006 and 2009 and the study suggests that 70% of the reduction in salt consumption is due to the reformulation of products rather than consumers changing their eating or purchasing habits. United Biscuits is one such company that is aiming to show its customers that it is taking steps to reduce salt content with a reformulation programme for brands such as Hula Hoops and Skips crisps.

The challenge with marketing healthier food is that it doesn’t appear to resonate with all social classes, says Quick. For example, C2, D and DE demographic groups buy more sodium, saturates and sugar than those in AB and C1 groups.

He says: “It is surprising that there is still a perception that eating healthily is expensive and therefore health as a reason for choice is more correlated with consumers who receive higher incomes. In other words, the more you earn the more likely you are to make healthy choices.”

Quick calls lower demographic groups the nutritional underclass. “The less affluent will over-purchase and therefore over-consume saturated fat, sugar, salt and tend to buy more convenience foods and snack more,” he says.

While this is happening, more affluent consumers have been influenced by campaigns such as Change4Life. “At the margins, this has had a particular effect on the more affluent classes. And more than anything, having children has had an impact.

“Even though you may not be anxious to make personal positive choices, seeing frightening stats and exposés relating to kids could make you make positive choices on their behalf,” he says. Fruit in lunchboxes is up 3% while chocolate biscuit bars are down 8% between 2009 and 2010.

Quick thinks that similar to some brand-led sustainability campaigns such as the “I’m not a plastic bag” push by social change body We Are What We Do and Marks & Spencer’s decision to charge for some carrier bags, it may take a supermarket brand to lead a healthy eating campaign that will appeal to all classes.

“I think ultimately one of the retailers will make a stand. At the moment they are all fencing around the edges and no one has really entered this space. Either a smaller retailer or a supermarket that collects purchasing data through a loyalty card might say: ’have you realised that over the last year you are buying too much saturated fat, and if you switch from this to that, it will make a difference’.

“I think it will happen in the next three or four years. As soon as they do that, manufacturers will be forced to fall in line and the whole market will shift.”