Two trends in marketing that all fresh produce companies should take note of

The world of marketing has changed dramatically in the last years.

From one side, consumers are quite different from years ago. They are more informed, keen on promotions, private labels and special offers, more difficult to be convinced by advertising.

Then, the proliferation of media channels has multiplied the number of commercial messages to which consumers are exposed every day – this making ads less and less effective.

Finally, thanks to smartphones - internet and social media have now become the places where most consumers spend the majority of their free time.

In this scenario, brands find it more and more difficult to be successful with traditional advertising.

These days, the best food companies in the world have focused (or are focusing, depending on where in the world they operate) their marketing and communications activities mainly on two areas:

• The point of sale. As it is very difficult to reach consumers with mass advertising, being noticed in store and being able to communicate something to consumers right there has become, for all brands, even more important than in the past. Hence an increased focus on developing a distinctive brand and packaging, on in-store activities, extra displays and so on.

• Internet and the social media. We've seen that some companies were able to build great brands by using digital media only. The best food companies are now diverting increasing parts of their marketing budgets to creating content that is relevant to consumers and spreading it on social media. In other words, they are moving from the traditional "outbound marketing" (i.e. advertising based marketing where consumers are interrupted with ads) to the more innovative "inbound marketing", where the goal is attracting consumers to the brand by creating great content and making it available on the internet.

Every produce company that wants to be successful in marketing should consider these two trends.

The world changes – and the best way to connect to consumers changes with it.

This is why marketing is such a charming discipline.

If you are interested in fresh produce marketing, download the free e-book "Introduction to marketing for fresh produce"

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Pisani Produce Marketing is a training & consulting agency for the produce world. It was founded by Maurizio Pisani, former Chiquita and Fresh Del Monte executive.

For more info:
Maurizio Pisani
maurizio@pisaniproducemarketing.com
www.pisaniproducemarketing.com

Publication date: Mon 17 Nov 2014