Hot Cereal, Hey, It’s All Natural

[Jahness]

Hot Cereal, Hey, It’s All Natural
By STUART ELLIOTT

IT seems like painting the lily, as Shakespeare would say, for the Quaker Oats Company to center the promotion of a new hot cereal on its being “all natural.”

What next, stickers on apples proclaiming, “Grown on trees”?

After all, other Quaker cereals like Quaker Old Fashioned Oats and Quick Quaker Oats have a sole ingredient, whole rolled oats. The roots of Quaker oatmeal date to 1877, when the “Quaker man” character received what the company says was the first registered trademark for a breakfast cereal in America.

Still, when Madison Avenue is peddling natural sodas, natural potato chips and even natural pet foods, perhaps it makes sense for a brand like Quaker to play up the natural nature of a product.

“More and more people are concerned about the naturalness, the wholesomeness, of the food they eat,” said Allen P. Adamson, managing director at Landor Associates in New York, which specializes in brand and corporate identities. “Everything we see is saying it’s not a fad, that it’s moving more and more mainstream.”

“People may know Quaker means ‘good for you,’ ” he added, “but as the niche brands in the category scream louder and louder, the big brands need to turn up the dial.”

The new Quaker product is being brought out under the name Quaker Simple Harvest. It is an instant, multigrain hot cereal, made from whole grain rolled oats, whole grain rolled wheat, rolled barley and whole grain rolled rye.

An introductory campaign includes television, print and online advertising, events at farmers’ markets and a partnership with a nonprofit organization, Farm to Table, to encourage farmers to grow natural and organic foods.

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The spending on the campaign, with the theme “Celebrate the simple,” is estimated at $25 million. Quaker, part of PepsiCo, says that is its most sizable marketing budget for a new product.

“This is tapping into an important and big opportunity for our business going forward,” said Dave Kimbell, marketing director for Quaker breakfast products at Quaker, which is focused on “simpler foods with less complex ingredients.”

There was no consideration of introducing Simple Harvest as its own brand without the Quaker name, he said, because “everything Quaker stands for is rooted in a product that’s so simple: just oats.”

Quaker products account for about 65 percent of the hot-cereal category, and 90 percent of the category is oatmeal. That leaves millions of breakfast eaters who shun the taste and texture of oatmeal; their options have included grits, Cream of Wheat or hot rice cereals.

Although “a bowl of our oatmeal is delicious and delivers all the health benefits it has for 130 years,” Mr. Kimbell said, “consumers are looking for more variety and for more ways to get the health benefits.”

In fact, Quaker research found that “about 30 percent of consumers are looking for a different texture, a different variety, than oatmeal can deliver,” he added. Quaker’s new multigrain cereal delivers that, he said.

Among other established food brands clambering aboard the all-natural bandwagon — made, no doubt, by artisanal carpenters with wood reclaimed from old buildings — are General Mills, which sells natural and organic products under names like Cascadian Farm and Muir Glen; Kellogg, which owns the Kashi and Morningstar Farms brands; and Campbell Soup, which in a campaign scheduled to begin today emphasizes that its lower-sodium Campbell’s Healthy Request soups are made with “natural sea salt.”

The Healthy Request campaign is the second phase of an effort that began last fall from Y&R Advertising in New York, part of the Young & Rubicam Brands division of the WPP Group. In research conducted after the initial phase, 65 percent of respondents said the lower-sodium soups brought them back to buying the Campbell’s brand, said Lisa Walker, business director for the wellness team at Campbell Soup in Camden, N.J.

A couple of WPP agencies, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide and 141 Worldwide, are also working on the Quaker Simple Harvest campaign, along with two Omnicom Group agencies, Element 79 Partners and OMD, and an independent shop, NuOrbit Media. The interactive division of Element 79, Tractiv, is involved in the online aspects.

Quaker Simple Harvest is aimed at consumers who are “box turners,” said Debby Fries, group creative director at Element 79 in Chicago, referring to their habit of scrutinizing labels as they shop.

“They want simple ingredients, nothing artificial, and they feel good about less,” she added. “Less is more.”

At the same time, Ms. Fries said, such choosy consumers are concerned whether “natural can actually taste good.”

“Some natural products are good for you, but you don’t want to eat them,” she added, “and they can’t be good for you if you don’t eat them.”

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In addition to appearing in media outlets where Quaker typically buys ads, like AOL.com, People magazine and “Today,” the campaign is running in media outlets favored by the box-turning set.

They include magazines like Body & Soul, Martha Stewart Living and Real Simple along with TV shows like “Healthy Appetite with Ellie Krieger” on Food Network.

Among the Web sites are lime.com and marthastewart.com as well as sites devoted to the brand, quakersimpleharvest.com and simpleharvest.quakeroatmeal.com.

Quaker is exploring the idea of adding products — rice cakes, for example — to the Quaker Simple Harvest line, Mr. Kimbell said, because there are “lots of places we could take this.”

Mr. Adamson of Landor, however, cautioned that the concept of peddling products as all natural is not infinitely elastic.

“I don’t think it will work for everything,” Mr. Adamson said. “You can’t put lipstick on a pig.”

“It’s harder for a processed cheese in a can to tell that story,” he added. “But for a brand that has the credentials, now’s the time to shout it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/bu...p=7&sq=&st=nyt

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

[SoularFlarez]

eat good, live longer........ and save on medical bills too

[Jahness]

Originally Posted by SoularFlarez

eat good, live longer........ and save on medical bills too

Greetings Soular!

Ditto to that, it's the truth!

Peace!

[Raha]

Hot Cereal OWNS.

Cinnamon Raisin is the shizz!

[shakim1969]

Originally Posted by SoularFlarez

eat good, live longer........ and save on medical bills too

You are so right about that but unfortunately , you have people who aren't interested in the idea of eating healthy , some people prefer to eat junk with out any worries of getting ill. We can save so much money on medical bills if we were to eat, as you say, good.

[SoularFlarez]

Originally Posted by shakim1969

You are so right about that but unfortunately , you have people who aren't interested in the idea of eating healthy , some people prefer to eat junk with out any worries of getting ill. We can save so much money on medical bills if we were to eat, as you say, good.

i cant speak for anyone else, but most of what i see around me is junk food....between the corner bodega, the chinese food place or the chicken shack..... and junk food is CHEAP and FAST.... "funny" tho cuz they can end up making our lifespan "cheap and fast" too.....

it takes some learnin and getting used to , to eat better, but take it in steps if anything....


peace

[shakim1969]

Originally Posted by SoularFlarez

i cant speak for anyone else, but most of what i see around me is junk food....between the corner bodega, the chinese food place or the chicken shack..... and junk food is CHEAP and FAST.... "funny" tho cuz they can end up making our lifespan "cheap and fast" too.....

it takes some learnin and getting used to , to eat better, but take it in steps if anything....


peace

I hear you brother. Where I live junk food is king. I don't see the corner store bodegas anymore since I moved to Georgia. However, junk food is still being sold at the local supermarket and/ or gas station.

The Chinese restaurants seems to dominate certain areas, it seem that we have a penchant for unhealthy foods and these non-Afrikans know it. Have you noticed the difference between the diets of Asian people and what they serve people at those Chinese restaurants??? as you can tell they don't serve the people anything that is close to nutritious.

I wish all Afrikan people from the continent and the diaspora, analyze our diets. We are dying and people don't realize it. Like you said,junk foods and fast foods are "cheap and fast" which causes our life span to be " cheap and fast".

Uhuru

[Jahness]

Greetings Everyone!


Shakim1969 you are correct the junk food out there is cheap and fast. There is not much nutrition in any of it. They are usually full of empty calories.

Grocery stores are full of junk food. When you get on the checkout line in the supermarket all you have to do is watch and see the amount of junk food some people have in their shopping cart.

Eating healthy is a conscious decision we all have to make. We have to teach the children as well very early how to eat healthy, their life depends on it.

Peace & Blessings!