How Do You Educate Consumers?

I watched the documentary Supersize Me last night on DVD. It was a great movie - I highly recommend watching it. Aside from the enormous health implications of the fast food industry, the movie got me thinking about the importance of both personal responsibility and the responsibility of marketers.

I've also recently read two books, Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser and Food Politics, by Marion Nestle. Both point a long finger of blame toward industy, and marketers in particular for the health crisis that we are facing in North America. So what is the responsibility of marketing?

Here's the glitch. The capitalist system is based on offering customers what they want, when and where they want it. The company that can do this best, at the best value will become very profitable. Consumers want salt, fat, sugar and caffeine. They taste good. Fast Food companies and food manufacturers (let's not let the grocery companies off the hook here), deliver those things in a convenient package inexpensively. So, marketers are doing exactly what the consumer wants them to do. Is there anything unethical about that?

Now I have to come clean. I worked for two large food manufacturers - Kraft and General Mills - for a number of years. I never saw myself or my peers as unethical, or as manipulative. I always believed that the consumer has a choice whether to purchase a product or not. The rationale I always heard for not educating consumers has always been, "that's not our job" or "it would cost too much" or "we trust the consumer to make informed choices".

The problem is, the consumer is not always informed. They may not care, they may not have access to information, or the information may be hidden from them (big tobacco is a case in point). They may not have the inclination to get the full information because it seems like a relatively harmless, low risk choice.

So how much responsibility does the marketer have to educate a consumer? Well, I don't know. What I do know is that marketing is evolving into a conversation with consumers. Maybe we just have to have ongoing conversations, through media like blogs, websites, emails and traditional TV and radio, to figure out what consumers don't know, and need to know, how and why they might change their behaviour. So how do you educate a consumer about the complex subject of nutrition? Well, that's the challenge for food marketers to figure out. And a challenge for health professionals.

Closing our eyes to increasing consumer dissatisfaction with corporate behaviour (aside from the Fast Food companies, you have Big Tobacco, Enron, Tyco, the list is endless) will only lead to long term cynicism and growing distrust. So, despite the costs, complexity and risks, marketers have got to start having conversations with consumers, about both the benefits and the risks of their products. It's time to be authentic.

Comments

[Josh Weidman]

RE: Authenticity.

In my house we have been arguing a lot about the role of Big Pharma. My mother is a pharmacist who believes that the multinational drug manufacturers are the root of all evil and my sister-in-law is an executive with one of the same said companies.

Here is the argument:
1) Mother: The Drug companies have a social obligation to contribute positively towards overall health.

2) Sister-in-Law: They are businesses not charities and have no obligations other than to uphold the law and maximize profits for their shareholders.

David Olive wrote a good article in the week-end toronto star - and quoted an early president of Merck -

"We try to remember that medicine is for the patient. We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered it, the larger they have been."

—George W. Merck II (1935)

The point being that an earlier generation of managers and marketers knew that:

- authenticity
- commitment to orienting brand promises to customers "true" needs
- commitment to keeping promises

are what maximize profits for shareholders in the long term.

Great Blog! Loved the New Yorker article on choice!

- I'll be back