Has 'Craveable' lost its selling power in the Ozempic era?

One day, about sixty years ago, comedian Bert Lahr put on a devil suit, held up a potato chip and said a sentence that would be a milestone in food marketing: “Betcha can't eat one.”

Positioning food as deliciously addictive, as Lay's did in its sly TV commercial, became advertising gold. In the decades that followed, Oreos And frozen waffles (“L'eggo my Eggo!”) were depicted as so irresistible that people fought over them. A popular stoner movie, “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle”, describes two friends' obsessions with fast food sliders.

Cravings became such a selling point that Kellogg's went all in and named a chocolate-filled cereal Krave. Top chefs were not immune. Christina Tosi, known for her hyper-sweet desserts Milk bar stores called Crack Pie.

But we are now in the Ozempic era. A class of new drugs that eliminate food cravings, as well as a fresh body scientific studies, have drawn attention to the link between addiction and food. Ultra-processed foods, made with cheap industrial ingredients and potentially as addictive as tobacco or gamblingare emerging as a national concern.

What should a food marketer do? Some who work or study in the country $1 trillion food industry describe the moment as little more than a speed bump. Food companies are adept at surfing the cultural waves and finding new ways to keep customers reaching for the next helping.

Others say it's a turning point in the way Americans eat and will change the way companies sell food.

“It's an existential threat to the food industry and certainly an existential threat to the processed food industry,” he said Marion Nestle, an emeritus professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University who has written extensively on food policy and science. “You're making all these things come together in a way they've never come together before.”

In the 1960s, when Lay's challenged the nation to stand up, “it didn't even occur to anyone that wanting more chips would be a bad thing,” says Steve Siegelman, executive creative director at the marketing firm Ketchum, who works with the beef industry. has worked. industry, Kikkoman and Häagen-Dazs.

Portraying food as irresistible or desirable is already falling out of favor, he said, but it remains perfectly acceptable as a business-to-business tactic. For example, Hidden Valley Ranch uses the slogan “Give them the cup they crave” in its advertisements in restaurant trade publications.

Pure overuse begins to undermine the marketing power of cravings, he said Mike Kostyo, a vice president of the food industry consulting firm Menu Matters, whose clients include brands such as Dunkin' and Del Monte Foods. But as an underlying concept, he said, it's not going away.

“It's so critical to how we get so much food to market,” he said. “All those images of dripping cheese and the sound of crunching.”

Mr. Kostyo said several clients have asked him how concerned they should be about the surge in popularity of drugs like semaglutide (the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy) and tirzepatide (in Mounjaro), which people credit with silencing what they describe as 'food noise'. ”, or constant thoughts about food. He tells them it's too early to tell.

If selling the addictive nature of a snack no longer works, he says, the industry will find something else that does.

Food companies faced a similar challenge in the early 1990s, when fat was portrayed as the nutrition demon. They responded with products like SnackWell's, a line of fat- and cholesterol-free cookies that was so popular that they were often in short supply. Baked Lay's, with fewer calories and less fat than the original, created a $50 million ad campaign featuring supermodels fishing or play poker. The slogan: “You can eat like one of the boys, but still look like one of the girls.” The commercials naturally ended with Lay's tried and tested slogan.

Michael Moss, a former New York Times reporter who has written two books explaining how some food companies use science, marketing and political influence to get consumers hooked on their products, doesn't expect drugs like Ozempic to make any difference.

“Letting us lose control is part of their business plan,” he said of the processed food industry. “I was talking to an industry lobbyist who said vitamin O scares us as much as Michelle Obama's 'Let's Move' campaign” to get kids to eat better and exercise more.

In its recent annual report on the food and beverage industry, market research firm Mintel said that consumer demand for minimally processed foods will grow, and suggested that manufacturers focus on the benefits of food processing, such as prolonging freshness or promoting food safety.

The report also offered a strategy for selling products with no redeeming nutritional value: “Brands that produce strong, overdone or ultra-processed food and beverage products will need to remind consumers of the pleasure and comfort they get from these products.”

But instead of telling consumers what a product can do for them, many marketers scour social media to find out what they want, says Caitlin Reynolds, executive vice president at advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi.

“It's like an unsolicited focus group that's active 24/7,” she said.

In 2021, Ms. Reynolds led a team that was established an award-winning advertising campaign for Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers, inspired by the shutdown phase of the pandemic, when people posted about eating the snacks by the handful while working from home. The multiplatform campaign highlighted Boban Marjanovic, the NBA player with the biggest hands, He held as many crackers as he could.

Although goldfish are a mainstay in homes with young children, the snack has become a top seller among teens eating them growing up. “Generation Z loves nostalgia,” Ms. Reynolds said.

And while brand integrity is important to members of Generation Z, according to Mr. Kostyo of Menu Matters, they don't have the same health focus as the Millennial generation, with its grain bowls and nut milks.

“With Gen Z, we're seeing a movement away from that,” he said. “They like sweets, Taco Bell and TikTok-y foods.”

Strategies for selling food to Generation Z and its successor Alpha, whose oldest members are 14, rely less on one message repeated in traditional advertising and more on deft use of social media. They also include fun, outrageous collaborations between brands, like the Nacho Cheese Dorito Flavor Liqueur that the snack giant recently established with Empirical, a company founded by alumni of Copenhagen's elite restaurant Noma.

Yet some companies continue to stick to the old get-'em-hooked approach. In 2022, Taco Bell pioneered a subscription offering, where $10 bought a taco a day for a month. In November it added one subscription for nacho fries.