For 2 years, I ran New Hope’s online, or “emedia”, business. It was fun and challenging. Fun because there’s so much to learn and challenging because there are few people in the natural products industry in marketing positions who really understand the opportunity of online advertising and marketing. Often I found myself explaining what pageviews, impressions and click-through-rates were, and why website “hits” was a ridiculous statistic. Rarely did I make headway into integrated marketing program discussions. Still, I had a great time and worked with alot of great people in the industry.
So when Advertising Age released this article on the recent increase in web traffic to packaged goods websites, it caught my attention. It seems that these packaged goods (Uncle Bens, Hersheys, M&Ms, Loreal) firms are finally getting serious about online advertising…AND their online advertising is returning some significant traffic and marketing ROI.
What I’ve learned is that the nutrition industry needs some serious education when it comes to refining their basic online strategies into tactics that drive online traffic and consumer loyalty. So, in NBJ’s December Business Achievement and Executive Review issue, we had the editor of Website Magazine, Pete Prestipino, contribute a “so now you have a website…what’s next” article. Pete’s a great guy and a wealth of information on the business of emedia. Check it out over the holidays when you’re digesting that turkey/roast/ham/tofurkey feast you just gorged yourself on.
-Patrick
Though I feel for Tony LaRussa, manager of the MLB St. Louis Cardinals, you gotta get a chuckle from this story about his recent DUI charge.
Apparently Tony took some “vitamins” from one of his players that turned out to be HGH (human growth hormone). When he was pulled over, LaRussa blamed his state on the vitamins.
The Most Serious Sports News Network thankfully interviewed the arresting officer. His statement said, ““It was obvious Tony was drunk. He had dried vomit on his shirt and a bottle of Jim Beam in the passenger seat. But he kept going on and on about vitamins that he received from one of his players.”
SSN continued, “Despite his tricky defense strategy, LaRussa was sentenced to probation, including fifty hours of community service, for the misdemeanor infraction.”
No industry likes to be attacked…but I think this type of attack isn’t so bad.
-Patrick
Not too healthy in my opinion. A quick search on the new Healthy Dining Findersite of the Boulder, CO area returned Domino’s Pizza, Old Chicago, Burger King, Carl’s Jr. and Hooters. Perhaps the water they serve is the “healthy” option.
How do they get away with this? It’s puzzling to me how sites like this are able to imply that their suggested restaurants are healthy. There may be a chicken or turkey sandwich on the menu for these restaurants, but most of the menu couldn’t be considered healthy. Studies have shown that when consumers feel they are eating healthy…they often eat more than they normally would, increasing their overall caloric intake.
Fortunately, Boulder is a very healthy town and the NBJ team has many healthy food options. I just hope others don’t consider this site authoritative….because it is not.
Here’s a link to an interview with the creators of HealthyDiningFinder.com
Registration is now open for Nutrition Business Journal’s Supplement & Nutrition Industry Raw Material & Ingredient Supply Webseminar. We’ll begin the live online event on December 4th, 2007 at 11am MT.
I think that this webseminar will be highly educational for any executive in or interested in the supplement & nutrition industry supply chain. So much has impacted this business in the last year - rising fuel costs, poor weather producing poor crops, currency fluctuations and China…to name a few. We’ll discuss all of these issues on December 4th, completely reviewing our November RMIS issue.
NBJ is one of the few research firms that dives deep into the supplement & nutrition industry’s supply chain in any significant way. Issues to be discussed will include: pricing, imports, exports, leading players, nutritionally enhanced flavors, sales and growth forecasts…and how they all relate to the complex and ever changing supply chain.
I highly recommend you sign up for this webcast.
-Patrick
What’s the saying - no good deed goes unpunished? It’s easy to forget that wisdom when you’re trying to save the world. Case in point - the local food movement. Popularized by Berkeley professor Michal Polland and a few other passionate and observant thought leaders, local food is not only sweeping through your natural and health food stores, but it’s also invading conventional grocery.
Today, however, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Bill Moseley highlighted another ethical food movement at odds with the local - fair trade. His article is entitled, Farmers in developing world hurt by ‘eat local’ philosopy in U.S.
William’s conclusion follows: “While the local food craze is all well and good, we should not be so quick to denounce organic and fair trade foods that are imported from the developing world. By shunning these products, we do not encourage local markets to flourish in these countries, but we condemn these farmers to the ills of conventional production for the global market (the only other real alternative at this time). We should remain open to such products in the short term, but also work for broad scale changes in the rules of the global market place to ensure that even conventional agricultural production is safe and fairly compensated.”
I tend to agree.
Improving the world we live in is never easy. Hopefully an open discussion of the issues will help these two movements find common ground.
