Post from guest blogger, Jenny Arthur BA (Hons) MSc RNutr, Nutrition and Marketing Consultant.
Recently, I went to Nutrition and Health Live in London, a very good conference targeted at Health professionals, with an excellent mix of the science and communications.
Motivating people
A session I particularly enjoyed was a personal effectiveness workshop looking at 'words that work', highlighting the importance of listening, your ethos, logos and pathos powers of persuasion and how to express yourself. It’s all about motivating people in a relevant way; I have been trying it out on my daughters and husband with varying degrees of success!
Another workshop I enjoyed was looking at the importance of telling the right story that consumers want to hear and helping them to 'find, understand and love your product'. There was also a lengthy discussion about the Eat Well Plate as the basis for promoting healthy eating.
The Eat Well Plate – is it the right approach?
All of this started me thinking again about the relative merits of the Eat Well Plate, which is close to my heart as it was the first project I undertook as part of delivering the Department of Health’s Nutrition Programme… going back a few years now! The essence of marketing is to target the right message to the right people and therefore in the Eat Well Plate’s case should there be different messages for different target groups, instead of a one size fits all approach?
This thought mirrors awareness levels, as among 5 to 8 year olds 64% are able to identify the Eat Well Plate and put the foods into food groups. This is because they are learning about and using the Eat Well Plate at school. Whereas older people have much lower awareness levels, 66% did not recognise the Eat Well Plate. Even from this starting point different approaches need to be adopted. What about young adults and families?
Another important factor about the Eat Well Plate is that people do not understand the timeframe for the plate, is it a day or a week?…. Essential if it is going to be used effectively!
There are specific key messages that need to be highlighted within the context of the Eat Well Plate, for example, reducing saturated fat and non-milk extrinsic sugars (always a tricky one to explain) levels and increasing intakes of fish, fibre and fruit and vegetables.
As Sam Waterfall from The Healthy Marketing Team pointed out tell a story that people want to hear and is relevant to them. Marketing and PR is now much more targeted with the objective of getting people to start talking about products. In my view, people would benefit from having more information about the quality of foods based on their vitamin and mineral contents and portion sizes that help to contribute towards a healthy balanced diet that is relevant to their life stage/lifestyle. There are many different versions of the Eat Well Plate worldwide but there is consensus across the US, Europe and the UK that people should be eating a Mediterranean type diet.
Visit Jenny Arthur's website for information on nutrition and market trends, nutrition and health strategy, product and recipe development, and consumer communications.
