Healthy Food Marketing Starts With Honesty

The most successful health food brands today are the ones that pride themselves on having an open dialogue with the consumers that choose their products. The takeaway? If you want to market health food successfully, you must be as transparent as possible.There is no denying the fact that consumers today, especially Millennials, demand to know where their food comes from, how it’s treated, who handled it, etc. For the brands out there that have chosen to ignore this trend in health (and in our national psychology), it’s time to either get with the program or get into a different line of business.There is also no denying the advantage in being completely transparent about food sourcing, business practices—well, everything—if you intend to be a successful brand with a consumer base that trusts you.And that’s exactly what comes to a brand when it’s as honest as it can be with its consumers. Trust.And what comes with trust? More revenue, better business, and a greater relationship with the people and the environment.A perfect example is SunOpta, a natural and organic food product specialist.Just visit their site and you’ll realize quickly not only how committed they are to the health and wellbeing of their consumers but how committed they are to making sure you know that. The pages of the site are chock full of their philosophy, mission statements, and ideologies (“we have long recognized what is good for the environment and society is also good for our business”). And if you don’t feel like reading, just watch the video.The point is that the public’s demand to know where its food comes from won’t be going anyway anytime soon. SunOpta is just one of the many health food brands that are being as forthcoming as they can about their practices.Maybe that’s why companies like Where Food Comes From, Inc. exist (I know, what a great name)—to verify the quality of food. The company describes itself as “an independent, third-party food verification company [that cares] about food, how it’s grown and raised, the quality of what we eat, what farmers and ranchers do, and authentically telling that story to you.”And if you think being too honest might be detrimental, Where Food Comes From has been so busy auditing food producers that they just reported record revenue and earnings growth for the first quarter of 2015. How’s that for proof that consumers won’t settle for anything but the truth?So just like SunOpta and Where Food Comes From, as long as your brand makes honesty a priority, only good things will come.