Brand Marketing In Food, Health and Automated Retail at the NCS and Farm Shop and Deli Shows!

One of our favourite trade shows, the National Convenience Show once again hit the NEC with its sister shows Farm Shop & Deli and the Forecourt Show. We love visiting this show and seeing all the innovation in food and beverage plus the marketing messages which are being sold into buyers and shoppers alike. It's a really great insight into the state of the market, where NPD buzz is and brands who feel they have something different to offer. Here are our key findings.

Disruptive Brands Targeting Health

A huge number of (primarily smaller or start-up) brands were at the show talking health. Functional health, natural supplements, energy boosts, gut health... a lot of really interesting innovations, especially in beverages, giving the shopper a range of options targeted to their specific needs.

The need in this category is to balance the 'naturalness' of the message with a marketing cut-through which creates a stand out on shelf. We did see a lot of white, grey and beige. All very worthy but we feel you need something else to help with impact on shelf and conveying a message of how you are different to the competition.

This can be done in a variety of ways. Mockingbird Raw Press let the product sing, with vibrant fruity colours sitting around a clean white label with colour hints matching the juice. Their products were really lovely, too! Goodrays use some pastel-based colourways in the can design which don't detract from the natural messaging but provide a decent product navigation. One of our favourites, Hip Pop Kombucha, go the other way with highly artistic designs in bright colours, which although are much more in your face, still manage to balance the natural gut health messaging with eye-catching shelf stand-out.

However, we wondered whether Trip CBD had quite got it right. They are the leading brand in CBD so obviously a great success story but we felt that maybe they needed to revisit the brand identity and look at updating it, even in a subtle way, to ensure they stay in front. Especially with other brands snapping at their heels. A brand that stands still will die, even the leader (look at Blockbuster!) may have trouble without innovation or a regular evolution of that brand identity.

Mixed Messages in Kids Snacking

Following on from adult health, we saw an interesting dynamic at play in kids' snacking. Our route around the show had initially taken us past brands like Toxic Waste and a new entrant Brain Blasterz: big, neon in-your-face brands targeting the eye pull of kids in store, pester power and almost a challenge to their mates - I can eat this if you can't! Lots of fun, but not necessarily in tune with what parents are increasingly after for their children, which is 'wholesome fun' and a balanced diet with treats still part of it.

We were however struck by two brands doing things differently. School Yard Kitchen with a strapline Flavour With Purpose, started off as a social enterprise marrying the flavours of Ghanian cuisine with Scottish food production standards to create a range of meals, snacks and ingredients suitable for the whole family. We loved the story, the messaging and the obviously quality of their products, and hope they continue to spread their appeal to parents and other consumers. Not sure our kids would be that interested in a brand which reminds them of school but this isn't who they are targeting!

Yumma Candy, an innovative natural sweets brand, also caught our eye with a back-to-basics approach on branding and messaging which actually provided a real point of difference in the show. Their packaging looked a little more mainstream than their stand but actually we liked the fact that the credentials of the brand (high quality sweets which are gluten and palm oil free, using natural flavours and juices) were communicated across all touchpoints. And their hexagon boxes are very special, a real USP in a world of bland pouches and bags.

A shout out also to Bob Snail. A slightly bonkers application of a brand which looks to resonate both with the kids and their parents, providing an eye-catching bright brand design with really great messages to assure mum and dad that these treats are better for the little ones than others. Marketing and brand design excellence, in our humble opinion! It shows that however great your product is, thinking about how you will market it right at the very start of the journey is vital. This is where we help small, founder-led food and beverage brands to develop their strategy and build the toolkit for go-to-market success.

Automated Retailing Gains Momentum

Automated Retailing has always been with us, at least for the past 40 years when Klix coffee machines started making their entry (Wikipedia tells us that the first automated coffee machine was first invented in the US in 1947!) Now however we are seeing a much greater emphasis on this form of retail, especially in the convenience and public sector channels, where speed and convenience is key, at all times of the day when staff may not be always available. We have worked with many businesses who have struggled to attract the right talent or headcount to provide the kind of offer they need to have, and Automated Retailing provides the answer.

Obviously coffee machines have been an integral part of the convenience market for twenty years, but now we see that other categories are finding solutions in this space. Lots of milkshake and smoothie offers, providing impactful designs and 'made in front of you' theatre which will appeal to children and adults who want an alternative to coffee.

We especially loved the customisable options available in the Fresh Blend offer from SV365 Technologies, with milkshakes, frappes, smoothies and iced juices to choose from. We rather held up their queue as we were looking through all the options available before deciding! What was interesting with SV365 is their focus on pay-at-machine terminals, rather than their competitors requiring a pay-at-counter approach. We think this is the way forward to exploit true Automated Retail. They even had a fresh chips machine on display which unfortunately we couldn't sample but they told us was very popular!

We think that BP's trial for Automated Retailing is just the start of the growth of this category, especially when you think of car charging dwell times and also the need to feed people round the clock in places like hospitals. It'll be interesting to see how food quality is assured through both the product experience itself and the machine/location branding.

All in all a really excellent show. We met with a couple of clients there who agreed with us that it provided a broad view of the marketplace and innovation from both the big brands and start-up, with everything in between. A key watch out from us is competition continues to be rife with many many brands competing for space. Our expertise is in finding your USP, your brand voice, a great product plan and creating a compelling story for buyers with a comprehensive toolkit for your sales team to land new business. Come and chat with us. We might treat you to coffee (from a real barista!)