Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

128 BRAND RELEVANCE
In addition to health gurus and scientists, the government
plays a role in the discourse by validating or countering positions,
communicating ideas, and regulating products. A study of
the roles of gurus, scientists, and the government not only helps
put into context the strategies of fi rms in the food industry but
also demonstrates why predicting and interpreting trends is not
easy. Trends are powerful, ambiguous, and complex, and they
ebb and fl ow.
Lessons about dealing with trends learned in the food industry
can be applied elsewhere. Every industry faces the challenge
of identifying, understanding, predicting, and sometimes infl u-
encing trends that affect markets. Retailers cope with fashion
trends, material developments in clothing, consumer tastes, and
so on. The automobile industry grapples with technology, government
regulations, style trends, consumer preferences, demographics,
and more.
The ultimate translators of these trends and the theories
on which they rest are fi rms in the food industry who are sensitive
to health issues. These fi rms have two challenges. One is
to seize opportunities to own new subcategories as they emerge.
Another is to avoid becoming irrelevant, to avoid standing on
the platform as the train leaves the station, by adapting offerings
to the new theories of the day.
This chapter has several objectives. One is to provide a
close - up look at a megatrend, healthy eating, to appreciate its
complexity and the political, cultural, technological, and marketing
forces that infl uence it. Most fi rms will need to interpret
and respond to trends and can learn from this case study.
Another objective is to present a series of case studies of strategic
responses to the growing but changing face of healthy eating to
gain insights into what stimulates ideas; the risks involved; the
brand strategy options; the competitor response factors; and
the role of uncontrollables, especially the capricious trends, in the
decisions and their aftermath.