My Longmont Ledger Biz Mix Column Debut!

I'm happy to announce that I've joined on as the business columnist for the Longmont Ledger, the weekly free news published by the Boulder Daily Camera. I've always wanted to write for a newspaper and as a kid, I used to love to pretend I was Rosalind Russell in "Gal Friday," or Lois Lane.

The column is called "Biz Mix" and I'll be focusing on the local and small business community in Longmont, one that is rapidly changing and expanding. Take a look and become a fan and a follower! And send me your business column ideas!

When the Good Guys Let Us Down, or the Case of the Broken Brand Promises

Marketing 101 - A brand is a promise. A promised consistently delivered through relationships with consumers.

Silk. Sigg. What do these brands represent to you? To me, they represent a way of life embodied by the acronym LOHAS, lifestyles of health and sustainability. But recently, I've discovered that Silk (made by WhiteWave and owned by Dean Foods) and Sigg stand for something else. Broken promises.

Let Down Case Study #1:

One of my children hates regular milk. Refuses to drink it. But she has happily guzzled Silk's Very Vanilla, aka VV, for a number of years, that was until I read about White Wave's decision to replace the organic soy beans used in VV with conventional ones. I read and re-read every article, each time with increasingly more anger. I had just come from the market and purchased VV. I threw open the refrigerator and grabbed the carton. Same colors, same package. Same schoolhouse chalkboard scrawled "Kids Fortified" message. Unless I knew to look for the change, I would have completely missed the fact that this was a vastly different product than the one I thought I was buying.

In case my sinking stomach was misguiding me about the stark difference between conventional and organic soybeans, I consulted the Organic Consumers Association's site, folks I highly respect and consult on all issues related to organic products. In a June 11, 2009 OCA posting by Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute:

Recently, Dean Foods reformulated their Silk product line converting almost all their products to "natural" (conventional) soybeans. They did this, quietly,

without telling retailers or changing the UPC code numbers on the products. Many retailers have reported to us that they didn't find out about the change until their customers noticed and complained

To add insult to injury, not only did the price of Silk products not go down when they switched to cheaper conventional soybeans, but they now reintroduced three products with organic soybeans and raised the price on those.

Sounds like the classic bait and switch, if you ask me. But beyond the obvious profit-grabbing move by Dean Foods, Kastel's illuminating details on the health and environmental impact of their soybean choice solidified my choice to NOT choose Silk as a brand our family supports:

Silk's Light soymilk, as well as its "Heart Health" soymilk, is made with hexane-extracted soy flour instead of whole soybeans. Hexane is a highly explosive volatile solvent. It is a byproduct of gasoline refining and a neurotoxin. Soybeans used in Silk's Light and Heart Health soymilk are immersed in this neurotoxic petrochemical to make soy flour, which is listed as the main ingredient in these Silk products.

Hexane is classified as a "hazardous air pollutant" by the Environmental Protection Agency and emissions are regulated for their contribution to air pollution. Food processors are the country's major hexane emitters. When The Cornucopia Institute sent samples of hexane-extracted soy flour to an independent lab for residue testing, residues as high as 21 parts per million were found. The effects on consumer health of repeated and long-term consumption of hexane-extracted soy ingredients have not been thoroughly studied. An extraction process that does not involve hexane is available, but using hexane is cheaper for the processor.

Our family has tried the new "Organic" vanilla, only because above mentioned daughter still is not willing to drink cow, goat, almond or any other kind of milk. Silk "Organic" is an inferior product in taste, consistency and besides, I don't like being betrayed by a company I've supported with my hard earned dollars for so many years. I don't like being betrayed by a company who I've entrusted my child's health and nutrition with. A shameful and greedy choice

and one that also betrays the very nature of the mission and vision of the company Silk was founded by.

Very Vanilla is a product created and marketed to children and parents. Dean Food's decision to detrimentally hamper with this product, but keeping the price point and packaging the same puts them in the same categories as the companies peddling sugar-laden food during Saturday morning cartoons. And we're not buying it.

Let Down Case #2:

When the news programs started getting flooded with reports of the damaging impact of BPAs in plastic food products, many of them bought by parents and used by young children, the outrage was real and the impact immediate. Within a few months, BPA-laden products were replaced and I began to weigh the non-plastic choices for water bottles for my kids. I consulted with a friend in the renewable retail world and asked her about SIGG bottles. I was seeing them everywhere, they were cute and had a line made just for little mouths. My friend, a thankfully no-nonsense person, told me that although SIGGs were being marketed as safe alternatives to plastic bottles, the cleaning instructions were strangely similar to regular plastic bottles and the company was not releasing the contents of its liner. A little red flag went off and besides, with the adult bottles coming in at a cool $20 a pop, not to mention an equally high price for the kids' bottles (don't any of the other parents' kids lose their bottles?), coupled with the ambiguity of the liner, I chose three brightly colored and decidedly non-trendy stainless steel bottles.

Fast forward to fall 2010, the beginning of another school year. My kids are one school year older, brand-savvier and making a really good case for the financial investment of three SIGG bottles. I had to agree, they were greatly colored and the kids older and more responsible. And then the news hit. SIGG bottles made prior to August 2008 contain - guess what - BPA. That proprietary information? Nothing more than the proverbial man behind the curtain saying, "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

The numbers of SIGGs sold are mind-numbing and those sales were made based on the promise of clean water, with a huge segment of those numbers coming from parents like me who want non-chemically impacted water for our children. As reported on 09/04/09 by the Canadian Broadcasting Centre - cbcnews.ca:

According to marketing monitor Advertising Age, Sigg's sales rose 250 per cent between 2006 and 2007 as concerns about BPA escalated. The bottles are sold in upmarket health food, outdoor adventure and baby stores in Canada as well as retailers such as Whole Foods.

In March 2008, CBC News reporter Curt Petrovich had asked Sigg's Swiss product manager Christian Roth if there was any BPA in the plastic liner of its bottles. At the end of a series of email exchanges, Roth told Petrovich there was "no trace of any BPA."

A no-brainer. Decision made. No SIGGS for us, ever.

I'm pissed. Pissed that companies who have built their reputations on the coat tails of generations of environmental, sustainable and consciously-minded grassroots people, organizations and visionaries have made a choice that is based on deception, betrayal and greed.

Hey, White Wave and SIGG - you are supposed to be the good guys. The sad fact is that these are companies that would have been just as successful, just as profitable by coming through on their brand promise because their success was built on the promise of socially responsible practices. Instead you sold out and let down the folks who believed in you, who worked extra hard to afford the higher prices your products demand because we believed in your promise to us. Clean, safe water. Organic and delicious food alternatives. The choice to purchase your products is not a rogue thing, it is a conscious and deliberate choice to live a life in as healthiest manner possible for ourselves and my children. The choice to purchase your products is one made to do my part to help slow down the rapid progress of global warming, to offset the loss of local farmers, the loss of sustainable and safe food choices.

Was the betrayal worth it? The greed? I doubt it. It never is.

FYI: This post is my contribution to Blog Action Day 2009, which happens on October 15, 2009. If you have a blog post related to the topic of climate change, let the fine folks at Blog Action know and join in. And if you want to keep up on all the BAD09 happenings, follow them at www.twitter.com/blogactionday.

Tweet, Friend and Connect: Social Media Trends in the Insurance Industry 2

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Tweet, Friend and Connect: Social Media Trends in the Insurance Industry 2

View more presentations from One Purpose PR & Communications.

I had a great time in Chicago with The Greenwich Group talking it up about how social media can benefit their business relationships, build new customer bases and extend their marketing budgets. Reminded what a great town Chicago is and also, how social media is a viable tool for anyone in any kind of industry. If you'd like to view the presentation, please do so! If you'd like to know more how One Purpose PR & Communications can develop a social media strategy for your organization, please contact me at ltrank@onepurposepr.com or follow me on Twitter!

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