Communication and marketing of Vegan products.

Whether I like it or not, I'm influenced all over the place and quite often even unconscious. When it is for something I've been waiting for, for a long time, this can be great. Now quite often it creates a feeling of me wanting things I don't need, that I would normally not buy and are quite often not at all very good for me.

The solution for it, I should not watch them, now like nicely illustrated in the movie FOCUS with Will Smith, in the majority of cases I've no clue till which level I'm influenced. It might be wiser for me, to look for myself rather than trying to avoid outside factors. To set in question my consumption level, rather than trying to avoid to be influenced.

For every purchase I do, I ask myself;

• Why do I buy this?
• What if I didn't buy it?
• Is it really necessary for me to survive?
• If it is not the first time, do I really need more of them?
• If I think that it will make me happy, will it really and for how long?
• Presume I have to buy it to survive, do I buy the most friendly one I know for the planet and the people that have contributed to it even if that is more expensive?
• …

To question myself like that, reliefs quite often the marketing techniques used on me and helps me to work as well as I can to my globally known over consumption.

Of course, if I consume, it is better if it is cruelty free, ethical,... so regarding Marketing of Vegan products, I tend to believe that, the marketing is more efficient if people don't see anything related to vegan (it increases the target audience also tremendous, see more about that, in this great book from Tobias Leenaert).

I might see vegan as a very positive thing, now by not changing my point of view too much, I might also see vegan as a very negative thing. If a word can be so easily interpreted in 2 completely opposite meanings, it might be more fruitful not using it.

Not using it, how do I communicate with my customers than?

Take out the positive side and focus on that. If you are e.g. making tasty vegan food, rather than saying ‘tasty vegan food’ use ‘very tasty cruelty free plant based food’. In my point of view, if people have to try one of the above, the majority are more attracted by the second. Now if that ‘tasty vegan food’ is primarily ‘tasty', since finding that all normal food should be plant based and cruelty free, then why not try ‘very tasty natural food’ or even ‘very tasty food’.

It is really something a lot of vegan companies are applying today with big success. The restaurants ‘Little Pine’ and ‘Crossroads’ in Los Angeles are excellent examples of that. A lot of people in there whom I talked to, didn't know they ate vegan, they go there because it is good food for everybody and nice place.

Yeah, and then vegans don't know?

The vegan community is a very active searching and communicating community. If I want them to know, should be pretty easy and straightforward to reach.

A last, more personal influence I find, are colours. If in the positive message from a company there are also nice colors in it, then I'm influenced very heavily.

Let me take 2 examples out of the vegan world to illustrate that, which of course I find both wonderful acts, I'm just talking about the effect of their marketing to me.

Bite Back

They work to reduce animal suffering and doing great work. Now when I personally see the pretty dominant black in the communication, I'm not at all attracted by that. I try to support them in events, with their work, now I will not very fast wear a t-shirt from them or have somewhere a sticker or so. I'm a very passive supporter.

HappyCow

They make a platform for finding very easily vegan restaurants and health stores all over the world. They use a nicely drawn happy cow as their logo, with happy colors in it and with a green background on their stickers. I love their stickers and love to wear their t-shirt that says that I love veggies.

So what I want to explain from my personal point of view, is that if Bite Back would have a nice green t-shirt, with a picture of what can be seen as a happy duck, with written under that ‘I'm happy thanks to Bite Back’ or ‘I’m all love thanks to Bite Back’ or even more provocative ‘I've not been eaten thanks to Bite Back’ I would feel much more in-line with that and probably increase my support.

Wow, it looks like I'm today, unconsciously influenced by their marketing, unfortunately from a negative side and I hope that I'm the only one like that, so they have plenty of 100% supporters.

For me personally, let the positive and colorful side shine on the cruelty free, ethical and plant based world!

Thank you Bite Back, Thank you HappyCow… for doing what you do!

#peace #goodfood #nature #fruitsandvegetables #wholefood #plantbased #veganmarketing #colors #crueltyfree #biteback #happycow