Dive Brief:
- General Mills is looking to combat falling sales and overcome the stereotypes associated with being a major food conglomerate.
- This includes more subtle marketing tactics, such as hosting a tasting station at a Minnesota grocery store, with a new product (a fava bean-based savory snack) and without its usual branding, leading consumers to believe it was a new product from an up-and-coming company.
- General Mills is also trying to imitate the nimbleness that is more common among small companies to bring new products to market faster, an ability often lost on larger manufacturers.
Dive Insight:
Crowdfunding initiatives like Kickstarter and CircleUp have alleviated barriers for smaller companies. Consumers are voicing their preferences for products they deem healthier and their appreciation for the transparency and accessibility of smaller companies.
Efforts like the tasting setup enable General Mills to adopt the inner workings of food startup culture, which is becoming more necessary as smaller companies become more trusted by consumers and squeeze out major manufacturers' market share.
"We don't want [the product] to be this most perfect thing and then be married to that execution," Liz O'Hara, global consumer insights manager for snacks at General Mills, told Marketplace. "Because then we can come out here and learn what about it is incorrect. Because it will be wrong."
The other option for major food and beverage manufacturers is to acquire smaller competitors. This can improve overall sales and also give larger companies a closer look at how these smaller companies achieve fast growth in an increasingly competitive industry.