Dive Brief:
-
Land O’Lakes and Unilever's Breyers received Most Trusted Awards from BrandSpark International for the fourth straight year, and Yoplait for the third, according to Dairy Foods. Land O' Lakes butter and Yoplait yogurt, owned by General Mills, were selected for their taste, quality and relative healthfulness. Breyers ice cream was chosen for its indulgence and variety of flavors.
-
Based on feedback from 10,000 American shoppers, the Land O’Lakes butter and Breyers ice cream brands have won in their respective categories every year since the award began. Yoplait has topped the yogurt category since it was included a year later.
-
“Just being around a long time isn’t enough,” said BrandSpark CEO Robert Levy. “But when you have been around a long time and you resonate, it’s hard to be dislodged.”
Dive Insight:
When it comes to consumer trust, legacy brands have an advantage over new market entrants. Nostalgia is a major benefit, as is clear in feedback from one Brandspark International respondent: “I have used that [Land O'Lakes] butter since I was a child in my mother’s house in Bayonne, N.J., and I am not going to switch now.” But retaining trust can still be a challenge, and all of three brands have made efforts to stay relevant for years.
Breyers, for example, stopped using milk and cream containing artificial growth hormones back in 2015. It recently added a line of dairy-free ice cream made with almond milk, and just last week introduced a range of low-calorie, high protein ice cream.
That’s not to say these brands are immune to competition. Indeed, Breyers’ new low-calorie ice cream uses a similar formula and packaging to the Halo Top brand, which has seen sales growth of 2,500% from 2015-2016, to reach $66.1 million. Still, Halo Top has some way to go to catch up to Breyers, which sold $500 million worth of ice cream in 2016.
Meanwhile, Chobani has given Yoplait a run for its money, overtaking the legacy brand in 2016 as the nation’s favorite yogurt just five years after coming on the market. Perhaps it's a matter of time for consumers to feel they trust Chobani as much as Yoplait. Chobani also is seeking to take a bigger chunk of the low-fat yogurt category with a new brand called Chobani Smooth, pitting it head-to-head with Yoplait. To fight back, General Mills is brining a new French-style yogurt using simple ingredients such as whole milk, pure cane sugar and real pieces of fruit packaged inside a clear glass container.
A growing number of consumers are looking for new products that meet high expectations for better ingredients, sustainable sourcing and current flavor trends — and many of the world’s biggest food companies are finding it hard to innovate fast enough to keep up. In this environment, some powerhouse brands are likely to be knocked off the top spot for consumer trust in the coming years.