Sea buckthorn is a plant that produces a phenomenal nutrition profile. Regulation tells us that food cannot be a medicine. But food contained in a balanced diet is the fundamental route to health. The sea buckthorn nutritional profile is a powerhouse in which each nutrient has a capacity to combine with any other one within the berry to provide a resource that the consumer’s body can utilise. Its fatty acids and polyphenol content are made up of many compounds which are identifiable, but obscure in terms of the detail of their individual capacity to influence bodily functions. This is a problem for a promoting a plant such as sea buckthorn. It is a problem of ensuring that information is accurate; it complies with regulation; but also a problem in that one needs to articulate and communicate this to consumers so that it makes sense and is relevant.
I know I have raised this subject before, but we have a health service that is bankrupting itself through being re active not proactive with diet based diseases. Yesterday we had a new take on the subject of alcohol. People do not like being preached to nor being told what to do. Saying that alcohol is bad for you has had little effect on consumption. Tell people that alcohol has a high calorie content and this changes the perspective. A perspective not for the whole population but enough so that it starts a trend. A perspective that will not stop people drinking, but reduce excessive drinking. A change of perspective changes views on outcomes. Sadly, one cannot normally see the outcomes of excessive drinking until it is too late.
So how do we put this change of perspective into how one can promote sea buckthorn. There are many, many websites pushing multiple benefits but these do not reach the wider audience. The nutrient complexity of sea buckthorn has been subjected to research but each of these studies is specific to a specific benefit. Regulations tell us though that this is irrelevant unless one can provide clinical trials which the European Food safety Agency accept as providing the right level of cause and effect evidence to become a legal health claim. This reduces the options to promotion based on what we know and can substantiate through nutritional content. This asks the question – who is the audience.
Sea buckthorn is not widely known but has every quality to deserve to be as much a market leader as cranberry or blueberry.
A question that was posed at a marketing course was – “If you are standing outside a supermarket how many of the first one hundred people entering the store will have heard of your brand or your product?” With sea buckthorn our first need is public awareness – getting those people going into a store to have heard the name sea buckthorn. A name is not enough. With it has to come some memorable facts. So going back to who is the audience – I see it as an open page. sea buckthorn is a food that is great tasting – but it is a good that is high in vitamins. Many fruits are providers of vitamins.
Just looking at Innocent’s website FAQs and there is a statement that their products are a source of vitamin C.
So we need a point of difference. An analysis led confirmation that sea buckthorn can provide other vitamins. Vitamin A, B complex, C, E, and possibly F and K – a veritable natural multi-vitamin. This could extend to include the omegas 3,6,7,9 – but each extension requires qualification and a reason to be relevant to the consumer.
When consumers are taking multivitamin supplements routinely, for sea buckthorn to provide a natural multivitamin package sounds good. It is a simple message and a memorable one. But it is a definition not a product guarantee.
When you come back to the concept that sea buckthorn is a food, then we should not just be looking at nutritional quality. The term natural is only as good as the way that a natural food item is handled. Poor quality harvesting; storage, processing; handling and distribution can all degrade a high quality natural product. All these issues are wrapped up into how good the services are that take the raw commodity through to the end product for the consumer.
So that consumer going into a store needs to know both the facts of what sea buckthorn is, but also the branding/quality assurance that convert the facts and definition of sea buckthorn is and deliver it to the consumer.
That is the challenge – a real product with reliable quality, delivered by a trusted brand.
This challenge is what focuses each decision I make on farm. What varieties to grow; how they will adapt to my soil and local climate; how I control pests and diseases, organically; how to develop a heavy enough crop to be profitable but a crop with consistent ripening and high in the nutrients that will go through into the end product; how to harvest the crop quickly, efficiently and without damage. Consistency and reliability are essential. Understanding the point of difference and the importance that it makes to the consumer is what will deliver on this challenge.
One final point – in my last blog I added that one needed patience. It was a very practical issue. I have found that controlling weeds by regular mowing is fine, but the temptation of too much speed when cutting between the plants can very easily damage the bark at the base of the plants. Patience delivers the same job but without the damage.