Positive Power of Principled Profit
Volume 1, Number 1 - September, 2003

Spotlight: Nature's Path, British Columbia

How much information can you fit on a cereal box? Quite a bit, actually, especially if you don't just "think outside the box."

Nature's Path, a natural foods company, uses its cereal boxes for both marketing and informational purposes—using the back and side panels, but also the entire inside of the box. I'm looking at a box of Organic 8 Grain Synergy(tm) Multigrain Cereal. The front panel contains several references to product features—mostly emphasizing the junk they leave out. The back panel is primarily nutrition and health advice from a dietitian, complete with a bio box, three footnotes, and a table for designing a healthy diet. But in a box in the middle, set aside in a contrasting color, is this statement:

Our Values We make organic foods because we believe organic farming and production techniques are better for the environment. Like other enterprises, return on invest-ment, profitability, waste-reduction, and brand leadership are all important goals. But at Nature's Path these are overlaid with the notion that none of it amounts to a hill of beans if we don't choose sustainable, environmentally responsible processes that will leave the world better than we found it. In short, we're about making wholesome and delicious foods in a way that will benefit the planet, our employees, and you, our valued customer.

Wow—that's a powerful statement! Forthright, customer-focused, and appealing to the market's interest in personal and planetary health.

The side panel has blurbs headlined "what's good about this cereal" and "what's good about certified organic goodness? But there's more. On both inside top flaps is the question: "What's good about certified organic? See inside the box." Inside, filling the entire box, is an article about the benefits of eating organics, with sidebars about the dangers of genetically engineered food, why certification is important, and what the benefits are to the consumer and the farmer. It's nicely laid out, with two illustrations, subheads, drop caps, and so forth.

The big question in my mind is—will people actually see this article? Will they "think inside the box?" I didn't notice it until I was halfway through my cereal. So if I were Nature's Path, I might move the question from the inside flaps to the outside, in a bold print that was hard to miss.

But once a reader finds it, this article:
* Cements the company's image as caring about stewardship of the land, and about its customers' health
* Provides fact-based arguments to help its consumers convince others about the benefits of organic food (e.g., notes that crop loss increased despite a 1000% increase in pesticide use, and raising concerns about the effects of water pollution from agro-chemicals on children
* Supplies evidence that the company conforms to a demanding outside certification process

Considering that they have to print a cereal package anyway, this marketing adds almost nothing to the company's cost.

Sanders, Tim. Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends
(New York: Crown Business/Random House, 2002).

A high-level Yahoo exec discusses compassion, abundance, and love as a business success tool. Young and hip, and very in tune with my views.

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