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We did a report on infant formula and baby food.
In the US, its about a
six billion dollar market, with
most of that going to infant formula.
The base for this market, of course, is the babies themselves.
We have about 4 million births in the U.S. annually.
That's actually been a fairly stable
number since the 1960's
even though the birth rate
is falling, has fallen
gradually, increases in population, primarily due to
immigrants,
have offset that decline.
There's a real focus, as
you expect, on product safety,
product quality, and nutrition.
One aspect of that has been
the popularity of organic baby
food, which really makes
sense even though organic foods
are not necessarily more nutritious than conventional counterparts
, they do have fewer pesticides and that
really affects children more than adults.
So Organic baby foods are
a natural market for your organic consumer.
You also have a lot of attention to key nutritional ingredients.
For example, a lot of
omega 3 DHA fortification, which
ties into brain development, it
ties in to eye health, into
the immune system health - all
kinds of benefits for babies as for adults.
You will also see many types
of ingredients that you see in adult products; acai.
You will see super grains,
super fruits - all kinds of nutritional,
sort of, heavy hitters are being
incorporated into baby food.
One of the other key ingredient trends
that we see is yogurt and probiotics.
Stoneyfield Farms' Yobaby yogurt was
a very successful stand-up product,
and we see several marketers now
following up on that trend. So we have yogurt-flavored foods,
We have yogurt smoothies, all kinds
of products for infants, for
babies, that follow the larger popularity
of yogurt in the
food market.
We're also seeing a lot of
innovation in packaging, and
one of the most visible forms of that has been pouches.
Pouches are becoming increasingly important in
the market and they're especially
suited for children, because it
gives them a way really to
play with their food. They're interactive,
they can control the way they eat,
they can control the amount that they eat.
They're fun, they're highly graphic.
So we see several innovations tying into
pouches; even including with Plum Organics,
a product where it has both a pouch and an attached spoon.
So again we're really giving these infants
an excuse to play with their food and enjoy that experience.
One of the most imortant marketing trends
in the larger market
is tying into social media, into
all the communities of mothers online.
And that can mean marketing,
advertising, in Facebook, through
Twitter, through apps, tying in
all kinds of ways through the
social media stream. And it's
not just talking about the products
themselves, about the infant formula and the baby food,
but it's also talking about nutrition tips for children, and even
eating habits, sleeping habits, on
child development points and questions,
and even having ways for mothers
to track the progress of
their infants, to post pictures
of their infants, really tying into
the whole parenting, to the
whole parenting experience for the consumers of these products.
Along with that social media
stream there's more conventional
marketing like taking advantage of licensing;
tying into Sesame Street, or
tying into Disney characters like Winnie the Pooh.
And you also have tying into
just general mainstream food brands. So
you'll have Green Giant,
tying in to vegetable products, or
you'll have Chiquita bananas, that brand tying in to fruit products.
Consumers are using both these more old-fashioned ways of
licensing and branding, along with
these new social media opportunities.