The “sunshine spectrum”: GNT tips yellow and orange colors to thrive in 2019 NPD
20 Dec 2018 --- Coloring foods leader GNT is tipping the broad “sunshine spectrum” of colors ranging from bright yellow through to deep orange to stimulate colorful food and beverage development in 2019. This market dynamic is happening as consumers seek out products that inspire upbeat, positive emotions and unite people with a feeling of joy, in what Innova Market Insights terms “I Feel Good” in its top ten trends list for 2019.
GNT has harnessed this trend in a new collection of coloring foods – EXBERRY Sunshine Shades. Ranging from bright sunbeam yellow to warm harvest orange, they are all derived from raw materials rooted in nature, including pumpkin, carrots and turmeric. It also comes as GNT expands the base of sourcing for its yellow and orange colors to encompass turmeric, with more intense yellow and orange color options set to be launched in 2019, as a well as a digital B2B platform to showcase the “instagrammability” potential of these coloring foods.
The “sunshine spectrum” choice was revealed days after Pantone tipped the pinkish hue of “Living Coral” as its top color for 2019 and as Firmenich revealed hibiscus as its “flavor of the year for 2019.”
Paul Collins, Managing Director of GNT UKFor Paul Collins, Managing Director of GNT UK, this broad base of sunshine colors holds more potential in the food & beverage industry as a whole. “If you look at the background to Coral Red, the basis is not grounded in food, but rather in fashion, fabrics, textiles, clothing and beauty. You could, of course, extend it to food and we are able to do that, but that is not the basis. We want to clearly ground our choice in what is relevant to the food & drinks industry. It is not in response to Pantone as we are not in competition,” he stresses. GNT’s 2018 choice was purple, but the similarities with Pantone’s choice for that year (“Ultra Violet”) was pure coincidence, Collins claims.
Revealing the announcement on one of the shortest days of daylight in the northern hemisphere certainly brightens the mood amid rising interest in the role that food can play in emotional well-being. A recent Innova Market Insights Consumer Lifestyle and Attitudes Survey (2018) found that eight out of ten consumers agree that mental health is as important as physical health to their overall well-being, rising to nine out of ten respondents in China, the US and Brazil.
More brands are following this trend towards emotional well-being and the communication of “feel good” claims is increasingly seen. This is stimulating product activity, with Innova Market Insights reporting 36 percent growth reported in food & beverages with a “feel good” claim (Global, 2017 vs. 2016) such as “happy” or “joy.” For example, we have seen launches such as Oreo Joy Fills and Sprig Jar of Chocolate Joy, but the digestive health brand Happy Inside from Kellogg’s is also illustrative of this. Manufacturers can succeed in putting a smile on consumer’s faces through nutrition (to help with relaxation or mood), packaging design (happy or funny images) or product shape (e.g. Ceres Organics Sweet and Salty Coconut Smiles), the market researcher notes.
Color can also be key to this emotional well-being trend. “We have gone back more to the basics of taking a look at food and drink and what is happening. One of the key drivers that you see is many elements that could relate to people’s connection and engagement with food; things like emotion and mood. This is where color comes into play as a particular color or shade of color has associations with elements of mood,” Collins explains.
Sunshine colors taken out of context can also address the number one trend for 2019: “The Adventurous Consumer,” despite their ubiquitous nature. For Collins, beyond the notion of “I Feel Good,” sunshine colors taken out of context can also address the number one trend for 2019: “The Adventurous Consumer,” despite their ubiquitous nature. “There is no color that doesn’t already exist – it is about how you use them. We don’t think it is just about yellow or naming one particular yellow, it is about the yellow-orange spectrum,” he stresses.
It is about offering holistic solutions. “The sun can rise, it can be midday, it can be setting. So it is about encompassing colors from yellow, brightest yellow, through to a more golden orange. This is why we related it to shades of sunshine rather than yellow. There is commentary on Generation Z where they gravitate when it comes to optimistic colors. From a seasonality perspective, you can relate it to all four seasons with products that have seasonality behind them,” he adds.
The notion of “the Instagramability of food” is taking the food & beverage industry by storm, with the recent color hit widely known as “millennial pink” – inspired by Pantone’s 2015 pick, Rose Quartz – highly influenced by this market dynamic. Just to reiterate the growing importance of social media on how food is perceived, an Innova Market Insights Trends Survey (2018) found that 55 percent of Chinese consumers, 43 percent of US consumers and 24 percent of UK consumers aged 26-35 years share pictures of their food online once a week or more. The survey found that one in five US consumers are influenced by social media when buying food and beverages.
“What we see is that the color of food is an attribute of a product that is much more communicated than it ever was. There was always an engagement with food before social media and Instagram, but now there is the opportunity to broadcast that one is in a restaurant with friends. A big part in of a chef’s role is to make the food look appealing before you dive in and eat it,” says Collins.
The application potential for yellow and orange shades goes across categories, but the key is building a story around it. “It is about how to relate it to new concepts, ideas, seasonal fits relating products to mood and calling out something with words such as ‘joyful.’ Yellow and orange are not a new color and nobody is doing that. What we are doing is embracing them, giving them a context and fitting them into a marketing proposition that can then be used to deliver concepts throughout the year,” says Collins.
Key to communication is ensuring that the consumer understands where their food is coming from. EXBERRY coloring foods are natural color ingredients obtained exclusively from fruits, vegetables and edible plants using gentle, physical processes such as pressing, chopping, filtering and concentrating. GNT controls the entire EXBERRY supply chain. In fact, around 80 percent of the raw materials used are grown within a 200-kilometer radius of EXBERRY production sites, with cultivation and harvesting monitored by GNT’s agricultural engineers.
Central to the campaign is, therefore, highlighting where these “sunshine shades” come from. In GNT’s case, they derive from the recognizable sources of pumpkin, carrot and in some cases turmeric. “You need to make it familiar, understandable and built into the proposition. It is how we bring that all together in terms of emotion, color shade and relevance to a demographic cohort that is key,” says Collins.
One of the ways in which GNT innovated in 2018 was in using turmeric as a source for these yellow to orange shades in addition to pumpkin and carrot. It is then about connecting that to where the color comes from. “Coloring foods speak for themselves and build on how that plays off on the origin with the agricultural aspects of these pumpkins and carrots. Does it touch my values for sustainability and the environment? It is all about the love for your food and the emotion and it goes into the realms of plant-based foods,” he notes.
Marketing for the EXBERRY portfolio in 2019 will include the creation of a B2B digital concept delivery system, where the ultimate target consumer is central. “It is about presenting creative coloring concepts in innovative digital ways. When companies develop products, they are very mindful of how it will look on Instagram because they know what is going to happen, what it will look like and what will be the message,” he says.
Also in 2019, we can expect to see new product launches in the yellow and orange area from GNT. “We will have some higher color intensity, higher performing or specific performing coloring solutions for yellow and orange. It is also about innovating with new solutions, where you could use one of these colors that may have been more difficult in the past,” he notes.
One of the ways in which GNT innovated in 2018 was in using turmeric as a source for these yellow to orange shades in addition to pumpkin and carrot. The company claims to be unique in processing turmeric through the use of water as the processing media rather than organic solvents. “Most extracted turmeric on the market is either an oleoresin or curcumin, which is extracted with an organic solvent. This is against our principles in terms of what consumers expect from food. So we process it to create turmeric concentrate which gives this fantastic yellow color, which comes into play in shades of sunshine and applications. We will be using this in our concepts,” Collins notes.
The ingredient could be used in a spiced turmeric latte, for example. “In that case, you would ask yourself whether you would really like your latte to taste like a chicken tikka masala?” he quips. “With our turmeric that is not the case as we can offer a delicate taste,” Collins adds.
Without disclosing specific sales figures, Collins is confident on the outlook for 2019 as fruit & vegetable-derived coloring foods trend, with agricultural input capacity built up to cope with growing demand. “We are in a growing market and will build up capacity and support this campaign,” he notes. “We have just installed a new spray dryer which allows us to make more powders on a larger scale. Earlier this year and now fully on stream, we built a dedicated spirulina factory so we are now the largest of processor spirulina for blue colors,” he concludes.
On one of the shortest days of the year, highly colorful and instragammable yellow and orange food choices can help bring a smile back onto a sunlight craving consumer’s face.
By Robin Wyers
