FMCG Innovations and Trends by Sophia Nadur

You may have read on  drinktg.com  about what motivated Hua and I to develop  Tg , ancient wellness traditions blended into refreshingly delicious hot & chilled brews. We also say that  our iced Tg Green Teas are like nothing you have ever tried before . Since we both are fed up reading ridiculous - and often irresponsible - claims made by food & drink brands, we want you to understand why say we this and why  Datamonitor  likes Tg for naturalness and functionality. People are asking more and more for two things from their drink choices, namely (i) get rid of the "bad stuff" and (ii) put in more "good stuff". By " bad stuff ", people mean high levels of sugar and calories as well as artificial sweeteners, colours and preservatives. We have all  started reading more closely the labels on our everyday food & drink choices . Most of what we have read shocked us. We didn't imagine just how many calories were actually i...

Apple. Starbucks. Nike. Tg.  Three of these four brands are well known around the world and leaders in their respective industries. The fourth,  Tg , is a startup brand hoping to disrupt the somewhat staid tea market.  Where a brand name like  Apple  or  Nike  originated or what inspired their logo designs - usually in the early "startup" days when money is in short supply but not passion and creativity - later become part of the collection of stories that help forge an enduring bond with consumers. Take for instance,  Nike . The brand  Nike  was founded in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports. One of its founders, Phil Knight originally wanted to call the company " Dimension 6 " but it was the company’s first employee, Jeff Johnson, who came up with the name "Nike" which comes from the Greek word for "goddess of victory". The Nike’s “swoosh” logo was designed in 1971 by  Carolyn Davidson , a graphics design stud...

Ian Quinn 's article in  The Grocer , " FDF head calls out NHS boss over sugar claims " [subscription may be required] covers the Food and Drink Federation's response to a comment  NHS  head  Simon Stevens ' made in a  BBC  interview over the weekend in which he suggested  the obesity crisis  was the " new smoking ". Soft Drink and Tobacco parallels As someone who’s worked in both the  soft drink and tobacco industries , I empathise with Simon Stevens linking obesity with smoking. After sitting through thousands of interviews with smokers up and down the country talking about obstacles to quitting tobacco etc. – and observing numerous food & drink consumer research before and since then – it’s clear that there are huge parallels between triggers of the emerging obesity crisis and smoking e.g. pitched initially as “ cool ” and a “ lifestyle/generational choice ” (especially  soft drinks ) but later becoming hard to shak...

Ian Quinn reported in The Grocer [ subscription may be required ] this weekend that UK health officials are about to begin a shock advertising campaign through social media aimed at highlighting the amount of sugar contained in some soft drinks. I endorse the "GULP" campaign . Here’s three reasons why. Reason #1: Suppliers need to work harder at finding & delivering better solutions for consumers!  Ambiguous on-pack labelling is still a problem. It’s a scandal that soft drinks brands have been able for years to declare on their single-serve packs that these packs contain 2 - sometimes 3 - servings. It’s hard to see how it was nothing more than a mechanism to hide the true calorie and sugar content of their beverages, especially since numerous focus groups and other research repeatedly showed that most people consume these drinks in one go and, worse, could not easily calculate the total calorie and sugar content. Updated serving size declarations and nutritional...