Planning to empower the consumer to make the right choice – healthy, safe, and environmentally sustainable? Great. Now think your CSR job is done? Not so fast.
Yes, labels can help. No business can survive long without giving its customers exactly what they want, so it’s smart tactics to educate them to ask for the right thing. After all, companies respond primarily to market signals. Everyone is jumping in on the act, from NGOs through quangos to governments. Even the EU Commission is calling for proposals to investigate a Europe-wide social labelling scheme.
But doubts are growing that labels really work. Lurid labels on cigarette packs certainly haven’t deterred smokers (though chemical addiction clearly features here). Mandatory APR disclosure hasn’t saved people from wracking up huge debts on their credit cards.
Trials by the Food Standards Agency at the end of last year found initial enthusiasm for a red/amber/green traffic light system on food, but this turned to confusion when meaningful information about fat, salt, sugar and saturates was added. In the US, where mandatory labelling is widespread and detailed, ignorance is rife: in a Hellmann’s survey about obesity in January, 96% of consumers thought monounsaturated fat was ‘bad’ and 36% that trans fat was ‘good’.
So what’s the answer? Above all, work to reformulate the product to remove the baddies, and add goodies – don’t forget in many parts of the world the issue is not so much too many calories but not enough essential nutrients. Then do improve labelling, but backed up by extensive and continuing consumer education – again don’t forget in some countries low literacy levels mean complex concepts won’t work. Finally, welcome some government regulation so all companies act and market leaders are not exposed to unfair competition. Achieve all that and you deserve a drink. (Just one, mind.)
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