Why Transparency Should be a Priority of PR in the Nutrition Industry

When done well, transparency and public relations should go hand in hand. PR generates and maintains mutually beneficial relationships that benefit all parties, from the brand and the consumer to the agencies and outlets that promote it. Keeping all of these parties happy can be difficult and made impossible when any party becomes greedy or is willing to sacrifice another party for their own profit.

Loyalty is the goal, trust is the tactic, and transparency is the foundation. Without transparency, trust is extremely difficult to achieve because personal gain and selfish behavior will cause corruption and prevent genuine trust from being established. Trust is essential for creating mutual loyalty in which a consumer can trust an organization to provide them with quality products or services in exchange for their continued purchasing. This also applies to the relationship between journalists and organizations. Journalists trust organizations to provide them with fair and accurate information in exchange for promotion on their outlet. Breaking this trust with a lack of transparency removes any possibility of creating loyalty.

Transparency in Nutrition

The concept of transparency is especially important in nutrition. America has extremely loose laws and regulations around what can be sold in our food and supplements, as well as how it can be marketed to consumers. This has created a disconnect between educated consumers and companies who manufacture and sell products marketed as “nutritional.”

http://www.theeverydaytable.com/ontrend-blog/2015/3/25/all-natural-on-food-labels

For example, there are currently no laws in America that regulate what is allowed to be marketed as “natural.” So a soda beverage loaded with processed and synthetic ingredients and chemicals is allowed to say “natural” on the label. Health-conscious consumers who know about this loophole are consequently wary of any product with that wording and have no trust in companies to accurately market their products.

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The lack of transparency demonstrated here damages the relationship between brands and their consumers and makes it difficult to establish trust and loyalty down the line.

Supplements are another example of a shortfall in transparency. Dietary supplements alone make 55 billion dollars annually in the United States, yet they

have almost no regulation. Some supplements have been found to be composed of fillers and cheap ingredients and in some cases not even contain the ingredients they claim to.

During the Covid-19 Pandemic supplement companies began marketing their products to suggest that they would help consumers fight off the virus. Despite the lack of evidence to support it, dietary supplement purchases grew from 3.6 billion dollars in 2019 to 6 billion dollars in 2020.

What Does This Mean For PR?

Public relations professionals in particular are educated and experienced in building relationships and facilitating open communication among all parties, making them the ideal group to foster a change in the way transparency is talked about and actually practiced in the nutrition world. While policy lies in the hands of decision makers on a national level and company leaders, PR practitioners have the unique position of being in constant communication internally, externally and with the media.

I believe that in the next decade we will see a shift towards transparency being the number one priority of consumers when they choose which brands they want to support. This is backed by the fact that Generation Z and younger audiences make informed purchasing decisions based on the information at their fingertips because of social media and technology.

Additionally, this huge group of consumers are passionate about authenticity and are often willing to spend more on a product if they believe in the values of the company and support their CSR efforts.

Nutrition and overall health and wellness has become more prioritized over time as people have increased their priority in taking control over their wellbeing. Because of this, the number of brands focusing on different aspects of the industry has skyrocketed, misinformation has become widespread and overall frustration around finding real answers and solutions has grown. Brands who want to stand out, have large-scale success and build a great reputation need to prioritize hiring a PR team that is committed to being transparent about everything from ingredients to packaging.