In the past few weeks I have gone through a wide-variety of food related documentaries. They have ranged across the typical Bourdainian browsing the food-cultures type to weird eating styles to those bashing the American Fast Food culture. I thought it will be worth sharing a few with my fellow food bloggers, readers and marketing enthusiasts.
The Foods That Make Billions is a three part documentary created by BBC about food categories that have grown from simple commodities to multi-billion dollar brands. It is a stunning lesson for marketers and business students, giving them an opportunity to visualize the so often heard about “Value Addition” in practice. Also it showcases the stupid heights of capitalism, and its ability to change our habits and the way we live life. The documentary is slightly U.K. and U.S. focused, and few of these categories are still evolving in India, but it is definitely worth a watch.
The first in series is on Cereals. It goes through the history of cereal development right from the early days of Kellogg’s, new product innovations in the category, how multinationals changed the way we had breakfast, the tough activism faced by the brands during the 70s and how the products reinvented themselves to suit the new environment.
The second one is on Yogurt. The story of taking a simple milk-based product to a fruit-flavored, sugar induced multi-billion dollar selling cocktail. The story traces the origin of Functional Foods from the days of Dr. Shiroto and Yakult, to Danone and Muller’s reinvention of the category. Given my recent interest in frozen yogurts, I enjoyed this one to the core.
The third talks about a product which I believe embodies the heights of marketing success, Water. To take a product as fundamental as water and to create some of the most profitable brands in the world out of it is a marketer’s dream come true. I haven’t found a full link to the video, so listing all the three parts.
BBC Documentary: The Foods That Make Billions–Water Part I
BBC Documentary: The Foods That Make Billions–Water Part II
BBC Documentary: The Foods That Make Billions–Water Part III
Let me know your thoughts on these documentaries, planning to share a few others in the coming weeks.
Note: I have just shared the links from Youtube, and have not uploaded or distributed these videos. I would have liked to see BBC upload such wonderful documentaries on their channel though. They have uploaded a few clips on their official website. In case someone has an issue, will pull them down.
beingdesh 