Bugs 'n' Sugar

Most marketers will agree that Dick Hubbard and his Hubbards cereal company have done a brilliant job in growing their company, especially through the use of innovative brand-building activities.  Hubbards has been able to take on the giants of Sanitarium and Kelloggs, proving that a small, locally born and bred company could in the space of ten years grow to enjoy over $24m in annual sales, representing over 10% of all local cereal sales.  A visit to the company website (www.hubbards.co.nz) reveals that Dick’s commitment to socially responsible business and triple bottom-line reporting is not a slick marketing veneer, but actually a very deeply ingrained part of the company.

That said, I had an interesting experience with Hubbard’s cereals whilst staying at a relative’s over Christmas.  My boys, aged 4 and 3, had the opportunity to try the Hubbard’s cereals Bugs’n’Mud and Honey Bumbles..  When on both occasions neither of my children wanted to have more than a few spoonfuls, complaining that the cereals made them feel sick, my mind got to wondering.  

So I tried the cereals myself, and after climbing down from the ceiling and regaining normal vision, I had a quick check of the cereals’ ingredients.  This revealed that these two child-targeted products were massively stacked with sugar – and if a food can “over sugar” my hyperactive 3-year old, that’s saying something!

To illustrate, let’s look at Bugs’n’Mud, which comprises cocoa-coated rice bubbles, and which is a close cousin to the Kellogg’s classic Coco Pops.  Coco Pops has 37g of sugar per 100g of cereal, whilst Bugs’n’Mud has 48g – 30% more sugar, in other words.

How about Honey Bumbles, which is Hubbards’ answer to Sanitarium’s Honey Puffs?  Honey Puffs has 25% sugar, and Honey Bumbles 46% - a whopping 84% more sugar! 

To me, this is where Hubbard’s halo becomes somewhat cracked and tarnished.  Surely, a socially responsible business would also be interested in selling socially-responsible foods?  Sanitarium hasn’t exactly suffered from a focus on healthy foods after all.  And although I’m no food scientist, I can’t help but think that with such a range of natural colourings and flavourings available, is adding vast quantities of extra sugar really necessary?  And that said, Dick Hubbard is a food scientist, and shouldn’t he know better?

This issue raises the hoary old chestnut of “credibility” of which I’ve written before, and what changes in technology and consumer attitudes are meaning for marketers.  If your brand or your company’s got skeletons in the closet, sooner or later they’re going to be found out.  And if your very company premise rests on ideals and actions as pure, conscientious and high-profile as Hubbards, then even more is at stake.  

To illustrate – it’s taken me five seconds on Google to uncover detailed descriptions of major staff problems that existed at Hubbards a few years ago.  Now to be fair to Dick, those problems appear to have long been cleared up, but that fact took Google somewhat longer to uncover.  And whilst that experience may have altered Hubbard’s actions and attitudes towards his staff, it doesn’t seemed to have changed anything regarding his childrens’ cereals.  Especially when this page was found as well.

So how immune is your company or your brand portfolio?  It’s easy to attack the tall poppies like Dick Hubbard, but try this for an interesting diversion – go to Google and type in your company name (inside speech marks), followed by the word “scandal”, finally followed by “inurl:nz” to produce only New Zealand results.  You can see where I’m headed!

Thankfully “Research Solutions” and “Marketing Magazine” yield no results, but scandal-searching for Shell produces 133 results; TVNZ produces 135, and Fonterra gives 67 results.  To be fair to Dick Hubbard (3 results), I then tried Kelloggs (1 result) and Sanitarium (again, 1 result).  Not all of these listings are actual scandals related to the companies of course, but one never knows – if it can be found, it will be – and keeping things out of the press won’t stop a journalist reading the newsgroup postings of someone “in the know”.  

As to Dick and his socially-responsible business?  Well, just ask some dentists about sugary children’s foods, and see what they think of Bugs’n’Mud and Honey Bumbles.