In Brief: Marketing the Impossible Burger; Changing the Traditional Résumé

Do Angry Customers Make Better Purchasing Decisions?

Common logic suggests that strong emotions don’t often beget the smartest spending choices. However, a recent report from Kellogg Insight reveals that anger can inspire consumers to be more focused and goal-oriented when making purchases.

According to Kellogg’s Michal Maimaran, calmness and comfortability in a store lead to indecision. With no stress involved, consumers are more likely to weigh all their options and lose sight of what they intended to buy in the first place.

“When consumers are unsure of which option to choose, they often avoid choosing altogether or go for the middle option, which can fall short of their goal,” Maimaran says.

Maimaran’s findings also show that angry customers end up more satisfied with their purchases. As part of the study, consumers were asked to select between cookies and a cash prize. A week later, they were contacted and asked how satisfied they were with their choice, and those who had been primed to feel angry were more satisfied with their prize than sad or neutral participants.

Why Plant-Based Food Companies Are Marketing to Meat Eaters

For plant-based protein brands like Impossible Foods, the path to sustained business success isn’t just a strong vegan following. They also need meat eaters to purchase their products, too. 

According to the market research company Kantar Insights, only 8 percent of Americans are vegetarian or vegan, which means that 92 percent of plant-based meals are eaten by people who aren’t limited to them. In other words, the main consumer demographic for foods such as Impossible Burgers and Beyond Burgers are, as Fast Company puts it, “conscious omnivores.”

Therefore, plant protein companies have stopped trying to market strictly to vegans. Just, a plant-based egg company, recently ditched its tree-focused logo. Beyond Meat even packages its Beyond Burger in a meat case now.

Says Will Schafer, Beyond Meat’s head of marketing, “We thought about how we wanted to evoke everything we liked about meat. So, you have a style of package and font and communication that emphasizes all the positive sides of meat: the amount of protein and the look of the product.”

Survey Finds Executives Prefer Spreadsheets Over Analytics Platforms

Despite new developments in analytics platforms, most business owners aren’t yet using the new tech to track their companies’ data. In a study of over 1,048 executives by Deloitte, 62 percent of executives claim to still rely on spreadsheets for their insights.

“The traditional workhorses of the data analytics universe — spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel and business intelligence tools such as Microsoft Power BI or IBM Cognos — are the most commonly used tools,” writes the Deloitte team.

However, the study shows that this reliance on Excel is more about time-honored habits than an unwillingness to change. In fact, a more modernized approach to decision-making and data tracking may be imminent; 67 percent of surveyed executives say they use at least one advanced analytics tool such as SAS, while 76 percent of respondents say their analytical maturity has increased overall in the past year.

Writes Deloitte, “Analytics is becoming an established fact of business life and no longer the sole domain of the IT or finance department.”

How Generation Z Is Changing the Traditional Résumé

The future of résumés may be personalized avatars, bitmojis and Instagram-friendly palettes of mint green and pastel pink, writes Wall Street Journal reporter Chip Cutter.

“As Generation Z enters the workforce, companies are seeing digital CVs filled with artistic flourishes, including illustrations of college mascots, logos of past employers and icons to denote hobbies such as home renovation and watching movies,” he writes.

Cutter attributes this new tradition of résumés to the enterprising spirit of Gen Zers trying to stand out in a pile of other candidates, however hiring managers and employers are divided on whether they welcome such facelifts to the “stodgiest of business documents.”   

Katie Burke, chief people officer of HubSpot, insists that “photos belong on your personal social-media accounts and online-dating profiles, not your résumé.” Yet others — such as John Lowe, chief executive of Columbus, Ohio’s Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams LLC — appreciate the creative flair. 

“Sometimes merely education and job experience on a white piece of paper doesn’t get across the person’s best attributes,” he says. — Dean Essner