Chocolate Manufacturers Want to Change Brand

Normally when companies talk about changing brand, they mean an advertising campaign. Real brand change is organic and involves changing the entire company to some degree or other. That could mean what Delta Song did when it deliberately engineered a specific customer experience before going to market or as companies do when they refine a brand by focusing on what they really do best. But some large members of the U.S. chocolate industry - through the industry trade group Chocolate Manufacturers of America - are petitioning the FDA to change the definition of chocolate so they can reduce their costs. (You can see a quick rundown on this with some links at my food blog.)

Certainly lowering costs is important, but when it requires a wholesale redefinition of what you make, you really enter the dangerous waters of trying to create a new type of business. Drop the cocoa butter and replace it with vegetable fat and no matter what the FDA allows you to call it, the result isn't chocolate as people understand it. Perhaps such manufacturers as Hershey, Nestle, and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) think that people won't notice. Many might not, but some percentage of the population will. Think candy sales can't go down? They have at times for some manufacturers, as these companies all know. Making more money is great, but not if you potentially endanger your future business. Why do I get the sense that the CEOs of these companies, or even the presidents of the relevant divisions, haven't talked to a single customer in years?