Jeff Hilton, president of Integrated Marketing Group, told attendees at a session entitled Creating Brand Value for an Ingredient at Expo West last week that while consumers may be interested in using functional foods, marketing terms like 'natural' and 'high quality' have lost credibility through over use.
They are looking for new ways to assess what works and what does not - a search that leave the way wide open for products to build up trust through branded, recognizable ingredients.
"Increasingly, we see science driving the brand image with the consumer," said Hilton.
In this climate, Martek Biosciences' recently announced agreement with Kellogg is a shrewd move. The breakfast cereal giant is currently developing a line of foods enriched with Martek DHA, all of which will bear the Martek logo on the packaging.
The idea, Martek spokesperson Beth Parker explained to NutraIngredients-USA.com, is for Martek to become a household name, just like Intel is in the computer industry.
And where better to begin than on breakfast tables all over America?
Branding an ingredient is not a cheap exercise. Unlike a one-off marketing plan it is a continuous, ongoing process designed to build a positive image and loyalty over a period of time.
In the 1990s marketing responsibility lay with the manufacturers but nowadays, according to Hilton, they are looking for help from the suppliers in order to spread the risk.
"Partnership between manufacturers and science supported by suppliers is the future of this industry, in both supplements and functional foods," he said.
The upside of sharing the cost of branding is sharing the pay off, but it only makes sense if you have patents or trade secrets to protect, said Hilton, and if there is substantial revenue potential.
If you are working in an undifferentiated category, on the other hand, or have no compelling science and intellectual property, you are unlikely to get a return on the expense. It would make no sense to brand a herbal like St John's Wort, for example, as it is already very well known.
Hilton also warned that against the perils of not investing enough money in the brand. "There are a lot of underfunded branded ingredients in the industry that have failed," he said, noting that most consumers are exposed to a brand three or four times before the message starts to sink in.
Carrying out research is an expensive process in itself, but 'borrowed science' - that is, the marketing of ingredients based on published research carried out by another company - is not uncommon. While patents offer some protection, unless a company is prepared to spend yet more on litigation when its patents are infringed they are next to useless.
That said, it often only takes one lawsuit for a company to show it is willing to flex its muscles, and this in itself may act as a deterrent to other would-be borrowers.
Hilton maintains that partnerships between manufacturers and suppliers is the ideal scenario, one that Martek is living out in its agreement with Kellogg. But not all manufacturers are as open-minded as the breakfast cereal giant, as Loretta Zapp, president of technology company Applied Food Science (AFS) found.
"You have to get a partner to understand the technology, get passionate about it and spend marketing dollars on it," she said.
Not as easy as it sounds. AFS developed a coffee bean roasting process that results in a beverage that is high in antioxidants but, when it approached major coffee manufacturers, they were skeptical about its consumer appeal.
Rather than can their discovery, Zapp and colleagues decided to launch their own brand of antioxidant coffee called Caffe Sonora, which has recently gone on sale in selected retail stores. Early indications are that it could do well, but success in consumer products is not the end goal.
Rather, Zapp hopes that Caffe Sonora's success will convince major coffee players to reconsider the technology and that the Healthy Roast logo will be a fixture on all major brand coffee packets before long.
The costs of building a brand seem to be stacked up against the ingredients supplier. Where once their main concern was delivering fulfilling manufacturers' orders, now issues such as logo design, consumer research, retailer training, spokesperson paychecks, patent protection, and even persuading manufacturers to use your science in the first place are jostling each other in the expense accounts.
But for the chance to become a household name as functional foods capture the imagination of consumers everywhere, and the revenue that goes with it, few would deny it is money well spent.