Traffic Light Labelling on Cereal? I'd rather have a bowl of?...…… (Pour Some Sugar on Me?)

Interesting read from BBC about Breakfast Cereal Labelling https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46373342

The cynical sarcastic side in me is wondering about why this has been announced just before the December and Christmas shopping periods when the kids are finishing school?

Notice also the timing is just before December and Christmas, but apparently the Consumer won't see the packaging changes until January 2019 (I wonder if they will be reformulating their recipes to engineer lower sugar and salt in their servings too).

Also the traffic light labelling system has been around since 2013, so its interesting that such a leading brand has been slow and taken until 2018 to announce this.....its an interesting continuous development improvement from such a big player in Breakfast Cereals.

Apparently the BBC NEWS article states the reason for making the change to their packaging labelling as: 

"We are changing because the people who buy our food told us we should. Following our announcement late last year to overhaul our cereals in the UK, we decided to look again at labelling," said in a statement. 

…..the decision followed a survey of 2,000 Britons asking them about their attitudes towards labelling.....

Mr Morton said: "Put simply, they said we should change and move to a full colour solution as they want help making healthy decisions. We've listened and now we're acting."

So that's from the BBC, but what's the alternative view:

You don't need to be a betting man to guess, but considering the current pressure the National Health Service is under for Obesity related illnesses if a Manufacturer of "Breakfast Cereal" (which is considered by many as healthy food) asks to 2000 people -would you like clearer labelling on our products so that you can see how healthy the Breakfast Cereal that you are feeding your family are in terms of "Sugar" "Salt" and "Fat".

OK, my bracketed title may be a bit off, "Pour some sugar on me" taken from Def Leppard is not at all similar to the loudmouth monkey or tiger character that claim how great the product is. Although monitoring sugar, salt and fat in diet is useful and its not rocket science, but one would guess it the majority of the people would say they would like more information (such as the traffic light system and improved clear labelling) on their food products. Its interesting that a massive company would spend the time in doing a survey for a question, the answer to which could be reasonably guessed without a survey. Such a question could be considered similar to- Would you rather know what is in what's in the food you are eating ? 

This question would be quite appropriate for this time of year with "I'm a Celebrity" on TV because then the answer may be different as most celebrities would probably not want to know what they are eating in a bush tucker trial.

Anyway its all very good publicity /marketing for the company getting on the news and all that, but taking the cynical side of this story, the media / marketing department must have had to work overtime to put some spin on the basic information they obtained to communicate the following in a positive fashion:

1. Hi we are Massive Manufacturer of Cereals and have massive Consumer base.
2. We know there's a big holiday coming up when the kids are off school and a prime time to advertise our products in one hit.
3. So buy our product.
4. Oh by the way you know there was a clearer nutrition labelling system involving traffic lights introduced in 2013 we didn't want to use it to better inform our Consumers when it was initially introduced.
5. Many of our competition use the traffic light system and we think we're missing out.
6. Its been almost 5 year and I know we've been slow off the mark for this but were gonna be more responsible in informing the consumer and put this traffic light system on our product packaging , well some of our product packaging.
7. One other thing, we are making this announcement now and its the end of November, so don't expect us to have sorted out this packaging thing before Christmas, in fact we won't have the products with new packaging in store until January and then it'll only be certain products and we won't finish rolling this out till 2020
8. Also Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall had a petition for us to change our labelling and be more responsible with labelling clarity, he offered to interview us on many occasions but we declined and looked rather bad on the back of our ignorance. So our marketing people allowed enough water to pass under the bridge since Hugh's documentary earlier in 2018 and decided Christmas would be a great time to inform/ "advertise" to the Consumer that we are becoming more responsible in the clarity of our labelling.....hopefully nobody will mention how long we have taken to make this change (which incidentally, we haven't made to consumer available product yet).
9. Hopefully the media coverage of our packaging labelling changes, won't mention we were pressured by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall either.

Anyway, well done Breakfast Cereal Marketing Department!!