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Last week’s Petfood Industry’s Newletter featured 2 interesting articles; about premiumisation and humanisation.

The conclusion of both articles is (I think) that continuing to follow these trends doesn’t make you stand out anymore. If everybody follows these trends (which has largely happened and is still happening) the value of differentiation becomes highly questionable. And a perceived novelty has an increasingly short life-span.

Probably 7 years ago I warned against the uncontrolled use of the premiumisation and humanisation trends and mentioned – specifically for premiumisation – the economic law of diminishing returns.

And more recently I asked the audience at a pet food conference if it agreed with me that humanisation is losing its shine. After all we must accept that trends appeal to a number of people, but certainly not all. And I think that we have reached – maybe not in all markets yet – the point of quasi-saturation. Maybe even a trend that you could call “back to basics”. Continuing to strive for better than best may become comparable to pushing water uphill with a rake!

Reason enough to have a look at other trends that are still very much alive and offer opportunities for differentiation. Trends that are credible and fit the mega-trends that are a concern to a growing part of the world population; that includes pet owners! Trends that matter to pet, people and planet. If we are truly serious about these mega-trends, we must start to think much harder than we do today about KM Zero, about carbon footprint, about our manufacturing-processes.

We very probably have reached the stage where change is necessary. Not just minor variation of an existing theme, but more fundamental change that will bring our industry in line with the requirements of tomorrow and the years after. Maybe we must stop our focus on more and better and replace that with a new “mission” for the industry: “let waste not go to waste!” If we see that 30-40% of all food is somehow wasted between field and fork, we all still have a lot to gain and pet food is a category that can bring a sizeable contribution to this gain.

If only we accept that upgrading waste is not questioned by pet owners, but becomes more and more the norm for the growing group of pet owners who care.

Maybe it’s time to shift our focus to what we have abundantly available, instead of trying to find what is available with great difficulty because “we have always done it like that” or “we want to make a difference”. Differences are not enough anymore, you need to be special to stand out. And let’s not forget that difference is often about ingredients which derive their difference from being the contrary of KM Zero.