Simplifying Science is the Goal of New U.S. Marketing Campaign

If the overt goal of the International Conference on Olive Oil and Prevention of Chronic Disease was to present sci­en­tific find­ings, the under­ly­ing goal was to bridge worlds with words.

The California con­fer­ence show­cased the work of European and American aca­d­e­mics, who reported their lat­est stud­ies con­cern­ing olive oil’s effects on car­dio­vas­cu­lar health, can­cer, dia­betes, stroke, Alzheimer’s, and other neu­ro­log­i­cal and chronic dis­eases.

It was the first International Olive Council sci­en­tific con­fer­ence in the U.S. since 2001 and the spring­board for a three-year mar­ket­ing cam­paign titled the Olive Oil Promise.

“Our pur­pose today is to bring all of the olive oil fam­ily to California, to the heart of American olive oil, to look to the future and send a strong mes­sage about the olive oil promise,” said Jaime Lillo, deputy exec­u­tive direc­tor of the IOC.

To these ends, the sci­en­tists will syn­the­size their find­ings into a report that will inform a con­sumer-fac­ing pro­mo­tional cam­paign to edu­cate the American pub­lic about the proven health ben­e­fits of olive oil.

“This is how we can fix the gap between aca­d­e­mics and con­sumers,” said Lillo. ​“We believe there’s a lot of room for improve­ment when it comes to con­sumer knowl­edge of health ben­e­fits.”

According to the IOC, con­sumers tell mar­ket researchers they buy olive oil for health rea­sons, but can’t fin­ish the sen­tence to answer ​“why.” Among the gen­eral pub­lic, there’s wide­spread unaware­ness of the data-based, sci­en­tif­i­cally-proven ben­e­fits.

When the Olive Oil Promise cam­paign launches in New York in June, the IOC says it will mark the begin­ning of a con­certed effort to increase U.S. con­sump­tion by demys­ti­fy­ing the health ben­e­fits and clearly defin­ing the ter­mi­nol­ogy such as extra vir­gin, vir­gin, refined and cold pressed that con­tribute to the con­fu­sion.

The goal of the Olive Oil Promise cam­paign, accord­ing to the IOC, is to deepen con­sumers’ appre­ci­a­tion of olive oil by com­mu­ni­cat­ing its ben­e­fits as a health, lifestyle, and culi­nary prod­uct.

It’s a ques­tion of pack­ag­ing sci­ence for laypeo­ple, trans­lat­ing the per­plex­ing poly­syl­labism of polyphe­nols into plain phrases that make sense and sales.

The Olive Oil Promise cam­paign comes seven years after another IOC ini­tia­tive in the U.S. mar­ket that left more than a few promises of its own unful­filled. The 2011 ​“Add Some Life” cam­paign kicked off with a Lincoln Center cock­tail recep­tion for food blog­gers dur­ing New York’s Fashion Week. In 2013, the IOC deemed the 18-month, $1.7‑million pro­mo­tion a ​“suc­cess” although U.S. con­sump­tion barely budged over the course of the cam­paign and few in the indus­try had recalled see­ing any pro­mo­tional activ­i­ties arise from it.

The IOC’s exec­u­tive direc­tor at the time, Louis Barjol, said the impact would depend on the ​“syn­ergy” that would develop if pro­duc­ers lever­aged the Add Some Life cam­paign with their own ini­tia­tives. That did­n’t hap­pen and the cam­paign’s web­site and social pro­files were inac­tive.

Much like the 2011 cam­paign, the approach of the new pro­mo­tion will be to tar­get ​‘influ­encers’ with ​“spe­cial events and reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tions,” said Wendy Lane Stevens a pub­lic rela­tions con­sul­tant who works with the IOC. ​“We really are look­ing for­ward to build­ing a data­base of peo­ple who are inter­ested in olive oil, health and the indus­try,” she said, adding that the chan­nels will include a web­site, newslet­ter, LinkedIn page and an ​“influ­encer data­base.” The IOC has not pub­li­cally spec­i­fied the bud­get for the new cam­paign.

The United States is not a mem­ber of the International Olive Council, but it is the world’s largest olive oil importer and devel­op­ing the American mar­ket has long been a pri­or­ity for the Madrid-based inter­gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion.

The UC Davis Olive Center hosted the sci­en­tific con­fer­ence just as it cel­e­brated its 10^th anniver­sary.

Dan Flynn, founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor of the UC Davis Olive Center, got the last word at the con­fer­ence. Flynn left par­tic­i­pants with the Hippocratic part­ing advice to ​“let food be thy med­i­cine and med­i­cine be thy food.”

A video of the con­fer­ence can be viewed here.