Grow Manifesto Brands

Extra-financial Performance towards Danone's 2030 Goals

Grow Manifesto Brands

People are craving change when it comes to their food. At Danone, we believe that each time we eat and drink, we can vote for the world we want to live in. That is why we aim to build Manifesto Brands, purpose driven brands that act as true activists towards their point of view on society, resonating with what really matters to people, not only delivering an exciting experience, but also committing to create a positive impact on health and planet.

People are craving change when it comes to their food. At Danone, we believe that each time we eat and drink, we can vote for the world we want to live in. That is why we aim to build Manifesto Brands, purpose driven brands that act as true activists towards their point of view on society, resonating with what really matters to people, not only delivering an exciting experience, but also committing to create a positive impact on health and planet.

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"Only brands that will take a strong stand towards society will thrive. People are empowered with consumption. They will choose and support brands that share their beliefs and values. Grow Manifesto Brands is our pattern for sustainable growth whilst delivering our One Planet One Health vision."


Valérie Hernando-Presse, Chief Marketing Officer

 

WHAT IS A MANIFESTO BRAND?

Our ambition is that each Danone Brand will become a Manifesto Brand, powering the food revolution, and driving profitable, sustainable growth. This is how Danone’s brands will differ from others.

 

A brand is considered a Manifesto Brand when:

  • It has a strong point of view on society.

  • It pursues a purpose based on social, health and / or environmental issues that matter to its consumers and communities. It justifies its existence and relevance to the world, as a vehicle to drive growth and contribution to 'One Planet. One Health'. To be legitimate and credible this purpose needs to be anchored in the brand’s product truth.

  • It activates upon the brand purpose in a consistent way on the long term.

  • It creates a sustainable positive impact on people’s lives aligned with their purpose. It has clear KPIs and measures progress for growth.

 

We already have ten ‘Manifesto brands’ which accounted for about 20% of our consolidated net sales in 2018. These brands are growing faster than our other brands and our ambition is that all Danone brands will embark on their Manifesto journey by 2020.

MANIFESTO BRANDS EXAMPLES

 

Bonafont is the first water brand in Mexico. It is supporting women empowerment for more than 25 years.

Brand purpose: Decrease prejudice against women and fight for gender equality in Mexico

Like everywhere in the world, women have many aspirations and want to take actions to achieve it, but they are often afraid to be judged by society if they pursue their personal ambitions rather than sticking to their traditional role. And reality is that Mexico is one of the countries which suffers the most from gender inequalities.

 

Strongly believing that whole Mexico will progress faster when women will seize their full potential, Bonafont is committed to work on decreasing the prejudices against women, giving them tools and opportunities to build the Mexico of the future. Fully involved in this journey, the brand also wants to lead by example through its own internal transformation towards gender equality.

Brand commitment in relation to its purpose

  • Raising awareness on gender inequality
  • Train 1200 women on entrepreneurship by 2020 through a concrete program to reactivate the local economy in areas affected by the 2017 earthquake. 
  • Act internally and reach 40% women in leadership positions, 100% employees trained on Inclusive Diversity, and 100% compliance with Danone’s Global Parental policy by 2020.

2018 Brand purpose in action

In 2018, Bonafont continued activating its purpose strongly, especially by making the largest alliance in its history with UN Women, committing to support equal opportunities for men and women, through a three-year action plan. As part of this partnership, HeForShe special edition bottles were sold to contribute to equal opportunities and 100% of the earnings was donated to UN Women to develop a training to enable entrepreneurial women to reignite economy affected areas after the 2017 Earthquake. In 2018, the first round of attendees graduated. As part of this partnership, an awareness social experiment campaign was also launched: “Avancemos por la igualdad [Let’s advance towards equality]”.

 

In parallel, the brand launched a marketing campaign “Yo Soy Asi [I’m like this]” which promotes women empowerment and, as done for several years now, organized the Carrera Bonafont con Causa [Bonafont Race for a Cause] in Mexico. This is the largest 5 kilometers race for women in the world. Money was collected for every kilometer ran by the participants (about 70,000 women). 1 million Mexican pesos was donated towards Bonafont’s program with the United Nations.

2018 Brand progress

More than

70M

people reached by the campaign “Avancemos por la igualdad” and

44%

of Mexican population declare they are aware of the Bonafont’s social cause about progressing on gender equality with 36% organic reach.

 

120

women trained to entrepreneurship (out of the 1,200 estimated for 2020)

33%

women in Bonafont are in leadership positions (vs 24.6% in 2017)

13%

employees trained to Inclusive Diversity (vs 0% in 2017)

 

Nutrilon China is a Chinese Infant Milk brand which supports mothers in growing their babies strong.

Brand purpose: Grow all Chinese babies strong by reconnecting them to nature

Most moms want their babies to grow strong, body and mind, but due to mass urbanization in China, children are not always sufficiently exposed to nature. Struck by this observation, and strongly believing in nature’s strength to help grow babies strong, the brand decided to commit to shape a fitter future for Chinese babies by reconnecting Chinese families to nature and becoming a purposeful parenting brand.

Brand commitment in relation to its purpose

  • Raising awareness among mothers about nature’s role in the growth of babies
  • Reach 25 million mothers with nature education by 2020. The nature education will be delivered in various formats (offline classes or events, online training with videos and digital articles, …)
  • Act on its environmental footprint.

2018 Brand purpose in action

In 2018, Nutrilon developed a social program, The Nature education camp, to bring nature closer to Chinese children. The brand partnered with the non-governmental organization MCF (Shenzhen Mangrove Wetlands Conservation Foundation), to create outside playgrounds for children throughout China and encourage children to discover nature. The creation of the first pilot playground was an opportunity to talk to hundreds of moms and kids to explore nature and to share knowledge about nature. 

 

The brand also activated its purpose by partnering with key media and key opinion leaders to develop an online TV parenting program to encourage parents to reconnect their children to nature called The Nature strong campaign.

 

In parallel, the brand also pioneered innovations and renovations in its product portfolio building on the new purpose. 

2018 Brand progress

3,700 M

views of the Nature strong campaign to raise awareness and encourage people to reconnect with nature

1st 

pilot playground built in 2018 with an annual traffic

1.8 million

people.

 

Les 2 Vaches is a French organic dairy brand which is promoting organic production and consumption for more than 10 years.

Brand purpose: Promote a new food model through a joyful & organic production and consumption

Les 2 Vaches’ purpose arised from the observation that milk producers were embarking on the organic production adventure, at the cost of long efforts, but were not always rewarded for this transition as they were not systematically finding opportunities to sell their milk. At the time, in 2006, 40% of organic milk was not valued as such and was sold on the conventional market. 

 

Acting on the belief that milk producers, suppliers, manufacturers, consumers… make a collective animated by the willingness to change practices, to contribute to a better world, to be more transparent, fair and organic, the brand decided to take action. It is committed to offer organic farmers more opportunities through greater market access and to enable them to value all their organic production.

Brand commitment in relation to its purpose

  • Support farmers transition from conventional to organic agriculture
  • Support 100 projects encouraging consumers' transition to sustainable practices by 2020. The “100 Tâches” is a simple and joyful interactive program, that provides people with simple and concrete proposals of tasks, to act contributing to a better world (going from signing a petition to supporting initiatives for social rehabilitation). 

The brand is currently working on defining new targets for the coming years. These targets will be available in a dedicated CSR report which will be published in the coming months.

2018 Brand purpose in action

To drive and spread its purpose, Les 2 Vaches relies on historical activation actions since its creation. 


The brand acts through its products with a focus on quality organic ingredients and a choice of generous and natural recipes, but also on packaging with no more cardboard overpacks used on its products (except on a large format).

 

Starting in 2016, the brand developed a platform for the “100 Taches” interactive program, enabling anyone to submit ideas to do better in food, agriculture or the environment, and supporting on its social networks the ones most connected to its DNA. Additionally, education contents are shared to raise awareness on topics related to the brand purpose (pesticides, environmental impact…) and detailed information is available on ingredients traceability.

 

In 2018, Les 2 Vaches launched a consumer awareness campaign focusing on biodiversity and soil health. This was achieved thanks to a roadshow which lasted for over 15 days and thanks to the deployment of a physical game “les prairies vivantes” and a digital game “La biodiversit’haie” through which consumers’ participation contributed to planting hedges.
 

Les 2 Vaches is also highly involved on the field with the development of the specificity living meadows model which promote biodiversity, soil health, carbon sequestration and animal welfare. Since 2010, the brand supports a Danone Ecosystem Fund project called Reine Mathilde which helps milk producers in the Basse-Normandie region in their transition to organic.
 

Brand progress since its creation

40

milk producers converted to organic since the brand creation in 2006 (36 in 2017).

 

Around 3200

hectares of meadow turned into organic in Normandy since the brand creation in 2006.

64

projects supported since 2016 (30 in 2017)

 

Fortimel is a leading global medical nutrition brand recognized by health care professionals, patients and caregivers for the management of malnutrition related to diseases and conditions like cancer, stroke and frailty. 

Brand purpose: Give patients the very best care and support their recovery

In Europe alone, 33 million patients are at risk of malnutrition1. This can negatively impact their treatment outcomes and stand in the way of their recovery. For these patients, better care starts with the right nutritional solutions. When patients cannot meet their daily nutritional need through normal food alone, medical nutrition can play a vital role and should be an integral part of their care. Yet, malnutrition among patients often goes unnoticed. General awareness of the issue and its impact on patient outcomes is low and often healthcare professionals, carers and patients do not know about the role medical nutrition can play in supporting patient care and recovery. 

 

The brand believes that every patient should have the right nutrition to support their recovery the best possible way. To make a positive difference to the lives of patients, families and health care professionals, Fortimel aims at supporting them with innovative nutritional solutions in their fight for better health and establishing medical nutrition as an integral part of healthcare. 

Brand commitment in relation to its purpose

  • Provide patients with the best nutritional support alongside medical care and in doing so improve patient outcomes, while reducing healthcare costs 

2018 Brand purpose in action

At Danone we believe the way patients experience food is crucial to their fight for better health. That is why, through Fortimel we provide innovative and tailored solutions of which the product composition, taste, texture and eating and drinking experience is especially adapted for patients helping them to adhere to the medical nutrition they have been prescribed.

 

In 2018, the brand extended its Fortimel Compact Protein range with additional flavors. These new flavors were developed after noticing that up to 70% of cancer patients experience taste changes during chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy. These sensory alterations can have a negative impact on nutritional status of cancer patients and can lead to greater weight loss. Due to taste changes patients might eat and drink less, as a result of which they can become malnourished and withstand treatment less well.

 

To develop the new flavors the brand conducted on a sensory study with oncology patients to evaluate liking. In collaboration with the University Medical Center Groningen, 3 new flavors were selected, validated by cancer patients and added to the Fortimel Compact Protein range.

 

The new flavors were first launched for health care professionals at the medical congresses of the “European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism” and the “European Society of Medical Oncology”. A worldwide marketing campaign around the theme “Taste can change, Outcomes should not” promoted the launch. Internally, even more Danoners were onboarded on Fortimel’s Manifesto Brand journey through internal launch events and on online functional communities.

 

(1)  Ljungqvist O, de Man F. Under nutrition - a major health problem in Europe. Nutr Hosp 2009; 24(3):368-370.

 

Photo credits: Getty Images (jgalione), Fotolia (industrieblick)