A week and a half ago this picture was being shared on Facebook from a COBS Bread store counter card:
Image used with permission, credit to @kriscalgary on Twitter
What initially drew me in to this COBS Bread advertisement, taken in one of their Calgary locations, was the big lettering stating:
COBS BREAD USES 100% ALBERTA WHEAT
That caught my attention right away—wayta go, COBS! Sourcing homegrown wheat for the use in your bakeries and displaying it proudly in your advertisement. Then, if you look below that, is when it turned sour for me:
“The flour used in our bakeries is grown and milled in Alberta and is GMO-free.”
I have said it before and I’ll say it again: I cannot stand this type of advertising and labeling—it is misleading. Why is it misleading, you ask? Because there is no GMO wheat on the market or in our food chain and food labels should not confuse a customer.
I immediately went to the COBS Bread Facebook page to share the photo and to ask and understand why they chose to use this in their marketing. I also tweeted them:
Sad to see @COBSBread marketing their bread as #GMO-free 🙁 Yay for 100% Alberta wheat, hope you rethink the GMO part pic.twitter.com/rjhY7CR2Xo
— Sarah Schultz (@NurseLovesFarmr) March 6, 2014
COBS interacted with me on Twitter immediately and I was happy to see them interacting with me on Facebook too. By the next day before noon, COBS wrote this on the thread I started on their Facebook page:
“Hi everyone, thank you all for your comments. The most important message we intended to convey in this counter card is that 100% of our wheat is sourced from Alberta farms. Regarding the messaging about GMO-free, we are constantly asked by our customers whether or not our wheat is GMO. We had no intention to have a position on GMO-free or not and were proivding an answer a question that customers were asking. Based on your feedback, we will revise the positioning of this message to be more educational, as we intended. Our main purpose was to emphasize that all of our flour is sourced from Alberta farms.”
Hats off to you, COBS! I agree that more education needs to be done. Supporting local Alberta wheat farmers and stating it proudly in your stores advertisements is very encouraging. If there are customers that have concerns about whether or not GMOs are used in their bakery products, perhaps a simple “no” would be a sufficient answer, and the customers who are more concerned can talk to management or their great social media team. I truly believe that this type of fear-marketing just strikes up angst and panic where there need not be. By no means is COBS in the same category as other brands who have advertised in a far worse ways, but it is completely unnecessary, to me, to advertise anything GMO-free, especially products that don’t contain GMOs.
Yay for @COBSBread! Who says: Based on your feedback, we will revise the positioning of this msg to be educational https://t.co/CeSHEZVJRw
— Sarah Schultz (@NurseLovesFarmr) March 6, 2014
Someone on Twitter thought I was being too critical of COBS and that they were just doing good business practice, giving the customer what they want, and trying to make a profit. Well, I’m a COBS customer too, and one of the Alberta wheat farms that they potentially source from, and I want them to be honest in their advertising. Many of you will say that they are telling the truth—the wheat they source is GMO-free. Correct, but it’s a moot point and plays off of consumer misinformation on a very controversial topic. In a world where conventional food is criticized so often, and when I’m sure COBS has gotten questions whether or not their products are gluten-free (they’re not), I would hope COBS will take note of this incidence with me and be pro-active in taking the role to better inform their customers, as I’m sure they don’t appreciate how gluten is vilified in our food chain today.
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Way to go! Nice to see you can make some change at the grassroots level.
Thank you! Will be interesting to see if they actually make the change!
It's pretty amazing that you were able to advocate and get such a great response. Our efforts to reach out to vegan companies who use similar ploys have not been successful. Ultimately they say they do it just because the consumer wants it. I find that particularly ironic for companies who supposedly cater to consumers with ethical interests.
My recent post Worried About GMOs?
Thanks! I can only imagine that it would be very hard to reach out to vegan companies…it's just a shame how they use marketing to twist the truth.
Wish more companies were that open to corresponding with people and admit they are misleading. I know a couple companies that could take a lesson from them.
I think probably because they are a smaller company (70 stores in 3 provinces in Canada) and they do source from Canadian wheat farmers…maybe hearing from an Alberta wheat farmer they were more likely to listen to me? Regardless, I'm happy they did listen and I'm eager to see if they follow through.
Wow…so great to see a company respond that way!
I agree!