Marketing tips for Ontario's dairy farmers

Thursday, January 14, 2016

By SUSAN MANN

Seventy per cent of all brands will not be missed if they disappear from the marketplace, but those with staying power continue to survive because they remain relevant, useful and entertaining, says Victoria Cruz, Dairy Farmers of Canada’s new marketing director.

One of those brands is Tropicana juice, which ran an ad campaign six years ago centered on bringing the sun in the form of a brightly lit helium balloon to a remote Arctic community, Inuvik, where residents live without sunlight for weeks on end.  

Cruz, who took over as marketing director in October, said the Tropicana “brighter mornings for brighter days” video was “all over social media” and it created a huge buzz for its company, Tropicana Products, Inc.

She was one of several speakers at the Dairy Farmers of Ontario annual meeting in Toronto on Wednesday. She highlighted changes in advertising while another speaker talking on a similar topic, Charlie Arnot, CEO for the Centre for Food Integrity, addressed the area of engaging with consumers. The Centre is a non-profit organization dedicated to building consumer trust and confidence in today’s food system.

Cruz said there are four hallmarks of successful brands. One is a strong conviction behind the brand where “consumers feel the meaning behind what a company does.” Another is making people care about the brand and showing how it benefits their lives.

The third is to be interesting, entertaining and surprising while the fourth is for companies engaged in marketing their brands to stop saying things at people and start doing things for them, she explained.

The dairy industry is facing two challenges when it comes to marketing its products. However, it has a good foundation to work from, she said. Dairy Farmers of Canada surveyed 2,500 people across Canada last year and only three per cent made negative comments about dairy farmers, while only two per cent commented negatively about Canadian milk, Cruz said.

Usually the average number of negative comments for this type of study is 15 per cent, she said.

One challenge to marketing dairy products is health experts continue to advise consumers to cut dairy from their diets. Dairy product competitors are also getting much stronger and “have deeper pockets than ever before,” she said.

“We won’t be able to outspend them,” she added. But using the four hallmarks of successful brands will help the industry “to become more valuable in the eyes of consumers.”

The Dairy Farmers of Canada board is working on establishing the organization’s “strong conviction and corporate objective,” she said. Once it’s finalized, Cruz said they would begin work on marketing the conviction.

Arnot said food today is safer, more affordable and more available than ever before. Yet consumers have more questions and are more skeptical of the agri-food system than ever.

For farmers to continue to operate today “with a minimum of outside interference,” they increasingly need to earn and use a “social licence,” he said. Social licence is defined as the privilege of operating with minimal formalized restrictions based on doing what’s right.

“If the public trusts us to do what’s right, they won’t feel the need to impose more restrictions on how we operate, or what we produce, what ingredients, animal health products or animal husbandry practices we use,” he explained, noting there isn’t a premium for doing what people perceive is right. However, there is a cost for violating people’s trust.

Previously the restrictions came primarily from government regulators, but now they are increasingly coming from the marketplace. “It’s no longer good enough that you have the support of your MP (Member of Parliament), you also need the support of the social responsibility officer of your primary customer,” he says.

Operating with a social license, farmers can work in a system with lower costs that is more flexible and responsive. If a series of events or a single large event causes the violation of the social licence, farmers will find themselves operating in a system of social control with higher costs, more bureaucracy and greater rigidness.

Trust is the final goal “we’re trying to achieve,” he says. What does it take to build consumer trust in food?

• Influential others, such as family and friends, and respected individuals with credentials.
• Competency.
• Shared values and ethics.

Arnot says competency refers to “our technical competency in science. Historically, in agriculture we tend to be very data–driven. We want to know what the science says, we want to know what the economics are, and we make our decisions based on that.”

However, using data alone isn’t persuasive enough in making the arguments that will build trust in the food system, he says. “If you want to be successful in engaging with people, you have to first help them understand your commitment to do what’s right.” BF