Woodruff Sweitzer Presents at Pet Food Forum 2017
Customer Insight + Your Company’s Experts = Breakthrough Marketing
Matching customer insights with a company’s experts for breakthrough marketing isn’t as hard as it seems. Woodruff Sweitzer’s Scott Kington, executive vice president, strategic planning and brand development and Andrew Grinch, director of content, presented a step-by-step playbook at Pet Food Forum 2017. The program helped conference attendees apply an unique marketing approach that differentiates a business for greater relevancy, which then achieves greater results with customers.
The playbook includes a four-step “listen-to-win” approach based on pulling out data that sets marketers on the right path to discovering unique insights.
4 Step Approach – Listen to Win
- Mine – find the information
- Refine – sort it out
- Match – insights with company experts
- Create – breakthrough marketing
Mining to Find the Insight
Within the four-step approach, there are five places to start mining for customer insights and many of them are right at a marketer’s fingertips. Information alone is not an insight. Kington and Grinch created a custom filter to more easily arrive at an actionable insight and create breakthrough marketing.
Five places to look for information when
mining for what customers are saying
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Finding Common Ground With the Ag Audience (Everyone)
There are few topics that are as emotional as food. Every single person has a personal relationship with food, because the act of eating is as intimate as it gets. Everyone has strong opinions, preferences and reactions to the act of eating.
And the majority of the world has no idea of how food actually gets to its plates.
When we talk food, there’s a substantial disconnect between the average end-user and the producer. Sure, everyone knows the romantic view of the American farmer. But most of those views are ill-informed, because most Americans don’t have any interaction with farmers. They just don’t know what farming actually entails.
That’s why it’s so important to tell the ag story.
The average American is now three to five generations removed from actual farming, and farm families make up less than 2 percent of the United States population.
“Consumers in the cities and suburbs are more disconnected from farm life than ever before, and that disconnect has led to misconceptions about modern farming, and the people behind it,” said Lavell Winsor, a farm analyst for K-State Research and Extension in Manhattan, Kansas. “They don’t have any realization of how their quality food is produced, what it is like to live on a farm, grow livestock and grain safely and efficiently as a livelihood so others can eat.”
Disconnected but connected
The problem, however, is that while Americans are disconnected from the farm, they’re “plugged in” in plenty of other ways. Access to information is easier than ever, and anyone can find facts that support whatever narrative they’re trying to fill. It’s hard for the average consumer to separate fact from fiction when researching anything, let alone ag topics. Go online and try to get a clear definition of the words “sustainable” or “organic.” Go ahead. We’ll wait.
Telling (and controlling) the ag story is more important than ever because of all the available misinformation and pre-formed opinions floating out there in space. Farmers and ranchers have a big enough job feeding a growing world; they don’t have the time or resources to educate consumers about the realities of ag – let alone educate about why much of the available information is misleading.
Telling the ag story
But ag is a story that needs to be told. Stories teach us lessons; they lead to questions, which lead to answers, which lead to better and more useful understanding of complex topics. You can give people facts and bullet points. But telling a story is how you’ll really connect. There’s a reason that the new Star Wars movie is more than just a PowerPoint presentation.
We live in an age where consumers want to “experience” everything. They want the most out of every experience, and education is no different. Spin your yarn, and the people will follow you anywhere.
Know your story circle
For a story to connect, it has to be told to the right people. Your cynical grandpa who only loves Ken Burns documentaries probably isn’t going to be into the new Minions flick. But Minions made a jillion dollars because it found the right eyeballs. It knew its audience, and told them the story they would relate to.
Talking to your audience in the right language is just as critical as finding your target audience. You need to understand the consumers’ needs and wants, and that requires research. If you know your audience wants products made with “sustainable ag,” you should first know that audience’s education level. Do they truly understand what “sustainable” means? Or should your story’s main focus be education about the term? If you know your audience’s mindset and education level on a topic, you can connect with them on their level, making the story personal and relatable. Make the audience the main character; it’s their journey.
Not to beat the Star Wars analogy to death, but the reason the franchise has prevailed for 40 years is because everyone has a main character they identify with. The poor kid who craves adventure. The loveable rogue. The stalwart princess. And yes, the misunderstood bad guy. When telling the ag story, you don’t have to have so many relatable angles, but if you can fund that common ground, the audience will follow you anywhere.
Even to a cornfield in a Midwestern state far, far, away.
Pets, Antibiotics and Antimicrobial Resistance: A Growing Public Health Concern?
Protecting the efficacy of antimicrobial medications is considered a high priority in order to protect public health. Although attention has focused most recently on the use of medically important antibiotics to promote growth in food animals, interest is now turning to companion animal veterinarians’ use of these drugs and whether pets are a potential reservoir for drug-resistant bacteria. In fact, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced its intentions to identify strategies for promoting antimicrobial stewardship in companion animal medicine.
The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has been working at the forefront of this issue. In 2013, the AVMA created a task force whose charge was to develop practice guidelines for implementing antimicrobial stewardship in companion animal practice. The task force did that and more to help raise awareness for the issue of antimicrobial resistance in companion animals, identify gaps in the profession’s current knowledge and provide resources for veterinary practices to use.
Yet there is much more that can be done to help companion animal veterinarians and their teams learn more about antibiotic resistance, judicious drug use and infection control. Ample opportunities exist to help veterinary healthcare teams educate their clients about antimicrobial resistance and appropriate use of antibiotics that helps enhance the veterinarian-client-patient relationship as it helps protect human and animal health.
The risk of infection with antibiotic-resistant bacteria is real for pet owners and their furry family members. If your company’s product portfolio includes antimicrobial products that are indicated for dogs and cats or anti-infective products used in veterinary clinic facilities, you’re probably aware that antimicrobial resistance is a growing concern across the veterinary profession. And you may have thought about what your organization can do to help veterinarians and pet owners use your products appropriately. At Woodruff Sweitzer, we’ve thought about it too, and have plenty of good ideas to share. For more about what we know and think about pets and antimicrobial resistance, take a look at our white paper.
Sustainability Reports as a Marketing Tool
To succeed in a competitive industry, ag producers have to have an “operational” mindset; to meet the needs of feeding a growing world, not to mention their own operations, they must have a singular focus on production. A byproduct of that focus is that they are not accustomed to hearing – or understanding – consumers’ needs and demands.
So when they hear that consumers are demanding “sustainable” agriculture, it’s no surprise that many growers don’t quite get the hubbub. To farmers, farming is the most sustainable industry. After all, farmers constantly adopt practices that won’t harm their most valuable asset: the land. How is that not sustainable practice?
While this may be the case, consumers are often far removed from the farm. Fewer than 2 percent of Americans are engaged in agriculture, so the consumers who demand “sustainable” foodstuffs may have have no understanding or knowledge about modern agriculture. The disconnect between growers’ thoughts and consumers’ wants is a growing problem in the industry.
Desire for “sustainable” isn’t going awayConsumer interest in food (from recipes to dining experiences to policy about factors impacting nutrition and availability) is at an all-time high; consumers read blogs, they follow famous “foodies” on Twitter. This is especially true in the huge and influential millennial generation, a group whose impact on every industry cannot be overlooked. If millennials want something, brands have almost no choice but to provide it or face their wrath. Whether it’s true or not, these consumers think they’re knowledgeable. And they increasingly value food that’s produced “sustainably.” A 2014 survey reported in Sustainable Brands found that 77 percent of consumers say that sustainability was a factor in purchasing decisions. Furthermore, 89 percent say that they’re willing to pay more to “eat local.”
Those are incredibly large portions of an audience, and tapping into their wants and desires can be a boon to everyone in the food-production industry, from distributors and marketers all the way back to the growers. But how do you tap into that vein of eager, “green” blood?
You tell the audience what sustainable is, and how you provide itThis audience does not hesitate to ask questions, and those questions often focus on production practices, sustainability claims and verification. No matter where you are in the food chain, you should be able to provide that info, and it helps to provide it up front and willingly. Transparency without being asked for transparency is a great way to build trust with an audience that has an increasing number of options.
But even transparency can be complicated, because it’s often unclear on what to be transparent about.
Players across the food system haven’t yet agreed on an overarching definition of “sustainability.” It’s like the terms “organic” and “green.” What do they mean? People think they know what they mean, but do they really? It’s up to you to control the narrative. You do this by being up front. No matter where you are in the supply chain, you can provide consumers with the information they need (or think they need) to satisfy what they think they want.
Producers are busy producing, so it’s on processors and retailers to help verify that sustainable practices were used at various points in their own supply chain. There are quite a few organizations in the food system that provide these sustainability tools. Examples include:
Field to Market Alliance, who says that they’re “Uniting the supply chain to ensure sustainable outcomes for agriculture.” The Alliance provides a “Fieldprint calculator” for farmers as well as additional scorecards for use by others across the supply chain. The Alliance believes that farmers benefit from using the most accepted sustainability benchmarks and shouldn’t have to complete multiple, competing surveys. The calculator “helps improve practices while increasing opportunities to do business with companies committed to sourcing sustainably.” Their words, but good words!
Field Rise, an organization founded for farmers by farmers, uses university researchers to create and provide voluntary online questionnaires that ask crop-specific or whole-farm questions. The information then goes to farmers’ organizations; according to Field Rise, “food companies can draw from association data to show their customers that their supply chain is on the right track.”
These are just two of the organizations and tools out there that help farmers easily report sustainability, which lets those farther along the food stream (YOU) talk to the audience in the language they need to hear. Putting forth an effort in this area accomplishes a few things:
- It takes the heat off the producers. They can focus on feeding the world without worrying about what the world needs to hear.
- It helps market your brand or product. If growers have an easy way to track their sustainability efforts and tell you about them, you can then turn that information into marketing tactics. Control the narrative; tell consumers what they need to hear in the way they want to hear it.
It’s up to those downstream to talk to the audience, because those doing the real work are too busy doing the real work. And why wouldn’t we want to control those messages? As long as “sustainable” remains a vague and undefined term, we can define it in the way that meets the needs of everyone.
Let Woodruff Sweitzer help connect sustainability to your marketing.
What’s ’Appening? Can an app really add value to pet care businesses?
There’s an app for that. What? you ask. Exactly. There is almost literally an app for every interest, niche, hobby and business subset in this world. The pet and animal health industries are no different from any others: from fitness trackers for pets to diabetes management tools for pet owners to body condition scoring for dairy farmers to practice-management apps used by veterinarians, there is, indeed, an app for that.
You’d think that by this point marketers would begin to worry about saturation and start questioning the viability of creating apps for, well, everything. After all, if everyone has something special, no one has anything special.
So let’s just ask it: Do apps actually add value, especially to pet care businesses?
On the one hand, maybe the answer doesn’t matter. Why fight a rising tide? And the tide of apps is rising so quickly that the easy answer is to simply go with the flow. If every consumer expects an app, you’re kind of expected to give it to them.
As of 2015, apps accounted for more than half of all time spent on digital media. When you focus on smartphone users, that number makes a dramatic leap to nearly 90 percent. A more recent survey by Smart Insights says that when consumers use their devices to research, more than a quarter start with a branded app.
So, yeah. Apps are important. Your sales force wants them and, more importantly, consumers use them. It’s pretty easy to make the leap from these stats to the thought that your brand needs an app added to its arsenal. Maybe you already have one and want to up your game. Your competitors almost certainly have some sort of app. If the consumers demand it, the competition has it and (if your business is established) you’ve at least dabbled in the app game, why not dive in head first? Seems obvious, yeah?
But is your business really ready for an app? The answer is more complicated than you think. Any good marketer knows that simple popularity is no reason to make a move (it’s a reason, but should never be the only factor). You’d never develop a product without a thorough vetting and suitable strategy, and apps — good apps — take long-term thinking and quite a bit of risk/reward analysis. And that requires planning and, yes, money. Will the initial development costs and effort pay off? It’s an important question, if not the only question.
Apps aren’t finite expenses; they require plans for long-term maintenance. If you develop a good app, your audience will use it and want to continue to use it. This means that you’ll have to consider how to keep it running long into the future. Bug fixes, updates, device technology and even unforeseeable changes in the pet industry landscape must be accounted for.
However, a good app can be worth its digital weight in real-life gold. If your brand or business is at the stage where you’re assessing the need for an app, here are six questions to ask yourself and to discuss with your marketing team or agency.
What do you want it do?
Like anything you develop to bear your brand logo, you’ll need to have a clear business objective and a well-defined set of needs and requirements before any work begins. Apps are often the best fit for businesses that have loyal, repeat mobile customers that need to accomplish just a few, recurring tasks within the app. In short, you need a good audience and a clear focus.
Do you really need it?
The first thing we do when a client or potential client comes to us with a need is to vet the viability of that need. Often, after asking a few questions, the project changes scope and/or medium completely. A brochure becomes a website. A website becomes, yes, an app. An app becomes a campaign. So ask: Does this app make someone’s (your audience’s) life easier? Does it enable them to do something they want to do? Does it offer something that your mobile website doesn’t do or can’t be easily adapted to do?
Do you know what your audience wants?
Like any product or service you might offer, audience research is the primary key to success. How much value would your users get from a new or better app? Know who your audience is, what they want or need from an app, and understand the best way to provide it to them. From market research to surveys to brand personas, know your audience and build an app that is for them.
What do you expect from your app?
What is success to you? Usage? Sales upticks? Downloads? Figure out the metrics that you will tie to your ROI and be prepared to measure them consistently. But stay focused and don’t try to measure everything. Just know what’s important to your success, and then have a plan for improvement, adjustments and growth. Because there will be adjustments needed.
Are you prepared to engage?
Today’s audiences require attention. They want to talk to you and they want you to talk back. Regular engagement will make them want to use your products; it makes them feel special. Regular engagement gives your audience a reason to come back and use your app, as opposed to a standard one-time campaign tool that they might fuss with and forget. Build a campaign around the launch of your app, support it with other marketing, and keep the conversation alive.
Do you have the team to support it?
Apps need to be updated periodically after release. Data needs to be analyzed. Tweaks and improvements need to be identified and executed. Growth opportunities need to be capitalized on. And as we said earlier, a successful app can live for a long, long time. It can never be completely ignored. Make sure that you’re prepared for that kind of time (and cost) investment.
There’s no definitive “yes” or “no” answer that will universally apply to every business. But if you have a marketing partner who understands your business and how it can (or can’t) be enhanced by a mobile application, you can determine the answer that is right for you.
Three Keys to Smarter Marketing Through Active Listening
Successful marketers have always understood the value of listening to the customer. Listening is the key to gaining consumer insights about your product, your company, your competition and your industry – insights that can guide and influence your marketing decisions.
Surveys and focus groups used to be the preferred way to listen to the customer and are still a valuable tool. Today, however, marketing insights that used to take a substantial investment of time and money are readily available via social media. Social media channels are where today’s consumer goes to share their experiences with your brand. In fact, 50 percent of all millennials interact with brands through social media.
Your customers are talking about you. Are you listening?
Today’s skilled marketers are using social media monitoring and listening to guide their marketing decisions. If you’re one of them, congratulations. But if you haven’t started integrating social insight into your marketing strategy, we offer three important keys to make the most of this important new tool.
Social listening or social media monitoring?
Before we go any further, it might be helpful to clarify the difference between social media monitoring and social listening, two terms that you may hear used interchangeably. They are related but different. A popular analogy to describe the difference between the two goes like this: “Monitoring sees trees. Listening sees the forest.”
In a nutshell, social media monitoring uses software to crawl sites for specific words or phrases (product name, category, topic, etc.). Most social media monitoring tools crawl not only the major social networks (Facebook, Twitter) but also forums, news sites, review sites and other more topic-focused venues for conversation. This is an important distinction to note, particularly in the agriculture sector, as more farmers will be found having relevant conversations on AgWeb and Agriculture.com than on Facebook.
Even with this more focused look at particular sites, getting information from the internet is a bit like taking a drink from a fire hydrant. On Twitter alone, there are 500 million tweets every day. So while many marketers feel their work is done after signing up for a monitoring account, their work has really just begun. That’s where the listening comes in. Listening analyzes the data, looking for patterns and trends and drawing conclusions that can be turned into an actionable strategy.
1. How are you listening?
Whether you use Google Alerts or any of the number of other social listening tools and apps, there are basic search criteria that can lead to more successful results. Keywords and topics to monitor should include:
- Your brand and product names, including possible misspellings and abbreviated names (for example, look for “Dairy Queen” and “DQ”)
- Brand slogans
- Your competitor’s brand names and slogans
- Campaign names, spokesperson names
- Industry buzzwords
What are you listening for?
First and foremost, you want to know what your customers are saying about your products and your company. It’s important to keep an open mind and to be prepared to hear things that may not be positive. Don’t overreact. This is your opportunity to fix potential problems. As Bill Gates says, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Learn from the good and the bad. And listen carefully for the following:
- What are your customers’ pain points?
- When they talk about your brand, what do they say?
- Do they like or dislike your products?
- How can you make it better?
- Is this person a potential brand ambassador for your product?
- What is the competition doing and how are customers reacting?
- What new products is this audience talking about?
- What hashtags or unexpected keywords is your audience using when they talk about your brand? (Using these keywords can help you strengthen your SEO strategy for your website, blog or social posts.)
How are you going to respond?
The power of the new online community is that you can choose to listen and remain silent, or you can join the conversation and potentially influence its direction in your favor. Responding to negative comments appropriately can create goodwill in your audience and build customer loyalty. But it should be handled with restraint and diplomacy by a customer service professional. Skilled customer service can be the difference between losing a customer and gaining a loyalist. Here are some things to consider if you’re going to respond:
- Start by responding to questions posted on community forums about product performance, usage, availability, etc. There are some questions that only you can answer accurately. This is a great way to set the record straight. In the ag world, negative product experiences are often due to incorrect usage (applying chemicals off label at the wrong rate or timing, for example).
- 48 percent of customers don’t expect a brand to respond to a negative review. This is a great way to exceed customer expectations and build brand loyalty.
- Beyond improving customer service, negative feedback from listening should be shared with your R & D teams. They may be able to use it to improve current and future products.
Once you establish that you’re a brand that engages and communicates with its audience, more followers and brand advocates will join your conversation. Those advocates could turn into brand influencers who help spread your marketing campaign messages to a bigger audience. Just by being more active on social channels, users will start to watch for what you post. You may start to see more “likes,” favorites, shares, comments and interaction on multiple digital channels around your brand keywords.
Social listening isn’t a fad; it’s what marketers today must do to stay a step ahead of the competition. Knowledge is power. And there’s a vast knowledge base out there for the taking. All you have to do is listen.
Send us a note to find out more about social listening with Woodruff Sweitzer.
Get Customer-Obsessed: Journey Mapping
Sales today are no longer about moving people through the traditional funnel. Current B2B marketers must attract buyers, influence their decision process, and create relationships with a finely tuned mix of content across social, digital and traditional channels.
It’s a well-known fact that buyers now control their journey through the sales process. They choose how they view their online content, and how they prefer to shop. You, in turn, must now find your way in this new land ruled by customers. Here’s some advice to help you get there by engaging customers across available channels in a disciplined and effective way.
Know your customer’s needs
The customer has changed; there is no going back. They have higher expectations for you, and if you’re not working to meet them, one of your competitors probably is.
This new age of the customer will force you to rethink how you win, serve, and retain this empowered audience. You have to keep individual customer groups in mind because you can no longer lump them into one big pile and speak to all of them at the same time, in the same way. For example, as we’ve discussed before, marketing to millennials demands different tactics to be successful.
It is important to recognize the impact of customer engagement needs on the fundamentals of your business. As marketing leaders, you must champion customer obsession and all that it means throughout the organization. It’s the time to engage, earn trust, and offer genuine content in every area, in every medium.
Map your customer journey out in detail
The best way to explore the customer-controlled journey is by creating a customer journey map. These maps tell the story of the customer’s experience, beginning with initial contact, through the process of engagement and purchase, and into a long-term relationship. The map is an oriented graph representing different touchpoints that characterize a customer’s interaction with your service. Every customer group will have a different path to you and your product, a different map.
Most consumers achieve their goal with your brand through multiple interactions. Just one terrible, disjointed experience can send them straight to your competition. That’s why it’s so important to understand when, where and how customers connect with your business. Fulfill their needs, and you’ll create a loyal customer.
Know your customer touchpoints
A customer touchpoint is any moment when a customer comes into contact with your brand. This includes before, during, and after the purchase. Your goal is to make sure your customers are happy at every point.
The best way to find these touchpoints is by thinking like a customer who has never experienced your brand before and is going through the entire process of doing business with you. Start at the beginning and start brainstorming all possible scenarios, then follow them along this imagined journey and at every touchpoint along the way. Research, psychographics and media habits can help you predict the interactions and plan for success.
Common touchpoints
Common touchpoints before the transaction can include any of your marketing efforts like ads or social media activity. Social media can have a great effect on the pet care customer’s journey and, done right, will provide an excellent resource. You can read more about that specific leg of the journey here.
Customers can also form an impression through product reviews on e-commerce sites or through word of mouth. This is why we strongly recommend you listen up by paying attention to social media channels.
Once the transaction is in progress, common touchpoints include your point of sale environment, whether that be a physical store, website or catalog. This is where customers might interact with your staff, sales team, or call center. Even if your sales are strictly in-person, there are plenty of opportunities to improve pet product shopping through digital technology.
Common touchpoints after the transaction include things like billing, product support, questions and returns. You might also send customer feedback surveys, product newsletters or thank you cards.
Understand how touchpoints create the experience
After mapping out the touchpoints in the customer journey, step back and see how they all fit together. Are there any obstacles the customer might experience along the way? Ask yourself, are any of the touchpoints missing or underserved? Is there a clear route for the customer to resolve potential issues in the transaction?
Once you establish this map of the customer journey, you’ll be able to evaluate the experience and make improvements where necessary. And remember to always put the customer’s needs first.
Put an action plan into place now
Now, armed with this knowledge, it’s time for action. Here are the steps you need to take:
- Understand your buyers
Begin by collecting customer data and then turn it into insights. - Bring your buyer to life
Use your research and insights to identify buyer traits and opinions. From there you can craft detailed personas. - Create a journey map
Going through the imagined touchpoints for each persona, identify the customer lifecycle and build a map of their possible journey. You can continue to refine this map as you learn more and see actual customers travel through the buying cycle. - Develop tools to support customer’s navigation
Align the right engagement channel to the right lifecycle stage, helping your customer at as many points as possible along their journey. - Build a content platform to support your engagement
Be it a website, social media platform or mailing list, make sure you are exactly where your customer needs you to be.
Today’s B2B marketers must attract buyers, influence their decision process and create relationships with a finely tuned mix of content across social, digital and traditional channels. The best way to master this is by using a customer journey map and having a presence wherever you are needed.
Let us know how Woodruff Sweitzer can assist in putting together your customer journey map.
Woodruff Sweitzer Welcomes Nikki Kennedy to Account Team
Kennedy joins the agency’s Calgary staff
Calgary, AB (February 23, 2017) Woodruff Sweitzer (WS) is happy to announce the addition of Nikki Kennedy as Account Executive. She’ll be working out of our Calgary, Alberta location.
Starting with WS in late 2016, Nikki has already proven an invaluable member of the account team, helping clients like PX3 and Cat Healthy achieve marketing success. She’ll continue to ensure work is completed on time and on budget, working with internal teams to make sure client objectives are met, and exceeded.
“Nikki is a great addition to our account team. Her agency experience, insight and intelligence will allow us to grow our expertise in every aspect of our client’s marketing concerns,” says Jeff Groeneveld, President, Woodruff Sweitzer Calgary.
Nikki comes to us from agencies in Toronto and Calgary where she honed her skills working with clients like CIBC, Tropicana and WORKshift. We know she’ll keep a level head and even keel, having done so even as she rubbed elbows with celebrities like Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus in her work on the eos account in Toronto. Welcome Nikki.
Navigating “Ag-Gag Laws” Through Marketing & PR
“Ag-gag laws.” It’s a funny term for a serious topic. Officially known as Farm Protection Laws, and formerly known as agroterrorism or ecoterrorism laws, they differ among states but all center around protecting farms from undercover investigations that are typically performed by journalists or animal rights activists. Currently, just seven states (Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota and Utah – because measures have so far failed to pass in numerous other states) have ag-gag laws that guard against intrusion from those who intend to edit, and thereby skew, video footage in order to deceive or mislead the public. The laws also cover drone usage and prevent untrained people from entering the sites, as industrial farms can be dangerous places for those who are unfamiliar – dangerous for the individuals and for the animals.
Predictably, there is a significant divide between the two parties involved. Those wishing to investigate argue that it is their First Amendment right to do so and to expose any wrongdoing, such as animal abuse, by the agricultural operations. Conversely, those who run the industrial farms are concerned about protecting their property from damage or destruction, as well as preserving the delicate balance of the agricultural economy. Both groups, it is important to note, are dedicated to the welfare of the animals involved, with the Dairy Farmers of America releasing a statement in 2015 saying, “When animal abuse is witnessed, it should be immediately reported, not recorded.” They also encourage those who are uneasy to “[work] with the industry to proactively address their concerns.”
Marketing Around Ag-Gag Laws
If you or those you serve are in a state that has an ag-gag law in place, it’s critical to know how to protect the operation and its reputation. We strongly recommend you leverage these marketing techniques to ready yourself or your client in the event that something goes awry:
Be prepared. As a business like any other, you make claims to offer value and a unique selling point to your customers. You must be prepared to back up these claims – they will most certainly be challenged – to ensure that they have solid footing. As an example, eBay states on their website that they are “where the world goes to shop, sell, and give.” By their own account, they have 165 million active buyers in 190 markets and one billion live listings. Substantial support for a substantial claim. Be sure you know what you’re saying as a business and why you’re saying it.
Identify highest- to lowest-risk scenarios. And once you’ve identified them, be prepared for the highest-risk situations. Woodruff Sweitzer has a crisis management program to help you plan for various scenarios. Our plans are uncomplicated, tailored to your business to meet your exact needs and don’t require a hefty budget . One of our programs is quarterly Issues Management. This bite-sized effort helps keep costs contained, and it launches your issues program.
Know your influencers. It’s important to align your business with influencers who have credibility both inside and outside the ag field. They can be powerful allies when ag-gag laws come into play and are perhaps the best way to navigate relationships with adversarial groups.
What You Should Know
Moving forward, it’s imperative that everyone involved, as well as the public, understands the industry stance. While they’ve been demonized by some groups, those who support ag-gag laws are sincerely concerned with the health and safety of the operation, the animals, the people visiting the farm and the food supply. Agricultural operations are dangerous yet delicate places that are absolutely critical to sustain a growing population. Ultimately, misconceptions about the laws’ intentions must be addressed, and the gap between animal rights activists and producers must be bridged through communication of concerns and goals.
Your Agricultural Ally
Woodruff Sweitzer is happy to share our extensive knowledge and expertise in farm protection with you and your clients. Our team is stacked with a range of backgrounds, from public policy to crisis management to on-farm product application and animal health management. We’ll help ensure you’re prepared, aware of and ready to respond to all different scenarios that may arise and that you are able to identify and reach out to industry influencers. Reach out to Woodruff Sweitzer now so you’re ready to handle whatever the future holds for your business or clients.
Best Pet Health Brand Strategies: What Did We Learn From 2016?
As 2016 gets smaller and smaller in our rearview, it’s important that the lessons we learned from pet care brands who did it “right” don’t fade away. As marketers, although we always look forward, keeping that rearview mirror in mind is essential to success. So let’s hop in the way-back machine and take a look at pet care brands that cut through the noise and met their audience’s needs in the most innovative ways in 2016.
IAMS Dogumentaries tug at the bark-strings
As any marketer knows, the best way to get your audience to act is to tug on the ol’ heartstrings. IAMS went all in with this philosophy in 2016, creating a digital campaign that showed the emotional side of pet food through the lens of the human/animal bond. These “dogumentaries” were built specifically for social media platforms, which means that they were built to share. The most efficient marketing is the marketing that your audience markets for you, after all.
And share they did. Since the first video was posted to YouTube in October, it’s been viewed 75,000 times, with thousands more views and shares on Twitter and Facebook. These videos buck the norm, however. Instead of your typical 15- to 30-second clip that fits short social media attention spans, the IAMS Dogumentaries are more than three minutes long. They tell complete, emotional stories that anyone with a dog can laugh and cry with. And because these mini-movies are powerful stories instead of quick-hit jokes or commercials, viewers are more than likely to head over to the IAMS website for more information.
The lesson: Story trumps all. Tell your story in an honest, emotional way, and the audience will respond.
Purina’s “Dear Kitten” uses content marketing to the extreme
Purina took the viral video a step farther. In a campaign that began in 2015 but is still attracting eyeballs more than a year and a half later, Purina found a partner who knows how to get the maximum bang for its bark — er, meow. The “Dear Kitten” series combines the longform storytelling we discussed above with three proven Internet things: cat videos, giggle and Buzzfeed.
You can’t predict when or if a video will go viral, but if any outlet has perfected the process, it’s Buzzfeed. By partnering with an outlet that specializes in getting eyeballs on content, Purina created a foolproof campaign. “Dear Kitten” quickly evolved from a one-shot video that hit 25 million sets of eyeballs into a franchise that regularly cracks views in the eight-digit counts on YouTube alone. The flagship video has been shared on Facebook tens of thousands of times as well. Again, letting your audience market for you is virtually priceless.
The lesson: Find partners who specialize in your chosen strategy and then tap into what has worked. Buzzfeed understands how to disperse good content everywhere it can be seen, getting the most bang out of a single idea. That’s pure, uncut content marketing.
Pedigree’s “By My Side” story
Mars, Inc., makers of Pedigree Brand pet food, also jumped deep into the content marketing pool in 2016, creating a four-minute video featuring a veteran with PTSD and his trusty service companion, Wally. The video features almost no branding at all, instead using some subtle product placement. Most importantly, the clip showcases the bond between human and pet, and since April 2016, nearly half a million people have viewed or shared the clip.
That said, the timing and subject matter are what made our tails start thumping. With perhaps the most divisive election in history in process, the clip launched when the country was hip-deep in campaign season. Showcasing a wounded warrior and the dog who helps him cope with the toughest of times during a politically charged time in our country is an interesting and (so far) incredibly effective way to stir a reaction in an audience. Tying a subject (soldiers) that every single person has an opinion about with another (dogs) that is sure to strike a chord with most viewers made any branding or overt messaging unnecessary; people would see that the video was on the Pedigree pages and emotionally connect one with the other. It was a bold play that appears to have paid off.
The lesson: Opportunities to tell a good story are always present; knowing how to capitalize on them is where a smart marketing partner can really help.
Big Heart Pet Brands hit shoppers where they live
Big Heart Pet Brands went a different way in 2016. The maker of pets’ beloved Milk-Bones and Kibbles ’n’ Bits decided to target audiences with pinpoint accuracy. Rather than tell big, bold stories in the great big vacuum of Internet space, Big Heart went with a “boots-on-the-ground” approach, focusing on ultra-specific POP displays tailored not only to specific shoppers but at their specific non-pet interests at various times of the year.
For instance, at Halloween, when parents (and likely pet parents) would be focusing on candy supplies, Big Heart created in-store displays built to fit near the candy aisle. Holiday-appropriate packaging and messaging accompanied the display tactics, and everything was supported by print and digital ads. Big Heart followed the same path for Christmas and Valentine’s Day.
It’s old-school marketing at its finest, but where Big Heart did some big thinking was in its targeting. Themed campaigns are nothing new, but you don’t often see communications and promotions based on specific retailer demographics. Big Heart changed its messaging based on outlet demographics, from the “big on holidays” thrust of Walmart shoppers to the more practical tastes of Kroger shoppers to the app-friendly Target enthusiasts. The back-to-basics-with-a-twist approach worked, as the brand’s in-store sales grew anywhere from 1 percent to 90 percent per retailer.
The lesson: Focus your message on where your audience is, and how they want to hear it, but don’t shoot in the dark. Customer insights can be huge, and partnering with retail giants to get them is worth the effort.
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