BRITISH AGRICULTURE MARKETING

This is where we despair....why, oh, why are there so many membership-based models in farming? From trade associations to regional food groups, you name it, they are everywhere. So let's start with some basics:

1. Farmer brands
- are owned by farmers (or a farmer co-operative)
- are marketed by farmers
- return profits directly back to the farm business through increased sales (i.e. volume) or higher farmgate prices (i.e. value).

Examples of farmer brands are Tyrrells crisps and Wyld Meadow Lamb. Somerset brie and Farmers Best are farmer co-op owned brands.

2. These are not farmer-owned brands...
- The Little Red Tractor (owned by the NFU and run by Assured Food Standards)
- LEAF symbol (owned by LEAF)
- Organic symbol (owned by the Soil Association)
- Taste of the West
- Tastes of Anglia
- The National Trust
- The Duchy of Cornwall

They are all schemes or marques owned by other organisations. They provide collaborative ventures. But by their very nature, membership-based organisations are incapable of conducting marketing activity for individual farm businesses or brands. They may provide valuable business-to-business services, as well as customer assurance that the produce has met certain production standards, but they do not deliver profits directly back to the farm business in the same way as products owned and marketed by the farmer or farmer co-op.

These trade association or membership brands may have a positive 'umbrella effect' for the whole industry, but the product criteria and advertising messages are controlled by other people. So, farmers still need their own brands in order to communicate their own messages and respond to new market conditions. For example, the Soil Association organic symbol was happily endorsing Brazilian beef sold in supermarkets in 2005. At that time, farmers up and down the country were protesting about the importing of Brazilian beef from an area infected with FMD. The Brazilian beef met Soil Association organic-production standards, but British farmers had no way of communicating the differences in production standards between British and Brazilian beef to the consumer. Farmers had no brands of their own. There were no advertisements in the papers highlighting the differences in production. Farmers could only stand outside shops and protest.

Membership organisations all need money to help fund their own structures (e.g. pay for salaries and any new initiatives), but they do not return any of the marketing profits back to a farm business. In other words, if their name increases in awareness, reputation and value, that still has no financial benefit for farmers.

To illustrate this, following FMD, the South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA) gave thousands of pounds in grants towards supermarket own-label marketing projects, to (in theory) help farmers. Lloyd Maunder worked with Sainsbury's to establish a West Country own-label lamb brand. Sainsbury's owned the brand and used it for its own business advantage. Sainsbury's subsequently dropped its contract with Lloyd Maunder in 2005. Lloyd Maunder announced the closure of its lamb-processing business at the start of 2006 and hundreds of West Country farmers were left with no brand and no way of marketing their product. If these farmers had been encouraged to set up their own SW brand of lamb under a farmer co-op arrangement in response to increased consumer demand for locally sourced produce, then they could have taken this brand to new retailers in the area and gained a price advantage. Instead, the SW lamb flooded the commodity market again and brought down local prices. By contrast, when Golden Wonder closed down, the Pringles brand immediatley attracted many buyers.

We recommend that farmers develop their own 'farmer-owned brands'. Wyld Meadow Lamb is a good example of a farmer-owned brand, established by Clive and Jo Sage. Dairy Farmers of Britain, the farmer-owned milk co-op, has recently developed its own brands of milk called Definitely Yorkshire, Definitely Cheshire and Farmers Best.

Advertising & Brand development

Write a marketing brief
Before meeting the brand design, advertising, PR or direct marketing agency, write a marketing brief. The marketing brief is essential. It provides the agency with an outline business plan and an agreed contract to work to. Without a good marketing brief, the work is less likely to go to plan. The advertising agencies will either ‘go off brief’, or the working relationship may become fraught with people disagreeing on what has been said or done.

The marketing brief is equivalent to an architect’s drawings. Instructing someone to build a four-bedroom house only by verbal instructions over the telephone might end up with a few surprises. In the same way, advertising can go in a multitude of different directions. Even if the end result wasn’t what you had in mind, the work still has to be paid for. This can be costly and is easily avoided by writing a good marketing brief.

The marketing brief also demonstrates that you are serious about the project. There is no harm in asking the agency for feedback and questions on the brief. These can then be incorporated into the proposals and documented. But it should be noted that, like builders, agencies juggle several projects at any one time and may put some work on hold if something else comes up. A well-written marketing brief helps to focus the agencies on any date deadlines and ensure that the work is scheduled in. As a result, the work is more likely to be delivered on time and on brief.

The marketing brief should include:

1. Company details
Who is involved with the project and who is responsible for making any decisions. In other words, who owns the project and who is in charge. Several people may be involved and someone from outside the working group may want to have the final say, but the marketing agencies need to know who is responsible for making any decisions. The decision-making process also needs to be built into their time schedules.

2. Product details
This section should provide as much information about the product as possible.
For example, specifically for beef:
- Type of product (e.g. breed of cattle)
- Sales volume (i.e. number of cattle, cuts of meat)
- Sales value (i.e. price points)
- Production method (e.g. grass-fed, slow-matured, local abattoir)
- Product qualities (e.g. eating quality, high in XYZ minerals)
- Any other points of interest (e.g. append any research studies)

3. Target Audience
Who is the customer that you want to buy your product. Specifically:
- Gender
- Age
- Family status
- Existing purchase patterns for your product sector
- Attitude to food
- Attitude to your product (awareness, knowledge and perceptions)

This will start to identify any barriers that exits for consumers to buying your product.

4. Competitors
Provide details of any competitors in the marketplace. Who are they, how big are they and how do they currently market and distribute their products? Who is the biggest threat to your business?

5. Distribution
What are your proposed distribution routes to market? How does this effect your long-term sales plans?

6. Marketing requirements
Provide details of what you would like the agency to do and when. This could include:
- Initial concept ideas to fully worked-up artwork
- Recommendations on how to research and evaluate the work
- Request ideas on how they would approach this project differently

Give your project a working title
It is also useful to give your marketing brief a project name (e.g. Project Jump). This working title can then be used to brief all third-party advertising agencies - it helps them to:
- Know which project they are referring to until a brand name has been agreed
- Deliver successful new brands and creative work
- Maintain any confidentiality agreements

By providing a neutral project name as a working title, it allows the creative staff within the agency to keep an open mind when developing new brand names. This also helps to prevent moderators from steering consumer research in the wrong direction, as they are not so influenced by existing product descriptions.

Hire a brand marketing consultant
Finally, if you really don’t know where to start with the marketing brief, then hire a marketing consultant for 1-2 days' work. The marketing consultant can then be tasked with writing the marketing brief, in the same way that architects draw up the plans to build a house. But don’t confuse a marketing consultant with an agricultural consultant. The two are very different. Agricultural consultants tend to have production and distribution skills (often found at the Oxford Farming Conference wearing blue striped shirts). The majority of marketing consultants have never been near a farm and have only worked in advertising agencies or marketing consultancies.

Finally, marketing is fun, inventive and innovative. It gives you freedom to be creative and say what you want. Advertising agencies love breaking the rules, so it's much better than talking to DEFRA.