U.S. beef producers have devised a brand-identity marketing campaign it hopes will stem a decade-long slide in beef sales.
The National Cattlemen's Beef Association will launch a pilot campaign in 1998, using a new Beef symbol that will appear on beef products judged to be consistent in quality and taste. The group hopes the symbol will have the same success in developing consumer loyalty that the cotton symbol has done for that industry.
"The symbol is not the only thing we are dealing within this strategy but we do hope that it becomes a signal of trust and confidence for the consumer," said Chuck Schroeder, the NCBA's chief executive officer. Schroeder and other NCBA officials and members were attending the group's annual mid-year meeting in Reno.
The campaign, scheduled to go nationwide in 1999, will be tied in with print and electronic advertising.
The plan is the latest devised by the beef industry to turn around retail beef sales, which shrank 11.9% between 1980 and 1996, according to the NCBA.
To be successful, the plan will need cooperation from the ranchers that raise young calves, to the feedlots that fatten them for slaughter, to the meat packer and finally to the retailer supermarkets.
NCBA's Schroeder said packing company officials have been supportive of the plan, but that some packers and cattle producers had doubts about prospects of uniting the industry.
"The only concerns I've heard so far are the technical concerns about whether or not you can get an industry this diverse and this segmented to actually come together in a unified strategy," Schroeder said.
Feedlots, which sell fattened cattle to packing plants, often regard those plants as adversaries rather than team players.
"It is going to require a level of trust that doesn't already exist," said Paul Hitch, president of cattle feeding company, Hitch Enterprises. However, Hitch said he was still optimistic that the plan to unite the industry could boost beef sales.
Ranchers attending the NCBA meeting asked how the program would reward them for the calves they sell to feedlots.
"How do we return the profits back to the (calf) producer. That is going to be a problem," said Matt Echeverria, a Lebec, Calif. rancher.
Another issue still to be addressed, is how ranchers can produce a uniform beef product when there is a wide range of cattle breeds plus a lack of control on raising calves, which are bought from sale barns around the country and from Mexico.
NCBA officials said criteria is still being developed for each level of the industry to determine eligibility in the program.
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