By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, August 30, 2019

CHICAGO, Ill. — As the path of dairy checkoff promotion continues to evolve — especially since 2008 when a series of memorandums of understanding were signed by Dairy Management Inc. (DMI) and the National Dairy Council (NDC) with then USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack — the money flows increasingly toward DMI partnerships, agency services and executive staff through sub-agencies of DMI that facilitate the proprietary partnerships.

Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, U.S. Dairy Export Council, GENYOUth, Newtrient LLC, are a few of the vehicles for “proprietary” industry partnerships, which DMI refers to as ‘leveraging industry resources.’

In particular the Innovation Center, working closely with USDEC, is the vehicle for pre-competitive “proprietary” dairy innovations.

In fact, this innovation really began through a relationship between Fonterra USA and DMI as early as the 2006-08 time frame. Their respective ‘test kitchens’ are just three miles apart on the outskirts of Chicago, where milk proteins and ingredients, concentrators, extenders and utilization characteristics have been the focus of proprietary work.

As DMI CEO Tom Gallagher stated at a dairy conference in Wisconsin in March, food scientists from DMI have “cracked the code” on cheese-melting characteristics for partners like Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. He also talked about the new pizza cheese innovations with Dominos to meet USDA school lunch rules, calling them “wildly popular with students.”

From that March presentation at the Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin conference in Madison, the Wisconsin State Farmer quoted Gallagher summing up his job: “My job is real simple. I have to get the industry to do things with your product after it leaves the farm — that consumers want.”

Toward that end, Gallagher explained to the shift away from television ads and other “one-way” promotions to social media “conversations” and industry “partnerships.” It has shifted from promoting milk and dairy to providing product development specialists working for DMI’s partners — like McDonald’s, Dominos, Taco Bell and others — to get them to “do stuff” that puts more dairy in the fast-food pipeline (look for more on this in a future article).

A key driver of the shifting direction of checkoff promotion is the world renown Edelman company, with its headquarters in Chicago — 17 miles east of DMI’s offices and just two miles from the Chicago headquarters of Fairlife LLC, two miles from the Chicago offices of Coca-Cola and a mile and a half from PepsiCo’s Chicago offices.

According to Richard Edelman, in his May 2017 blog post at the company’s website, the Edelman company (known worldwide simply as Edelman) has been the public relations and communications firm for DMI for over 20 years. 

In this particular post, Richard Edelman writes about the launch of DMI’s Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy in 2008 and how he is looking forward to the leadership of the former USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack coming on board that year (2017) as president and CEO of checkoff-funded USDEC and Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy (after signing MOU’s with DMI while Secretary in 2008-09).

This Edelman blog post covers the launch of the Undeniably Dairy campaign that month (May 2017), calling it the first time Edelman has had a project “bringing together a fully integrated campaign at this scale.”

With offices worldwide and mergers throughout the advertising and public relations industry, Edelman is the world’s largest such firm and is open about their re-alignment of clientele around “social responsibility” and  “global environmental sustainability.” In fact, they’ve dropped clients with businesses not deemed “environmentally sustainable.”

Edelman and its clients — such as PepsiCo, Danone, Unilever and others — are listed as prime sponsors buying-in to the EAT Forums that are pushing the EAT Lancet report about the ideal global diet of cutting per-capita animal protein consumption – meat, dairy and eggs – by more than 75% over the next 10 years to “reduce the environmental impact of feeding 10 billion people.”

The firm was instrumental in setting up GENYOUth in 2008 and recommending CEO Alexis Glick as its coordinator. Not only are DMI and PepsiCo clients of Edelman, so is the National Football League. The NFL has a longstanding relationship with PepsiCo that predates the GENYOUth / Fuel Up to Play 60 alliance with dairy checkoff.

And, while PepsiCo is an Edelman client, Coca Cola is a headline client of Edelman’s spinoff Zeno Group, a global integrated communications agency founded 20 years ago by Richard Edelman’s father Daniel J. Edelman after Richard had taken over the reins of Edelman.

So what do the numbers tell us about the above-mentioned relationships?

According to the IRS 990 forms filed by DMI for tax-year 2017, the Daniel J. Edelman, Inc. company, mind-bending mastermind of “social marketing”, was paid $15.3 million in 2016 and $17.8 million in 2017 for “agency services.” That was 11.5% of DMI’s total budget of $155 million in 2017.

DMI paid NFL Properties LLC, New York, N.Y., $5.12 million in 2016 and $5.63 million in 2017 for “Promotion.” Is this the pay-to-play cost of the GENYOUth alliance and MOU? After all, the NFL is positioned as a partner with dairy farmers in the “dairy-farmer-initiated” GENYOUth. The NFL was in on the MOU signing with DMI and Tom Vilsack while he was Secretary of Agriculture.

But, while the NFL’s annual contributions to dairy checkoff’s GENYOUth are listed on GENYOUth IRS 990s as ranging from $370,000 in 2014 to $945,000 in 2017, DMI lists checkoff payments to NFL Properties of between $5 and $6 million for 2016 and 2017 on the DMI IRS 990.

It’s all about the kids, right? There’s more here than kids and breakfast carts.

Meanwhile, fluid milk sales continued to decline, even more rapidly over the 2008-18 decade as low-fat and fat-free school promotion and provision was dairy checkoff’s best play while the plant-based alternatives continue blitzing consumers with – you guessed it — television ads and “one-way” promotions that DMI says “don’t work.”

The alt-beverage industry has worked with Edelman client PepsiCo on its low-fat product portfolio through a variety of incubator projects involving plant-based alternatives for dairy products.

The alt-beverage industry is working closely with Edelman client Danone, which has set a goal to transition much of its yogurt market into plant-based alternatives over the next 5 to 10 years, opening the world’s largest plant-based yogurt facility in upstate Pennsylvania earlier this year.

The alt-beverage industry has even convinced the nation’s largest dairy-farmer-owned cooperative, DFA, to invest in alternative beverage production assets and to innovate with a DMI-checkoff-funded product innovation — a new blend of low-fat, lactose-free dairy milk combined with 50% almond or oat beverage that rolled out in Minnesota in August 2019, with sights set on the Northeast by 2020.

DMI is spending checkoff dollars in search of the next fairlife on which to hang dairy promotion’s hat.

Incidentally, Fairlife LLC received $8 million in DMI checkoff funds in 2017 for “promotion,” according to the most recent publicly-available IRS 990 documents.

So, what else can be learned from DMI’s IRS 990 returns in 2017?

For starters, they had $2 million fewer dollars to work with compared with 2016. Total revenue controlled by DMI was $155 million, along with the unified marketing plan that filters down through regional agencies spending the other half of the dairy farmer checkoff revenues that total right around $320 million. Some state dairy promotion order boards, like in New York, automatically give 25% of their budget (2.5 cents of the state’s dime) to DMI as a matter of course. For other boards, the pass-through may be more, or less.

Looking at program areas, the most recent IRS 990 for 2017 shows that $110 million of the $155 million in checkoff funds under direct management of DMI was described to the IRS as “program funding revenue,” $39.5 million as “core funding revenue” and $5.6 million as “contract services revenue.”

Of the total $155 million in revenue for 2017, DMI categorized $82.2 million as “domestic marketing”, $17.1 million as “export”, while $7.85 million was research, and nearly $7 million for contract services and other expenses.

Since we know that Edelman received $17.6 million from DMI for “agency services” in 2017, it’s clear that some of that is in a category other than “contract services.”

Compensation of board officers, directors and trustees totaled just shy of $3 million.

Other salaries and wages totaled $17.6 million, with pensions and contributions $3.1 million, other employee benefits $2.3 million, and payroll taxes $1.37 million.

Legal, accounting and other totaled around $550,000, office expenses $1.5 million, information technology $2.7 million, rents or occupancy $1.65 million.

In total compensation from DMI and related agencies under DMI control, the highest paid staff in 2017 was executive vice president Dr. Greg Miller (Doctor Dairy), who heads up NDC’s Dairy Research, at $1,546,760.

Listed as a “former highest-compensated employee”, Daniel Chavka, one of several DMI chief financial officers, was paid $769,475. Chief financial officer Carolyn Gibbs was second-highest, paid staff at $1,191,557 through July, and another CFO Quinton Bailey earned $246,542 in 2017.

DMI CEO Tom Gallagher was paid $899,810, followed by executive vice president Jean Ragalie-Carr at $857,406. She is a registered dietician serving as National Dairy Council president.

Fifth-highest paid officer is former Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in his first year as a DMI executive vice president, serving as president and CEO of DMI’s USDEC. From DMI and related agencies under DMI control, Vilsack was paid $800,557 in 2017.

DMI president Barb O’Brien was compensated $649,419 in 2017.

Additionally, two other DMI executive vice presidents Mark Leitner and Elizabeth Engelmann were compensated $638,041 and $478,809, respectively, in 2017.

The total for items related to salaries, other compensation, and employee benefits for 2017 was listed at $27.37 million – 17.7% of total revenue in 2017.

The agency services of Edelman, at $17.8 million, was 11.5% of total 2017 DMI revenue.

The $8 million paid to Fairlife LLC was 5% of total revenue.

DMI travel was listed at $3.55 million, while the line item for conferences, conventions and meetings was $1.46 million in 2017.

The DMI board chair (listed as Paul Rovey in 2017) was paid $25,000. Other board officers and members of the executive board saw compensation ranging from $1800 to $8600, while many board directors were listed as receiving zero compensation.

To be continued

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