By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, October 8, 2021
MADISON, Wis. – A new and different – essentially vigorous — paradigm in milk marketing and promotion was the focus of an American Dairy Coalition discussion in Madison on Sept. 30th during the 54th World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin.
Bill Gutrich, senior director of food industry engagement-USA with Elanco Animal Health shared his insights and experience having spent his career in the consumer-packaged goods sector for global brands like Coca Cola, McDonalds and Samsung before coming into animal agriculture three years ago.
“We have a great product and producers do a great job, but we need to increase domestic dairy consumption, specifically,” said Gutrich to an in-person audience of over 50 people (flowing in and out of the Monona Room of the WDE Exhibition Hall). Another 30 people attending virtually online.
The ADC event attracted dairy producer thought leaders from east to west and generated follow up discussion and good questions. ADC CEO Laurie Fischer said the discussion is a starting point and hopes to see allied industries that are committed to animal agriculture join in on the bandwagon to shift the milk message, the animal protein message, in the face of the accelerated barrage of new plant-based and lab-grown lookalikes.
“We need a group such as yourselves to help us move forward,” said Fischer. “We are in this together.”
One statistic Gutrich shared that was quite revealing is that 51% of total sales in the milk section are fluid milk, but only 33% of the retail milk space is devoted to milk. On the other hand, he said, 9% of total sales in the milk section are plant-based non-dairy alternatives, but almost twice the space — 17% of the milk space is devoted to non-dairy alternatives because there are so many varieties.
With so many different brands and variations of non-dairy alternative products coming onto the market and ramping up rapidly, this supply chain effort is essentially crowding out real milk in a manner that is not consistent with true consumer demand.
Likewise, the anti-animal activists are small in number but loud in advocacy. In effect, the gap between perception and reality on messaging as well as shelf-space vs. sales is that smaller sales, smaller numbers flood milk’s space and take positive attention away from milk, but this is not necessarily by consumer choice.
If Gutrich had a magic wand, he’d likely look to make milk competitive in the total beverage market, to reframe the competition and look at milk’s share of all drinks instead of share of the milk aisle. For example, consumers love cold whole milk, so if the message puts that first, then already it is connecting with the most loyal sets of consumers and connecting to their ‘why’ to build growth from that solid point.
When innovation focuses mostly on sustainability, then fewer resources are devoted to getting the message right in connecting with what consumers want.
Gutrich’s insights and discussion are consistent with his role with Elanco engaging the food industry and connecting the food chain. He talks to companies and purveyors, and from those conversations, it’s clear, he said, the people attacking animal agriculture are from the outside, pushing in. They don’t want animal ag to exist, but these are not the people we need to connect with to build loyalty to animal protein.
As the son of a police officer, Gutrich said his personal mission is to elevate the level of respect people have for farmers, much like the efforts elevating respect for our country’s veterans and law enforcement.
He said it comes down to “inspiring consumer loyalty to animal protein.”
Having worked around talented marketers outside of animal agriculture, Gutrich said he has come into the animal protein sector seeing “how we market our beautiful, incredible products to consumers.
“Every dollar starts in the hand of a consumer over the counter,” he said, describing how good marketing starts with the ‘why’, not the ‘what’ and the ‘how.’
“What are the emotional needs you need to connect with?” he wondered aloud. “They will buy the why.”
Using a borrowed analogy of the Craftsman drill, he said the ‘what’ is the buyer wants a hole. The ‘how’ is the drill. But the ‘why’ is they want to do it themselves.
The ‘why’ is what wins customer loyalty and offers the potential for a premium, Gutrich explained, noting that the key is to identify the ‘why’ and attribute it, and then “own it. That’s what great brands do.”
For Starbucks, the ‘why’ is the whole coffee-drinking experience. For Mountain Dew it is the ‘energy.’
In the dairy sector, Gutrich gave the example of Sargento Cheese, where the ‘why’ is ‘The Real Cheese People.’
“What did Kraft do?” he asked. “They labeled their cheese ‘made without hormones.’ What does that have to do with my ‘why’?”
These types of labels introduce something scary to consumers, and it has been proven in surveys and market research that these claims have little to do with their ‘why.’
“What this actually does is undermine their trust in the brand and the category,” said Gutrich, “and in the long run it’s bad for both. People want to think about serving a rich protein food, and we’re talking to them about hormones.”
Good marketing talks about consumers. Bad marketing talks about products and processes, according to Gutrich.
“Loyalty is a feeling,” he said, explaining a successful strategy communicates with consumers about the why, not so much about the process, the sustainability. Yes, sustainability and processes need to be handled, but that’s not connecting with consumers on an emotional level about their ‘why.’
“Own your consumer’s ‘why’, don’t let your critics determine your ‘why,’” he said. “All great brands have critics, but they handle the criticism separately, and keep marketing to why people love them.”
Gutrich gave some vivid emotional-connection examples: “Don’t you love how butter melts on your raisin toast or your cold milk on your cereal?”
In another non-ag example, he showed how Michelin tires own the safety-why, Goodyear owns performance. They keep their whole message consistently on their consumers’ ‘why.’
“Protein is hot,” said Gutrich. “Why aren’t we owning protein?”
The peanut butter brands own protein, and people believe peanut butter to be higher in protein than it is.
“We own protein,” said Gutrich about animal agriculture. “But instead of owning it, we create confusing talking points about the ‘whats’ and the ‘hows’ instead of owning the ‘whys.’”
Gutrich noted that supermarket scanner data show how consumers vote with their dollars, but when producers are told that they must ‘own’ sustainability because 85% of consumers want to see it and want to prioritize climate impact in their food choices, the question becomes, how were those questions asked?
When consumers are questioned with an ‘aided awareness’ style of questioning, of course they will say yes. But that percentage drops to 9% when the question does not include ‘aided awareness.’
Among consumers under 23, the Generation Z, Gutrich shared surveys showing this generation to have a higher overall level of brand loyalty (68%) compared with millennials (40%).
“There’s hope,” said Gutrich.
On fluid milk sales, specifically, he observed the well-known saga of sales decline over time, and the steep decline since 2000, but he has a different perspective on it.
“The dairy industry did this to themselves with over 10 years of ‘buy my milk with no hormones,’” he said. “Instead of focusing on your consumer’s ‘why’, the industry opened this chasm of 13% for milk alternatives to climb in.”
He analyzed domestic consumption figures from 1950 to the present, noting that domestic consumption is the issue, and it’s where the focus most likely should be. When domestic consumption growth is put beside U.S. population growth, the sales growth ultimately shows that dairy has “lost its share of stomach.” This is looking at domestic data only, excluding export sales.
“Ultimately, this means we have work to do,” said Gutrich. “How do we get back to the 1950s?”
Well, there’s no time-machine; however, he had a positive message about this, stressing that the non-dairy alternatives “are not going to take us down. Milk is in almost 95% of households. Let’s worry about our own sales growth and not worry about the alternatives.”
Breaking out the percentages, Gutrich showed that 94% of households include milk, 42% have both milk and alternatives, 3% are exclusively plant-based, and 52% are exclusively milk.
A successful brand would look at that breakdown and say: “We want to grow our loyal customers and go after the people that are closer to the ones that love milk. We want to remind them why they love milk so much.”
But instead, there are all of these triggers in the way and all of these other conversations that move the message away from the consumer’s ‘why,’ – away from the ‘why’ of the loyal or closest to loyal consumers fluid milk can build from.
“If we can continue to do better on these triggers like animal welfare, environment, carbon footprint, that’s fine, but we make it worse by talking a lot about it,” he said. “Get the marketing right. It’s about balance. The packaging dynamics are also amazingly important.”
To be continued
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