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Special coverage from the National Pork Forum in Kansas City, Mo., March 4-6, 2010
Most people are most worried about factors that affect their families and personal lives, i.e., cost of living, cost of health care, employment/unemployment, personal finances and the safety and welfare of their families and themselves, according to Mark Williams, managing partner of the Motus Group in Chicago.
Their first food concern expression is the cost of food, which comes 29th on a list of 100 concerns, and how animals are raised on farms is "way down the list," Williams said yesterday in reporting research commissioned by NPPC. This provides some balance" to what seems to be constant consumer fret surrounding animal agriculture and meat production, he said.
The research found that consumers don't think as much as believed about agriculture, he said, and if prompted enough, 20% of consumers have no real issues with agriculture and most think first about field production.
If prompted even more, they finally think about animal agriculture, and if prompted even more, they finally think about pork production, and the issues they have about pork production concern A/H1N1, food safety and farm waste, he said.
Everyone believes that animals should be well cared for, but how animals are grown on farms is not top of the mind, he said.
Williams said the research identified a consumer group that he called "engaged consumers" who are active, involved and attentive and who belong, vote and consume news. There are about 35 million engaged consumers in the U.S., he said.
The rest of the consumer segment is just not involved, he said.
The research also found that there is "a fine line between talking and talking too much," and talking too much comes off as being too aggressive, he said. Furthermore, the work also learned that "less is more," i.e., talking about multi-million industries loses people, as do "unfriendly words . . . like science and technology," he said.
Accordingly, Williams said, producers need to be careful about how much talking they do to/with consumers. Certainly, producers want to talk with engaged consumers because they are influential -- "the one who move minds" -- but "broadcasting" messages to everyone isn't necessarily a good strategy, he said. In response to questions, Williams said broadcasting messages simply makes most of consumers aware of something of which they were not previously aware, although mass messaging when an issue is hitting the front pages of newspapers and the tops of news programs every day would be recommended, as did the Pork Board and NPPC during the H1N1 crisis last spring and the recent CBS report on antibiotics use in animal agriculture. |
