A favorite weekend pastime is going to Costco or Whole Foods on a Saturday. I don’t love the crowds, but I do love the bountiful smorgasbord of samples handed out. Nothing puts a food item into a cart faster than a yummy bite.

Marketers consider sampling to be a part of experiential marketing. The fact that I can write “experiential marketing” in a column aimed at meat industry professionals demonstrates how much the landscape has changed since I started working at Meatingplace 11 years ago.

I came to Meatingplace from a magazine about and for marketers. I was with that title for a decade, as well, and came to appreciate the art and science that goes into persuasive communication.

It was jarring, then, back in 2008 to delve into the meat industry. For so many players, marketing was a foreign concept. I had sorta hoped to trot out my fancy marketing and market research vocabulary in my new job, but it was a lost cause. For most of the players I spoke with those early years, “marketing communications” began and ended with “sell it or smell it.”

More recently, however, I find myself having to brush up on the latest technologies and strategies in communications; a lot has changed in marketing in 11 years, and even more has changed in meat marketing. Yes, most fresh meat still is sold in unbranded, overwrapped packages from the meat case, but the proliferation of brand names even there is dizzying. Once the customer moves to more value-added parts of the store, the CPG-inspired battle for shelf space is in full swing. Think about the volume and variety of frozen burgers alone you can peruse at your local supermarket.

Outside the retail channel, meat companies are putting marketing might behind their b-to-b efforts, as well. One that comes to mind is Tyson Fresh Meats’ campaign, launched in early 2018, to brand the unit as “The Beef and Pork Experts.” Major meat processors are looking to work with customers on “solutions” that will help them move more product, rather than simply negotiating today’s acceptable price.

All of it — the sampling, brand-building, relationship selling and dozens of other marketing communications channels — is a departure from the science-based, fact-based, high-volume/low-price approach to business that is woven into so many processors’ cultural DNA. But think of it as capitalist Darwinism: The traditional approach is choking the commodity supply chain between high input costs at the one end and shifting consumer demands at the other. It’s time for companies to evolve.

But the commitment must be whole-hearted. The money spent on marketing and advertising, with no direct connection to revenue or profit margin, will make long-time meat business folks uncomfortable. Still, it’s a path worth taking.

Well-executed marketing can boost the top and bottom lines simultaneously, with the caveat that it must be done consistently and over a period of time for the payoffs to become tangible.

So does your research say your beef is more tender? Let consumers taste that for themselves. Do your operations enable you to offer a great value on chicken for frugal shoppers? Don’t let the price be your only communication: Advertise, or co-market your products with limited-assortment grocers or even dollar stores. Your burgers are better than the next guys? Take a cue from Schweid & Sons, who sponsors the annual South Beach (Fla.) Food & Wine Festival’s Burger Bash.

As we editors like to say, “Tell them. Tell them what you told them. Then tell them again.”

Tell 'em what you told 'em

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