AgWired

Things are kind of quiet here today at the Cattle Industry Summer Conference since it’s committee meeting after committee meeting. They’re working but that makes it a little challenging to get to talk to and do interviews. However I caught John Dudley before his committee got started.

He’s chairman of the Joint Advertising Committee. Their meeting is combined with the Nutrition & Health Committee. The reason for that is that new creative ideas for next year’s advertising will be unveiled. John says the new advertising will combine the two messages of previous campaigns that focused on enjoyment and nutrition.

He says he’s going to solicit the opinion of all the members of both committees even though they’ve only got about 3 hours to get the job done. He says the advertising campaign will be very different from past campaigns but didn’t elaborate further. I’m sure we’ll see some more information coming out after the conference here. He did say that the campaign will only be utilizing print and radio since there’s just not enough budget to include television.

Listen to my interview with John here (4 min.): cisc-07-dudley.mp3

By the way, John’s a member of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. He says that they’re real happy to have Eldon White on board who’s their new CEO (formerly executive director of NAMA). I’ve seen Eldon here and he was smiling so I guess he’s doing fine with his new gig.

He’s no Monte Reese but . . . He’s good and he’s the CEO of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board. This is Tom’s first summer conference in his new position which he took over after Monte Reese retired. Tom’s pictured here at the media reception last night. He’s speaking with Chelsea Good, interning at the Angus Journal.

Tom is not a newcomer to the CBB as you’ll hear him say and he’s really enjoying his new position.

In my interview with Tom after the CBB Update session he describes the attitude of producers not only from his own personal observations here at the conference but also with some information from the latest producer attitude study.

For example, he points out that 7 out of 10 producers continue to support the Beef Checkoff program.

Tom says that committees will be reviewing new advertising ideas here at the conference and providing their feedback which will be used to fine tune the message for upcoming advertising campaigns.

Listen to my interview with Tom here (7 min.): cisc-07-ramey.mp3

You may know that the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association performs work for the Beef Checkoff under various contracts. The man who helps oversee that along with everything else that NCBA does is Terry Stokes, CEO. Terry is being interviewed here by Ron Hayes, Radio Oklahoma Network, in the media room this morning. BTW, Ron was just recently inducted into the Oklahoma Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

Terry says that the projects they perform for CBB are meant to increase consumer demand. There are 3 key areas that he focused on. To start with new product development is an area where research is conducted to develop products that meet consumers needs.

Another area is nutrition. He says that they know how important healthy choices are to consumers so one way they’re working to help properly position beef in consumer’s minds is working with the dairy checkoff through efforts like the joint issues forum here to find ways the two groups can better accomplish this goal. Promoting beef in international markets through the U. S. Meat Export Federation is the other area he talks about.

Besides talking about Checkoff project work Terry also gives an overview of the issue facing cattlemen that NCBA is working on like the farm bill.

Listen to my interview with Terry here (9 min.): cisc-07-stokes.mp3