It has been a long day, I’ve spent several hours driving to Toronto and back, productive meetings, turkey barns checked and time well spent with the family, but after too many social media feeds about Mr. Trump or Mr. Bernier, I needed some humour… and asked myself a recurring question, Who owns my market?

Check out Meat and Livestock Australia’s version of owing their market, lamb!  This award winning commercial is clever and touches on food as a uniting factor across cultures, with a twist of Aussie humour… take a look as they seek to ‘own Australia Day’.

In following with my quest of meeting consumer driven needs in the market place, a question around the use of dollars that are invested in marketing and communication, particularly in our supply managed boards is an important factor, what value do we have in promoting our products and how should the dollars be spent? Particularly with generic marketing where it is about informing, educating and ensuring product awareness is prevalent.

As a turkey farmer, I am envious to my dairy peers in the dollars allocated to budgets at a national level, but at the same time, what is the message, the purpose and does it make a difference?  With a niche (and preferably not so niche) protein like Turkey, perhaps we don’t have a vision, or we have lost sight of the goal.  Are we simply a festive protein with duality year round? Or have we even given up this festive space to other meats?  Do we even have an identity?

In meeting with the marketing representative at Woolworth Grocery Retailer in Sydney last month, he recommended I look at the humorous pork advertisements that helped stabilize consumption in the country.  I know most certainly that marketing is much more about product, price, positioning etc., but the funny side of cultural advertisements, at least makes you think about ‘putting pork on your fork’.  I realize its the lighter of side of marketing, and to be fair, I am not sure all Canadians would see the same humour, but seeing how our food is marketed elsewhere is at least worth a watch.

So again, Who owns your market?  I sure hope the answer is that we do, the socially organized, market responsive industry that ultimately meets consumer needs with availability, fair pricing and a knowledge that local farmers are a part of responsibly and competitively growing this food for you!