IBIE - 2019 Special Edition & Show Preview - 105

4 Key Program Elements
Mr. Nagle. He spoke in mid-May in an online townhall
meeting about different elements likely to be incorporated any program ultimately launched.
A consumer-facing integrated marketing and communications program is what Mr. Nagle said is most
generally associated with a checkoff program, and such
a campaign with a broad message about breadbasket
products is likely to be incorporated, he said.

A conversation about nutrition
Underpinning such a campaign and nearly all the checkoff messaging will be food science and nutrition research, Mr. Nagle said.
"This is important for any major food category program because it informs and drives a lot of important
things that contribute to success," he said. "It informs a
national conversation about food and nutrition among
opinion leaders and policy makers and all the people who
shape the food and nutrition wisdom in the country."
Also important is to provide science-based information to the retail nutrition community, which
Mr. Nagle said is trying constantly to meet consumer
needs around nutrition.
"When you go down the bread aisle in the grocery store
today, you see a lot of science- and nutrition-based claims,
or at least they purport to be science- and nutrition-based,"
Mr. Nagle said. "A lot of the best-practice programs have
engaged the retail nutrition community. There are a lot of
nutritionists who work for retailers who are really good targets for these sorts of programs. Food science and nutrition
research also informs the foodservice institutional feeding
channel of the business, in terms of menu and product development and also their own marketing. In both channels,
retail and food service, you see the consumer facing, they
typically will be pleased to see the industry promoting its
overall set of products to the consumer. They want the consumer to want your products."
Understanding the importance of such interactions with
nutritionists at food retailers and foodservice institutions
requires realistic expectations for what a consumer-facing
campaign alone will accomplish, Mr. Nagle said.
"I'll bring up the 'Got Milk' fallacy," he said. "I feel OK saying that since I spent 10 years on that program. [The fallacy
is that] if you just run great ads and PR, everything will go
better, and sales will go through the roof. Even the milk folks
didn't experience that. In order to really drive bottom-line
outcomes, you have to have a powerful consumer-facing
message like 'Got Milk,' but you also need ways to drive your
marketing program into the channels and get traction there.
"Some of the best programs are involved with menu
and product development in the foodservice channels,
showing people how their products contribute to better
consumer-facing products and better outcomes with their

GFF

customers. The dairy folks in Chicago have full-time staff
at McDonald's," Mr. Nagle said. "They've had some of the
best success in getting big foodservice players to think about
their commodity group in more aggressive ways in terms of
product development. And also reaching out to that retail
nutrition community."
To change attitudes, the objective is not to silence naysayers, Mr. Nagle said. Instead, the goal is to have a louder
voice in public discourse. He said public discussion about
milk was about 70% negative when the sector launched its
public relations and advertising campaign. Five years later,
discussion was 80% positive.
"Did that happen because they made all the activists
go away and shut up?" he said. "No, it happened because
the industry showed up and poured positive messaging through PR and a variety of other messaging into the
public sphere. So, by the time they were done, the industry
share of voice was just a lot bigger than the activists and the
haters. They will never go away. Making them go away is
not the goal. Making them irrelevant is the right goal and
absolutely achievable."
Having conducted research across the research and
foodservice channels, Mr. Nagle said customers will be receptive to a campaign from the baking industry. Retailers
perceive bread and grains as critically important and see
opportunities to leverage fresh and local, tapping into the
importance of sandwiches.
"They want a vision and elevated position for grain foods,"
Mr. Nagle said. "They say things for which the answer is the
program that you all are considering. They are focused on
category leadership with a focus on invigorating sales. They
are willing to experiment. They want innovation."

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