Beef Checkoff Launches “I Heart Beef” Month-Long Campaign
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Suggested Lead: February is heart health month. To those in the beef industry that means it’s time to remind consumers how much they love beef and how great it is for them. Kim Essex helps manage promotional efforts for the Beef Checkoff Program and she says the timing is terrific for a campaign that is tailor-made for beef.
Essex 1: “We’re coming off the holidays, which are good for us. Going into grilling season, which is great for us. And in between we slow down a little bit, so your checkoff is working very hard to sustain in particular middle meat sales. Steak sales are off, because it’s hard for consumers to pay the prices that we demand for our product. It’s a high quality product, and those competing proteins are lower priced. So we want to really tell consumers: There’s a great value, and a great deal, in steak sales. And how we’re doing that is through a campaign we’re calling ‘I Heart Beef,’ really reminding consumers about how much they love our product, and how they celebrate with it. And remind them that special occasions are always about beef.” (40 seconds)
Essex says it’s a full month of publicity efforts aimed at a variety of audiences.
Essex 2: “All 28 days of February we have something going on. We actually kicked it off a little early because we wanted to be in those newspapers and in those stories during February. We reached out to 10,000 reporters. We already have 35 million impressions, which is basically how many times consumers are seeing beef producers’ beef checkoff messages, and we expect that to grow exponentially. We’ve reached out to 5,000 health professionals and started the recipe contest. So we’ve got a lot going on.” (27 seconds)
According to Essex, the primary target for the campaign is a consumer group called ‘food and health involved.’
Essex 3: “About 50 percent of American consumers right now fall into that category. So it’s a significant market. They also kind of lead the way with food trends and health trends. So they inform their neighbors and their family about how to eat and how to stay healthy. And we want them to be sharing beef as part of their messages to their family and friends.” (20 seconds)
The “I Heart Beef” campaign is part of a larger year-long publicity effort that has a huge goal.
Essex 4: “The target is 3 billion impressions, which sounds like a ton, and it really is. It’s about the number of times we are exposing consumers to a message in a year. So within this year we’re shooting for 3 billion impressions.” (15 seconds)
For more information about the “I Heart Beef” campaign or other efforts being funded with your beef checkoff investment, visit www.MyBeefCheckoff.com.
The Beef Checkoff Program was established as part of the 1985 Farm Bill. The checkoff assesses $1 per head on the sale of live domestic and imported cattle, in addition to a comparable assessment on imported beef and beef products. States retain up to 50 cents on the dollar and forward the other 50 cents per head to the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board, which administers the national checkoff program, subject to USDA approval.
Funded by the Beef Checkoff.