Wyoming CattleWomen Continue Beef Promotion Efforts
Wyoming CattleWomen – what does the future look like? We did a survey in the spring to see what members wanted and what should we be doing. All came back strongly encouraging the beef promotion arena. CattleWomen do this extremely well and will continue to do so. The face of promotion may change as our times are changing. The food demonstrations in the grocery stores are becoming a rare thing, and serving meals is not such a mainstay as it once was. The hard part is how do we restructure our demonstrations to better reach out to the consumer?
CattleWomen will being doing two sessions of in-store demonstrations over the next couple of months trying to reach out to those consumers that are shopping for their families. One of the locations is in Cheyenne, and the other is in Billings, Mont.
One of the main items we have been known for over the years is the Beef Gift Certificates. This has been a great project for CattleWomen, but as time has evolved and banks went to gift cards, we had some problems with them and were unable to continue using them. We made the decision to go back to the old paper style, but we are finding that there are issues to be faced with them. People are not purchasing the gift certificates as much, and then, they are not being redeemed once they are purchased. Either people just forget they have them or the retailers don’t take them, and the bank that is listed on the certificate has changed names a couple times. The cost of reprinting is expensive. Are we really serving a quality purpose with the old beef gift certificates? We will be faced with the decision of if we continue to promote and use these, how do we adapt them to fit today’s consumers?
We have partnered with the Wyoming Beef Council in the use of some of the checkoff dollars for several years. As they structure their focus of how those funds can be used a bit differently, it makes us look at how we pass these funds on to our grassroots groups. There will now be a pre-approval process that will be looked at by the CattleWomen and the Beef Council to assure that the promotion is in accordance with the Wyoming Beef Council objectives.
Wyoming CattleWomen are like all the organizations – looking to increase our membership. How do we show the benefits of belonging to the up-line organizations to our grassroots members. How we increase numbers is still a planning endeavor. One way we may utilize is that Powder River Panels is donating a chute to the state that has the largest increase in membership for the next year. Wouldn’t it be great if Wyoming could win that?
Wyoming CattleWomen will continue to be a voice and stay strong in the beef promotion arena. Who else will be telling our stories and sharing our great tasting healthy beef entrees if we don’t?
