Years in and Ready for 25 More

tronic era; not a small achievement.

“Cattle Country remains a highly-trusted media resource amongst industry stakeholders — and that is saying something,” Kuik says. “People want to be able to trust their information sources and the integrity of Cattle Country remains distinguished in that regard. The objective of Cattle Country remains: to create key awareness of issues, relay critical information, insight and understanding of relevant news and/or programming and facilitate the exchange of information by the use and inclusion of local, trusted knowledge and experience. As public trust in the media declines, the quality work of a community-focused paper like Cattle Country may be overlooked or underestimated, but its contribution remains vital.” easily spread through social media and other channels.

Cattle Country is something unique: it’s a paper that is founded, funded and operated by people who live in the community.

As Kuik guided the Board and staff through a strategic planning process, it became clear that the organization needed a new name that better reflected who and what it represented and so MCPA became the Manitoba Beef Producers (MBP).

“A critical issue when we were identifying our target audiences, was the urban/rural divide,” Kuik says. “It became clear that there was a more significant change in identifying language that we could make to bridge this divide and fi nd common ground with what the public audience care about. They might not readily understand all the challenges and/or issues of cattle industry, but they certainly love and care about beef. So, a critical and significant part of the new brand identity was a name change from Manitoba Cattle Producers Association to Manitoba Beef Producers.”

Of course, Cattle Country remained a mainstay of the MBP’s communications strategy, but it was time for it to step up and play a new role.

“The establishment of Cattle Country as a long-standing and trusted communication vehicle for the beef industry in Manitoba was already highly successful,” Kuik says. “Our new brand would have to be consistently represented across all the platforms of our marketing mix and so Cattle Country had to reflect that as well. Cattle Country was a legitimate, provincial newspaper and it now needed to consistently reflect the same standards as its print media counterparts in the province, and be fully identified and assimilated with the new brand standards established by Manitoba Beef Producers’ new name and identity.”

Which meant that Cattle Country got a bit of a revamp. The new Cattle Country had a fresh layout, with MBP’s new logo and tagline ‘my farm, your family, our future’ front and centre.

The logo conveyed the three pillars of MBP’s new brand: stewardship, security and sustainability, and the tagline was developed to encompass the benefits of the brand (environmental commitment, social responsibility and economic impact).

Cattle Country couldn’t have been more at home with this new identity because, for more than a decade its pages had been dedicated to bringing these increasingly important priorities to the fore. The newspaper now had an exciting role to play in telling the positive stories of modern beef production, engaging with the wider public and inspiring a new generation of beef producers to ensure a viable future for the industry.

The future?

By 2016, when Dianne Riding fi rst became an MBP director, the digital era was in full swing. So, what would that mean for a print publication like Cattle Country? Would it go the way of the dodo?

Riding quickly realized that wasn’t likely to happen any time soon because, as she found out, the paper still had a solid, loyal readership.

“As a new director, I was handed a copy of the Cattle Country subscriber list for my district and asked to go through it and remove any producers that I knew were no longer in the cattle industry,” Riding says. “That was eye opening for me because MBP started getting phone calls that their paper wasn’t coming any more. The paper is still delivered to the houses of many past producers, who still want to know what is going on in the industry, and they want that news via Cattle Country.” There may also be a bit of a fallacy that younger people, who are defi nitely at home with their devices, are foreswearing print for good.

“At a district meeting I asked one of the young producers if he had signed up for Cattle Country online, or did he still have it coming to his house,” Riding says. “He said ‘Oh yes, it’s on the cupboard at home; I have only read part of it.’ So, it’s still very valid.”

Kuik also believes that Cattle Country remains highly relevant and holds intrinsic value in our elec-

“Its writers, editors, and contributors spend countless hours researching, investigating and informing us about local issues that have direct impacts to us,” Kuik says. “Never has that been more important. While the perception may be that digital online news is more readily available, the extent of it isn’t keeping up with all Cattle Country provides and encompasses. It does not serve to appease any other interest other than to serve its readership with the same integrity and trusted content through which it has built its reputation.”

Riding says that the joke, for years has been that cattle producers needed to move into the 21st century, but as someone who ranches and lives in rural Manitoba, she knows it’s simply not possible for everyone.

“Because of the lack of good rural internet in many places, producers are not embracing digital as much as they might,” she says. “Younger producers, who have grown up with internet and laptops, embrace that really well, and there was talk that we should go more digital but you have to think about your audience, and that is why we have both print and digital options because the biggest part of our audience is getting there slowly onto the internet and the digital world, but they are never going to be fully there. In the next 10 to 15 years maybe Cattle Country will only be digital, but it will still be there because there are still going to be cattle producers on the landscape, and we will have learned better skills along the way.”

Another 25 years to go?

Today’s Cattle Country isn’t a lot different from that fi rst edition 25 years ago; it still contains interesting stories, editorials and regular columns from industry experts and the current MBP President and General Manager. It promotes new ideas and practices, covers trending issues and ones that are all-too-familiar, bull and purebred sale announcements, advertisements from many companies who have been there from the start, and the odd recipe or two that highlight the diverse options for preparing beef.

“It’s still an important avenue to get beef-specific information on all topics related to the sector,” says MBP’s current General Manager, Carson Callum. “With it being a publication mailed out to members and subscribers, it provides an ease of read for those who use it and it’s continued in that way because of all the great content that it provides and information to producers of things that are happening within their industry.”

Callum doesn’t see the focus or purpose of Cattle Country changing any time soon, even if the format may one day evolve.

“Our communication efforts to our membership will always be a top priority,” he says. “I think the Cattle Country publication will continue but will likely be tied more into a digital presence in the future. But the Cattle Country brand will stay front and centre, and continue to provide all the valuable information that producers have come to expect from it.”