Connecting with Consumers

Consumer Engagement Update

By Jennifer Kyle, Manager of Public Engagement and Digital Strategy jennifer@ontariobeef.com • www.ontbeef.com

So, what have we been up to through the end of 2021 and in the first quarter of 2022? We’ve been busy! From social media campaigns and podcast advertising to AgScape partnership and traditional public relations campaigns, we have been working hard to connect with folks through a number of avenues to get the good news about Ontario beef and beef farming out to the people of Ontario.

Enjoy Some Local Flavour Campaign

After another successful summer BBQ campaign, our fall iteration kicked off in mid-November. This campaign, Enjoy Some Local Flavour, saw us partner with five different Ontario food and beverage brands to do some crosspromotion and get folks thinking about creative ways to dress up their beef.

Beef in the Classroom

Over the past year, we have continued to strengthen our relationship with AgScape to work on getting our beef messaging in front of students. As part of this, we worked with the AgScape team to create three curriculum-linked resources for grades 7-12. Touching on various subject areas from health and physical education to social studies, science, careers, and technology, these resources aim to provide an overview of the practices involved in the production of beef in Ontario from farm to table. The resource, An Exploration of Beef Farming in Ontario, was launched during Ontario Agriculture Week in October and AgScape has since had well over 250 requests for the resource.

In addition to the resource, we have increased our overall support for AgScape to help enhance their Teacher Ambassador Program and translate their offerings for use in the French language and French Immersion classrooms. We will continue to work closely with AgScape to help them deliver on their mandate to bring accurate and balanced information about farming and food production to classrooms across the province.

Environmental PR Campaign

In September, we kicked off a traditional public relations campaign aimed specifically at getting more good news stories into the media about beef and beef farming’s positive impacts on the environment. The campaign was very successful achieving 152 pieces of media coverage and 42.1 million impressions from September 2021 through March 2022. In addition to the earned media, we also ran two sponsored pieces with MacLean’s magazine in late December and the Toronto Star in early January, with a third planned for Toronto Life this spring. One of the biggest highlights of the campaign was landing an op-ed piece in the Financial Post in early March. This article equates to “PR Gold” as it is incredibly rare to get an op-ed picked up by a major, daily paper. The piece was picked up by the Financial Post, syndicated by 87 outlets and its parent paper, The National Post, also chose to run it in their print edition that same day. That op-ed alone garnered over 15 million impressions. The PR campaign would not have been possible without a number of producers and industry partners who have generously lent their time and expertise to accommodate these media requests. We wish to extend a huge thank you to all of the folks who have served as our spokespeople over the past several months. OB