What’s So Hard About Mass-Marketing Lamb & Wool

In the past, when I’ve pointed out that for many decades this nation hasn’t really marketed flock products, some folks mistakenly thought I was pointing the finger of blame at them or at their cherished institutions.

Let me be clear:  It’s no association or official’s fault that U.S. sheep products are so hard to mass-market.  Our nation’s lamb and wool varies so much in character from breed to breed and in growing methods that these products are nearly indefinable, and thus not readily mass-marketable.  This is starting to become true of the global sheep biz too.

For example:  The term “wool” means a lot of contradictory things.  There is a separate sheep-sourced fiber for each of the following uses:

• Heavy mattress-stuffing
• Plaster reinforcement.
• Firm, resilient, durable carpets.
• Silky-smooth tapestries
• “Bouncy” outerwear.
• Non-springy weaving warp.
• Felt of all descriptions
• Non-felting wool comforter fill.
• Delicate, no-itch undergarments and baby-clothes.

These highly-varied uses can be further categorized into sub-classes produced or modified by myriad husbandry and handling practices. Yet customers (wrongly) know all wool is the same—it all itches (wrong), it all shrinks (wrong), and it smells (definitely wrong—plastic textiles are what that makes you stink).  For garments and furnishings, wool is today’s supreme comfort textile, but the public doesn’t know it.  Why?

Well for one thing, we can’t promote all wool one way.  Ethically, a promo campaign paid for by all growers must benefit all growers.  It won’t help most U.S. growers if we promote wool as if it all provided “soft, next-to-skin comfort,” because most U.S. flockmasters don’t grow that kind of wool.

So we just shout “buy wool!” and hope some buyers get the kind they like.

Similarly, we also can’t in truth claim “U.S. lamb is mild-tasting,” though we’ve all seen promos that claim just that.  The first trial pack of gamy lamb bought by a new buyer heeding that call wins only an enemy.  There are even absurd, self-cancelling sales pitches saying things like “savor the rich, mild flavor of our lamb….”  C’mon, which is it, rich or mild?  If it can’t be defined, it can’t be marketed.

Practically every book on sheep-keeping contains a chapter or two on “marketing.”  But in the books I’ve read, I’ve rarely seen anything on marketing, only selling tips.

Marketing means “find a need, then fill it.”  Promotion means “try to get folks to buy what you already produced.”

There seems to be little interest in real marketing in the sheep biz.  Widespread belief that it’s just promo may be a reason why U.S. sheep numbers have steadily declined for nearly 60 years.  The decades have seen many officials come and go who claimed they were marketing sheep products yet they didn’t know or just disregarded the difference between that and promotion.  Again and again, the only thing proved was that promotion without marketing didn’t grow the nation’s sheep industry.

Promotion can get “trendsetter” types to buy once; marketing builds the health of overall demand.  Promotion only initiates illusory, temporary “test-buying.”  But consumers repeatedly buying flock products are what keep sheep growers in business.  Flock-product promotion is important, but marketing has to come first.  When we promote without marketing, buyers cannot sense any concern for their needs in our approach, which is why we miss the mark.  When we aim at nothing, we always hit it.

We as growers have for many decades been paying for what we thought were marketing services through dues, head taxes, check-offs, fundraisers, etc.  That makes us the “customers” of these services—we are the ones with the money.  Yet despite all the millions of dollars spent, Americans now consume far fewer U.S. flock products—both overall and per capita—than they did 50 years ago.  And this, despite growth in population and buying power.  Many of us sheep-grower “customers” are wrongly convinced that every penny of the money spent so far has made life better for us.  This drives home an incontestable point:  Customers aren’t always right, even when the customers are us.

“Animal Procedures Are Cruel”

Mankind has come a long way over many millennia in the arena of humaneness, most recently in the work of the famous Dr. Temple Grandin.  Her discoveries and research have helped slaughter facilities everywhere reduce animal discomfort in the slaughter process.  Even kosher and halal slaughter (which use no stunning) now take place without significant animal suffering.  See more at Dr. Grandin’s web page, which covers animal transport, handling, slaughter and facilities design.

      Now imagine if no one ate meat, how many and how big fences would have to be built to keep wandering, overpopulating, starving farm animals out of gardens and fields!  “Mercy killing” would be inevitable.  Vegans very often will kill animals they think are suffering, but for reasons known only to themselves will not use the meat.  It goes to waste or is fed to animals like cats and dogs, which have no self-inhibitions to kill.

      A veterinarian castrates an animal for pay; a pet-lover does it to prevent overpopulation; a farmer does it to increase meat quality; a sicko does it to get his “jollies.”  But you know, the animal may feel the same no matter the motive.  So is it one’s motive that makes it cruel or humane?  Is mercy killing always merciful?

      It can be argued that cruelty to animals sometimes averts greater evils.  King Solomon noted 3000 years ago, “The righteous man regardeth the life of his beast, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.” (Proverbs 12:10)  Cruel behavior, though not approved, was a valuable way to see of whom to beware.  Cruelty can be accidental, negligent or intentional.  When staged for publicity purposes, it’s the latter.  When its remedy is delayed in order to get camera footage, it’s the second and third—really hard to excuse.  Yet they’re the bread and butter of the professional animal sympathist industry.  Even so, let’s be wary of the assumptio non probata, lest we lose our moral high ground to money-grubbing activists whose tender mercies are cruel, and thus lose the opportunity to please the real customers, who just want to look out for “the life of their beast.”