In The Land Of The Blind…

From the foregoing observations we deduce that the wide variety in flock products’ character causes marketing difficulties.  Unless agencies stir up eager consumers for each wool type, and unless packages of sheep meat get identified by flavor traits, there can be little gained in trying to promote any of it on a mass scale.  Each wrongly or non-identified product cuts the chances of holding loyal customers.

No association can gaze into a crystal ball and see how my flock’s meat tastes, nor can it know from year to year if any given type of wool’s supplies will be sufficient to fill U.S demand.  If not, then its promo benefits America’s competitors.

Promotion agencies and officials must therefore grope in the dark no matter how experienced they may be in promotion because they can’t MARKET it.

I may not be an expert textile-worker, but if I’m at least acquainted with what my wool is best for, I have vision where the officials are blind—they have no idea what I’m producing.

The same holds true for my flock’s meat flavor.  I don’t have to be a butcher to rate it against other lamb or mutton as gamy or mild.  Personal experience with my products gives me at least a little hands-on vision of what I can offer to the public, while faraway “experts” can’t help but be blind to it.  If stores don’t sell lamb in my region, then I have a market all to myself.  Even if officially-promoted lamb is available, I still have the market all to myself, because none of that lamb’s flavor is knowable.

Likewise, if I grow wool that’s best  for a specific use, my tiny spark of dim vision is way ahead of the total blindness of an agency or official trying to promote it from afar.  Thus, mass promotion can’t possibly compete against flock marketing.

Remember:  In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

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.