NR ARWX
AU Searjeant,G.
TI Put customers first to get the beef back in les rosbifs
QU The Times (London) 1996 March 25
PT Zeitungsartikel
VT
Americans tell a cautionary marketing tale. In the early 1970s, Schlitz Brewing, then second to Budweiser in the US beer market, cut costs by using processed ingredients and halving its brewing cycle. Profits boomed in 1973 and management was lauded on Wall Street for being smarter than its rival. Why build in traditional quality if customers don't notice? But customers do eventually notice, however much advertisements lie. By the end of the decade, Schlitz was the number seven brand. Its shares fell 90 per cent before a smaller brewer stepped in to the rescue.
If Schlitz was a disaster, it is worse when a food synonymous with Britain is banned on the Continent, scorned by les rosbifs at home and rejected by McDonald's. British beef is not a single product, let alone a company brand like Schlitz, but the ruin facing this complex industry stems from the same mistake.
In the book Brand Power, Bradley Gale writes: "Brand power is essentially the power of customer-perceived quality." Using quality inputs and proper processes is as central to marketing as packaging and promotion. To progress, industry seeks to make things cheaper as well as better. But cutting costs at the expense of quality is a dangerous game.
In a meat market that came to be dominated by powerful buyers lording over small sellers, ever more pressure was exerted to keep costs down. Cattle products were treated as a commodity, whose quality seemed irrelevant for most uses. The Ministry of Agriculture was the ultimate guardian of the British beef brand, but, as so often, a Government that browbeats others to put customers first, put them last itself. The BSE story, and the "scares" that have punctuated it, is less a medical saga than a marketing one.
Having eschewed the well-tried slaughter policy of dirigiste days, ministers had to keep telling customers that they were wrong. This absurdity required a myopic mental cartel of the Treasury, BSE-hit farmers and suppliers, along with customers such as food retailers and fast-food groups who should have known better. How else could minority products such as ox-tongue just be written off?
If these interests had not concentrated on maintaining the status quo by hectoring customers, competitive market forces would have resolved matters by now. Good meat from certified BSE-free herds would have driven out the bad. Milk, beef and hamburgers would cost more. Dairy farming, which depends on the income from selling calves, would be in deep trouble, requiring bridging aid from taxpayers. But a smaller, more profitable beef industry would be returning to health and most of the £600 million export market would have been saved.
Not for nothing did Perrier respond to a loss of consumer confidence by having its entire stocks treated as industrial waste by a water company. Perrier was saved. British beef is a dead brand. Like Ratners, it has a negative value. The sooner it is buried the better.
That need not mean we abandon British cattle-farming, lose about 1 per cent of the national income, force sterling down and inflate prices. To rebuild, however, the industry must put customers first. An industry task force should be set up that includes marketing rather than medical experts. It needs to act fast if markets are not to be lost permanently to imports. Catering markets may already be a goner.
Roasting beef and steak producers should never have been tarred with the BSE brush; most herds are free of it. They should find it easiest to adjust. The essential change, I fancy, will be to move from a commodity approach to direct supply relationships. This is bad news for cattle markets. But it is the only way to trace meat reliably and will help farmers to reverse decline in quality.
In place of "British beef", new trustworthy brands must fill the vacuum. Some will be big supermarkets and butchers, who already play with premium ranges. These will be matched by producer groups with common standards and policing, controlled breed groups such as Aberdeen Angus Producers (Scotland), organic herds policed by the Soil Association, assurance schemes such as the Scottish Quality Beef and Lamb Association, and co-operatives. Those who can guarantee that their herds have been fed naturally, closed to doubtful outside animals and have never had BSE, should market themselves as a new product. To cut completely adrift, they might give the word beef a rest in favour of steer, bullock or heifer, or a breed. Some certified meat aimed at continental markets could be diverted to a new home market.
To go much further, however, the Government needs to change its stance and help. As in business, change will only be credible if heads roll, regardless of blame. If politicians do not volunteer, the chief medical officer would be a good start. He has lost public confidence.
Certification of BSE-free herds needs to be tighter and better enforced to beat growing fraud. A new labelling scheme should, perhaps, separate meat raised in closed, organically farmed herds, mainstream dedicated beef herds and fattened dairy calves. In these cases, quality and lack of risk go together. Customers already demand different ranges of eggs.
This will be of little avail, however, unless the public is convinced that BSE will be eradicated quickly and that no high-risk meat is sold. Meat outside approved categories should be banned from human food, infected dairy herds quarantined and mass slaughter begun.
This will cost taxpayers a packet, so a tax-cutting Chancellor may regret cutting his contingency reserve to the bone. But politicians need to save dairy farmers even if beef is sliced in half. On the street, mothers are already muttering about milk.
SP englisch
PO England