CONTENTS

Evaluation Principles and Data Needs

Manager's Viewpoint

Editor's Notes

Director’s Corner

Next Meeting

NEC-63 Fall 1997 October 6-7, 1997 Washington, DC A Symposium to Examine the Effectiveness of Different Nutrition Education Programs

Manager's Viewpoint

by Bill Allen, President
The Catfish Institute

The Catfish Institute (TCI) qualifies as a “limited budget promotion organization” with total annual revenues varying from around $2 million when TCI was organized in 1986 to $3.4 million in 1996. The goals of The Catfish Institute are to increase awareness, improve attitudes, and increase demand for U.S. farm-raised catfish. TCI differs from most U.S. commodity promotion organizations in several ways. First and most notably, we are an independent, nonprofit corporation, not created or regulated by any sort of federal or state mandated “checkoff” legislation.

The Catfish Institute executes its various programs through arrangements with agencies and independent contractors with annual review and renewal options, rather than through staffing. We have found this to be a very satisfactory method of retaining the specific expertise that we need to address vastly different target audiences and still retain the flexibility to change targets and tactics without upsetting staff positions. When we start “evaluating,” we are essentially evaluating agency or contractor performance. We routinely build a number of specific measurement vehicles into each agency or contractor budget. My job is that of a “manager,” overseeing and coordinating the activities of the various agencies and contractors while reporting directly to a board of directors appointed by member feed mills.

While no specific program of evaluation is required of The Catfish Institute, evaluation is probably more important to us than to other commodity organizations. We must constantly evaluate the results of our expenditures and report on our activities to various industry groups in order to keep the support of the catfish farmers and processors in addition to the voluntary financial backing of member feed mills.

The Catfish Institute has been generally viewed as “successful” by various industry groups and outside observers. Total round weight sales volume of catfish from farmers to processors has grown along with growth revenues at the processor level. Best of all, this growth has occurred with relatively stable pricing to farmers and processors compared to the recent explosive growth in U.S. salmon consumption accompanied by disastrous pricing consequences for producers.

It’s my personal opinion that generic promotional organizations usually get too much credit when things are good and likewise take too much of blame when their industries are experiencing problems. Realistically, an organization like The Catfish Institute, spending from 0.5 percent to 1.0 percent of industry gross revenues on promotion, cannot be expected to dramatically impact short-term supply and demand cycles or pricing. What we can do is develop carefully targeted programs to help allocate limited revenues to activities that will improve consumer attitudes toward the product over the long term and create a more favorable selling environment for our processors. Our current spending mix is approximately 65 percent consumer advertising; 15 percent public relations activities; 7 percent targeted food service and culinary school promotion and training programs; 7 percent targeted export promotions to Germany (net of USDA/MAP funds); and 6 percent overhead and administrative costs.

For advertising, we conduct consumer and trade focus group interviews from time to time to see how various audiences view our messages and what they take home from our advertisements. We also conduct “attitude, awareness, and usage surveys” by telephone on a biannual basis to track demographics of catfish users, measure changes in awareness and usage of the product, and monitor their agreement or disagreement with certain specific product attributes. We have also used coupons extensively in print ads to provide performance comparisons between various publications within a media schedule. One final measurement for advertising is econometric modeling. This may be the best possible way to isolate the effectiveness of various media advertising tactics when sufficient data is available to evaluate.

For public relations, the most tangible measurement comes from clipping services. We spend lots of time and money each year disseminating information to various food and news editors, and this is the best way to determine whether they use or discard it. We go a step beyond clipping services by sending our clips to an independent evaluation agency to audit them based on the total number of catfish stories or spots, estimated total audience, and estimated dollar value of equivalent advertising. More importantly, we audit clips for specific messages that we’ve included in our press materials. We don’t want to take credit for random catfish articles, but we are especially pleased when we can document our specific messages being picked up and reported by editors.

Evaluation of food service promotion programs might include “mystery shopper” visits to various food service outlets to confirm that they are, in fact, running TCI promotions and visibly displaying materials sent to them as well as evaluation of pre and post promotion sales volume data provided by food service distributors. Evaluation of culinary school training programs might consider whether major culinary schools actually use catfish in their seafood training curriculum, whether or not they allow TCI representatives to conduct on-site training workshops for students, and whether or not they incorporate videotapes, diskettes, or other training aids sent by TCI into their teaching programs.

Our German programs are different from our U.S. programs since there is a very limited catfish distribution in Germany. We support our German efforts with MAP funding administered by USDA/FAS. TCI has a trade representative and a public relations agency in Hamburg, and initial evaluations of their efforts include such measures as the number of top German seafood importers brought on U.S. trade missions, number of German distributors carrying U.S. catfish, total export volume, number of restaurants, office cafeterias, and retail supermarkets conducting catfish promotions, and the number and quality of catfish articles written in German seafood trade and consumer publications. Also, with USDA/FAS funding, we have been required to conduct an independent evaluation of our German activities for each of the past two years.

The preceding paragraphs have detailed some of the specific measures that we use from time to time to evaluate our separate program elements, agencies, and contractors. In addition, we have to look at broader measures that relate to our effectiveness. We can’t ignore sales volume, pricing, and general industry profitability even though these are really beyond the scope of TCI activities in the short run. We also have to evaluate the relevancy of our programs to processors who are actually selling the product. I think it's very important for promotional organizations and their everchanging staff and agency personnel to be in tune with the people who are actually growing, processing, marketing, distributing, and selling the product. This takes a little effort in communication and analysis of personal feedback from the industry.

In summary, I think that managers and directors of promotional organizations should consider as many different types of evaluation vehicles as possible when making decisions. Realize that none of them are infallible and that no one has invented a magic formula that will accurately consider all factors that affect sales of our products and give absolute quantitative analysis of promotional programs. Don’t panic when certain measures indicate problems or poor performance. Work closely with the staff, agency, or contractor responsible when things don’t turn out as expected. If they are worth their hire, they will help to honestly evaluate the situation and identify problems and possible solutions for future programs. If they resist criticism and change, find new people.

In managing a “limited budge promotional organization,” I think that the key is to carefully evaluate all programs on an ongoing basis, try to strike a balance between total inflexibility and extreme knee-jerk reactions to various evaluation methods, and seek to carry out a few well-planned and executed programs over a long period of time.