Building trust in the red meat sector
Meat & Livestock Australia is the research, development and marketing organisation for the Australian red meat and livestock industry.
Increasingly, consumers want to know how food is produced and community expectations about the social and environmental impacts of food production are changing. Meat & Livestock Australia engaged Currie to engage key opinion leaders, improve transparency and, in doing so, build trust towards the $20 billion Australian red meat industry.
Strategies
Through extensive stakeholder engagement, Currie facilitated the co-design of the first-ever blueprint for sustainable beef production – the Australian Beef Sustainability Framework. The Framework enables the beef industry to engage stakeholders, foster best-practice and measure, track and report progress to decision-makers, including government.
Stakeholders were mapped and analysed using a qualitative assessment matrix that prioritises stakeholders on power versus interest scales and rates stakeholder salience as a guide to targeting messages. A model of outreach based on the International Association Public Participation (IAP2) spectrum was used to engage stakeholders. The campaign comprised an online forum, vlogs, infographics, workshops, case studies, eNews, socials, media relations, videos, government relations, stakeholder briefings and a web site.
Results
(Sept. 2017-Aug. 2018)
Web site
- 4,493 visits
- 4011 unique visitors
- 415 unique downloads of 2018 Annual Update
eNews
- 47% open rate (cf. 14% industry average)
- 12% click rate (cf. 2% industry average)
Workshops
- 7.9/10.0 average “approval” score by attendees
Twitter
- 881 followers
- 1 new follower per day, on average
- 4,824 engagements
- 304,397 impressions
Media
- 196 media mentions
- 916,482 aggregated press circulation
- 10.7 million aggregated online reach
The Federal Minister for Agriculture received the industry’s first progress report, the 2018 Annual Update, in May 2018. Since the start of the campaign no new national laws governing the use of beef grazing lands or animals in Australia have been made. In 2019, the US beef industry followed Australia and launched a beef sustainability framework.
Testimonial
“It’s refreshing to work with an agency that genuinely has a deep understanding of sustainability and the complexities that come with it. This, in combination with their broad networks and a passion for stakeholder engagement, have been the perfect fit for this project.” – Pip Band, Manager, Sustainability and Stakeholders, Meat & Livestock Australia.
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