Working Ranch Magazine Summer 2025

and marketing. There are so many interactive beef activities for the kids, and we can talk to parents and dispel so much of the guilt society places on them around food, and provide them with assurance there are so many great and affordable ways to put beef on their plates at home with out needing to buy into all the trendy buzzwords associated with marketing nowadays. Being able to dispel misin formation and alleviate concerns is a very real win that sticks with you. AH: It may not sound exciting, but from an ROI perspective, we’ve had tremendous success with our ‘Southeastern States Beef Promotion Campaign.’ We do it as a summer grilling series and then tackle cer tain holidays as well. It’s an online campaign, and we utilize a variety of media types, lots of information cre ated at the national level, and then we partner with our regional states and run the campaign. We are also for tunate that several midwestern state beef councils help fund us to be able to reach more people, because most of our region has relatively small cattle numbers but incredibly large popula tions, so it’s a way for us to collabo rate in a variety of ways and reach a large number of consumers through that collaborative effort, when we wouldn’t have the funds as an indi vidual state to do it on our own. AH: If we don’t promote our product no one else will. The checkoff proves year in and year out that the ROI it provides is fantastic. We are doing great work across the country, and state beef councils are working hard to represent their producers in ways they don’t have time for. Every dol lar spent is determined by producers serving on boards, who are metic ulous in vetting proposals to make sure our limited funding is going to be spent in the most effective ways possible. It’s truly grassroots, pro ducer run, and the time they invest to serve our whole industry is not taken WR: What’s a program you’ve had a lot of success with? WR: Why are check-off funds important?

NC Beef Backer winners - this is a foodservice award that recognizes a restaurant that goes above and beyond in serving beef.

NC Beef Char-Grill contest winners. The NC Beef Council is a sponsor of this event which fea tures young grilling enthusiasts with their original recipes and beef presentations to judges.

NC Farm Tour with Director of Con sumer Information, Ashley Herring.

lightly. It makes me so proud to repre sent them and all the incredible work they do back home to create such an incredible product that is easy to want to promote and get behind. Beef producers have such a powerful story

to tell, and the checkoff allows us to share it with the masses.

WR encourages producers to have a voice by being active and involved in an association that aligns with your ideals.

SUMMER 2025 I 87