There are those who’ll bail you up at the bar and wax lyrical about some escapade or other, at great length, but when it’s over you can feel a bit underwhelmed. There are other people who just seem to work away quietly, changing the world in their own small way but saying little about how.
New Zealand’s sheep and beef farmers tend towards the latter. They’ve had a great story to tell for some time but until now haven’t put their heads together to agree on the plot. Until now. The Taste Pure Nature brand launched last week by Beef + Lamb NZ looks to give our red meat a real story to tell the world about sustainability, superior taste and great farming practices.
It gives our disparate group of exporters some common ground. They will still market the qualities of their own products in their own way but this new brand will give some cohesion to NZ’s read meat exports and over time hopefully provide a point of reference for consumers globally.
It’s the type of thinking we need to do more of as a small exporting nation. Sure, each meat processor has a story to tell and they’ll still do that. But as we’ve seen with our tourism industry, telling a national story can pay big dividends down the road. And some of our competitors in overseas markets, the likes of Australia and Ireland, are already well down the track in taking a unified, simple whole-of-nation brand to market. We have a bit of catching up do do.
But think of it. If every package of NZ meat on every shelf wordlwide has its own badge of honour, one that seeps into the memories of consumers over time, what a profile we will have. Of course a great brand needs to be built on a solid foundation but compared to other farming systems we have that part sorted. Let’s get behind it.
