Out with the Old and in with the New:
Or, Why Would We Want to Trade Horses Anyway?
Donald W. Poucher
Assistant VP: Marketing
IFAS, University of Florida
Introduction
In 1999, as a part of the long-range planning effort, the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) engaged nearly 1,000 stakeholders from throughout Florida for discussions of the IFAS strengths and weaknesses and opportunities for serving the state's food and agriculture, the life sciences, and natural and human resource interests over the next decade. The planning process identified forces for change affecting Florida's engaged and future stakeholders to articulate UF/IFAS program imperatives for enhancing Florida's economic, environmental, and social positions over the next decade. The stakeholders also identified a major UF/IFAS crosscutting need: to expand efforts in enhancing the public awareness of UF/IFAS among its varied audiences through an analytically sound institutional marketing program. The planning effort resulted in a rolling five-year strategic plan: Florida FIRST, Focusing IFAS Resources on Solutions for Tomorrow.
UF/IFAS also launched a major institutional marketing program geared to its
strategic plan. The program positioned UF/IFAS as "putting Florida FIRST" through
its various efforts in agricultural, natural and human resources. Institutional
marketing program objectives included the following:
a. Short-range, developing an awareness of subunit linkages to the IFAS parent
and creating IFAS program brand awareness among IFAS supporters and clientele.
b. Long-range, positioning IFAS as the provider of choice among those clientele with an awareness of the IFAS linkage; helping public decision-makers develop a commitment to support IFAS with necessary resources at local, state, and national levels; and helping secure a private-sector commitment for generating public support of the programs.
Historical Perspective
UF/IFAS public awareness began to dwindle in the late 1970's as institutional public information efforts began to shift from popular media (radio, television, major dailies/weeklies) to agricultural/industry/commodity specific press. Given a rapidly declining farm population, such press reached much smaller audiences than did the popular press.
______________________________________________________________________________
By: Donald W. Poucher, Assistant Vice President, Marketing and Communications, University of Florida: Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences; Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists: Communications Section; February 3, 2003; Mobile, Alabama.
Furthermore, the UF/IFAS central administration mandated a shift in the public information output to a decentralized effort at the county and research center level. This deliberate shift, coupled with the redirected media targets, resulted in a significant
loss of public exposure for UF/IFAS. By 1983, the external media function within IFAS had declined to less than 40 external press releases per year being generated out of Gainesville.(1)
Even to the casual observer, it became obvious that a loss of active output to the popular media resulted in reduced institutional awareness among the general audience. The emphasis on the trade and commodity press could not make up for the loss in public exposure for UF/IFAS as a result of shifting away from an emphasis on targeting the popular audiences.
Furthermore, decentralized media efforts by counties and centers did not identify local programs with either the University of Florida or with UF/IFAS. In 1983, fewer than 5% of the newspaper clips from daily and weekly publications identified the programs as being part of UF/IFAS. Thus, while UF/IFAS programs were well known locally, little or no local linkage existed between those programs and the UF/IFAS parent organization.
In 1984, UF/IFAS recognized the need to try to recapture some of the lost awareness among the general public. Efforts to restart centralized media activity from Gainesville were resisted by some of UF/IFAS middle management. The loss of popular media contacts also contributed to restart problems of UF/IFAS, as did the resistance of top management to initiate and enforce UF/IFAS identity policies at every level.
Nevertheless, by 1988, the level of local use of UF/IFAS identity was back on the rise from less than 5% of the clips with UF/IFAS identity to 13% of weekly and daily newspaper clips throughout the state. In 1989, UF/IFAS regained television exposure throughout the state through the weekly half-hour Florida File program series on Florida public television. The television exposure, along with increased print media activity generated by intensified Gainesville-based centralized news production activities, and a quarterly popularized science publication Impact helped UF/IFAS begin to recapture much of the lost exposure of the late 1970's - early 1980's as the varied media activities began to complement each other, and the UF/IFAS identity began to develop a consistent resonance throughout the state.
However, as public awareness for UF/IFAS began to rise, the gains were nullified by two significant factors: a reduction in television emphasis by UF/IFAS central administration and the selection of a new University of Florida president.
In the mid-1990's, despite a measured weekly television audience of nearly 1,000,000 viewers and effectiveness studies reflecting a positive knowledge impact on the lives of those viewers, UF/IFAS top administration reduced its support for the statewide television series. Television outreach was limited to video news production, which became very closely monitored and regulated by University of Florida central administration. The few video news releases generated from Gainesville and aired on a random, catch-as-catch-can basis by Florida television stations could not ameliorate the loss of nearly 1,000,000 viewers per week generated by the weekly television series, Florida File, which aired in guaranteed weekly time slots on eight public stations from Miami to Pensacola. A shrinking television news hole along with increasingly fierce competition for time contributed to the low usage of UF/IFAS video releases.
The second major factor affecting UF/IFAS exposure was a UF Presidential mandate
that the UF/IFAS name identity take a back seat to the UF identity in news,
signage, and other visual and graphic representation. In 1998, a restudy of
the use of the UF/IFAS name in newspaper clips indicated a use rate of 15%,
a 10-year net growth of only 2%. In addition, the UF/IFAS identity on television
has been virtually nonexistent since the mid 1990's.
In 1999, as a prelude to the launching of the Florida FIRST strategic plan's
institutional marketing program, UF/IFAS commissioned a research project to
benchmark levels of UF/IFAS awareness among the Florida general audience. The
project provided a statistically significant correlation between levels of media
use and audience awareness.
The 1999 Research Base
The Florida FIRST marketing plan was based on the 1999 study by Breeze and
Poucher conducted in conjunction with the UF/IFAS strategic planning effort.(2)
The Breeze-Poucher study was conducted through a random digit-dialing telephone
survey of Florida households conducted in early July 1999. The questionnaire
was developed by UF/IFAS faculty and faculty in the UF Department of Political
Science. Questions focused on awareness of UF/IFAS and its major programs, and
opinions on the importance and quality of UF/IFAS programs. Six-hundred and
one interviews were completed by trained staff of the Florida Survey Research
Center in the Department of Political Science. The 95% confidence level on primary
variables was approximately ±2.5%. The study documented several important observations
about UF/IFAS public awareness, as follows:
1. Very large majorities, 65% to 98%, said programs in core UF/IFAS program
areas are important. On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being most important, programs
in the environment, energy, and food safety, were evaluated as ranging from
4.74 to 4.82. Family, youth, and community issue programming was evaluated as
ranging from 4.38 to 4.67. Home gardening issues were evaluated at a 3.56 rating.
2. Only small minorities of the population were familiar with UF/IFAS and were
aware that the core programs are part of UF/IFAS.
3. The association between UF/IFAS and local extension programs was tenuous.
4. In aided recall, respondents expressed moderate preference for UF/IFAS as
an information source on the range of core topics as previously outlined.
Respondents were given the opportunity to identify UF/IFAS as the source of programs in the core areas through both unaided and aided recall.
The unaided recall question asked, "Of what organizations are you aware
that conduct programs in agriculture, forestry, family, youth, and community
issues?"
In the unaided response, 10.1% of the respondents identified the University of Florida as the source of programs in the core areas, as compared to 5.9% for county/cooperative extension, 3% for UF/IFAS, and 81% for other federal, state and municipal agencies, education institutions, NGO's, etc.
In aided recall, respondents were asked to identify from a list of organizations
including those IFAS units conducting research in the core program areas. In
the aided recall, respondents selected UF/IFAS units (58%) at about the same
frequency as they mentioned the University of Florida (60%). Some 40% of the
respondents continued to mention the county extension office as the source of
local programs.
Thus, as reflected in the data, even with aided recall, UF/IFAS ownership of
programs was secondary to ownership of the programs by UF and county extension
among respondents.
A very significant observation: better than 81% of the respondents identified
the programs with entities other than University of Florida or UF/IFAS in unaided
recall. The level of University of Florida and UF/IFAS identity nearly doubled
when respondents were aided in their answers.
The major conclusion: UF/IFAS must work to aggressively overcome the
lack of identity throughout the state and increase public awareness of its ownership
of programs, which as many as 98% of the public believe are important, but who
do not necessarily identify as coming from UF/IFAS.
The Breeze-Poucher study provided a research base for a formalized institutional marketing program as a part of the UF/IFAS strategic plan.
The Need for Change
By 2002, in the fourth year of the Florida FIRST strategic plan, UF/IFAS began a transition away from "putting Florida FIRST" to new positioning. Concurrent with the need for new positioning, the University of Florida's Board of Trustees began to question the name of UF/IFAS. Some believed that the words Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences were no longer relevant to the organization's expanded mission.
Was it time to completely start anew? Why would UF/IFAS want to trade horses anyway?
This paper explores the need for a change in positioning, the resulting
institutional marketing program for UF/IFAS, and the decision on the name of
the organization.
The UF/IFAS Identity Crisis
At the beginning of 2002, UF/IFAS continued to suffer from an identity crisis.
The crisis resulted from several factors: lack of adherence to UF/IFAS identity
standards; central University mandates for UF identify dominance; and historically,
a lack of administrative support for enforcing the identity standards.
Thus, UF/IFAS began to incorporate into its institutional marketing program
an important element missing in previous years: explicit top administrative
endorsement of the need for uniform and consistent identity standards and the
enforcement of those standards. Administrative endorsement came in the form
of an internal management directive which mandated identity standards for all
UF/IFAS units.(3)
The mandate was accompanied by an administrative sanction of faculty and staff
(including administrators) evaluation based in part on the implementation of
the identity standards unit by unit, program by program, person by person.
At a benchmark for the evaluation process, several internal surveys were conducted on web sites, news clips, and telephone answering patterns. One study reflected that all unit and program web sites generally comply with UF/IFAS identity standards. Another study showed that units and programs still are lax in the UF/IFAS identify process, to wit: (1) there was still only a 25% rate of news clip identity with UF/IFAS; (2) more UF/IFAS units identified themselves with the University of Florida than with UF/IFAS (41% versus 10.5%)(4); (3) a larger number of offices (44%) identified themselves with neither University of Florida nor with UF/IFAS(5).
The plan for increasing the marketing effort
was also based on the comments by urban stakeholders during 2002 UF/IFAS Strategic
Plan listening sessions reflecting the need for increased and enhanced institutional
marketing. The need to shift the UF/IFAS positioning away from the Florida FIRST
concept began to emerge as an undercurrent of the urban listening sessions.
Of a total of 235 comments at the listening sessions, all but four were related
directly to UF/IFAS support of the agriculture and natural resource industries.
Some 227 comments (97%) were directed toward the theme of UF/IFAS putting "science
to work" to protect and enhance the viability of agriculture and natural resource
industries, which generate some $54 billion annually for Florida's economy.
Even among those comments relating to human resource issues, respondents spoke
from a perspective of community development and viability of local economies
through IFAS working for the enhancement and involvement of human resources.
In addition, during 2002, UF/IFAS conducted five strategically-located meetings
with agricultural industry leaders. A compilation of the leaders' comments reflect
that in their opinion, UF/IFAS has experienced a major culture shift. For the
food and agricultural industry, the comments reflect a lack of organizational
commitment to the "customer-driven" concept in which UF/IFAS, as a land grant
institution, prided itself in the past. In no uncertain terms, industry leaders
provided a clear mandate for UF/IFAS for both regaining its traditional culture
and rethinking its market position.
The need for increased customer clientele orientation is reflected in several
key indicators as follows:
1. Clientele say programs need improvement, and they need to be more proactive to industry needs.
From economics to production, to policy issues and specific disciplinary needs such as water quality, soil fertility, pest disease control, trade and marketing, and commodity breeding programs, leaders say programs suffer from major deficiencies. Most notable, the comments reflect the belief that UF/IFAS is not sensitive to the needs of production agriculture and that UF/IFAS has shifted its focus to urban areas and environmental regulatory issues.
2. UF/IFAS is no longer clientele centered.
Comments include lack of clientele focus in commodity breeding programs (tomatoes), that scientists are anti-agriculture, lack of program-shift with changing needs, that faculty believe scholarly publications (and promotion and tenure) are more important than industry needs, agents no longer can relate to industry needs, advisory committees are no longer engaged, and faculty are not engaged directly with farmers.
3. UF/IFAS clientele have lost access to UF/IFAS programs.
Comments include lack of publication availability, lack of industry feedback mechanisms, lack of ability to contact faculty directly, need better ways to access information.
4. UF/IFAS organizational factors inhibit customer-driven mentality.
Issues include regionalization versus local service, a need for highly trained specialists, need for more multi-county agents, misdirected programs, REC leadership deficiencies, and poor Gainesville faculty linkages with field faculty as major problems.
Among the industry leaders, the need to recapture a customer-driven perception
became the major priority of the UF/IFAS marketing plan. Comparisons of the
comments from industry leaders with those from predominantly urban audiences
further reflects on the need to consistently reposition UF/IFAS among all audiences.
While the Florida FIRST positioning of 2000 and 2001 struck a major chord with
urban/suburban audiences, such positioning created dissonance and discord with
industry leaders. Generally, industry seemed to regard UF/IFAS as putting
Florida FIRST and agriculture second.
Thus, UF/IFAS shifted its positioning to reflect the needs/views of all audiences:
UF/IFAS should work to keep our economy strong and dynamic and enhance our natural
resources. The external positioning is captured in a single message: UF/IFAS
works for you. A natural progression is for the positioning
to move toward UF/IFAS works for me!
The works for me phrase is key to UF/IFAS positioning in that it advances
the notion that the organization is relevant to the public at large and to specific
target groups. For the general audience, UF/IFAS must develop specific benefits
on how UF/IFAS is working to meet the needs of consumers, homeowners, and the
public at large. Among specific groups, UF/IFAS must also develop specific benefits
in each of three general target groups to demonstrate how programs work to meet
the needs of agriculture, natural resources, and human resources. The benefits
of program impacts which fulfill audience/customer needs provide the basic response-directed
positioning message: UF/IFAS works for me.
UF/IFAS Works for Me
The works for me plan was developed in consultation with the private
sector marketing unit of the Burger King organization.
The works for me plan is divided into internal and external objectives.
Internal objectives are designed to reinvent a customer-driven orientation among
administration, faculty and staff, and transmit that orientation to external
audiences through a unified, consistent positioning of UF/IFAS identity and
image. Internal strategies include internal audits to determine levels of customer
orientation with training and empowerment activities as appropriate. Concurrent
internal strategies are vested in an integrated marketing communications program.
The customer-driven audit and training activities are not directly addressed
in this paper. This paper addresses the concurrent internal integrated marketing
program strategies. Those internal strategies form the primary marketing thrust,
as follows:
External strategies are centered on communicating the UF/IFAS works for
me positioning to target customers and potential customers. Ongoing print
and electronic media activity should be complemented with the following strategies:
Identity Standards Compliance
Every effort should be made to engage all the UF/IFAS personnel in the identity/branding/positioning
exercise. UF/IFAS must emphatically insist that all units and programs identify
themselves in every possible way with the UF/IFAS parent. The 2003 program will
develop and implement faculty/staff/administration evaluation criteria based
on the utilization of and engagement with UF/IFAS identity standards, policies,
and tools. In every case, UF/IFAS will clearly identify its UF connection.
Identity Standards Training Programs
At least three identity standards workshops should be conducted throughout
the state on a regional basis. In addition to communication skills training,
these workshops will include exercises in utilizing UF/IFAS identity tools and
standards, as well as spokesperson training. These workshops will target students,
faculty, staff, and administration.
Formalizing a Brand Management Program
The brand management program includes an update of an internal identity audit
which will document and benchmark current levels of UF/IFAS identity standards
used throughout the organization. As a result of the branding audit, Marketing
will establish a cadre of brand coordinators, which will be primarily composed
of members of the UF/IFAS Marketing and Communications Council. These brand
coordinators will work with senior managers in the various units to translate
brand positioning to faculty and staff and demonstrate the use of various tools
available to them for helping brand IFAS programs. The brand management effort
will overlap and complement the training effort.
Publications and Video Evaluation Programs
Marketing will develop and implement a UF/IFAS Communication Awards Program.
These standards will be primarily aimed at publications, video productions,
and web page efforts. Medals will be awarded in all categories to the very best
of the communication tools that most clearly engage and utilize the UF/IFAS
identity and positioning standards. These awards will also serve as a means
for identifying entries in the University's Golden Gator program.
Marketing Grant Program
As a part of the plan, Marketing will solicit proposals from County Extension and Research and Education Center faculty and staff for collaborative proposals to implement a local and/or regional marketing program based on UF/IFAS identity standards and marketing objectives. Each of four successful applicants will receive a single $8,000 grant for one year and should propose collaborative efforts between extension offices and research centers, students, and stakeholders. Proposals should also include at least a 50% cash match from local sources.
Developing a UF/IFAS Television Program
The 2002 listening session comments directed toward increased marketing included a significant number of suggestions that UF/IFAS must re-energize an external television effort geared at the general audiences. During 2003-04, Marketing will develop a concept for a new UF/IFAS television effort and will develop a pilot program to be utilized in developing distribution channels. Based on comments from the stakeholder listening sessions, highlighting volunteer efforts on behalf of UF/IFAS throughout the state in the various volunteer programs (such as Master Gardeners, Florida Yards and Neighborhoods, 4-H, Family and Consumer Sciences Efforts, Master Naturalists, and others) could be very helpful in demonstrating a direct stakeholder involvement with and support of UF/IFAS. Public service announcements demonstrating local linkages and various impacts should also be developed to use throughout the state.
Special Events
Grand openings, dedications, regional and local listening sessions, and an IFAS-wide convocation highlighting UF's 150th anniversary are special events that UF/IFAS Marketing will support during the upcoming year.
Paid Advertising
A special effort should be made to explore means for developing private support to support ongoing activities and to purchase time and space from state media outlets in order to guarantee increased UF/IFAS public awareness. UF/IFAS will also develop cooperative advertising programs with commodity groups and NGO's.
The UF/IFAS Name
Germane to the UF/IFAS marketing plan is the question of the UF/IFAS name. Some have suggested that the name Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) is no longer relevant to the organizational mission, which also includes natural and human resources and targets urban dwellers and businesses, as well as rural residents and the food and agricultural industry.
A proposal to change the IFAS name, at least on the surface, has some merit. A clean slate is often more desirable than to have to deal with repositioning an existing name.
However, there are some disadvantages to changing the IFAS name, as follows:
1. Cost #1:
The cost of determining, through group interaction or surveys, the appropriate words to use in a new name will be expensive, as will the media effort required for its rollout in Florida, which is comprised of several of the top 100 national television markets.
2. Cost #2:
The cost of a name change associated with the IFAS infrastructure (signage, letterhead, forms, business cards, etc.) would be staggering when applied to all IFAS locations.
3. The loss of identity with stakeholders and gatekeepers:
The IFAS name is a recognized name among many traditional stakeholders, which comprise between one-third and one-half of the present IFAS audience. Furthermore, IFAS appears to have better name recognition than ever before among legislative audiences. To change the name would mean a loss of a substantial number of audience members who have at least a cursory awareness of the IFAS name and that for which it stands.
4. Who cares what I-F-A-S means?
There is demonstrated private industry success that bespeaks to the notion that the actual words in a "name" acronym is irrelevant. For example,
who knows (or cares) about the meaning of IBM, KFC, 3M, AT&T, MGM, IT&T, NASDAQ, and many others? What matters is the branding of the name and its positioning among customers and potential customers.
Full Bore for IFAS
What may be more important than a name change where IFAS awareness is concerned is the intensity of the effort, the need for support from UF and top IFAS administrators and faculty for the effort, and the fiscal commitment to the effort. No matter what the name, a full court press with print news, television programming and psa's, the quarterly IMPACT magazine, and paid media if possible, will be required to secure improved name recognition. At least with "IFAS," about half of the audience already knows about the organization. Materials and infrastructure already exist to facilitate the identify effort. Further, UF administration must accede to the use of the IFAS identity and its branding efforts. However, no matter what the name, units, subunits, programs, and faculty must identify with the parent organization.
What Can UF/IFAS Afford?
Finally, it is important to recognize that given finite resources, it will not be possible to gain universal UF/IFAS identity recognition. An important strategy may be that of carefully identifying (beyond stakeholders) what segments of the total potential audience are important to UF/IFAS and targeting messages and media to reach these specific segments.
Into the Future
UF/IFAS has commissioned the 2003 replication of the previous public awareness study conducted in 1999. The results of the public awareness replication study will provide a significant report card for the UF/IFAS awareness effort and a road map for the future directions of the works for me marketing plan.
Footnotes
1. Comprehensive Review Syllabus, Educational Media and Services Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida; September 1996; p. 24.
2. Breeze, Marshall H. and Poucher, Donald W., "Measuring Public Awareness of the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences," Proceedings from the Communications Section of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists Annual Meeting; Lexington, Kentucky; January 31, 2000.
3. Internal Management Memorandum 6C1-6 90-2; Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida; June 7, 2001.
4. Telephone survey of phone-answering patterns of UF/IFAS offices; July 2002.
5. Ibid.