By Ron Joyce, President & CEO, Joyce Farms

When you sell a product, the first thing you have to do is figure out what makes your product different, what makes it unique. My father started our company in 1962, and as I got older and joined the business I saw the need to take us in a direction that would make us stand out from other poultry producers. I saw that the industry was moving toward a race for faster, cheaper, increased production. The result was a uniform type of chicken bred to grow fast (so it consumed less resources) and with a big breast (so it provided more of the meat consumers wanted). But I didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing – I wanted to bring something new and different to the market. That was flavor.

It’s on to part two of my follow up to the post Trick question: Are you a marketing planner or a marketing doer?, which touched on the basic requirements of a strategic marketing plan:

• Establishing objectives and goals
• Defining audiences
• Creating strategies and tactics
• Setting priorities 
• Establishing how success will be measured

Occasionally we like to get philosophical here at Reuben Rink. This is one of a series of posts we label Thoughts on Advertising that address our, well, thoughts on advertising. In this post we look at an iconic ad campaign from the 1990s. In future posts we’ll look at other aspects of our industry, including some contemporary ad campaigns and marketing techniques.

I consider the Budweiser Frogs TV ad, introduced in the 1995 Super Bowl, to be the best single TV ad of all time. If you’re not familiar with it, here it is: http://bit.ly/2e7bsZo

As part one in a follow up to my recent post Trick question: Are you a marketing planner or a marketing doer?, I want to take time to delve a little deeper on the qualities that comprise an effective marketing plan. While a plan can take many forms, it should meet some fundamental requirements, including:

Written by Amanda Marshall

It’s a mobile world out there and, in case you haven’t noticed, many of those living in it appear to be tethered to their phones. This is true personally as well as professionally. I’m a Millennial – I’ve never known a world without cell phones, where you could be reached pretty much anywhere at any time. But the accelerated rise of smart phones use has been a game changer. Now phones aren’t just for calls anymore. Instead, communication and information of all kinds is flowing in constantly.

Business people often categorize themselves as ‘doers,’ with great implied disdain for those who take time to carefully plan out their actions before rolling up their sleeves and diving in. Sometimes the entrepreneurial spirit fosters this mentality – “If I don’t put this in play immediately, I’ll miss my opportunity”…“I have too many ideas and not enough time to vet them all thoroughly, so I’m going for it.” And marketers are notorious for it – “Let’s get this idea out there and see if we can get some traction – we can tweak things later.”