Creating resources to increase collaborative marketing impacts for direct marketers

Creating resources to increase collaborative marketing impacts for direct marketers

Summary

This project seeks to address the lack of support and resources for those farmers participating in collaborative marketing to make informed decisions. In the first year a group of five target farmers were identified to participate in the project by helping set the landscape of collaborative marketing across a variety of commodities and aid in evalation of resources and materials created for collaborative marketing. 

These farmers met and outlined their current collaborative marketing relationships, what tools/resources they use (if any), what types of information they would find useful in evalation of such relationships and their current challenges. They also discussed potential future collaborative marketing relationships. All this information helped inform the literature review conduct by the project leader; yielding no existing resources but helping to shape the Collaborative Marketing Checklist & Sample Collaborative Marketing Agreement. The literature review was also informed by conversations with existing Cornell Cooperative Extension educators and Cornell University faculty and staff regarding existing tools (or lack thereof).

The first year was successful in laying the foundation for this project and 2015 promises to be eventful as participating farms enhance or grow their collaborative marketing, we design the economic forecasting tool and disseminate the results of this project through a variety of mechanisms.

Objectives/Performance Targets

In-person meetings were held with the 5 participating farmers in the project. Results revealed that while all were currently participating in some form of collaborative marketing it fell into two categories: co-selling at farmers’ markets or selling to restaurants/grocery/health food stores. All believed that communication and spirit of partnership were most important in successful collaborative marketing. Some were interested in better understanding how they could enhance and/or grow their existing relationships. They also felt that they really had no concrete way to evaluate collaborative marketing so tools were definitely needed in this area. These conversations helped set the stage for the 2014 season and critical thinking about what actions each of the farms might take specific to their operation as it related to collaborative marketing. 

A literature review was conducting via the internet as well as with other Cornell Cooperative Extension educators and faculty at Cornell University. It became clear that while there are alot of resources that relate to cooperatives and those types of relationships, but nothing that is specific to collaboration. The project leader then created drafts of both a checklist to evaluate a collaborative marketing relationship as well as sample agreements farms could use when entering such a relationship. These were reviewed by the participating farms once drafted for usefullness.

Accomplishments/Milestones

April 2014-June 2014:
– Project leader met with five producers/producer groups currently collaboratively marketing to better understand the landscape, their challenges, currently how relationships are structured, etc…
– Project leader conducted a literature Review for case studies, sample agreements, evaluating relationships, etc…
– Project leader will create data points for economic forecast tool –> The information required for this needed to be gathered in 2014; it will be worked on in 2015. 
– Project leader created drafts for the following: sample agreements, how to evaluate relationships
– Project leader created and disseminated survey statewide to find out what resources producers would find most useful when it comes to collaborative marketing, etc.. –> This survey yielded the predicted results of very few resources available; examples and drafts were created and given to participating farmers for review and use in 2014/2015.
July 2014-October 2014:
– Collaborating farmers will try sample agreements and report back on efficacy in evaluating relationships and use economic forecast tool –> Participating farmers did not have a chance to try out the agreements, but this will be priority in the first quarter of 2015. This is the same with the economic forecast tool. 
November 2014-December 2014:
– Project leader will write 1-2 case studies based off of interactions from first group –> The project leader will be working on this in the first quarter of 2015 as not enough data was gathered to complete this. 
– Project leader will distill results of producer survey to start skeleton of online resource center for collaborative marketing –> This will occur in the first quarter of 2015.
– Project leader will evaluate usefulness of sample agreements, checklist of evaluating collaborative marketing relationships and forecasting tool and make changes as appropriate –> As the resources stand they can be used but over time they will change as appropriate. 

In general, we were able to accomplish a good amount in 2014. There were some challenges, namely one of the farms dropping out of the project in the fall of 2014 and then a replacement needed to be located and brought up to speed on the project. As well, an unplanned pregnancy meant the project leader lost some time in the grant timeline. This will be made up in 2015 but certainly threw off the timeline a little bit. 

There was also some relationship building which occurred with the Cornell Small Farms Program as they are working on rollign out a “Wholesale Revolution” training and we wanted to see what synergies there might be between the projects. We are still determing what this will look like as they are rolling out the program in 2015.

• Checklist for Evaluating Collaborative Marketing Relationships
• Sample Collaborative Marketing Agreement

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

Data collection to this point has proven difficult due to the unofficial nature of the collaborative marketing relationships our participating farms operate within. We believe this is fairly common as most of the time these sales are done “on a handshake” and due to existing personal relationships between farms. It demonstrates the further need for more concrete data collection and determination of data points to aid farmers in evaluating collaborative marketing relationships. 2015 will be focused on more concrete data collection and resource collection, so that farmers looking to enter, or evaluate collaborative marketing as it relates to their current operation can utilize data and have tools to apply.

Collaborators: