Listen as Scott Wallin, Vice President of Farmer Relations, chats with Beau Hayden, vice president of strategic intelligence, about his work with online retailers such as Instacart and Amazon. They will also discuss promotional partnerships with both local checkoffs and retailer, Dollar General, as well as international partnerships with U.S. Dairy Export Council.

Tune in to find out!

To learn more about the national dairy checkoff and your local dairy checkoffs, please visit www.usdairy.com.

Host & Guest:

• Host: Scott Wallin, Vice President of Farmer Relations and Media Relations, Dairy Management Inc.
• Guest: Beau Hayden, Vice President of Strategic Intelligence, Dairy Management Inc.

Transcript: (AI-generated please ignore the typo)

Scott Wallin  0:00 

Hey everybody, its Scott Wallin with Dairy Management Incorporated. I’m so happy to bring you a bonus episode of the Your Dairy Checkoff podcast in which we speak with checkoff experts and leaders about the many strategies that are building sales and trust of dairy. Today I’m joined by Beau Hayden. He is Vice President of Strategic Intelligence for Dairy Management Incorporated. But how’re you doing today?

Beau Hayden  0:20 

Doing well, Scott. Thanks, man.

Scott Wallin  0:22 

Well, thanks for joining me. And I know there’s an awful lot of interesting things you and your team are working on. Before we get into some of the more specific questions this kind of talk a little bit about what does the day in the life look like for you? What are some of the goals you try to achieve on behalf of the Dairy Checkoff?

Beau Hayden  0:36 

say on behalf of the Dairy Checkoff? What What I’m really, you know, operationalizing against is about three or four different key pillars. One of them is I work on our partnerships, so across dairy, gold across Amazon, and even with some of our retailers Instacart and through in with ESRs from a digital perspective, you know, that’s connecting our trust silos from our MCA, you know, marketing comms and affairs team, and their social activations, and connecting that to a point in retail and really trying to drive volume. And then on a third pillar, it’s really working with our partners over at US dec, and really helping drive some of our export initiatives and strategies across the full Federation.

Scott Wallin  1:18 

You know, I think everybody understands the importance of the digital retail space. Obviously, we’re in in that space as well. Can you talk a little bit about some of the strategies you were trying to do in digital retail why it makes sense for the Dairy Checkoff?

Beau Hayden  1:30 

Yeah, so from a digital perspective, if we just take a step back, about 69% of all grocery sales are truly digitally influenced. And so shoppers, us, you and me, all of everybody listening, you know, we want to navigate typically seamlessly between this online environment, and even our install environments. So we want a look tone and feel that’s consistent across everything. With that, how do we how do we work with and through our multifunctional teams are our peers and even our state and regions across the Federation. So by really communicating and activating as one, we’re really shortening that path to conversion or that path to sale by not only driving awareness and informing from the, from the trust side of the house, but then linking that to a conversion point, whether digital or fit in the physical store itself. Now, again, we were bombarded we’re constantly, you know, introduced to new tactics or new environments, whether it’s from a cell phone, whether it’s from a web browser, a TV, and then in store as well. So again, we need to show up consistently for the category for our farmers, and really tell the dairy story in a in a very unique, but really timely way that is received by the end user to then ultimately grab our products, purchase them at a higher rate, and ultimately push more volume through the system, or

Scott Wallin  2:53 

with Instacart in that digital space. Can you first of all, explain a little bit about who Instacart is and and what some of the strategies are we doing with them?

Beau Hayden  3:01 

Yeah, so Instacart is a is it’s an aggregator of retailers within an online marketplace. So ultimately think of a Amazon that that collects a bunch of brands and then you can buy it from a consumer perspective, almost anywhere and anything they are though they have the largest reach into the population. So they reach about 95% of consumers with their delivery capabilities. And ultimately what we’re doing with them is at a national level and at a state and region level, working with a supplier to ultimately activate on site and really drive awareness of our categories and key moments or tentpole activation. So back to school June Dairy Month, the holidays, new year new me within the q1 and really activating specifically where we’re elevating products that are real dairy to the top of the page. So if I’m a consumer and I’m searching milk, unfortunately, with with the regulations that we have right now, our alternative beverage competitors can actually sit at the top of the page for keyword milk. So we’re strategically trying to elevate real dairy to the top point where we see about 82 to 85% of all of the conversions or sales happening from a keyword search. What we’re also doing is inserting video or static imagery, and really ultimately putting a cut in along these different column aisles or category. So if you search cookies, Scott, then you will get you know Oreos and viscose and chips a hallway and But about two rows down. We could put a milk banner there where you can add milk directly to your car without having to navigate. So again, we’re showing up in a relevant place to be purchased to be added to that cart and ultimately added to the list.

Scott Wallin  4:54 

Pretty cool stuff right there. I know outside the digital space the E commerce space for all Also with bricks and mortar companies as well. One of them is Dollar General. Can you talk a little bit about what we’re doing with Dollar General?

Beau Hayden  5:07 

Yeah, so a couple of SROs. And a couple of the state and regions actually came with an idea around q4 last year. And we were able to put ourselves on, basically a cooler cleaning and in the cookie aisle, with the shelf talkers, across about 45% of all dollar generals within the US. And so we did that for about eight weeks that ran, you know, around the calendar year and was ripped out about January 14, I believe. And what we saw was a was about a 6% 7%, sales lift, and ultimately a volume increase of about 9%. of fluid milk. So the whole point for the the shelf talker, or the sign within the cookie aisle, was to remind folks go back and get your milk from the cooler section. With the success of that pilot in that program, we’re actually folding them into a couple activations. I’ll say that were that were, you know, really teeing up for about the back to school timeframe. So middle of q3, kind of rolling off of around the the tail end of q3 as well. So super excited about, you know, not only the performance of the activations that we’re able to do, but really the leadership that the state and regions, and their team showed, of identifying an opportunity, coming with it, and then really being able to activate that and in a very short timeframe.

Scott Wallin  6:25 

Your work obviously goes beyond our borders into into the international marketplace. You’ve worked with the US dairy Export Council on some retail programs. Can you talk a little bit about what’s going on there?

Beau Hayden  6:37 

Yeah, so we’re actually identifying a couple opportunities, specifically in Southeast Asia and hopefully possibly in Mexico as well. Mexico will be probably around you know, cheese just in general, as we’re seeing a lot of cheese come online with a lot of the introductions of processing plants in the next couple of years. So we obviously need to find places and identify opportunities to drive demand for US made cheese. within Japan we are looking at a omni channel retail physical store opportunity with not only natural cheese, so possibly artisan cheeses, but really meeting that Japanese consumer with products that we might already have it domestically so what what can we take and export and fuel the fire of sales outside of our borders, but then also identifying what is it that we can create that is desired by the Japanese consumer. So really exciting work ahead, you know, it’ll probably be another six to 12 months, but we’re we’re super excited about what is on the horizon and what we’re able to do, you know, working with him through our partners over it used it

Scott Wallin  7:44 

well, but those are some awesome insights. I really appreciate your time and sharing all that with me today. And dairy farmers who want to learn more about their checkoff. Be sure to visit Dairy Checkoff. podcast.com Thanks a lot, Bo. Thanks, Scott.