Co-promotion agreements with Robin Hood and Primo Pasta point the way to the new brand battleground — the grocery shelf
The headline in the New York Times said it all: “Canada Wins Wheat Prize: Raises the best wheat in the world say American Land Fair judges.”
The date was November 5, 1911 and Saskatchewan pioneer farmer Seager Wheeler, the “Wheat Wizard of Rosthern,” had just claimed $1,000 in gold, with another Prairie farmer, W. I. Glass of Fort MacLeod, winning honours as runner-up.
The Canadian grain industry had made a conscious choice to differentiate its wheat. Its goal was the top end of the milling market, and its main strategy was an innovative quality assurance system that used the government as the standards arbiter of grain quality.
Read Also
Producers aren’t panicking over tariffs and trade threats
The Manitoba Canola Growers Association (MCGA) surveyed its members this spring to get a sense of how trade uncertainty was…
In 1911, that decision was paying off, not only with Wheeler’s gold, but with a global brand for superior quality wheat that made Canadian first choice in many markets.
Now, flash forward nearly 100 years, and again the Canadian wheat industry is immersed in an innovative brand-building campaign, this time with the often-controversial Canadian Wheat Board partnering with customers to sell the unique ‘brand’ of Canadian wheat and barley.
Again, too, there’s a sense of energy, a sense that Dave Burrows, the CWB’s branding director, says the organization knew it had on its hands when its customers began to link their bread and flour with Canadian farms and Canadian Wheat.
First a baker from the United Kingdom approached the CWB about an identity-preserved program that would ensure the best quality wheat and flour to differentiate their products. Then, a prominent Mexican miller began emblazoning their flour sacks with the legend “Manitoba” — a nod to the now-defunct archaic grade designation “No. 1 Manitoba Northern Hard.”
“We want to be the ‘Intel Inside’” Burrows said in a Count ry Guide interview, referring to the computer chip manufacturer which successfully positioned itself in the 1990s and early part of this century as the heart of a great personal computer. The challenge is the same. Few consumers buy wheat, just as they don’t buy silicon chips. They buy packaged flour, bread and pasta instead, just as they buy Dell or HP computers.
As a sign of its belief in branding, the CWB has decided not to wait for markets to grow on their own. Instead it is actively courting partners for joint venture promotions that highlight the quality attributes of Canadian grain in their home markets to distinguish their products.
“The CWB has had a long-standing reputation for pushing grain into the pipeline, and we do that very well,” says Burrows. “We’ve had little experience and virtually no reputation for pulling it out the other end, yet therein lies the opportunity from a branding perspective.”
Burrows says they’ve been able to strike up copromotion agreements with a number of customers around the world, with some of the strongest interest coming from Latin America.
