"Tired of seeing animal rights activists and back-to-the-earth advocates control the spotlight unchallenged," the American Business Media's case study on Mike Smith's For the Record: Straight Talk about Antibiotic Use in Agriculture explains, "the Animal Health division of Alpharma Inc. did a 360 when it changed tactics completely. ...Alpharma had plenty of options for advertising its agricultural product lines, but felt it was losing ground in the debate over animal health and food safety. ...the success of the [For the Record] program lies in large part with the fact that while Alpharma underwrites the project and gets some marketing exposure expecially via the e-letter, it is an issues-oriented media venture, not a hard--or even soft--sell."
Distrubuted by Vance publishing through its livestock-producer trade verticals, the quarterly four-page For the Record pushed back against the growing "concensus science" that use of Alpharma's products and other antibiotic products in livestock production posed a meaningful risk to the health of food consumers. Although nothing could be further from the truth, misinformation from activists was being widely circulated with little or no effective response from a sometimes timid agricultural community.
"I think For the Record represented a fundamental shift at the time that was way ahead of the rest of agriculture, and Alpharma deserves credit for showing the courage it did," says Washington, D.C., ag-regulatory expert and lobbyist Steve Kopperud. "While so many traditional ag companies and ag communicators were running away from the controversy, Alpharma actively chose to turn and run toward it."
"They certainly took a risk, because there could have been a backlash both at the customer level for drawing too much attention the controversy, and at the consumer level," the ABM case study quotes Smith. "But I also think For the Record is a good example of how a custom project can more intimately connect you with your market. It's not a sales piece at all, but it has earned Alpharma a load of customer goodwill for having the backbone to stand up to the critics. And among readers it's improved the level of knowlege of the issue about 95 percent."
To read the entire ABM case study on For the Record, click here (Acobe Acrobat format).
Click here to read samples of For the Record.
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