A group of University of Guelph students placed second at the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) student competition in Kansas City.
The 15 students finished second out of 29 teams with their innovative product marketing for Hewitt’s Dairy Goat Milk Latte.
The intensive competition brings together agriculture university students from across Canada and the United States to present marketing plans for many novel food and agriculture products.
Why it matters: Competitions like the student marketing competition push students to test themselves against others from across North America, creating a unique learning experience for future workers in the sector.
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Grace Mullen, president of the Canadian Agri-Marketing Association (CAMA) University of Guelph student team, identified several reasons for their high finish that are applicable for teams in general.
Attention to detail
Mullen says the team excelled because of its ability to answer questions from judges with accuracy and confidence.
“We had the confidence that we knew the product and we were the experts. Any question we could answer it. We were not necessarily expecting to win it either. We had a goal to make the semifinals.”
The teams go through three rounds of judging and compete with teams in their heats until they get to the final round of six teams.
University of Guelph teams have competed at the NAMA competition since 2000 and in that time have won it once, in 2013. The 2018 result is only the second time a team has placed second.
Preparation
The project is a lot of work, and the team started earlier than ever in 2017, holding applications in August and then choosing the team in October. There were 35 applicants and that meant the group decided to take 15 team members instead of the expected 12.
The students get a half course credit for being part of the team in their winter semester, and they have an advisor to help them along. This year it was Prof. John Cranfield.
“All the speakers had our lines down pat,” said Mullen. “We knew what we were saying.”
Using team members’ strengths
Mullen said the team aimed to help each member grow in a skill of their interest. They asked each team member what they wanted to learn early in the process and Mullen said that helped assign people to areas where their strengths would be of greatest benefit to the team.
“As a team the biggest thing we learned, is that if we work together and learn everyone’s skills, we can accomplish some pretty big things,” she said.
Know your market
This University of Guelph CAMA team was the first to work with a outside company to develop a marketing plan for one of their product ideas, in this case dairy co-operative Gay Lea and its Hewitt’s Dairy division.
The idea was for an on-the-go goat milk latte drink. Mullen said they targeted the drink to young, educated, female urbanites interested in trying different products and with an interest in transparency and authenticity. The plan included a message about Hewitt’s founder James Hewitt that could be viewed through augmented reality from a code scanned by a phone.
Mullen said the judges at the competition said they could see the product in the hands of young urbanites and that showed they convinced the judges of the validity of their product. The latte was to be sold in a recyclable plastic 305 ml bottle.
The student plan looked all the way back to the farm-level impact. It wouldn’t be significant on the currently over-supplied goat milk market, but they calculated that over three years the economic benefit to the producers would be $481,592, with an increase in goat milk demand of 375,000 litres.
Mullen has now finished her degree and is working for RBC in agriculture lending. Others will be returning for another year or two at Guelph, in various disciplines.
Team members included:
- Nadine Anderson, fourth year student, Crop, Horticulture, and Turfgrass Sciences,
- Allison Bailey, third year student, Honours Agriculture,
- Carson Burtwistle, fourth year student, Food and Agricultural Business,
- Logan Emiry, second year student, Honours Agriculture,
- Laura Fullerton, third year student, Food and Agricultural Business,
- Grace Mullen, fourth year student, Food and Agricultural Business,
- Amanda Norris, fourth year student, Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics,
- Michelle Ragany, second year student, Food and Agricultural Business,
- Hayden Rath, fourth year student, Marketing Management,
- Mitchell Rice, second year student, Food and Agricultural Business,
- Tim Shuh, third year student, Food and Agricultural Business,
- Jeroen Slits, fourth year student, Honours Agriculture,
- Laura Stortz, fourth year student, Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics,
- Caleigh Van Kampen, fourth year student, Animal Science,
- Megan Wright, third year student, Food and Agricultural Business.
