A break-out session at the International China Summit in Beijing, which proceeded the current three-day VIV China Intensive Livestock Exhibition, started with global marketing - strategies, ideas, trends and solutions and finished with information technology - the impact of digital technology on the feed and food industries in the first of four concurrent sessions.
Greg Watt of Watt Media and Poultry International magazine gin the USA encouraged feed manufacturers and others involved in marketing to have a written plan with established objectives. "What is your marketing and communications strategy and how is marketing aligned with your company's strategic plan? That's what is important."
"Without that, and one year in, you may well face failure," he told a crowed room of industry specialists. He also informed delegates that they needed to measure success based on accurate data gathering. "If you're not data driven then you should be. Lead generation might be one form of assessment, others might be adding distributors or database building or simply counting the number of visitors to your trade show stands."
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| Greg Watt of Watt Media in the USA with Poultry International China editor Dingding Li translating |
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However when discussing the pros and cons of social media he suggested that it was not yet the time for business-to-business and the feed sector in particular to adopt social networking, which was working well for businesses with end consumer customers. "Although it's very early stages and this could change quite rapidly," he added.
Meanwhile Roger Gilbert of Perendale Publishers Ltd, the publishers of Grain and Feed Milling Technology magazine, said in his information technology paper that there may soon come a day when all employees of business might be required to have social media accounts to reference their company's products and activities.
His presentation dealt with how the impact of IT and digital technologies might have on mmeting the food demands of a growing world population.
"Digital technology speeds up the transfer of information; it identifies and allows us to more easily control problems as they occur; it improves the route to market allowing for traceability and quality control checks along the way. Finally, it allows our industry to become more cost effective and more competitive while at the same time producing safer and more affordable products," he told his audience.
"Time is of the essence when facing the challenge of feeding nine billion people by 2050!"
Information Technology, using digital equipment, has allowed us almost without realizing it, to improve communications between researchers, scientists and others at the cutting edge of new technologies to complete their programmes over a shorter period of time, he says.
"It has allowed us to educate people within our industry more rapidly at tertiary level connecting students, courses and lecturers globally. It has been used to enhance training offered within companies and through remote learning courses. It has improve the individual’s awareness to global as well as national issues over a shorter period of time and continues to do so."
Mr Gilbert says, "It allows us to trace product and raw materials back to their sources; allows us to track and trace ingredients from manufacturer through processing and identify the batches and products they are used in and allows us to carry out recalls – today’s recalls can be more closely targeted and more product specific, lessening the full impact of costs on an industry such as ours as has occurred in the past.
"However, for our globally-connected industry to minimize costly contamination costs, very individual working in the food chain has responsibilities that must be taken seriously to ensure the quality of products reaching the consumer at the end of the food chain are safe. The actions of individuals or companies can no longer be hidden from view and are quickly identified in this new digital world in which the feed industry now operates."
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