Australia's leading rural newspaper The Land has published an article about our views of the crisis in the wool industry. Here's what they said about us:
(PENNY ZELL ñ PICS: pz112805079..83)
THE marketing crisis in Australia's wool industry could be fixed right now, says Goolma woolgrower and marketing guru, Michael Kiely.
In fact, it would probably only take a matter of hours for Australia's leading marketing experts to nut out a powerful marketing strategy for wool, he said.
"Australia has some of the best marketers in the world: John Singleton, Gerry Harvey, Aussie John Simons, ex-Woolworths CEO, Paul Simons, to name a few."
"Let's put them all in a room together and let them loose on the problem," he said.
Mr Kiely is a 20-year veteran of Australian marketing - with his clients having included Toyota, Macquarie Bank, Australia Post and Hyatt ñ and the executive editor of Marketing Magazine, to which he has contributed monthly commentary for 20 years.
He also runs about 3000 Merryville-blood Merinos with his wife, Louisa, and son, Daniel, on their property, "Uamby", at Goolma - west of Gulgong in the State's Central Tablelands.
His extensive experience in the marketing industry makes it difficult for him to accept the current situation in the wool market, which he describes as a "national crisis".
"Australian woolgrowers produce a limited amount of one of the best fibres in the world, so why are we still being price takers?"
Mr Kiely proposes the industry stops trying to sell wool on its functional attributes, and instead, puts all its efforts into making wool "cool" ñ which will allow the industry to tap into the huge youth fashion market.
"We have a whole generation of youth who are strangers to wool ñ we need to stop talking to the middle-aged people who grew up with wool and start talking to the kids," he said.
"We need to recruit the "cool" people who influence this generation - DJ's, musicians, actors, models or sports stars - and feature them in advertisements saying they are unwilling to wear synthetics and that they prefer wool," he said.
And if the campaign was successful, Mr Kiely was confident this generation would pay big money for wool clothing - just like they would for any other brand item that was "cool".
"Kids have money for things they really want - think of the difference in price between a white t-shirt and a white t-shirt with a Nike sign on it."
He has even come up with a possible slogan for this marketing campaign ñ 'Wool.Cool. So what are you wearing?'
And like most successful marketing strategies, Mr Kiely said the emphasis should be on one aspect of wool ñ its natural element.
"The next generation are demanding natural, environmental products ñ this gives us an area we can put some weight behind to market the product".
"Wool is a living fibre, synthetics are made from petrochemicals; wool is grown by families who care, petrochemicals are made by corporations that do not; wool has soul, synthetics have none," he said.
These thoughts have helped him come up with a new brand positioning line - "Australian Wool: Made by Mother Nature".
Mr Kiely applauds the work AWI have done in wool innovations to date, but said they were wasting their efforts as long as the fundamental driving force was missing ñ demand for the product.
"People have got to want wool," he said.
"To make wool attractive to the masses, you've got to start with the style-setters; the elite who the rest follow like sheep," he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment