Rod Slater, who heads BLNZ's promotional efforts in New Zealand, told Rural News that the technology revolution which includes social media, offers massive promotional opportunities to get lamb back on the radar of consumers.
"Young consumers are very electronic-friendly so they know how to seek information. If we've got information on the web, they are downloading it and that's happening now," he says.
"The recipe guides that used to be put alongside products at the supermarket or butchers shop are not giving us very much traction at all. The last research we did on recipe cards showed that only 4% actually ended up in the kitchen."
Slater adds that just because they got to the kitchen is no guarantee the recipes will be used and it's a very costly way of trying to get the message through to consumers. "The electronic media has changed everything. With I-phone and smart phone applications and that sort of thing we are seeing very cost effective and efficient ways of getting information to consumers."
Slater believes what's happening now, and happen in the future, is beyond most people's dreams.
"The direction we're heading is that people will walk into a shop with a smart phone, run it over a meat product and immediately up will come up a recipe and the ingredient lists for this cut, as well as other information about the product."
When he was a butcher back in the 1960's, Slater says his customers knew more about a product than he did.
He believes this has changed, but technology could turn the tables back in favour of the consumer.
