Social media is “definitely a place that accelerates the spread of bad news” – but is also a vital channel of communicating, particularly with younger generations aged under 30, according to the National Dairy Council (NDC) CEO Zoe Kavanagh.
Kavanagh was speaking to Agriland ahead of this week’s launch of the dairy council’s latest campaign “NDC: Fortifying Irish consumers’ trust in dairy farming”.
When asked about social media and its impact – and in particular, whether enough is being done from a social media perspective to push back against an anti-dairy and anti-livestock farming narrative, the CEO said: “It’s an interesting point.
Social media
“When we launched our last campaign, which was very much rooted in reassuring the questioning consumer – and we targeted the 29-year-old female because she was rejecting dairy due to fat, allergy intolerance and then exclusionary diets.
“That was very much a social media led element, and we found that the minute we launched that work – and that was back in 2016 – we were hounded on social media.
“We learned a lot from it and we learned a lot around the behaviour, particularly of the vegan elements that are anti-animal protein, anti-animal [farming] then evolving into the environmental concerns.
“We did a lot in that space to combat how organised they are – because they get a great bang for their buck.”
Going into detail about such groups, Kavanagh claimed: “It’s a small community, about 300 people, highly organised within chat groups in various social channels – and they are triggered to react en masse to counter a lot of what we were doing.
‘Omnipresent’
“I think step one was we have learned a huge amount around the behaviour of the challenging voices on social media – and as part of this campaign and what we learned in our last campaign is that we have to be omnipresent.
“Within our media plan, we have what we call an ‘always-on’ social media strategy.
“On Facebook, Instagram, Twitter we are always on; our channels are constantly being populated.
“And what we realised was in the Instagram, Facebook-type channels, rather than going head-to-head with them, actually you talk from your position of strength. So promote the goodness, and in fact we ‘cleansed’ our channel.
“We found ways of filtering out the contamination that was coming from these disruptive groups, allowing our story to be told – but then finding our voice on Twitter when the rebuttal is required – particularly around misinformation.
“So, it’s definitely a space that accelerates the spread of bad news and that’s where you need your rebuttal; and we’re skilled-up to do that. But it is also a vital channel.”
‘Their world is online’
Kavanagh highlighted that, while 71% of the population overall believe that Ireland’s climate is suitable for dairy production according to research conducted last year, this figure falls to 57% among those aged under 29.
Highlighting the need to communicate with these age groups in particular, the NDC chief executive stressed:
“Their world is online so we have to be online and we have to ‘show up’ wherever they are.
“Because they are probably unlikely to see the ad break on the RTÉ Six One News and unlikely to pick up the newspaper where we’re going to have print ads.
“So it is an area where we’re going to be focusing a lot of attention,” Kavanagh concluded.