COLLECTIVE PROMOTION REQUIRED TO HARVEST HIGH-HANGING FRUIT
The ready-mix industry in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP) is at a crossroads. A fragmented, underperforming juggernaut obsessed with direct competition, the industry risks commoditization of its namesake product.
Two weeks ago, I called on industry stakeholders, within and outside the Wisconsin Ready Mixed Concrete Association (WRMCA), to sit at a table and create an engaging vision of success.
I paraphrased President Lincoln to illustrate a guiding principle for organizing discussion and suggested the current WRMCA mission statement identifies three key action areas where industry stakeholders can be more effective working in association than individually: Legislative Advocacy, Promotion, and Education.
This week’s post makes the case for collective promotion.
Few concrete industry stakeholders would argue against promotion as a key tool for creating, defending, expanding, and supporting ready-mixed concrete markets in Wisconsin and Michigan’s UP.
But too few stakeholders actually engage in concrete promotion. Instead, they fight each other over low-hanging fruit.
Follow the Money
Direct sales costs notwithstanding … the number one promotion expense for most ready-mix producers is phone directory advertising.
Direct sales costs notwithstanding … the top two promotion expenses for most concrete contractors are phone directory advertising and display advertising in the service directory sections of local newspapers and shopper publications.
There is logic to these promotion expenditures: Home and business owners, or construction professionals in need of concrete and/or concrete construction services, often use local phone or service directories to identify potential concrete suppliers and contractors.
Why would ready-mix producers or their concrete contractor customers ignore this low-hanging fruit?
Harvesting High-Hanging Fruit Would Increase Annual Industry Yield
But what about the high-hanging fruit … the construction professionals and homeowners who have yet to commit to ready-mixed concrete?
Home and business owners, builders, contractors, and construction specifiers have many construction material options to choose from, including:
- Concrete patios versus wood or composite deck systems, or natural stone patios, or concrete pavers (or can choose to forego a patio/deck system)
- Solid concrete foundation walls versus wood, concrete masonry, or pre-cast concrete foundations
- Above-grade, insulated concrete structural walls versus wood, steel, concrete masonry, or pre-cast concrete above-grade wall systems
- Concrete (and pervious concrete) pavement systems versus asphalt (and porous asphalt), concrete pavers, recycled glass, or recycled tire pavement systems
- Concrete structural framing elements versus steel framing elements
- Site-cast tilt-up construction wall systems versus wood, steel, or pre-cast concrete walls systems.
When the majority of stakeholder promotion resources are used to fight direct competitors for low-hanging fruit (construction professionals or home and business owners who have selected concrete as their material of choice and are in need of concrete and/or concrete construction services), few resources remain for creating, defending, and expanding ready-mix market segments among undecided project owners and construction professionals.
But if those remaining stakeholder resources were pooled and channeled through the existing statewide and regional promotion avenues of the Wisconsin Ready Mixed Concrete Association, concrete markets across Wisconsin and the UP could be created, expanded, defended, and supported.
On a voluntary basis over the past 20 years, WRMCA members, in partnership with the Great Lakes Cement Promotion Association (GLCPA), have invested more than $2.5 million in concrete promotion for Wisconsin/UP construction markets. Their collective promotion efforts doubled core market share for ready-mixed concrete in Wisconsin and the UP.
But as I reported earlier this year, ready-mix margins in Wisconsin and the UP have been in decline for almost a decade now, contracting the ability of producers to maintain or increase voluntary contributions to harvest high-hanging fruit.
With many segments of the national and state economy in recession, and as cement industry contributions are based on the volume of cement shipment into the region, Wisconsin/UP Concrete Promoters will need to do more with less (yet again).
Re-imagine the Wisconsin/UP Ready-Mix Industry
Instead of a fragmented, underperforming industry obsessed with direct competition and at risk of commoditization, I dream of an industry united behind an engaging vision of success, a best-in-world, marketing, legislative, and knowledge-management powerhouse, devoted to making ready-mixed concrete the construction material of choice in Wisconsin and Michigan’s UP.
To achieve this dream, a unity strategy must be developed and implemented. All industry stakeholders need to step forward, including:
- Ready-mix producers
- Concrete contractors
- Aggregate producers
- Cement/Cementitious materials manufacturers
- Admixture, Curing compound, Fiber, and other additive manufacturers
- Concrete placement service providers
- Tool, equipment, form, truck, and plant manufacturers and suppliers
- Professional service providers to all of the above.
Imagine the army of Concrete Promoters the industry could muster and provision, if all industry stakeholders would enlist in this collective crusade to make concrete the construction material of choice in Wisconsin and the UP.
If your revenue stream is impacted by the amount of ready-mixed concrete manufactured, trucked, and/or placed in Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, you should be contributing – financially, and with your time and expertise – to collective industry promotion.
But for this to happen, structural and strategic changes will be required of the WRMCA.
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