November 2009 Industry News

Note this strong upward retail trend. Thanks to YOUR individual efforts, which include use of the Council’s promotional partners, themes and templates. You may not have a large marketing budget, but you have all done a great job of making the most of it. Now if only we could figure out what to do about the global recession and its impact on eating out at restaurants that use mushrooms….

For more retail sales data you should be sharing with ALL of your customers; be they retail or foodservice (to show how popular mushrooms are at home, thus put them on your menu!!) click here.

SHIPMENT SUMMARY

Mushroom Council First Handler Reports (millions of pounds; totals may not match due to rounding).

Current Charts	Aug-09	Aug-08	% change	YTD 09	YTD 08	% change
Total Shipments	55.99	56.49	-0.88	472.38	492.87	-4.16
Domestic Shipments	49.32	50.17	-1.71	414.73	437.53	-5.21
PA	29.94	29.71	0.77	247.01	253.25	-2.46
CA	8.56	9.10	-5.89	74.16	81.60	-9.12
Rest of US	10.81	11.36	-4.84	93.57	102.68	-8.88
Imports	6.68	6.32	5.70	57.65	55.34	4.19

COUNCIL UPDATE

Call for nominations for regions 1, 2 and 3 will be mailed on February 1, 2010.
If you are receiving this monthly report by mail, would you like to get it via e-mail instead? Just send an e-mail to Cheryl@mushroomcouncil.org or call 408-432-7210 to get started immediately.

MARKETING SUMMARY

TOTAL IMPRESSIONS/PLACEMENTS TO DATE:
October impressions overview:

Program	September 2009 Impressions	% of September 2008 Impressions	Total Year Impressions to Date*	% of Annual Goal
Consumer/Nutrition	34,106,239	53%	816,615,873	163%
Foodservice	373,388	35%	8,727,759	272%
Retail	0	0%	1,619,403*	105%

*To note: there is a delay in receiving retail clips. After last month’s report was published,
an additional 82,188 impressions were received.

        In October, the Mushroom Council had an average of 51 percent share of voice. While
        conducting proactive media outreach, we generally expect Mushroom Council coverage to
        represent between 33-75 percent of mushroom placements, according to average consumer
        product and commodity industry standards. Note that there are always external factors or
        industry forces that could change that metric.

Mushroom Share of Voice

Week Ending	Mushroom Council Generated Placements	% of Total Mushroom Coverage	Type of Outreach
October 2	10	58 percent	Proactive
October 9	7*	47 percent	Proactive
October 16	21	55 percent	Proactive
October 23	8	47 percent	Proactive
October 30	18	47 percent	Proactive
Total	64	51 percent	Proactive

*This number does not include the additional placements generated by the Council’s
press release on vitamin D and the updated USDA nutrient database.

Mushrooms in the News and Online:

Q3 mushroom recipes include the Mini Mushroom Quiche Caps and Portabella Eggs Benedict. To date, the recipes have garnered more than 5.9 million impressions combined.

The Council’s pink efforts around National Breast Cancer Awareness Month were noted in 55 placements to date, totaling more than 36.2 million impressions. Outlets reached include Consumer Reports on Health, Men’s Health, The San Diego Union-Tribune, Health.com, BaltimoreSun.com and TBO.com (Web site of The Tampa Tribune).

The “Think Pink” ground media tour with lifestyle expert Lynn Becker continued this month and has reached more than 2.1 million viewers across the country. Becker shared key messages with consumers in 19 markets, including Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Atlanta and Las Vegas, highlighting the Council’s commitment to breast cancer research and urging consumers to look for pink tills at their local retailers. Two nationally syndicated segments, Daytime and Better TV, further carried these key messages to consumers. View one of the segments here.

From October 17-20, the Council joined 6,000 dietitians and their guests at the American Dietetic Association’s annual Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo (FNCE) in Denver, Colorado. At the Mushroom Council booth, Council staff shared the health benefits and nutritional qualities of mushrooms, in particular highlighting the research at City of Hope on mushrooms and breast cancer. For every person that stopped at the booth (to get their attendee ID card scanned), the Council provided additional funding to City of Hope. FNCE attendees also joined the “Wall of Pink” by writing their name on a pink till in support of breast cancer research, or the name of someone they wanted to honor. Watch the wall grow in this video.

In October, the United States Department of Agriculture updated the National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference to include as many as 3,000 values for vitamin D for the first time. The database now recognizes mushrooms as a source of vitamin D, and the Council issued a press release to highlight the news. In total, 180 outlets picked up the release, spawning nearly 893,000 impressions. Outlets reached include Reuters.com, as well as the Web sites of Arizona Republic, Los Angeles Business Journal and The Seattle Times.

Mushroom Council placements represented an average of 51 percent of total mushroom news in October, which is within the norm of 33 to 75 percent during a period of proactive outreach. In past years, the Council has not engaged in proactive efforts during the month of October. To view all October placements, click here.

The Council launched a two-day Twitter program at the end of October to both recruit new followers and generate additional awareness and funding for City of Hope’s research on mushrooms and breast cancer. For every new follower added from October 29-30, the Council provided $5 to City of Hope, ultimately generating an additional $1,500 in funding. This program pushed the Council’s following to well over 1,000 and generated 82,963 Twitter impressions. Council messages were re-tweeted 104 times and many powerful responses were received. Some examples are included below:

blogtalkradio@MushroomChannel Glad to help, what your (sic) doing is awesome (14,878 followers)
TerriSRich@MushroomChannel $5 for city of hope where they helped me beat breast cancer 10 years ago. They are the best!!! (1 follower, appears to have joined just to help us promote this)
JanBaxterPls RT 30mins left!! RT @MushroomChannel We are still going! $5 for @cityofhope breast cancer rsrch for every new MC follower till midnight! (91 followers)

In October, MushroomInfo.com and TheMushroomChannel.com experienced 14,372 unique visitors combined, a six percent decrease compared to last month’s total unique visitors. Day to day subscription numbers, however, are still higher than previous months’ averages as September’s spike was a result of the three days surrounding the BlogHer Food conference.

The Council has 1,244 Twitter and Facebook followers to date. Obtaining these followers resulted in 778,703 total online exposures in October, compared to September’s total of 542,432, a 31 percent increase. Also, the Council had 229 total Twitter interactions in October, accounting for 29 percent of all interactions since tracking began in mid March.

On the Retail Front:

The Q3 retail newsletter was distributed with a continued focus on mushrooms’ strength in numbers, as mushrooms have outsold other top produce items including tomatoes, carrots and lettuce. Additionally, the Council developed a printable version of the newsletter for use as sales collateral.

The Q3 newsletter had an open rate of 40 percent, which is an eight percent increase over the Q2 newsletter and almost triple the open rate for standard industry newsletters.

Click through rate for this newsletter was almost 14 percent – more than double the average rate of other industry newsletters. View this newsletter here.

To wrap up pink initiatives, the Council is working to develop a case study that demonstrates the success of the pink promotion at retail. Remember to share any retailer case studies or testimonials by sending leads to Cheryl at Cheryl@mushroomcouncil.org.

For larger image, click here.

On the Foodservice Front:

From October 12-15, the Council attended the International Foodservice Editorial Council (IFEC) conference.

Council staff met with 23 editors in a series of formal desksides to discuss editorial opportunities in foodservice trade publications throughout 2010. Attending the conference has a great impact on foodservice placements. To date, 70 percent of foodservice placements have been a direct result of attending last year’s IFEC conference.

Major themes in the editorial line-ups for 2010 include vegetarian cuisine, burgers, value menu strategies, healthful dishes, emerging ethnic cuisines and educational tools for industry focused publications. Editors were very receptive and excited to include mushrooms in each of these categories and to use the Council’s resources of menu leads, photos, recipes, research and collateral in their articles.

The Council also sponsored the Chef Showcase event featuring Chef William Bradley of Addison restaurant who served delicious mushroom soup and crab-stuffed cremini caps to 200 conference attendees.

Foodservice media outreach resulted in a Pizza Marketing Quarterly article about internationally inspired pizzas with afull-page photo of a Portabella Boursin cheese pizza. Other October placements continued to keep mushrooms in pasta stories.

For an update on the status of the Council’s foodservice promotional pursuits, click here; to see new mushroom menu items for October click here.

Take Action:

Did you know the Mushroom Council is reaching consumers everyday with news, recipes, health information and program updates – all with mushrooms at the center of the discussion? You can help spread the word by getting involved in the following ways.

MUSHROOM CHANNEL TIPS:

The Mushroom Channel is the mushroom industry’s blog, a direct line to consumers and online influencers alike that brings together mushroom conversations taking place online. This is a great site to share with friends, family, colleagues and customers.

Bookmark MushroomChannel.com (http://www.themushroomchannel.com/) on your Internet browser or computer.

Receive new posts in your email inbox! Just click here, enter your email address and you’ll get each post as it’s posted.

Forward relevant e-mails to friends, family, colleagues and customers. Click on the e-mail icon at the bottom of each post to easily share content.

Share your favorite blog posts on your own Facebook page. Click the Facebook icon at the bottom of any blog post for simple directions to add it to your Facebook wall.

TWITTER TIPS:

The Mushroom Channel’s Twitter profile (@MushroomChannel) uses the real-time social networking service to interact with consumers by sharing health and nutrition news, program updates, questions and even recipes in 140 characters or less.

Follow @MushroomChannel (www.Twitter.com/MushroomChannel) for the latest tweets and re-tweets of ongoing news.

Extend the reach by re-tweeting any of the Mushroom Channel’s Twitter content.

Post your own favorite articles and recipes featuring mushrooms.

FACEBOOK TIPS:

The Mushroom Channel’s Facebook page (Mushroom Channel) links old and new friends and colleagues while providing a valuable relationship-building space for the industry.

Become a fan of the Mushroom Channel. (http://www.facebook.com/MushroomChannel)

Encourage friends to become fans of the Mushroom Channel by selecting “Suggest to Friends” underneath the Mushroom Channel photo on the Facebook page.

Share Mushroom Channel Facebook posts with your friends by clicking the “Share” link at the bottom of each Facebook post. You can share posts publicly on your wall or choose to send it as a Facebook email to select friends.

Comment on or “Like” Mushroom Channel Facebook posts by using the links below each post.