The shine is starting to return for the cooperative business model — and that’s after a time of indifference or worse.
An early-1990s poll by Cabot Creamery Cooperative of consumers found that belief in and respect of cooperatives for food, power and credit had crumbled.
Among the dairy farm families of the Northeast who owned the cooperative, the marketing team had to break the bad news that research revealed: “co-op” was now a dirty word. A commie plot. Not a real business.
Though our farmers have been united as a cooperative since 1867, that information wasn’t important to folks who might buy our cheddar cheese. The luster of cooperatives peaked in the 1950s and has laid dormant for the past few decades.
Yet, the sunshine is coming back.
Here’s the scoop
Why? Thank you, social media and the idealism of millennials and well-situated boomers.
With social media, cultural characteristics are being shaped more and more by individual voices heard loudly and echoed among huge and varied crowds of influence on rapidly changing social media channels. One thing to bubble up in this fast paced environment: cooperatives are sexy again.
Social media has shredded or redefined every channel we used in the past to talk to consumers: newspapers, television and magazines. It allows folks to give a damn and exert influence beyond their backyards and family. Additionally — and largely because of this new landscape — research now says that brands must prove what they boast about in their marketing.
For 28 years, the Cabot Creamery brand had two messages: we are the World’s Best Cheddar having won every major award for taste, and we are owned by dairy farm families. For the past two years, we’ve enhanced those two messages that took our farmers from near bankruptcy in the 1990s to more than $600 million in sales today to include that we are a proud New York and New England Co-op and a Certified B Corporation.
Cabot cheese and dairy products allow farmers to keep farming. By 1,200 family farms coming together as one to collectively own the Cabot brand, farmers are able to create a business they otherwise could not. They own the brand as a group and reap the benefit any profits made. That is a powerful story to tell.
There is finally a U.S. movement afoot to promote the fact that cooperatives are owned and run by members, driven by values and profits and are acting together among other cooperatives to build a better world.
The proof is in the . . .
How can you prove you are a good company? There is a modern, international Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval that must be earned (i.e., you can’t buy it). B Corporation certification is a rigorous third-party certifying agency that will verify that you are a good company in the areas of governance, workforce, community and environmental impact.
Any company that sells a product or service across state lines or online must rise to meet consumer demand in whole new ways. Just having a good product or service is not enough anymore (if it ever was). How does what you do benefit others? Each company must look at itself honestly and answer that question. But know that it truly pays to be good. And 1,200 farm families who own Cabot Creamery prove it every day.
Roberta “Berta” MacDonald is the senior vice president for Cabot Creamery Cooperative of Vermont.Before settling in Vermont to raise her family on a beef farm, Berta gained a national reputation for her marketing contributions to such prestigious organizations as the San Francisco Opera, Ford Foundation, CBS, American Express and the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial. For information, visit www.cabotcheese.coop
