DENVER, Colo. – Names like Heart Throb, Turn On and Nasty Habit might sound like something from the steamy side of the internet.
But at one of the world’s largest international livestock shows, they’re being used to promote purebred bulls.
That connection to the racier side of humankind was exactly the reaction many producers wanted from hundreds of potential customers walking by their cattle stalls at Denver’s National Western Stock Show, which is running Jan. 9-24.
“Anything that stops you and gets a positive reaction is good advertising,” said purebred breeder Dawn Wilson. She owns and operates Miller-Wilson Angus at Bashaw, Alta., with her husband Lee and children Ty, Dakota and Jaelayne.
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Although Wilson isn’t using racy names for her breeding stock, she is taking a more liberal approach when it comes to marketing her farm.
At her stall in the Black Angus livestock yards, it’s hard to miss the poster of her two daughters, one blonde, the other brunette, posed in short shorts, tank tops and cowboy boots for a poster titled “Branded DMM”.
It was used to promote their farm when Calgary played host to the World Angus Forum last July.
“We started to think, ‘What have we got that is different than everyone else?’,” said Wilson, referring to strategies they were devising to draw visitors to their farm after the forum.
“We have two daughters that are pretty good looking, so we thought it would be a neat little twist,” she said.
Dakota and Jaelayne were 18 and 16 when the poster was photographed.
“We did three but we noticed that this one went off the shelf the quickest,” Wilson said of the poster showing her daughters with horses rather than bulls. The demand surprised her.
“We printed 600 and we didn’t have enough.”
She reprinted another 300 posters to hand out at the Denver show.
Located two alleys down from the Wilson camp, genetics company Sexing Technologies was also raising eyebrows and cashing in on the surprise factor of a name.
Marketing director Gustavo Toro said having Sexing Technologies in large, bold letters on the outside of their display tent piqued peoples’ curiosity.
“We had one gentlemen come into our booth to see what kind of movie we were playing,” said Toro with a laugh. “You could see his wife walking the other way.”
The seriousness of the business outweighs the snickers that the name might generate. Sexing Technologies enables purebred and commercial cattle producers to predetermine the sex of offspring before conception.
“It was a big debate when developing our name,” said Toro. “But using the name Sexing Technologies was obviously the right choice,” he said, because the name accurately des-cribes what they do.
Many businesses know increasing traffic to their booth at an event such as the Denver show increases the chance of gaining new customers.
“I’m sure some people don’t find it as fun as we do, but we sure find it fun,” said Wilson. She’s now considering using her son Ty in another campaign, targeted at female customers.
“We had such a great response and the funny thing is since we did it, we’ve had other breeders say they want to do something kind of fun too.”
But does the sexy approach actually sell cattle?
“Absolutely,” laughed Wilson. “It’s the best form of advertising we’ve done in a lot of years.”
