The Idaho Potato Commission has various programs designed to help retailers boost potato sales. Of those, Seth Pemsler, vice president of retail at IPC, identified three as “the key elements of our program.” They are advertising support, Potato Lovers Month retail display contests, and “what we call bin promotions,” he said.

Bin promotions are a strategic tool that the commission implements on an as-needed basis to help restore balance to a crop with a size profile that is skewed to either large-sized or small-sized potatoes. Jumbo bin promotions played an important role in the 2012-13 marketing season as the 2012 harvest yielded a very large crop heavily skewed to large-sized potatoes. However, bin promotions are not a tool that is used every year, nor are they incorporated in advance into the marketing year’s programs. Rather, a bin promotion is a tool that is ready and implemented when the market situation warrants.

The other two key elements of the commission’s retail programs are employed consistently year after year.

The ad support program is “something that we do and will continue to do” every season, said Pemsler. In that program, the commission enters into a contract with retailers “where we pay them a certain amount of money per ad during a specific time frame.” That is “very important,” he said, “because generally in the produce area, retailers are not paid for advertising” other than by a few of “the big brands.” In general, when retailers run ads for produce items such as potatoes, broccoli or lettuce, “they don’t get money.” But by contrast, on the grocery side of the business, “they always get money for every single thing they run.” For that reason, “the dollars we offer” to retailers to advertize Idaho potatoes are “a big deal in produce.”

The Potato Lovers Month retail contest has been ongoing for 18 years now, according to IPC President Frank Muir. It started with around 600 participating retail units, and since 2004, “the average has been about 2,000 every year.”

For the February 2013 Potato Lovers Month, “we had a significant number of entries more than we have ever had before,” said Pemsler. The most recent prior years had been around 2,500, but this year there were 4,047 entries. “Part of that related to the fact that WalMart got involved.”

February 2014 “is going to be even bigger” for Potato Lovers Month, said Muir. Last February, “WalMart was hugely successful with PLM,” and for the coming year, “they are going to expand it even further.”

The IPC had a new partner, Hormel, for Potato Lovers Month in 2013, and that proved “very successful.” Among other things, “we now have 240 direct sales people” from Hormel helping to promote the program, he said.

In addition, “shippers have been doing a great job of adding overlays to PLM. That is strengthening our program, too,” said Muir.

Pemsler said that when he joined the potato commission almost 10 years ago, “February was still a weak month” for potato sales. “Now it is one of the stronger-volume months, and it is entirely due to the fact” that retailers are “building these giant displays and ordering truckloads of potatoes more than they ever did in the past.”

For the 2013-2014 marketing season, “we will continue to have ad programs. we will continue to have potato lovers month,” Pemsler said. Additionally, “we will continue to have a category management data initiative” in which the IPC retail field team provides advertising or market data to retailers.

“We are doing some studies,” he said. “We just completed one where we evaluated seasonality” based on monthly data the commission has been able to procure. In the past, it was only available by quarter. “That is now available through our field guys” who are presenting the data to retailers “for russets, reds, yellows and fingerlings.”

That is a tool retailers can work with, “and we are going to work on providing some additional new information like that over the next year,” Pemsler said. “The new impetus this year is new and never-seen data that is going to help the category manager better capture opportunities both for volume and margin.”

The commission’s field representatives “will continue to be out there helping,” he said. ”Our guys are experts at one thing — potatoes. They are all produce people,” and most worked in retail or foodservice before joining the commission, so often they have held the same jobs as the customers with whom they meet and understand those jobs. But more importantly, “they have an incredibly deep expertise in the potato category.”

The commission encourages retailers, as they change buyers or category managers, “to contact us, because we can provide, basically, a training session” for those individuals, he said. That training is for the entire potato category, not just Idaho, although “we will always say you should include Idaho as part of your portfolio because it provides you more margin and more profit, because you can sell them at a higher price.”

The commission will be leveraging its programs wherever it can, said Muir, and one way it will be doing so is to have the Giant Idaho Potato Truck, which has been highly successful for the last two years in generating favorable publicity for Idaho potatoes through two coast-to-coast tours, make appearances at retail-oriented trade shows and conventions such as the Produce Marketing Association’s Fresh Summit and the Eastern Produce Council dinner.

At the PMA show in New Orleans in October, “we are going to do something totally different,” Pemsler said. “We are going to have a ride related to our truck,” complete with motion and a video screen. “We will be able to provide some fun and some messaging, all truck related.