Sometimes you hear history second-hand, and sometimes you get to talk to people who lived it. In this episode, Keith Evans shares a little of both. As a 36-year employee of the American Angus Association public relations department he had a unique vantage for many big changes through the years. He first covers early history from proxy voting to the move to St. Joseph, before switching to changes he observed, such as the incorporation of artificial insemination to the “elephant ads.” Upon retirement from the Association, he authored, “A Historic Angus Journey — The American Angus Association 1883 to 2000.”  

HOSTS: Miranda Reiman and Mark McCully 

GUEST: Keith Evans — writer, marketing expert and Angus promoter — spent 36 years working in the public relations department at the American Angus Association. He came to the Association in 1962 with journalistic experience, which helped him in his quest to provide news that editors wanted to run. He worked his way to director of publication relations and retired in 1998. That’s when he undertook the research and writing of a comprehensive history of the Association, “A Historic Angus Journey — The American Angus Association 1883 to 2000.” 

RELATED CONTENT:  

Purchase “A Historic Angus Journey — The American Angus Association 1883 to 2000.”  

After 35 years with the American Angus Association, Keith Evans retires.

The "elephant ad" highlighted in the Annual Report on page 57 of the December 1984 Angus Journal.

Miranda Reiman (00:00:02):
Welcome to the Angus Conversation. I'm your host, Miranda Reiman with my co-host, Mark McCully, CEO of the American Angus Association. And Mark, when I get done with an interview like that, the one we just had, I can't stop smiling.

Mark McCully (00:00:15):
I know. We both said when the mic's turned off, we said that was fun.

Miranda Reiman (00:00:19):
Yeah, exactly. I am a history buff, so it was really fun to have someone who could recount a lot of history of the Association. We had Keith Evans, who was a 36 year employee of the American Angus Association, and a bystander for many years after that, come right into your office here in St. Joseph.

Mark McCully (00:00:37):
Yeah, we're so fortunate we get to see Keith from time to time as he lives here in St. Joseph and invited him in to just sit down and talk a little bit about his time. He's just such a wealth of knowledge and literally wrote a book on the history of the Association, and I think really going back and he talked about how going back in some of the records and the research that he did to again, highly encourage our members to read the book. I think it's fascinating of where our Association started and some of the controversies along the way, and we got to get into some of those and get his perspective of as a staff member at the time and in a PR role at the time, how those things got navigated.

Miranda Reiman (00:01:21):
And at 90 years young.

Mark McCully (00:01:23):
Wow. Yes.

Miranda Reiman (00:01:24):
He got to tell us about a lot of stuff that he experienced firsthand from ad campaigns he was involved in to discussions that he maybe had to communicate. And it was just a really fun to hear from somebody who was self-described as more of a behind the scenes of the Association for all the years he worked here.

Mark McCully (00:01:41):
Yeah, very much, very much. He got to see a lot and observe a lot and document a lot for us to learn from today and really enjoy.

Miranda Reiman (00:01:51):
We're going to link a lot of things in the show notes so that you can actually see some things that we're talking about, but I just hope you really enjoy listening to this one.

(00:02:04):
Today on the podcast, we've got a very special guest with us who resides in St. Joseph, Missouri, has spent a lot of his life here and dedicated 36 years of his career to the American Angus Association, in Keith Evans. Keith, we're glad to have you here.

Keith Evans (00:02:18):
Good to be here.

Miranda Reiman (00:02:19):
So we did a little bit of research on there. I know you were the director of the public relations department, but actually joined the Association staff in 1962.

Keith Evans (00:02:28):
'62, yeah. Just as a kid. I was public relations assistant at that time. There were actually three people in public relations in those days. So Lloyd Miller was the director of public relations. Bob Snyder was associate or assistant, and I was the third man on the totem pole.

Miranda Reiman (00:02:52):
And where did you move to St. Joseph from? Where'd you grow up?

Keith Evans (00:02:55):
I came from, well, I grew up about 40 miles from here near Lathrop, Missouri, but came here from Chicago where I worked for the Daily Drover's Journal for four years.

Mark McCully (00:03:09):
Four years.

Keith Evans (00:03:09):
Right. Okay.

Miranda Reiman (00:03:10):
Very good.

Mark McCully (00:03:12):
What was the responsibilities of the PR department when you were joining? Where were you spending most of your time?

Keith Evans (00:03:20):
A lot of time was spent probably with shows more than we would. I mean, there were only three of us,

(00:03:28):
And if we wanted to cover a show, Bob Snyder or I were the ones who covered it. So in those days we did a lot of that. We did a lot of writing news releases and mailing these pictures to hometown newspapers. It was at one point, there were so many shows and so many people that it became easier to get these in local newspapers, and there were a lot of livestock publications that there aren't today. So we would get, place ads and feature stories. I did a lot of feature stories over the years and gave them to other publications.

Miranda Reiman (00:04:26):
So you were going to a show, collecting all the information, and then come back to St. Joseph, write the story, put it in an envelope with a stamp on it to get it to that newspaper.

Keith Evans (00:04:35):
That was it.

Mark McCully (00:04:36):
Take it down to the Pony Express here.

Keith Evans (00:04:37):
But you brought back all the film.

Miranda Reiman (00:04:41):
Right. That's what I was going to ask.

Keith Evans (00:04:42):
And the Dark Room and at a big show, the International Livestock Exposition, we'd spend up into Sunday afternoon getting all those pictures printed, the captions, and mailed out. It was a really big project in those days. There was no other way to get the information to them other than through the mail.

Miranda Reiman (00:05:10):
Those of us who spend our time in public relations and communications activities now sometimes like to think it's harder because we've got Facebook and we've got video and we've got, that sounds like a pretty manual process to me, so I don't know.

Keith Evans (00:05:24):
Oh, it was really, and you had to cut the stencils and

Miranda Reiman (00:05:31):
You had to paste,

Keith Evans (00:05:32):
Print that and No, it was a lot. And then you had a lot of, as I said, these publications that you had to make sure that you got them what they wanted so that they would use it. And so that was

Mark McCully (00:05:49):
Keith, when you came into Angus, what did you envision? Were you planning, was this a stop off to somewhere else that you were going to be here few years or, yeah, yeah. Or was this...?

Keith Evans (00:06:00):
Told my wife

Miranda Reiman (00:06:00):
That plan worked out well,

Keith Evans (00:06:01):
Told my wife, Shirley, that we would come here for three or four years until something better comes along and nothing better came along.

Miranda Reiman (00:06:11):
Well, we're glad for that.

Mark McCully (00:06:12):
Yeah, absolutely.

Miranda Reiman (00:06:14):
One thing we did not note on your list of accomplishments too is that you are the author of a history book that is often referenced in our community here that we bring out quite a bit. So A Historic Angus Journey. And it's the history from '83 to 2000 and has often served as a reference point here in the office. And we give it to new hires to read. And so it's a treasure for us to have that. But maybe talk a little bit about that process of writing the book. How did it come about? You decided to write a book?

Keith Evans (00:06:44):
Well, way back before I actually did it, we talked about writing a book and one just about the Association. No one had ever done that. And so I started putting together information and wrote, oh, probably two or three chapters, just roughed them out. But there was no way I could finish all that because we didn't have any staff. And then at one point,

Miranda Reiman (00:07:15):
Because you had a real job.

Keith Evans (00:07:16):
When Dick Spader left, there was just me and for the most part, and so I hired LaVera Clark, then it was to come and help me. So we just put that on hold. And when I retired, that's when Dick Spader was really interested in doing the history of the Association, and I had the time and the interest, and that's when we really started

Miranda Reiman (00:07:49):
And quite a bit of firsthand knowledge of that last period. It's not often that a history book writer has actually lived so much of that history.

Keith Evans (00:07:56):
Well, yeah. I gave you 36 years of that firsthand experience. Experience on it. Yes. It was fun. And I enjoyed it. I love history, so it worked out well. Yeah.

Mark McCully (00:08:10):
Well, I would highly recommend it. And it is available. It's on the brand store website. You can go out and purchase it. It has got, I was just flipping through my copy here, 40, 45 chapters, sections of very different eras in time, different programs that you really so well outlined. And it's a treasure to us, as you said, we reference it all because a lot of times it's like, so why are we doing this? Or what was the background of this? And to be able to go back, well, that's right. AI rules, and we want to talk about a little about that of like, wow, that was such an interesting time, and you captured that so well. It definitely was such a great resource.

Miranda Reiman (00:08:53):
So I guess when I read through it, and I just read it here probably a year ago, I'm remiss that I, so long into my Angus career before I picked it up. But one of the first things that, I mean, I love going to the way back history, but that really caught my attention was I wasn't really sure how the delegate process came to be. And thinking back through, this was the time when people were coming in on trains to big annual meetings in Chicago, maybe set that time period up for us a little bit.

Keith Evans (00:09:18):
Well, of course I wasn't there.

Mark McCully (00:09:21):
Yeah, this was the twenties.

Keith Evans (00:09:23):
But the Association, when it began, of course in 1980 or, 1883, there were not many members, and it was kind of an old boys club in lots of ways. They were all kind of congregated around Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Indiana, and so forth. And it was easy for them to get into the annual meeting and to the International. It was all tied together, but it began to grow by the late 1890s and the early 19 hundreds, those 20 years or so, farm income.

Miranda Reiman (00:10:13):
Life was good.

Keith Evans (00:10:14):
Yeah, it was really good. And cattle prices were high. And then 1920, the farm recession began, and Angus cattle prices at sales just dropped in half in one year, and people were dissatisfied. And when they would go to the annual meeting in those days, I guess I should drop back a bit, but as the breed expanded, people got farther away. It became a little more costly for them to come into the Chicago. So what they did was develop this proxy system, which made sense if you couldn't go ... give my proxy to you. Well, problem was people began to

Miranda Reiman (00:11:12):
Collect stuff

Keith Evans (00:11:13):
Collect these proxies, this M.A. Judy from Iowa, and he'd been involved in the Angus business, and even the Association at one time, he would come to the annual meeting with over a thousand proxies, and two or three others would have close to 500. And all he had to do was find one of these other guys with the 500 and he

Mark McCully (00:11:40):
Could do anything they wanted to

Keith Evans (00:11:41):
Control the Association and what they didn't want to change it as a problem. And the executive secretary, or they called him at that time, was kind of in a bind because

Miranda Reiman (00:11:58):
He knew it needed to be changed.

Keith Evans (00:11:59):
These people had hired him. He knew it, but he had to kind of stick with him otherwise. So they finally just had a group of people that were going to demand change, and they couldn't get it done by just going to the annual meeting and asking for it. So they all started collecting proxies and came to a meeting and finally

Miranda Reiman (00:12:30):
Proposed the system we have today.

Mark McCully (00:12:30):
Gave us the delegate system we have today.

Keith Evans (00:12:33):
Yeah. They proposed the representative system and went on from there. And no one ever thought that was a bad deal at all after that. But it just took bad conditions and people who didn't want to change and

Mark McCully (00:12:52):
Especially if they had the power and the authority at that time

Miranda Reiman (00:12:56):
Of course they didn't want it to change.

Mark McCully (00:12:58):
They kind of liked the way it was.

Keith Evans (00:13:01):
We see that today in places maybe, and

Miranda Reiman (00:13:04):
We might think, oh, go ahead, Mark.

Mark McCully (00:13:05):
Well, I was just say, I talked to some of my compadres in other breed associations and things, and they look at our delegate system today with a lot of envy. They would say it's really, really, in many cases, I've had 'em tell me they wish they had a similar system. I think it does a really good job of representing, giving the membership a vote and a very democratic process. And I think it's

Keith Evans (00:13:29):
Served us well. No other way you could gather everybody in and do it without the delegate system. It just wouldn't work.

Miranda Reiman (00:13:38):
That's kind of what I was going to say is even though today it might be easier, we can jump on a plane and get to Fort Worth or wherever annual meeting is that year, it's still not any easier for anyone to get away from the ranch. There's still all that work to do back home. So I think it still serves as well, for sure. I guess another historic move that I think about is a literal move. You mentioned how much was tied up there in Chicago. Talk a little bit about how it came to be that we're sitting in St. Joseph today.

Keith Evans (00:14:07):
Well, they just about ran out of space in Chicago, the old livestock records building where the Association was. And at one point there were the Shorthorns and the Percheron horses, and I don't know what all, but they ran out of space and actually the conditions were changing around and it was harder to get people that they wanted. And so they had talked a long time even before the depression about having a permanent home someplace. But then with the thirties, twenties, and the thirties

Miranda Reiman (00:14:53):
Had no money to move

Keith Evans (00:14:53):
And the war, they

Mark McCully (00:14:55):
Too uncertain

Keith Evans (00:14:56):
... weren't able to do that. So then they put together a committee and kind of interesting, because most people on the committee had their own ideas. I mean some Columbia, Missouri, Hutchinson, Kansas,

Miranda Reiman (00:15:13):
Lincoln, Nebraska,

Keith Evans (00:15:14):
Lincoln, Nebraska, Iowa City, those places, even Omaha, they were pushing for and they started going around and for whatever reason, St. Joseph decided that they wanted the Angus Association to come here.

Miranda Reiman (00:15:36):
The city did.

Keith Evans (00:15:36):
The city did. So what they did was put together a program that included all this acreage right here where the association building is. They exempted them from property taxes for about 30 years, and they really put on a deal. And finally that's at the appropriate annual meeting. They decided to come to St. Joe because, it worked out well. The interstate was already on the books to be built and KCI was already on the books to be built. It took a little longer than they thought, I think. But anyway, it worked well, and you were right in the middle of all these land grant colleges. So that was important, particularly back in those days.

Mark McCully (00:16:40):
And St. Joe was still a pretty important market hub at the time. Had a very vibrant market here in the St. Joe side.

Miranda Reiman (00:16:47):
A lot of cattle traded.

Keith Evans (00:16:47):
No, it was a ...

Mark McCully (00:16:50):
Very logical.

Keith Evans (00:16:51):
Grain and livestock and so forth was sold and traded here.

Mark McCully (00:16:58):
One thing I noticed, and the architect was Eckel and Aldrich,

(00:17:03):
And we actually had a speaker yesterday morning. We do a staff breakfast once a month, and we get together and one of the things is occasionally we'll have someone come in to help us learn a little more. A lot of us are transplanted, so we try to learn a little bit more about St. Joe, and we learned about some of the really incredible architecture in St. Joe all went back to Eckel, EEJ. I'm not going to get his initials right. Yeah, I don't know. His had a huge architectural influence in St. Joe. I didn't know until this morning. I was glancing at the timeline that he was actually the architect of our building.

Keith Evans (00:17:35):
I don't know which Eckels it was. And I always thought it was kind of like the building was more like a school or a bank or something,

Mark McCully (00:17:49):
Institution.

Keith Evans (00:17:50):
It wasn't very exciting, like the Hereford Association built down there on the hill with a modern building and the big pylon with a Hereford bull on top and so forth. But it worked. I mean, that was the thing.

Mark McCully (00:18:08):
So I don't know if this was the son of the original Eckel that did, because that would've been through the late 18 hundreds and early 19 hundreds probably. So this was,

Keith Evans (00:18:16):
Yeah, I don't know which one of the Eckels actually did this, but

Miranda Reiman (00:18:23):
We're still at the same location. We moved to, if people from the original staff that moved into this building came today, they probably wouldn't recognize it. We've had additions, some remodels, additions, and moved the entrance.

Keith Evans (00:18:38):
I hardly recognize it myself, but yeah, it's originally the work area out that's been so modernized now was just filled with people doing registrations and transfers. Typewriters. And I only got here for the end of it in '62. They were beginning to install a computer and actually running double the old system and the new system together until they figured it all out.

Miranda Reiman (00:19:14):
And I think that would've been about the same period, if I'm not mistaken, when kind of the AHIR and recording some performance data started to happen. So they would've had more than ever to record as well.

Keith Evans (00:19:25):
Yeah, there wasn't much performance work being recorded in 1956. It wasn't even something that most Angus breeders were talking about. Now. There were a lot of people out in the industry talking about wanting performance records and having processing records and so forth. And so that finally led up to starting the program here. But

Mark McCully (00:19:54):
Well, thinking about what was going, I mean, we had dwarfism going on kind of there in the fifties. We were making them very, it wasn't objective in terms of a weight or a measure. It was more about kind of the baby beef and the small blocky types.

Keith Evans (00:20:07):
It was baby beef. I don't know. And some people think that's what caused it. Looking back all, almost all of the dwarfism cattle came from one place, and it was a place that was very influential, and so it was hard to nail it down. I mean, there were people in saying it was a genetic thing, but yeah, it was the first, I guess, big genetic defect thing that came up

Mark McCully (00:20:46):
That the breed had to deal with. Yeah.

Miranda Reiman (00:20:49):
So the industry was talking about performance before the Angus Association made the leap to do anything formal or to start collecting that data and all of that. I mean, was that a easy discussion or did they debate on it a lot? Was the,

Keith Evans (00:21:05):
Well, I think everybody knew that it was important. In fact, we ran an ad about that time talking about the performance records. Now, this was a little later and people thought, well, you're going to get a lot of feedback, but nobody said anything. So it was leaders, Dave Pingrey and other people on the board wanted to do this, and they finally convinced the Association or the board of directors to start the program. Of course, they'd had had a program, they call it AHIR, but it was like of a classification of live animals, which didn't really amount to anything, but it was the beginning.

Mark McCully (00:21:57):
It was the step,

Keith Evans (00:21:58):
And they started weighing cattle and moved on up from... Today, I can't even understand what all these programs are anymore. It is beyond me.

Mark McCully (00:22:11):
Fast forward just a little bit is we then start getting up in the introduction of artificial insemination and that technology. And I know that's a fascinating era as we study our history and the controversy that was going on around AI.

Miranda Reiman (00:22:28):
Yeah, we didn't do what other breeds did either. I mean, we were somewhat leaders sometimes in that space, but yeah.

Mark McCully (00:22:34):
Well, and as in PR at that time, I'm guessing you spent a lot of time

Miranda Reiman (00:22:38):
You had job security.

Keith Evans (00:22:41):
We didn't, it wasn't a big PR thing. As the science was developed and people could do it, they wanted to do it. They wanted to try artificial insemination. And one of the original rules, you could have AI, but you had to be part owner of the bull. And if the bull died, you couldn't sell semen that you had collected from then on. And people were afraid that it would kill the bull market.

(00:23:23):
I think a lot of 'em forgot that most of their bull market was commercial producers anyway, and that hasn't developed enough to amount to anything I don't think today. So yeah, then we had the lawsuit. We think maybe the AI studs were instrumental in this suit, but the federal government said we were in restraint of trade with the rules that we had, and it went on and on. By that time, there was going to be some change in it anyway, but with the lawsuit and the government involved there, lawyers said, don't change the rules now. Just

Miranda Reiman (00:24:22):
Kind of wait until the lawsuit comes out.

Keith Evans (00:24:24):
So when they finally signed the consent agreement, we did not want anything that we had agreed to in, what was it in '72 in March when they voted to open up AI and throw it wide open for the most part. And it's been a great thing ever since. But there were really people that were concerned about it and afraid that they would lose their market, and

Mark McCully (00:25:02):
They were very real concerns. They didn't know how they were, different predictions of how the future was going to play out and how this technology would impact them. Talk about how was that, I think about today, if we would have a similar controversy, the chatter would be out on social media, it would be, what was that, I know obviously the Department of Justice lawsuit that would obviously all been handled in boardrooms, but was there a lot of member engagement and discussion about this?

Miranda Reiman (00:25:31):
Were you fielding phone calls?

Mark McCully (00:25:32):
Were you going to the field days talking about it, or what did that look like?

Keith Evans (00:25:36):
Well, people were concerned about it. And in the seventies, the economy for the Angus business was bad. I mean, registrations were going down. People were unhappy. There was one group they wanted us to advertise to filthy rich people that would come and buy all these cattle they wanted to sell and start their own, but there were just a lot of talk. So the AI was kind of involved in all of that. But I don't remember at an annual meeting or anything, a lot of discussion about that. I wasn't, in those days. I didn't attend all the board meetings or the staff didn't start that until later. But anyway, it was once it was done, it was accepted and

Mark McCully (00:26:47):
Off you went.

Miranda Reiman (00:26:49):
People just moved on.

Keith Evans (00:26:51):
They moved on from there.

Miranda Reiman (00:26:55):
We're going to pause for a quick moment for a message that could help you this sales season.

(00:27:01):
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(00:27:36):
You bring up a great point about the history. One thing that I think I read throughout that is that there was a lot of ebbs and flows and demand, like the Association would be riding high and then the Great Depression came, and then we'd go back and we'd build up, and then something else would come to knock us down a peg and things like that. You would've lived through some of those highs and lows in the business.

Keith Evans (00:27:57):
Oh, yeah. No, it was '73, '74 ,registrations were down. People didn't want to dip into the, board members didn't want to dip into the reserves to keep things going, and that's when they had a staff reduction and all that goes with that. But then things began to improve, certainly after AI and the performance programs were so accepted and working so well.

Mark McCully (00:28:31):
Well, I think the breed had to make a pretty significant gear shift there too. I mean, you think about those early seventies, we had a significant type change, the influence, all the Continentals coming in. I mean, Angus was losing market share. We had the lowering of the grading standards that ultimately led to the establishment and the desire to start a branded beef program

Keith Evans (00:28:51):
Thanks to the lowering the standards. When they did it, it was humorous in a way. I went to one national livestock producers and a guy, a breeder, got up in front of the group and they were talking about grading changes. And he said, well, we know people like Choice Beef, so we just lower this standard and they'll have all the choice beef that they want. That was the rationale behind it. In fact, everybody was for it, except the Angus Association and the National Restaurant Association, if you can believe. I talked to them some, but everybody else thought,

Mark McCully (00:29:42):
This is a good idea.

Keith Evans (00:29:42):
We're going to sell more Choice cattle at higher prices. And

Miranda Reiman (00:29:48):
It turns out it created opportunity for the Angus breed then.

Keith Evans (00:29:51):
Well, yeah, the Choice grade became

Miranda Reiman (00:29:53):
Meaningless,

Keith Evans (00:29:56):
No good, and

Mark McCully (00:29:56):
I always defend USDA because I hear it told USDA, and I think I just said it. USDA lowered the standards. Well, they were petitioned to lower this. It was an industry petition to lower the standards. So it wasn't USDA necessarily wanting to do that. It was the cattlemen saying, lower the bar.

Keith Evans (00:30:11):
No, I don't think they wanted to at all. That wasn't their idea. But it was, exotic cattle, love them, but they didn't grade. So a lot of people wanted help. Angus were being discounted, but when feedlots got a bunch of Angus cattle in, they would salt those throughout. Their other pens that didn't have any cattle that would grade, and so they're preferring Angus, but we still didn't get paid for it.

Miranda Reiman (00:30:49):
So then it took, I mean, that kind of a shift takes a while to take hold. So that was the seventies, it was still going down, eighties. I mean, it took a while before that actually paid before the program made sense before

Keith Evans (00:31:02):
Well, yeah. And Dick Spader always said, well, he came here to work in 1969, and it was for the next five years. When he got here in '68, of course, they registered more cattle than any breed association, and it went down and down and down from there. So it was 1981, I think, before

Miranda Reiman (00:31:27):
It reached that

Keith Evans (00:31:27):
It started to increase. And the CAB program was beginning to stimulate the business and the Angus business.

Mark McCully (00:31:38):
Well, there was a year in there. I don't recall if it was seventy three, seventy four... I think registrations dropped like a hundred, a hundred thousand one year. I mean, there was a big drop in there one of those years

Keith Evans (00:31:51):
We got from 400 and some thousand, it dropped down to 134,000 registrations. So you can see what that does to the income and

Miranda Reiman (00:32:03):
And morale of the employees and the breeders

Keith Evans (00:32:05):
And what the board who are responsible for holding things together, what it would

Mark McCully (00:32:12):
Continuing to offer the programs and services for those that were...

Miranda Reiman (00:32:16):
So when we talk about some of those extra services, I guess, and I don't remember when this falls into the scheme of things, I think maybe it got built up as we went along, but I wanted to talk a little bit about the creation of regional manager position and having folks out in the field and out working with breeders more on a personal level and those kind of things. Do you remember the history of that?

Keith Evans (00:32:40):
Can remember it was 1939. I guess. At one point they had fieldmen or people that were working the field, and some of 'em were even connected to the Angus Journal. They would share responsibilities and so forth. But during the depression, all that went away. It was 1939. They hired John Barton's brother to be the first regional manager. It was called a fieldman. Then there wasn't any management part. They were representative, representing the association at different events and helps form state associations and different things. And it grew from there.

Miranda Reiman (00:33:32):
And that was the real role of them early on, wasn't it to organize folks within their state? I mean, there wasn't a lot of state associations.

Keith Evans (00:33:39):
No, no, there weren't. And then later on, the juniors associations became really big thing and state junior associations. And in fact, Dean Hurlbut, this was later on, was involved in forming the Missouri Junior Angus Association. So that would've been about that time, I think.

Miranda Reiman (00:34:06):
And now today it's grown to 13 regional managers across the United States, and their job description is pretty long. So

Mark McCully (00:34:16):
Now they also represent Angus Media obviously as well. And that was a merger of those in the seventies, right?

Keith Evans (00:34:22):
Right.

Mark McCully (00:34:23):
Well, well, I guess we didn't have the journal until '78

Keith Evans (00:34:28):
When we got the Journal. When we bought the Journal, CK Allen didn't think that we needed fieldmen to represent the magazine. And they went through that for two or three, about three years. And then he left the association. Dick Spader came in, and the first thing Dick did was find people that were out in the field who would love to also represent the Journal. And there were only about three or four people who were getting close to retirement who thought, well, they weren't quite ready to start that yet. But from then on, everybody of course represented both. And it saved

Miranda Reiman (00:35:19):
Having two people

Keith Evans (00:35:20):
the Association because part of their expenses were paid by the Journal, so it was a good deal, particularly at that time

Mark McCully (00:35:30):
In your role, and probably, Keith, you probably mentioned most frequently in two different areas in this office. One is this book, and the second is a pretty famous ad that you were a part of when we turned the tide on type of cattle, and we were in a bit of a frame race to see how big we could get them, and

Miranda Reiman (00:35:50):
We don't even have to name the ad. And you know what we're talking about.

Mark McCully (00:35:53):
And you developed the elephant ad as we refer to it. Talk about that.

Keith Evans (00:35:59):
Well, the elephant ad was more fun than I've had in a long time. When we did it, it wasn't my doing.

Mark McCully (00:36:10):
We're going to still give you credit for it,

Keith Evans (00:36:12):
OK, I'll take credit. But Bob Watkins became our, he was with Fletcher Mayo advertising, and we went with them instead of doing in-house advertising. And then they changed. But Bob was the one he asked a million questions and talked about, and we also had focus groups that we talked to the people about this, and he came up with Packers don't want to box elephants. In fact, they were so unsure about it. The advertising agency was that they put together another type of program that they could present in case we thought that it was

Miranda Reiman (00:36:59):
That it was too outside the box

Keith Evans (00:37:01):
We're way out. And everybody loved it, Dick particularly. And he was the one that was going to take most of the heat. So that started and the readership on them, we used to participate in readership studies, and geez, a third of the people who read a magazine would remember those ads. And of course, some breed associations weren't too happy about it at all.

Mark McCully (00:37:36):
They took some offense to it.

Keith Evans (00:37:38):
It was a maternal ad for... mothers don't need to be elephants or something. Well, the calf was kind of a different colored Charolais and Simmental, both at various times thought we were making the calf look like

Miranda Reiman (00:37:59):
One of them,

Keith Evans (00:38:00):
Their breed. And so we changed different colors and so forth, but it was, and one breed put out an ad against it that we were selling...

(00:38:14):
But it was interesting, and I don't think we stopped the growth in size of cattle at that time, but

Miranda Reiman (00:38:24):
At least you pointed it out, huh? Right.

Keith Evans (00:38:26):
Yeah, we changed. Yeah,

Mark McCully (00:38:29):
Those pendulums take a bit to get slowed up and reverse course, but I would like to think, and I believe that that's made some people pause and start maybe thinking about the end product and our downstream impacts of what we were doing at the time from a frame standpoint and size.

Keith Evans (00:38:46):
Yeah. Well, that was the one thing I really wanted. Whatever ad program we started was to make people, anybody who read it, they may have been, have other breeds of cattle, but make 'em at least think, is that true? Can I make more money if I changed my program? And I think it did. There was a lot of that.

Miranda Reiman (00:39:12):
So I've got to ask a really specific question. Was that a stock photo of an elephant or did you actually go do a photo shoot with an elephant?

Keith Evans (00:39:20):
No, we did a photo shoot.

Mark McCully (00:39:22):
Did you really?

Keith Evans (00:39:22):
Out in California, yeah.

Miranda Reiman (00:39:24):
Well, I'm glad I asked. So tell me how a photo shoot with an elephant goes, because I know what it's like to take pictures of bulls and they don't always do exactly what you want them to do.

Keith Evans (00:39:34):
Well, elephants are pretty docile.

Mark McCully (00:39:35):
Maybe they're easier.

Keith Evans (00:39:36):
Yeah, they're easier than,

Miranda Reiman (00:39:39):
But you got to be part of that photo shoot.

Keith Evans (00:39:41):
I wanted to go. So I think Bob Watkins, who knew this photographer, and there was an organization there that supplied animals for photos or whatever. In fact, this elephant was in a movie at one point.

Miranda Reiman (00:40:02):
What a famous elephant.

Keith Evans (00:40:04):
So yeah, it was interesting. And had to build a big backdrop.

Miranda Reiman (00:40:12):
It's the white backdrop.

Keith Evans (00:40:14):
Yeah. So there was nothing, but that was about all, he had a box there and this guy,

Miranda Reiman (00:40:20):
So the person was actually there too. You didn't combine two photos. You had the meat cutter

Keith Evans (00:40:25):
And yeah, he was there in the box and things was looking at the elephant.

Miranda Reiman (00:40:30):
And what was your role? Was to be pooper scooper or you had to get his ears, or what was...?

Keith Evans (00:40:35):
I just

Miranda Reiman (00:40:36):
You supervised?

Keith Evans (00:40:37):
I just enjoyed it. Yeah. No, it was going to be our,

Miranda Reiman (00:40:43):
Your ad

Keith Evans (00:40:43):
I wanted, I wanted to be there and see how it works.

Mark McCully (00:40:48):
Thats so cool. I don't know how we do this. Miranda, if we can link a picture or something.

Miranda Reiman (00:40:51):
Absolutely. We'll make sure that it gets in the show notes

Mark McCully (00:40:54):
In our social post. Yeah, because maybe not everybody's seen the elephant ad

Keith Evans (00:40:58):
I'm sure by now.

(00:40:59):
Yeah, that was a long time ago.

Miranda Reiman (00:41:01):
Yeah. No wonder you said it was one of the most fun things you'd been a part of. I that's,

Mark McCully (00:41:06):
Did you have others besides the elephant photo shoot? Were there other memorable

Miranda Reiman (00:41:11):
Experiences? Well,

Keith Evans (00:41:11):
We took a lot of pictures of the elephants. I mean, so in future ads, they were kind of put together the elephant and the feedlot and all that sort of thing. So you started to ask

Miranda Reiman (00:41:27):
If that was the highlight, or did you have other highlights that stick out as high as the elephant ad?

Mark McCully (00:41:32):
Some other campaigns you got to work on that were

Miranda Reiman (00:41:34):
Or just experiences or events?

Keith Evans (00:41:36):
Yes. As you may know, the board members took so much heat from people back home about that. That was the only time in history they voted to kill an advertising campaign that was really going great guns. But yeah, after I think just two years is all they allowed us to go

Mark McCully (00:42:05):
Just thought it was too edgy? Were they getting their neighbors with some other breeds? Were getting giving a hard time,

Keith Evans (00:42:10):
Yeah, giving 'em a hard time

Mark McCully (00:42:11):
Or thought they were out there just little too far?

Miranda Reiman (00:42:14):
I didn't know that part.

Mark McCully (00:42:15):
No, I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that. That's awesome.

Keith Evans (00:42:19):
No, but then with Bob Watkins again, he worked with us for, well until I retired, but we had two or three really, really good advertising campaigns where we had testimonials. But the photos were big of the person that we thought was kind of popular in his era. And he was talking about his Angus, the kind of cattle he liked. And then we did one tricky one. We went up to Dave Nichols and he had three different breeds of bulls that were all black. So the ad said, which one of the three bulls is worth more? Now, some people said, we were not really honest about that, but we were. The Angus,

Miranda Reiman (00:43:19):
We can set the record straight.

Keith Evans (00:43:19):
Angus cattle we're selling for more, and people had to guess. Well, we told them in the ad, but which one was really an Angus? And when the crossbreds, a lot of people were going to black everything. And so that was kind of to counter that.

Mark McCully (00:43:40):
It's funny, a lot of,

Miranda Reiman (00:43:41):
I was just going to say, that's interesting

Mark McCully (00:43:42):
Still, our messaging around Powered by Angus is you can't tell by looking, and

Keith Evans (00:43:46):
They're all black

Mark McCully (00:43:47):
What we call the imposter ad now. And there's so many black that it's driving the value now if you've got to look for the registration.

Miranda Reiman (00:43:55):
And honestly, when I started at CAB, that was a sale barn study we used to do where it was comparing known Angus cattle to just nondescript black cattle and trying to prove an actual Angus premium. And that was 2006. So it's interesting to know that we're just continuing the work you started, Keith.

Keith Evans (00:44:13):
Yeah. That's good.

Miranda Reiman (00:44:15):
We'll keep working on it for you.

Mark McCully (00:44:18):
We talk about the elephant ad being such a favorite. Are there others that you worked on that you're really proud of looking back, that you think really, were there any controversial ones even, maybe?

Keith Evans (00:44:29):
Well, yeah, that one was

(00:44:33):
That one I just talked about the three, the three other three bulls that were all black and one was worth more, and people said, well, you can't, he's really not worth more. But if you went back and the results of things that had tests and so forth, you could prove that. Anyway.

Miranda Reiman (00:44:56):
So you've talked a lot about a lot of the great leaders that you've worked with, but you took over the communications department or public relations, I don't know which it was called at the time. What period of time was that?

Keith Evans (00:45:08):
That was 1968. It wasn't quite '68. In '68, Glenn Bratcher died and Lloyd Miller was made executive secretary. It left Bob Snyder and I, and he was director of communications, and I was assistant and head of the advertising department, but then Bob decided he wanted to be a minister, so he left me. And that's when we weren't hiring very many people.

Miranda Reiman (00:45:49):
You got the promotion because they needed you.

Keith Evans (00:45:52):
I got the promotion just really when CK came that there was no one, no one else he could hire. Yeah, it was ... most of them.

Mark McCully (00:46:12):
What were some of the biggest changes you saw in the department from when you started when you retired in '98?

Keith Evans (00:46:19):
In public relations?

Mark McCully (00:46:20):
In public relations, specifically

Keith Evans (00:46:22):
Well, the change from the old advertising where Harry Barger, who had been a consultant on the advertising program since it began, and he was retired, and that's when we decided to go to an agency, an ad agency, and ended up with one right here in town.

Miranda Reiman (00:46:46):
What other changes

Mark McCully (00:46:47):
I'm thinking about some of the change of photography and some of the design tools?

Keith Evans (00:46:51):
You go right back to all of a sudden there weren't any people in the PR department and there wasn't seemed to be much interest in adding more. So we did at one time,, got an assistant and then she left. But what we did, since I couldn't, and we had no other photographers, I convinced regional managers. In fact, some of them really liked it to have cameras and take photos at a lot of the shows that we would never have covered before. And those pictures were when you sent them, to hometown newspapers, were just gobbled up. I mean, there's not as many hometown newspapers anymore,

Miranda Reiman (00:47:47):
But we still send results and news releases to hometown newspapers

Mark McCully (00:47:50):
And the pickup is pretty incredible.

Keith Evans (00:47:51):
No, it was big doing that, and we couldn't have done it unless the regional managers had cooperated and taken pictures and sent 'em in to us.

Mark McCully (00:48:04):
So they sent the film in.

Keith Evans (00:48:05):
Film in.

Miranda Reiman (00:48:07):
So in your time, would've you gotten rid of the dark room or not until after you left? I mean, I was in college in about that time period and we were still developing. So it was just kind of the transition to digital at that time.

Keith Evans (00:48:20):
We kept, the Dark Room was being used all the time I was here. Then they got one of these machines, I guess that prints color pictures. They weren't very good at that time, but I mean now it is tremendous. You've got great pictures and you can send them out over the internet and no late, Sunday,

Mark McCully (00:48:49):
We all carry a camera in our pocket now.

Keith Evans (00:48:50):
That's right. No, that was interesting. And it was fun. We had a lot more work in the darkroom. We bought a printer, but she worked for us and she learned to use, that was

Mark McCully (00:49:07):
Kris Sticken? I mean, because Kris started,

Keith Evans (00:49:09):
No, it wasn't Kris

Mark McCully (00:49:10):
She works on our Foundation now, but I think she tells stories of being, working in the darkroom

Keith Evans (00:49:14):
Well, yeah. She probably did.

Miranda Reiman (00:49:14):
And you mentioned LaVera earlier.

Keith Evans (00:49:16):
Well, yeah.

Miranda Reiman (00:49:18):
There's several people actually that are CSRs now that talk about starting in the darkroom. Some of our long-term employees. I think maybe the darkroom wasn't a place that a lot of people stayed for a lot of years. They moved on to another job after that

Keith Evans (00:49:32):
I loved darkroom, I learned it in college. And Drover's Journal, I ran the darkroom there. In fact, I took the pictures and ran the darkroom, and so I didn't mind printing pictures. It'd get a little tiresome at times. But back in the days of the International, with hundreds of pictures being printed.

Miranda Reiman (00:49:59):
So if you had one thing that you could be known for your contribution or your time at the Association, what do you hope people would remember about Keith Evans?

Keith Evans (00:50:09):
Most people wouldn't remember, wouldn't remember much. I mean, really

Mark McCully (00:50:14):
That's not true.

Keith Evans (00:50:16):
It's not a job that, I didn't deal a lot with registered breeders. I mean, my job, as I always looked at it, was selling registered cattle to commercial people. And all the stories I wrote were about commercial people who were using Angus bulls and being very successful. We also, I wasn't a big part of it, but Bob Snyder particularly, they had these tours of different parts of the country. Cattle tours. We didn't go to any registered breeders. Tours were all to commercial people who were really doing a heck of a job.

Miranda Reiman (00:51:04):
See those genetics in action.

Keith Evans (00:51:05):
I left the breeders kind of on their own. I did write to, advertising and so forth and try to help, but most of my effort and the PR effort was in selling to commercial people. Sure.

Mark McCully (00:51:24):
Well, I think, gosh, it was so important, especially then. I mean that source of those stories for a breeder maybe in Indiana, to hear success stories of the Angus breed and commercial outfits all around the country or wherever. That was such an important part, I think, for breeders to understand and hear those success stories and get connected to that commercial industry that we have to stay so connected to.

Keith Evans (00:51:47):
Yeah, I guess I was, but Farm Journal in those days with almost 2 million subscribers,

Miranda Reiman (00:51:57):
Wow.

Keith Evans (00:51:58):
Was hard. Was hard to get into. And so several stories I was able to get them to use about Angus cattle and an Angus, commercial Angus breeder in Wyoming who did a great job. So being able to kind of break into that because nobody had really done this much before

Miranda Reiman (00:52:28):
As far as promotion. Yeah,

Keith Evans (00:52:30):
Different, well,

Mark McCully (00:52:33):
It was focused on the show rate,

Keith Evans (00:52:35):
Editors always need help. And so I didn't send them a,

Miranda Reiman (00:52:42):
You were doing journalism,

Keith Evans (00:52:43):
A promotion, an ad. I sent 'em a story that I would've written regardless, and geez, they loved it. We had a few responses. That's when Lloyd was executive secretary that wrote ... something about how much they liked these stories. Well,

Miranda Reiman (00:53:07):
They were real stories.

Keith Evans (00:53:08):
Yeah, it worked really well. And it happened in the West where the Herefords were strong

Mark McCully (00:53:17):
King at the time.

Keith Evans (00:53:18):
Yeah, yeah. But nobody ever really picked up on that. No other breed association that I know of.

Miranda Reiman (00:53:27):
My very first boss when I was starting out had been an editor at Farm Journal and at Beef Today. And I think that probably it's similar, your experience working for Drovers, you knew what an editor wanted because you had been one. And that's something that I learned from Steve Suther as well

Keith Evans (00:53:42):
I've written those stories

Miranda Reiman (00:53:44):
Yeah, right, exactly. Well, let's maybe wrap this up a little bit where we started. So Dick Spader said, I'm interested in you writing this book. So then how did you, you're in retirement. Did you come into the office? I mean, you amassed a lot of research and really poured into it. What did it all take to come together?

Keith Evans (00:54:04):
Well, we started, the Association had kept

Miranda Reiman (00:54:08):
Lots of papers.

Keith Evans (00:54:10):
In '34, the Association burned down, so they didn't have

Miranda Reiman (00:54:15):
Robust records,

Keith Evans (00:54:16):
The records, but a lot of, there were lots of records of the annual meetings. So we have information about annual meetings going way back. So the first thing was to read that and get some sense of where you're going to go with it. And then you have all these questions. And so you talk to people that were there at the time. And

Miranda Reiman (00:54:49):
So you did a lot of interviews,

Keith Evans (00:54:51):
Just mostly telephone. How did this happen and what was going on then and what did you or they think about it,

Mark McCully (00:55:01):
What were they thinking?

Keith Evans (00:55:03):
That sort of thing.

Mark McCully (00:55:04):
A couple year process of putting it together?

Keith Evans (00:55:07):
Yeah, a little, Dick wanted it fast, I'd like to had a little more time, but it was OK. My only regret, real regret was that somehow or other the information that told about when they required Angus to be black, I didn't get it in the book. So I ...

Miranda Reiman (00:55:38):
We should add an addendum. Is that what you're suggesting?

Keith Evans (00:55:41):
Yeah, I always thought about that. Some people would. I don't know where you'd get the, somebody asked that after I'd done the book and I said ...

Miranda Reiman (00:55:50):
After it was out?

Keith Evans (00:55:51):
I said, I thought it was in there? No. So I went back and went through all the stuff that was still there. And here was that two sheets of paper. I don't know why it wasn't in, but anyway,

Mark McCully (00:56:05):
Those darn editors cut it somewhere.

Miranda Reiman (00:56:07):
Yeah, that's right. Trying to save a PH cost on a form or something. Very good.

Mark McCully (00:56:11):
Well, I would tell you, we are incredibly grateful that you took the amount of time and effort that you did to document this history. Like I said, it's a resource for us and I would say all of the Angus Association and breeders to go back to and learn from history and make sure, what's the old Abraham Lincoln? Those that don't know their history are destined to repeat it. And so I'm a believer that we need to make sure we study our lesson well, and you've written a great lesson

Keith Evans (00:56:41):
You're creating a lot of history right now. Somebody's going to have to deal with it.

Miranda Reiman (00:56:46):
Maybe it'll be a retirement project for me, how's that?

Keith Evans (00:56:48):
Yeah, there you go.

Miranda Reiman (00:56:50):
So we always end this podcast on a random question of the week. So I want to know, after you've had a successful career with Angus and you've written a book, what does Keith Evans do in retirement?

Keith Evans (00:57:01):
For a long time, I had syndicated my column for about 11 years after I retired, and then I did marketing lectures and around the country and in Canada, and I did a whole bunch of them in Australia.

Miranda Reiman (00:57:23):
You got to travel to some cool places.

Keith Evans (00:57:25):
Yeah, I spent about a month in Australia going, they had different programs set up, but right now there's not as much. I write newspaper editors to get my frustration out.

Miranda Reiman (00:57:43):
So you're still writing?

Keith Evans (00:57:43):
I still write. They don't print many letters anymore, if you may have noticed.

Miranda Reiman (00:57:51):
So I hear in retirement, Keith Evans keeps doing what he loves.

Keith Evans (00:57:55):
That's about right. Reading. I do a lot of reading. Too much, my wife thinks; and I love jazz music, traditional jazz, and I can spend an afternoon

Miranda Reiman (00:58:12):
Reading and listening to jazz.

Keith Evans (00:58:13):
Listening to jazz and so forth. That's great. So it's fun.

Miranda Reiman (00:58:17):
I love that. Well, and we're lucky that you are still here in St. Joseph so we were able to grab an hour out of your afternoon, and I guess we did not mention in your intro in the beginning, but that you're also an Angus Heritage Award Foundation winner and

Mark McCully (00:58:32):
Yeah, back in '98, I think the year you retired. Right.

Keith Evans (00:58:35):
Probably

Mark McCully (00:58:35):
Honored you at that point. Very well deserved.

Miranda Reiman (00:58:39):
So like Mark said,

Mark McCully (00:58:40):
Echo. Yeah, we're just so thankful. And look back, I mean, I know when our team, our communications team look for inspiration, they go back and study what Keith Evans was doing and thinking about, I think what you talked about of making sure that we're making people think and telling those great stories. That's still the recipe today. Yeah. So thank you.

Keith Evans (00:59:02):
If you can get people to think

Mark McCully (00:59:05):
That's a whole nother,

Miranda Reiman (00:59:05):
Is that harder today?

Keith Evans (00:59:07):
What's going on today? Not much thinking.

Mark McCully (00:59:13):
That's probably a good place to park.

Miranda Reiman (00:59:14):
Yeah, that's right. Well, thank you again for coming in this afternoon, and I'm sure our listeners are going to enjoy this much as, this one as much as we have.

Keith Evans (00:59:24):
Well, thank you.

Miranda Reiman (00:59:25):
I hope you enjoyed that walkthrough Angus history as much as I did. As a reminder to keep up on Angus stories as they're happening, or to take other historical looks back or dive into data, be sure to subscribe to the monthly Angus Journal. Our theme for April is top of the class, encouraging progress and a growth mindset. Upcoming. In May, we have Next Level, making the most of your brand and your marketing plan. And June, we'll turn the page to Unshakable, a showcase of resilience and perseverance. These are sure to be chock-full of good stories that you don't want to miss. Visit angusjournal.net to learn more. This has been The Angus Conversation, an Angus Journal podcast.