Matt Harlow

In-person events are of high value to both customers of agencies and have been shown to contribute to positive agency perception. They are also a challenge to scale due to the high level of investment in terms of time and funding required. Additionally, many programs do not create a smooth customer pathway, which can lead to higher churn rates. 

Indiana DNR, in collaboration with DJ Case & Associates, has developed a novel solution. In 2025, the Indiana DNR debuted 6 new in-person courses for use by both internal staff and external partners, including local NGOs. Courses are consistent in content and design, are simple to use, and can be implemented broadly to expand the reach of current R3 initiatives and help unify Indiana’s conservation community.

The lessons included: Basic Fishing - Panfish, Bass Fishing Basics, Catfish Fishing Basics, Firearm Deer Hunting Basics, Squirrel Hunting Basics, and Duck Hunting Basics - Dabbling Ducks.

Recruiting new hunters is a vital component of sustaining conservation funding and participation in America’s outdoor heritage. As interest in hunting evolves and traditional recruitment pathways decline, effective marketing has become an essential tool for reaching today’s prospective adult hunters—especially those without familial ties to the tradition.

Research Project - This report synthesizes insights from a focused analysis of three social media ad campaigns—Hunt for Good, Tennessee Go Hunting, and Become a Hunter—DJ Case & Associates conducted interviews and an online survey with outdoors-oriented new adult hunters or non-hunters interested in trying hunting. The study evaluated how various images and messages influenced willingness to click on an ad and take a next step.

A key finding was the importance of imagery to effectiveness of social media ads. Image composition and quality had a greater impact on ad engagement than slogans or copy. Successful ads featured high-quality, emotionally resonant visuals—often close-up shots, smiling subjects, diverse representation, visible hunting gear, and a sense of action or accomplishment.

Implementation Guide - Based on results from this project and six other recent projects that had similar goals and/or methods, this Implementation Guide offers practical, evidence-based recommendations for R3 practitioners on how to optimize audience targeting, message design, and media placement. By using relatable imagery, tailoring content to specific motivations, and leveraging paid digital media, agencies can more effectively inspire non-hunters to take the first step toward participation.

State fish and wildlife agencies have long voiced a need to raise awareness of their role in delivering natural resources conservation among the general public. Some local efforts have shown promise, but previous national efforts have fallen short. By developing an understanding of how to reach audiences outside of the typical outdoor recreationists, identifying the messages that resonate best with them, and achieving a favorable perception change as a result, state agencies would gain a broader, deeper support base, which would lead to better and more effective conservation efforts. 

The original Making It Last campaign (found here) was a ready-to-use, branded campaign developed for this purpose and provided for states to utilize. However, states were hesitant to use the campaign and asked instead for a “formula” that would allow them to create messages that meshed better with their particular brands and communication efforts. This project set out to discover that formula. 

The recommendations provided below emphasize steps an agency can take in developing a campaign to increase favor and garner new support among the general public. Strategies include selecting topics of interest that attract the public, image selection, content development, vocabulary choices, media platforms for distribution, additional resources to support the public's continued engagement with the agency, and metrics for evaluating campaign success.

When new hunters are asked where they go to learn new skills, one of the top answers is almost always YouTube. YouTube was mentioned as a preferred source of content and instruction in Effectively Targeting New Adult Hunters (2023, DJ Case & Associates) and New Hunter Journey Map (2024, DJ Case & Associates). Yet, Engaging New Adult Hunters with YouTube Advertising (2024, DJ Case & Associates) showed that paid YouTube advertising was less cost-effective than other paid online media at driving new hunters to a recruitment-oriented landing page. 

Given the importance of YouTube for providing content to new hunters, this follow-on phase of the project sought to determine if paid YouTube ads are an effective way to drive people to YouTube content, specifically “how-to” deer hunting content. To determine this, DJ Case & Associates (DJ Case) employed marketing methods both inside and outside of YouTube to drive viewers to the National Deer Association Deer Hunting 101 playlist, or one of four co-branded pilot state playlists.

Results were analyzed to develop recommendations for state agencies and conservation non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for utilizing YouTube marketing in R3 (recruitment, retention, and reactivation) initiatives. This report discusses results and provides tips on how to best market YouTube how-to content online. Findings indicated that the most cost-effective means of driving traffic to the playlists above were social media advertising and paid search. YouTube advertising strategies were far less cost-effective, with a cost-per-click up to 125 times higher than social media ads and as much as 25 times higher than paid search. 

Youth shooting sports programs are among the fastest growing youth sports programs in the country, however, little is known about youth motivations and barriers impacting this trend, or how to best maintain and grow participation over time. By understanding the barriers and motivations of youth participants and addressing them though tested outreach strategies, coaches and other practitioners can more effectively increase shooting sports team participation.

In a previous, related project (Phase One), DJ Case & Associates (DJ Case) conducted nineteen focus groups across various shooting disciplines to develop a better understanding of what factors attract participants to clubs and school teams, as well as what factors act as barriers to participation.

Several motivations emerged from the focus groups, indicating elements that act as strong attractants for youth participants across the shooting sports disciplines. These attracting elements include making friends, having fun, participating in an activity that is both a team and individual sport, and enjoying the welcoming atmosphere of an activity that is for everyone. 

This report examines key communication strategies for youth shooting sports recruitment, developed based on these identified motivations and barriers, and assesses their effectiveness in engaging parents, coaches, and youth.

LearnHunting.org is a website designed for new adult hunters interested in finding experienced hunters who can offer one-on-one guidance and social support. According to previous research (The Missing Link in R3: Making Mentorship Work, August 2020; Wildlife Management Institute with Southwick Associates and DJ Case & Associates), new hunters and mentors alike trust state fish and wildlife agencies to help broker this type of relationship. The LearnHunting website’s roster of mentors was prepopulated in pilot states with state-certified hunter education instructors who were willing to provide guidance and support through this non-traditional medium. The goal of this project was to pilot test methods for recruiting new and potential adult hunters to utilize the platform. 

The International Hunter Education Association-USA (IHEA-USA), eight pilot state agencies, and DJ Case & Associates (DJ Case) provided support for this project by focusing on creating and testing marketing campaigns in the eight pilot states. These campaigns directed new and potential hunters to the LearnHunting.org website and encouraged them to select a hunting mentor through the platform. Parallel campaigns sought to engage additional mentors to further populate the roster of instructors.

Pilot state testing revealed very useful results. In general, social media can provide a higher number of impressions than paid search ads, but often at a higher cost. Paid search ads generate fewer impressions but at a much lower cost per conversion and with a higher conversion rate. Simply stated, social media ads get agencies in front of the largest volume of people, while paid search ads get agencies in front of the right people at the right time in their hunting journey. Some key recommendations from this testing include using state logos in ads, performing social media burst campaigns that run prior to and overlap with an upcoming hunting season, and funding ongoing paid search campaigns to connect with new adult hunters during the right time in their hunting journey.

In 2024, the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) and DJ Case & Associates conducted a mixed-methods evaluation of MDC programs intended to recruit, retain, or reactivate (R3) hunters, anglers, trappers, and recreational shooters. The project was designed to gain insight into current programming and inform future program design, delivery, and evaluation. It was intended, in other words, to begin answering these overarching questions: What are MDC’s R3 efforts currently achieving, and why? What could they achieve, and how?

Based on analyses of agency databases and survey results, as well as interviews conducted during the course of the project, this report shares findings concerning MDC R3 programs and events, as well as participants’ motivations, experiences, and needs. Though some findings are specific to MDC, many suggest patterns which, though inferred from a limited data set, may prove worthy of consideration by other agencies and worthy of further research.

The project team found that participants are motivated to attend R3 events by factors that (1) often emerge out of relationships and/or personal interests in developing specific skills and (2) vary somewhat among new, active, and returning participants. Participants are highly satisfied with individual MDC R3 events, which yield helpful, though limited, boosts in skills, knowledge, and confidence.

Across new, active, and returning participants, the ideal recipe for sustained participation appears to be similar: personal motivation plus connection with others who are also enthusiastic about the activity. Except for those pursuing trapping, most participants reported that R3 events did not significantly increase their sense of connection with other individuals or groups. Based on project findings, this report offers two sets of recommendations: one related to program evaluation, the other to program design and delivery.

Youth shooting sports programs are among the fastest growing youth sports programs in the country, but little is known about participation of underrepresented groups. By understanding the barriers these populations face, coaches and other practitioners can develop strategies to increase their participation and representation in the shooting sports. The goal of this project is to understand how to increase and improve efforts to recruit more diverse participants into youth shooting sports such as archery and trap shooting. This report summarizes Phase One of the project: findings of focus groups conducted by DJ Case & Associates to help inform the development of recruitment tools and efforts in Phase Two.

The DJ Case team conducted focus groups with shooting sports coaches and participants as well as with students who do not participate in shooting sports. Findings include insights into:

• Why students do/don’t participate in high school sports, in general
• Why students do/don’t participate in high school archery teams
• Why students do/don’t participate in high school shooting sports teams

These findings, combined with the findings of past studies, were used to develop recommendations as to how high school shooting sports teams could best attract more diverse participants. These recommendations include the use of:

• Diversified imagery and representation to showcase different genders, ethnicities, and physical abilities
• Strategic messaging and imagery to address perceived barriers
• Specialized new shooter events to bridge first-time to competition-style learning

As part of a 2022 Multi-State Grant, the Association for Conservation Information (ACI) and DJ Case & Associates utilized social listening to monitor the social media posts about every US state fish and wildlife agency. Every other week, reports were sent to state agencies, and at the end of the year, thousands of posts were analyzed for trends that could be useful in state agencies’ efforts to manage their brands in social media.  

We were able to develop queries for 50 state agencies and monitor those queries for a year. Every single state received these reports. Many reports went to multiple divisions/work units in an agency. These have been helpful to agencies in understanding what is being said about them in real-time.

In 2023, DJ Case is expanding those queries alongside WSFR and ACI to include property names (WMAs, parks, boat ramps, piers, etc.), greatly expanding the number of posts we collect. We are using our agency contacts for each state to help identify which additional areas they would like to hear about. We are also splitting our reports into two modules.

1. Incoming reports are conversations happening outside the agency about the agency 
2. Outgoing reports capture the conversations started or promoted by the agency through an agency's own social media

We are adding to the existing queries for all 50 state fish and wildlife agencies and are monitoring social media conversations for: 

• Positive and negative conversations that revolve around agencies 
• Demographics of the people having these conversations 
• What triggers these conversations 
• How these conversation threads move through social media channels 

We will analyze the data and report results and trends about what social media users are actually saying about fish and wildlife agencies.

YouTube has become the go-to location for learning how to do nearly everything. Regardless of their demographics, if you ask any group of adults where they go to learn a skill, the vast majority of them answer “YouTube.” According to Omnicore, a team of data-driven digital marketing experts: 

• 81% of U.S. adults use YouTube.  
• 95% of 18–29-year-olds in the U.S. use YouTube. 
• 91% of 30–49-year-olds in the U.S. use YouTube. 
• 62% of U.S. YouTube users say they visit the site daily. 

YouTube advertising tools provide an opportunity to target these viewers by age, gender, location, and interests.   

We are working with 4 states (one from each AFWA region) to develop and deliver YouTube advertisements offering an opportunity to learn about hunting to adult residents who are interested in outdoor recreation, food, and sustainability. As the ads run, we will study conversion rates and make mid-course adjustments to them to maximize campaign success. In other words, we will be letting real people in our target audiences show us by their actions what makes a successful YouTube campaign. 

Youth shooting sports programs are some of the fastest growing youth sports programs in the country. These sports do not require you to be the fastest, biggest, or strongest, and all youth can participate equally, even those with physical limitations. However, the participation in the programs by females and minorities does not directly reflect the general population. Furthermore, participation by females or minorities between different shooting sports disciplines is not the same. Understanding the barriers to participation within both female and minority populations will enable us to develop strategies to increase participation.

Research shows that adults who are interested in hunting but did not grow up in a hunting family need and desire repeated, one-on-one instruction and social support from an experienced hunter to eventually hunt on their own. In addition, many current hunters are willing to instruct new hunters beyond their social circle but haven’t done so simply because they haven’t been asked.

The interest in and use of LearnHunting.org by mentors and new hunters relies heavily on state fish and wildlife agency and non-governmental organization participation. The process has solicited and obtained commitments of individual states’ participation in the project. These states provide state-certified hunter education instructors to establish an available mentor base for new hunters to pair with from the start. States that participate in the program effectively communicate with and motivate their hunter education instructors to actively participate on the website and mentor new hunters through the platform.

Recent trends in hunter education nationwide suggest a growing cohort of volunteer hunter education instructors with fewer opportunities for educating new hunters in traditional hunter education programs. LearnHunting.org provides these current state-certified hunter education instructors with additional opportunities to instruct new hunters and share their passion for the outdoors.

The variability in habitat created through disturbance is valuable to many wildlife species. Early successional habitats provide habitat for many disturbance-adapted wildlife species and is one of the most endangered ecosystems in the United States. Absent further disturbance, the suitability of these habitats for dependent species declines as it transitions into mid- and late-successional forests. Its loss across North America has resulted in reduced populations of upland game animals, songbirds, pollinators, and other species. 

Active management of these habitats by landowners is critically important for the wildlife species that depend upon them. Agricultural landowners are the most likely candidates to convert part of their land to an early successional state. Both NBCI and NGA have produced outreach campaigns to raise awareness and encourage interested landowners to contact state private lands specialists about managing for early successional habitat. This project developed a communications and marketing plan (based on tested messages and ads) to help states encourage early successional habitat management on private lands.

Since the discovery of CWD in North American cervids, state, and provincial agencies have been trying to find an efficient way to communicate about CWD to better track and manage its spread. With funding from a series of Multi-State Conservation Grants, DJ Case & Associates teamed up with The CWD Alliance, The Wildlife Management Institute, West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and Indiana Department of Natural Resources to find out what agencies needed, and then developed a solution to provide the highest priority information available for the least amount of agency effort.  

To learn what agencies need/want, project investigators conducted surveys, personal interviews, and held a workshop with CWD professionals across the continent. Based on these conversations, four online CWD information mapping tools were developed to help document, track, and manage the spread of CWD:  

• CWD in North America shows counties and wildlife management units in which CWD has been found in wild and/or captive cervid populations. This map is available to wildlife management professionals, hunters, and the public at: https://cwd-info.org/map-chronic-wasting-disease-in-north-america/ 
• CWD-Related Hunting Regulations provides CWD-related regulations from every state and province. The map shows CWD-related hunting regulations, maps of CWD-positive areas, and the CWD regulatory status of each  states and province. https://cwd-info.org/cwd-hunting-regulations-map 
• Carcass Transport Regulations will help users discover regulations impacting the transport of cervid carcasses from one state/province to another. It includes import, export, and pass-through regulations for cervid carcasses for every state and province. It is available to everyone at: https://cwd-info.org/state-and-province-carcass-import-regulations/ 
• Wildlife Agency Dashboard allows wildlife health and management professionals to research and compare CWD-related regulations or combinations of regulations across states/provinces. The map is available to wildlife health and management professionals only and can be found at: https://cwd-info-collaboration-cwda.hub.arcgis.com/pages/management. Editing and viewing-only access levels are available. If you would like access, contact Matt Dunfee (Matt@WildLifeMgt.org).  

​​​​​​As the largest single hunter demographic group (white, male, Baby Boomers) continues to age ever closer to desertion, the hunting R3 community is urgently seeking ways to recruit new hunters to replace these users as they age out. To do so effectively, R3 practitioners need tools to categorize potential hunters into audience types.

R3 practitioners cannot afford to spend their limited resources engaging with people who have little or no interest in hunting. Neither should R3 messaging be wasted on those who are already hunters or who are already planning to try hunting without intervention. This project was designed to discover the demographic, geographic, and outdoor recreation profiles of adults with the highest likelihood of taking up hunting so the R3 community can concentrate funding and effort where it is most likely to generate the greatest return.

The Wildlife Management Institute teamed up with DJ Case and Associates to apply for a 2021 Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA) Multi-State R3 Grant to address this issue. The grant was awarded, and the work began in the first quarter of 2021.

Thanks to this AFWA Multi-State Grant, the Wildlife Management Institute and DJ Case & Associates conducted a series of focus groups to document characteristics of new adult hunters and inform a segmentation survey. The survey targeted individuals who had purchased a hunting license for less than five years and then eliminated respondents who had hunted more than five years or who had hunted frequently as children.

The resulting list of respondents was then segmented using a statistical regression model. Using a combination of hierarchical cluster analysis, convex cluster analysis, Gaussian Mixture modeling, and biclustering, we determined new adult hunters naturally grouped into four segments:

1. Family Firsts (22%) – Family Firsts hunt to spend more time with their families. Their motivation for hunting is social. This segment had the largest percentage of females at nearly 50%.
2. Self-Sufficients (31%) - Self-Sufficients hunt for the meat - to make themselves and their families less dependent on stores and big agriculture. Self-Sufficients hunt to increase their lifestyle independence.
3. Locavores (16%) - Locavores hunt because they believe it is a more environmentally sustainable source of protein. Their goal is to lower their environmental footprint by only eating food that was raised and processed within 100 miles of their home, reducing the fossil fuels, chemicals, and preservatives required to feed their families.
4. Recreationalists (31%) - Recreationalists hunt for the enjoyment of the activity. They like being outdoors and the challenges of hunting more than other segments, and that enjoyment is their primary motivation for hunting.

In 2022, the Council to Advance Hunting and the Shooting Sports identified several needs for evaluation and assessment within the R3 community. To perform these tasks, the Council assembled a working group of 30+ R3 professionals from all levels of leadership, representing all regions, and engaging state and federal agency staff, industry partners, and NGOs.

Involvement in this working group was divided into two segments:

1. The Assessment Group (TAG) is the primary working group with a higher capacity and availability for engaging in direct sub-committee efforts. Phil Seng is a founding member of The Assessment Group.
2. TAG Review Panel (TRP) is a secondary working group that serves in an advisory capacity. Matt Harlow is an original member of the TAG Review Panel.

​​​​​​The Relevancy Roadmap identifies diversity and inclusion as critical factors to secure the future of conservation. However, agencies continue to struggle to locate diverse images to use in outreach to broader constituent bases. As part of a 2021 Multi-State Conservation Grant, the Midwest Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (MAFWA), Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, National Wild Turkey Federation, Council to Advance Hunting and Shooting Sports, Gud Marketing and DJ Case and Associates teamed up to research the hunting motivations and barriers Black, Hispanic, and female individuals face and how photography contributes to enhancing or alleviating those concerns.

The 2021 project team used these findings to inform a three-state photo shoot depicting women and people of color in various hunting scenarios. These photos were added to the R3 Clearinghouse for use by the entire R3 and Relevancy community.

The second phase of the project (funded by a 2022 Multi-State Conservation Grant), provided 5 states with $20,000 each to be used to create, place, and run advertisements utilizing the new photos resulting from the 2021 MSCG project. Interested states applied to the MAFWA R3 Committee. Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin were chosen to participate.

Each state developed and ran a campaign using the test photos. When the five campaigns were combined, messages featuring Black, Hispanic and/or Female hunters reached 19,574,150 individuals and motivated 46,579 of those individuals to click the message to learn more about small game hunting. What follows are case studies on each of those campaigns. The state efforts were summarized in a report and lessons learned were summarized for other states wishing to attract more diverse outdoor activity participants.

​​​​​​Helping managers plan, organize, and market education programs for the new and growing crop of food-motivated, novice, and adult hunters/anglers.

The tool kit includes:

• Locavore.Guide Website – a collection of resources to help hunting and angling program managers plan, organize, and market education programs for adult hunter/anglers.
• Hunting and Fishing for Locavores – a YouTube channel for adult, novice hunters and anglers. We’ve previewed, sorted, and arranged nearly 500 fishing and hunting “how-to” videos that you can share with your participants moving through your training program.
• Locavore Train-the-Trainers – There’s a lot to learn if you aren’t used to teaching novice, adult hunters and anglers or developing a recruiting program from scratch. This YouTube channel speaks directly to those training locavores to hunt/fish and takes them step by step through creating a program, recruiting participants, and teaching this new audience.
• WildLocavore - Pinterest is one of millennials’ favorite social media platforms. It offers graphic, bite-size pieces of information and entrainment. We’ve lined up hundreds of hunting and fishing related pins that you can share with your students via their favorite mode of communication, their smartphones.

Earned a Masters of Business Administration with a marketing emphasis from the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University. Management classes in all areas of business with an emphasis on communication and sales strategy. 1988 GPA - 3.31 

Sales and marketing strategy development, project management, creative production and implementation for a variety of consumer and business-to-business account using a variety of media.

Dual undergraduate degrees from The Ohio State University. Bachelors of Science in Business/Marketing from the Fisher School of Business and Bachelors of Arts in Journalism/Advertising from the School of Communications. GPA - 3.71