Too many brands are swimming in the sea of emotional sameness. Flip through a handful of farm magazines and you’ll notice much of the advertising skews toward feature-benefit messaging, fact-filled headlines and bullet points. Some advertising does ladder up to emotional-benefit messaging. Those that do, seem to limit the appeal to a farmer’s pride, peace ... Read More

Keep in mind the importance of family farming when connecting your audience to a brand. Contrary to some propaganda, family farms continue to dominate agriculture representing 97 percent of the 2.1 million farms in the United States, according to the most recent U.S. Census of Agriculture. A colleague of mine recently attended Farm Journal’s Corn ... Read More

Drive bigger success by involving your sales and marketing audience at key stages earlier in the brand campaign development process. As most marketers know, it’s important to keep your internal audiences informed about ongoing efforts to support them and your brands. It helps to instill confidence in your sales and marketing teams while also striving ... Read More

One of the oldest forms of communication still works. Storytelling may be the most overused word in marketing. But there must be something to it for it to be so enduring and popular. And there is — storytelling can be highly effective when done well. Especially when marketing to farmers. Why stories work so well ... Read More

An informal survey reveals very few taglines in ag meet the criteria to be great. If you walk around a farm show, flip through a farm magazine or scroll through a few ag brand websites, you’ll probably see a lot of clever lines and phrases hovering near logos. It would be imprudent, though, to classify ... Read More

Critical to your program’s success in marketing to farmers is following a communications brief that’s been written and approved by key stakeholders. Because I think of a brief as a project’s blueprint, I’m always surprised when I hear about a campaign launched without one. As a homeowner, you’d never OK construction on your home without ... Read More

Before you start, make your agency search more efficient by knowing which agency model is best for your ag business. Full Disclosure: I am the President and CEO of Rhea + Kaiser, a marketing agency with current clients and deep roots in agriculture. I have some thoughts on considerations and strategies when selecting agency partners ... Read More

Strengthen your brand’s relationship with farmers through the strategic use of native advertising in your overall plan. I recently went to Google for a definition of “native advertising.”  This is what I was given: As it turns out, this isn’t what I was expecting at all. Packaging material to match the design of the editorial ... Read More

Even as new channels emerge, the rigors of creative evaluation remain unchanged. A few months ago we discussed the challenges of reaching and engaging farmers in their media-stacked days.  While it is getting more difficult to intrigue farmers with marketing and persuade them to take action, great ideas still can, and do, reach three important ... Read More

Look for more insights in 2017. The past year was certainly a challenging year for U.S. agriculture. In particular, farmers faced continued low commodity prices, high land costs, rising inputs, increased supplier mergers and acquisitions, complicated crop insurance programs and the list could go on and on. As we enter a new year the marketing ... Read More