Is UK agriculture PLC effective when it comes to PR and advertising?

It's a question that we've touched upon on these forums a few times before. And it is also going to be a hot topic on the second day of the Oxford Farming Conference. One of the speakers will be The Sun's ex-editor David Yelland who is going to talk about how farming can face up to its communications challenges.

Because it is such a biggie - we've decided to make it a Big Debate and we're running a competition alongside it.

The Big Debate is open to everyone in farming to participate but we are particularly keen to encourage young people aged between 21-35 to give us their views and there is a great prize in it for the best two contributions. 

Yara, a company which recognises the importance of encouraging young people in agriculture, is providing two tickets to the 2009 Oxford Farming Conference for two young people who put forward the best arguments to the debate on this forum.  This is a fabulous prize to attend one of the premier industry events in the New Year and it includes accommodation in the stunning city of Oxford so get stuck in and have your say. 

To get the ball rolling we've produced an article raising some of the key issues about PR and advertising. Here is an extract:

Whether you're 60 or 16, you're probably familiar with the phrase "Go to work on an egg". The egg advertising campaign may have first run more than 50 years ago, but it has become an iconic slogan, taking its place alongside such greats as: "Have a break, have a Kit-Kat", "The future's bright, the future's Orange", and "A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play". But what about more recently? Has any sector of the farming industry come up with anything that can rival it? And does it matter? Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones says agriculture has much to learn. "The farming industry is one of the worst there is at marketing itself," says the Jamaican-born farmer and advertising guru, who sells products under The Black Farmer brand. "At the moment, we're not prepared to be adventurous. I don't see any signs of courage."

You can read it in full here.

But we're now looking for your thoughts on what the farming industry has got right about PR and advertising and what is got wrong. Which campaigns have you felt have worked - and which do you dislike? We'll be pulling the best comments back into the magazine in a couple of week's time.

We're interested in the thoughts of everyone on this issue - whatever your age. But if you are between 21 and 35 and would like to be considered for this prize then make sure you note your age on your comment. If you are chosen as a winner you will be contacted by email using the address you are registered with on FWiSpace.

Regards,

Isabel

FW Community Editor

I dont think agriculture is effective as it COULD be when it comes to PR and advertising.

I say this as an industry there isnt enough done to promote what we have to offer! We can produce quality products and let someone else butcher or dress them, market them and then sell them. I think in this day and age farmers should look at alternatives to add value to what they produce and try and market there product as produce of the farm, not as supermarket produce, grown by a farmer.

Farmers or farm businesses need to actively go out there and meet people, talk to consumers and get rid of this stereotypical view that farming is for old blokes wearing straw hats (or similar).  Public relations is one of farmings weakest points and while we have a very succesfull industry, i think a weakness it has is that sometimes farmers arent in touch with consumers. Its easy to keep doing what we are doing now but in order to make people aware of what things are, where things come from and how things are produced we need to go out and talk to people. Agriculture is often seen in a bad light and pessimistically, especially with recent press coverage such as F&M and bluetongue and sometimes i dont think farming is appreciated as it should be and the public should be made aware of what we do and how much hard work goes into it. I dont think however, ag is terrble at PR and advertising, it just needs more initiatives to help it and for us to step outside the ''comfort zone'' and be more adventurous and take more risks on different ideas. However, to make the industry more sustainable, especially in tough economic times we need to make our products more appealing nd have an edge on other producers to stop people buying foreign produce which in turn will loose us money. Adding value to farm produce and marketing this through things such as farm shops is one way and internet sales is one way.

In my opinion, we need initiatives such as open farm sunday to carry on its great work, but not only should farmers be going out there and meeting people and selling not only there business but agriculture as a whole but we also need backing from the government who i think could do alot more for the industry! Personally, i think we need to adress the issue and be pro-active about it if we want to industry to have a bright future........The futures bright, the futures farming!

Matty

I am not sure that the agriculture industry has realised that the world has changed when it comes to advertising and PR. We are still thinking about TV adverts and pages in the paper. People need to be more imaginative about how they promote the industry using things like YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and all the new technology there is out there (not that I understand it all, but I've read about it). I think Cadbury's showed the right idea with the relaunch of Wispa. As I understand it, a few groups started on Facebook calling for the Wispa's to come back - Cadbury agreed and by working with their customers got loads of really positive coverage in return. We need to be more focussed on what our customers want from us - rather than tell them what we want them to understand.

I'd agree that we need to be bolder and more experimental. I don't think we should get carried away by the technology - the message is the important thing. But you are right that we need to try new things.

Here's how the vote is going after 24 hours:

Yes		5%(21)
No		95%(372)

So by the looks of that poll we all think we are bad at PR and advertising but the more important question what messages to we want the public to hear. Most of us don't sell direct to the public we sell to processors so what good is telling the public about what we do. A lot of the adverts on T.V are already connected with food. I've never seen a steel mill advertising on the T.V it's always the car manufacture or who ever sells the end product not the primary producer.

Is everyone forgetting about what EBLEX and QMS do in promoting red meat. They both do a lot of work on the Continent and here promoting their respective nations meat, it may not seem high profile to most farmers but how many of us read culinary industry magazines and go to culinary trade fairs. I would be very upset if i saw my Levy money spent on advertising beef in FW as all the readers of FW should know about beef.  

I don't have a great belief in farm shops. they are good for a few who come up with a good yarn to spin about high end products but there isn't room in the market from 55000 farm shops in the country and if all food is sold through farm shops the whole processing industry looses all economies of scale.      

A very difficult question to answer in the terms in which it is phrased, and this may be because agriculture is such a diverse industry with ownership ranging from the Sole Trader, through County Councils, Insurance Companies, Absent Landlords and the Cooperative Society.

Its markets are both local and global and its products can be considered as commodities or, in some cases, specialised. Products can go direct to the consumer, or into a long supply chain that can transform the product into end uses of food, fuel and chemical feed stock, and can also be used as next seasons seed or processed, via capital intensive systems, as components of pharmaceuticals and beauty products.

It seems to me that, because a lot of its output is categorised as commodities, this makes marketing difficult for those products, specialist products with unique selling points can gain premiums.

In answering the question as it stands however, we might distinguish between. Selling, Marketing, PR and Advertising. In this regard my view is that Agriculture is poor at selling, worse at marketing, terrible at PR and as good at advertising as the money it spends.

In saying that agriculture is poor at selling, I really mean that although it is good at growing product that its buyers want, it is really the buyers who buy, not agriculture that sells.

In some ways we are very good ad advertising our products. We are less skilled in marketing ourselves. And there is often a bit of a balls-up when it comes to the timing of "disasters".

In any supermarket you will see that nobody wants to buy the middle range. There are always plenty of buyers shopping on price for whom providence and quality are less of a concern. The rest all buy the "finest" or whatever is in the fancy packaging.

What I wonder is why they do this? Do they care about local food and welfare standards? I think they do when it comes to eggs. For the rest, I think they are buying as a form of conspicuous consumption. They like to be seen buying the fancy expensive stuff for its own sake.

It is hard for us as farmers to market our products. What makes it hard is threefold. Firstly, we insist on having food scares to roughly coincide with big advertising campaigns. Bit of a bummer trying to launch a UK beef and labm campaign if bluetongue epidemic appears the week later isnt it? Secondly, we have opposition who will always whip us, namely the organic lobby. Its hard to try to position yourself as a provider of great stuff without the organic label as buyers will always say "yeah, but think of all those nasty chemicals". This may be best seen in the fruit and veg isles but it applies throughout - milk too now. Finally, we as farmers are retiscent in getting outside help. When confronted with the costs of an advertising executives salary, we will always feel that their wage undervalues our hard work on wet days, and so try and have a go ourselves.

So how can we fix this? For s start if we want to market anything from a single item of food to farming in general, we need to get professional help (maybe in both senses of the word!). Get a decent ad agency in - dont do some fag packet scribbles around a dirty table. Secondly, we must know our enemy, and know ourselves. We as conventional producers in the UK would be stupid to compete against UK organic farmers. We need to go after the real enemy - the low welfare inports. These are an easy target and why we havent had a proper go at paddling their backsides I dont know. Finally, we must try and avoid every picture of a farmer in the press being of a sprayer or of us looking like grumbling bumpkins.

Thats the selling done. Now who's doing the paying? It is well know that all farmers, despite being friendly to each others face, are actually hoping their neighbours farm fails so they can buy their land. Farmer co-operation is very poor. Best thing I can see is if they are bypassed entirely, and have levy boards do all the legwork on their behalf.

This is a bit of a challenge to BPEX really. Apparently they "BPEX Ltd is focused on enhancing the competitiveness, efficiency and profitability for English pig levy payers and driving demand for English pork and pig meat products in Britain and globally". With us Brits loving a sausage and some bacon, there really isnt any real need for any pork in the UK to come from overseas. Danish bacon? With a half decent ad campaign we could give them a beating, and get UK bacon in an M&S bacon and egg sandwich (labelled as UK free range egg, but not UK bacon?). The way to do this is simple - pay the people who did the Danish bacon marketing to do it for us.

You get what you pay for in life, and if you want people to buy expensive uk high welfare food, then we have to pay expensive high quality marking men to do our work for us. Simple.

Danish bacon! Danish bacon! Yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy!

See what I mean? Whips putting uk pork on your fork.

Try to get that out of your head at bedtime.

One of the biggest problems we face is the "press" itself who are only too eager to publish all the negatives of farming. Take this past harvest season for instance, how many of the public understand the true efforts that have gone in to getting the 2008 harvest in the barn. There is no other industry which has to cope with so many variables and unfortunately when things go wrong or something is said out of place only the negatives are advertised.

True, livestock producers seem to be reeling from one animal health crisis to the next, and the media can't wait to use it to knock public confidence in meat safety.

spotty dog:

One of the biggest problems we face is the "press" itself who are only too eager to publish all the negatives of farming.

Yes this is true.  However, the "press" will always publicise the negatives, "It's public interest." 

The solution is to answer the criticism levelled by the "press," not bury our heads in the sand and hope it goes away.  It never does go away.  The "press," once they have their teeth into a story want to feed on it, which is the ideal time to come out and defend or explain our side to the story.  It will get reported, and that is the point at which the public can make up it's own mind.  As long as we put a good argument forward I think the public will mostly find in our favour.  If we don't put an argument forward the public assume and the "press" paint you guilty as charged.

Sadly, I should know.

The recent news last week that Georgina Downs won her High Court ruling will no doubt open a can of worms that will eventually make spraying near built up areas next to impossible and totally unworkable. At the time of this news being broadcast there should have been an immediate response by a body such as the Pesticide Safety Directorate that explained the stringent testing of chemicals that each product has to undergo before it gets anywhere near our sprayers. How many people living in rural areas know anything about Voluntary Initiative, NSTS Sprayer Testing, PA1 AND PA2 trained operators, NRoSO, Cross Compliance buffer strips and so on.....

When are we going to have debates on live TV for example about issues such as these so the public can make their own "judgements". I used to spray right to the edges of peoples gardens and was once stopped by a resident. An interesting debate started about why I needed to spray my crops at all. I invited the person to come with me on the sprayer so I could show the concerned individual just what it was we were doing and the safety procedures we went through along with all the paperwork. He left me with more information than he had learned in 15 years of living in the countryside and was content that what I was doing was as safe as it was possible to make.

Programmes like Countryfile need to focus on issues such as these and it should, once in a while, be screened at prime time. Science in farming has gone such a long way but there is still a massive void in educating the public. The recent Carling adverts still portray us as using farming methods pre war, which although might seem romantic, is a million miles from what we are doing today.... and we wonder why we can't get young people in to our industry!

My thoughts are that we are terrible at PR and advertising.

Most non country people see us as whinging farmers.

Jimmy Docherty has done us more good with his TV programmes, than any money spent on example the Beefy and Lamby campaign, which in my opinion is embarrassing.

For the amount of money that each farmer pays in Levies and assurance schemes, we should have an excellent campaign. A large chunk of it though is sqaundered on ad.min. and jollies.

If all our levie money was given to a advertising agency, we could have a massive and hopefully effective campaign, and still have money left in the pot.

Word is that Jamie Oliver is about to have a crack at cheap pork imports from countries with a dubious welfare record. Good for him - he appreciates the reality that we cant feed the world on organic stuff and is pragmatic enough to see this whilst trying to get us to condsider the lives of the beasts we rear and consumers eat.

Any levy money directed away from the levy boards is a good move. I personally liked the Beefy/Lamby idea, but we need more unified branding. A common approach if you like, to show that British food is best. We have gold plated standards, so why not shout them up, and show up other countries' failings.

The short answer is no but this issue calls for a more reasoned argument.

It seems to me that there is a touching but naive ideology amongst farming leaders that all sectors in the food chain are partners and that farming organisations, in attempting to deliver a campaign, must try to promote the interests of the whole food chain with the inevitable result that the farmer consistently gets the worst deal.

I've had the opportunity to observe a number of respected campaign organisations develop and deliver successful campaigns. I believe that we have a lot to learn from those organisations that are so much more effective at delivering their campaigns - often at the farmers' expense - and not just the obvious environmental NGOs but also respected consumer organisations like the WI and Which?.

The most obvious difference is focus.

The most effective organisations are single-issue campaign groups that are totally focused on delivering their campaign and achieving their predetermined goals. They know exactly what they want to achieve, how they are going to achieve it, and, most importantly, they know when they have achieved it.

If we are to see more effective PR and advertising we need our larger farming unions is to develop single-issue campaigns that focus on the interests of farmers - and no-one else. Of course any campaign targeted at the interests of farmers will encompass the interests of the environment and rural economy because the two go hand-in-hand, but the interests of government, supermarkets, dairy processors, fertilizer manufacturers etc etc should not be included - other than through the benefit they might derive from being associated with an increasingly confident, successful, profitable and sustainable farming sector.

I totally agree that Jimmy Doherty has done a GREAT pr job for uk agriculture this year and I hope that we can all build on that in 2009.

I believe that we have a fantastic opportunity to lead the nation on their quest for uk produced food. As most of the population has virtually no idea what it takes to produce food, it is essential that we are ultimately seen by those people as the ones who showed them the way rather than as (as many have put so well earlier) whinging land owner toffs or wurzel types. Lets face it 'perhaps' a number of the nation will again turn to agriculture for employment once they cannot get industial or office jobs and the only opportunities are food production related, filling in the gap that the departing Polish, etc will leave. Lets get them on board willingly not just as their last resort.

Having attended public facing events over the past few years, it is evident that they know precious little about where their food comes from and so very easily misunderstand and react against uk agriculture whenever there is any bad press. However, they are interested and do care about their food and through actual face to face contact with the farming community they would learn an awful lot and would put a number of the stereotypes behind them. They must be able to understand the complexity and difficulty of our challenge for themselves rather than just through telling them 'its hard and we dont make any money' which just switches them off. This needs to be done in a calm and adult manner through various media where people get to see the passion and devotion that goes into food production - for example, many millions of people are interested in what happens on Terry Waltons allotment in the Rhonda valley due to Jeremy Vines radio show, why couldn't that A.Farmer talking about his cows/sheep/crops, etc in a similar way? With the right person fronting it it could engage millions into our world.

Finally lets not complain about it not being done for us but actually do it for ourselves, we can be our own best sales people as we know the product better than anyone else, yes a national strategy is important but let us al 'have a go' the sum of our collective parts can have a enormous effect!

Having farmed, traveled and now working in service side of agriculture, I have seen all sides of the Agricultural PR beast! (well mouse really) As an industry feeding the nation you would have thought that telling the nation how good a job we are doing would have been easy, however the common theme in all media's is agriculture's failures.

Be it foot and mouth, bluetongue or pesticides, it is always the farmer that is portrayed as being in the wrong! These are the images or sound bites that stick in the general publics mind because they have no other images of agriculture provided to them. In Canada, for example, Ag Chems are advertised at peak viewing times on TV as are Quality Assured Meat and Veg. All produced very professionaly, showing on farm acticities and images while still promoting where produce is available. This is the reverse of what is seen in the UK, where it is images of supermarkets with shelves of lovely British produced food...hardly any images of standing crops or animals health on farm before they become "produce".

In my view we need to re-associate food with farming, re-educating the consumer about where stuff come's from. It is all very well educating school children using farm visits etc, and i say carry on with that, they however are not really going to influence buying decisions for another 10 or 12 years. The only way to get a positive image of agriculture into the general public is to use mass media. Actually show images of farms farming, the closest to getting it right was this summers potatoe adverts, think they were ASDA?.

I think Best of British, showing responsible farming actions perhaps sponsored by a supermarket chain rather then Supermarket images showing food they selling.

I am sure extra funding for PR, showing the Best of British, could be negotiated from certain large AgChem companies if they were aloud to display their logo in a corner of an advert.

Here endeth the lesson for today.

Cheers all,

Neil.

I'll support the comments about Jimmy D. and his excellent work.  But he is a lone voice and probably seen as a little eccentric, maybe just like farmers in general.  I was watching Question Time on Thursday, the day the CAP healthcheck was announced.  Were there any questions about this subject that exercises to much of the EU budget and of it's legislative effort?  Nope: just inane questions about some reality TV scandal.  Hopeless ...

Penny has just dropped. We are just too British. We grow great crops, rear great beasts and make great food products - we just cant bring ourselves to boast about them. By virtue (!) of government policies, we can say that our food traceability, security, standards and welfare are second to none. So why dont we tell everyone this and let them choose?

My ad would be "British happy pork, or (insert country x) sad pork. Its your choice what you put in your basket, and your choice what sort of life the animal has."

Bish bash and bosh.

Farmers are notoriously bad at working together but I really feel that to pool out limited resources we need to adopt ONE logo and sink all available funds into it. The Little Red Tractor is as recognisable as any other logo and should be the choice.                                                                                                                                                                     I always thought the BPC should, for one year, use all levy monies for TV advertising and NOT do any R&D....just to see if that may have been a more effective use of funds.

As I gazed across all the farmers at last years NFU conference I noticed one key difference between the (mainly) men there and a cross section of 1000 members of the general public. Comparatively, Farmers are a fit looking, slim line bunch and an advert in themselves for healthy living and eating. Could we utilise that fact....I can't quite work out how but I am sure there is a message there somewhere.....any thoughts anyone?

cazzajk:

Comparatively, Farmers are a fit looking, slim line bunch and an advert in themselves for healthy living and eating. Could we utilise that fact....I can't quite work out how but I am sure there is a message there somewhere.....any thoughts anyone?

Yes, buy a pack of Walkers crisps. On the back you will see them proclaiming the virtues of our UK potatoes. McD (for their sins) promote their UK produced products. M&S promote their UK free range egg in all their sandwiches. Go into Tesco and buy a bag of spuds and they all have little stickers on with pics of the farmers who grow (some) of them.

So its not that our products are not promoted. Its that someone else is promoting them and reaping the benefits, and not passing them on to us.

But then again why should they? Pipers Crisps sell well. Chap has made a wad of money, but dont think for a minute that he wouldnt sell up if ABF came with a truck of money. Look at Ben & Jerrys. Big company came in with the money trucks, and they ran off - out went ethics and quality but it still sells well.

Maybe more large scale. 1000 slim farmers pictured alongside 1000 general public with 30% (?) obesity and our happy pigs -v- foreign sad pigs. Show what being British is all about, eat healthy, be healthy, support healthy pigs and farmers!!!!!!!!!!

Makeup / clothes are sold with envy in mind. I am meant to buy the product and get the lifestyle / looks etc. It's how most ads are run to men and women. How can we ever find a way to make our (farmers) lives enviable enought to sell our food on the back of it?

Maybe we should be thinking in a different way. We dont want to go and alienate the supermarkets, as thats where most of our stuff ends up. So how about working with them? My local Tesco now has a Polish section, an Italian section, Chinese and Indian. How about a British isle? Good pun too - can we make that into a slogan?

Please take a look at a post in Talking Tackle regarding hedgecutting. A non farmer asks a civil question. One person responds in a civil manner. All the rest do not and sadly undo any good pr and publicity that UK Farming may be hoping to achieve. We do not stand a chance with people like that representing our industry. We all have gripes but communicating our views in a professional manner is vital.