The article was taken from the website mediamarketing.com
Within the agency world, there is a number of industries which are very well known to everyone. As soon as one mentions the beverage industry, pharmaceutics or telecommunications, agencies are already aware of all the laws, advantages and disadvantages related to each of them.
Now imagine an industry you know nothing about – agriculture. Even though it is one of the oldest industries in the world, when comparing it to the aforementioned industries, we realise how unknown and unexplored it really is. In the marketing sense, it constitutes a very fertile, yet almost completely uncultivated soil. Three years ago, our Senior Account Executive Ivana Besak had the good fortune (believe it or not, she calls it good fortune) of getting the opportunity to manage a pitch for Bc Institut, a client that produces maize seed, oilseeds and straw cereals (Ha? Straw cereals? Yes, that was her reaction too). For all intents and purposes, it was a leap into the unknown, so she had no choice but to roll up my sleeves and get to work. Below read the interview Ivana gave for portal Media Marketing.
Tradition or trends – Why not both?
In spite of the client’s 120-year tradition riddled with guaranteed product quality, younger generations constituting the focus of communication need more. If it is them we are addressing, then we have to change the tone of communication, and change it drastically. But before defining the tone, it would be ideal to get to know them well. Who are they? Where are they located? Through what media do we reach them? It was necessary to draw the client’s attention to a whole new world. It is no longer enough to say that you have good quality seeds, but it is necessary to use new channels and provide additional content for young farmers by means of how-to videos, tips, applications, social media, etc. Little by little, we sowed our digital grains, which have borne some extremely fruitful years.
Arable lands
We did not cultivate any fields, but we learned why it is important to monitor the trends of arable agricultural lands in depth. If there are fewer arable lands every year, then the market where you sell the product also becomes smaller. We all know that Croatia has truly ideal land and climate conditions for agricultural development, but for a number of reasons, agricultural lands become fewer every year. But there is one more thing to consider. State subsidies also play a big role. Why? If the state granted subsidies for apple cultivation, farmers would convert their arable lands into orchards, while they may have cultivated corn the year before. The result of said factors is a smaller market, so the challenge of how to help from the marketing perspective arises. We have made those crops sufficiently interesting to young farmers, regardless of the subsidies!
Corn is amazing!
Corn is an integral part of more than 1,000 different products – it is used in the food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, textile and chemical industry. I believe that, reaching this point in the article, many readers still think that agriculture is one of the most boring and unattractive industries. But if we consider that by 2050 there will be over 9 billion people in the world, I believe that the seed production industry will certainly become more attractive.
Go corn, GO!
GO corn, with marketing or without it? In order to make Croatians aware of the importance of sowing good quality seeds to then be able to harvest the fruits of hard labor and produce food, quality marketing communication is of paramount importance. As I stated at the beginning, agriculture is one of the oldest industries in the world, but it is also becoming less and less common, which is truly unfortunate given the climate we live in. If we moved away from treating agriculture as something related only to “peasants”, as something “outdated” and “unprofitable”, we would realise that agriculture is actually the future. Without agriculture and the food we get from it, the world is not sustainable. Therefore, marketing campaigns are essential for the purpose of making farmers, marketers and the general public aware of the importance of crops. Agriculture is an unpicked grapevine that, to those who embark on the picking adventure, provides fruits they will enjoy all year long.
The original article is available on the link.