Avoiding these common mistakes can help keep your brand out of the Hall of Shame
They may seem obvious, but flip through any ag industry pub and you will see multiple examples of these sins being committed. Building a strong connection to farmers requires sincere, knowledgeable communications.
Mistake Number 1: Don’t reduce farmers to a cliché. No one likes to be over-simplified into a stereotype. Farmers do work hard, they do have long days (especially at certain times of the year) and they do sometimes enjoy outdoor activities like fishing and hunting. Just because these things may be true doesn’t mean they are insightful, or that they will resonate with farmers. In fact, they are more likely to alienate a brand than build a connection. Your brand doesn’t “get up early and work as hard as a farmer.” At their best, these approaches are ineffective; and at their worst, they are downright offensive.
Bottom line: Dig deeper; don’t patronize your audience. It doesn’t work in politics, and it doesn’t work in marketing either.
Mistake Number 2: Don’t out yourself publicly. Farmers are suspect when people from outside their world are trying to pretend they know ag. Always ensure someone with a deep understanding of his or her world is reviewing the work. Too often brands out themselves as being insincere or downright clueless with things as simple as using the wrong stock image. Don’t show kids walking down the rows of a tasseling corn field in shorts and a tank top with their hands held up so they can feel the leaves slide past. Want to market a line of lubricants perfect for heavy-duty use on the farm? Don’t Photoshop a combine harvesting green field corn. Just don’t. Being technically correct is key. If you didn’t understand why these chosen images were a problem, you have a problem.
Bottom line: Credibility is a must with farmers, just like most people.
Mistake Number 3: Farmers are rational human beings, who often behave irrationally and emotionally. You could indeed run your sell sheet as a print ad. Farmers might even tell you that’s all they want in a focus group. That’s because farmers are like every other person on the planet – they want to believe they are purely rational when making decisions. That they are in control of their emotions, and thus always approach these decisions from a purely rational perspective. So why then are most farms all one color of equipment? Does that brand build the best equipment in all sizes and across all functions? Why do they typically only have one type of truck on the farm for generations? In the last 60 years, has a single manufacturer made the best truck year after year? Logic and rational thinking would tell us there must be another reason for this behavior.
Bottom line: Embrace the emotional side, but give farmers the rational permission to believe. Find your brand’s balance.