AG COMMUNICATOR INSIGHTS.

Ag Communicators offer their Insights on the Future of Agri-Marketing

We asked the best and brightest in agri-marketing to offer their thoughts on the future of the industry. Following are their responses.

Ag Communications -- A Bright Future for Those That Embrace Change

by Jack Odle, Vice President and Editor of Progressive Farmer

When Ben Franklin coined the phrase "in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes," he only got it two-thirds right. The other certainty is change. For agricultural communications, and I guess for everyone else, change is scary, exciting, hopeful, and daunting. It happens whether we're ready or not. It happens subtly and suddenly. It happens. It's always happening.

The point isn't whether change is good or bad - change is just. Not that many years ago we had Ma Bell and Uncle Sam to handle our communication needs.

Today we have more communication vehicles than you can count. I'm not certain that these additions have improved our communication that much. The reason I say this is that the most important part of communication has always been listening. No communication between two people happens unless you can get one person to listen. With all the noise out there -- e-mails, faxes, voice mail, cell phones, pagers, television, radio, the Internet, direct mail, magazines, etc. -- I'm not sure anyone is listening.

To me, the challenge facing ag communications is figuring out how to get folks to listen. Most people don't have time or don't take time to listen. All these new technologies designed to save us time have sped up our lives, but have they saved us time? Ask most folks and they'll say, "I'm more busy now than I've ever been." They believe they have less free time than ever before because they can never get away. There is always a cell phone, a pager, or an e-mail that tracks them down wherever they are.

Back in the horse and buggy days folks just accepted the fact that town was a half-day ride away. Then came the internal combustion engine and the trip shrunk to 15 minutes. Talking to someone meant a face to face meeting and even though it was instanteous you weren't quite sure if you got your message across because you couldn't see if that person was listening. Now with e-mail you don't know if your message was even read, let alone understood.

Now don't get me wrong, the last thing I want to do is return to the horse and buggy days. But, I do think we need to understand that just because we sent an e-mail or fax doesn't mean we communciated. Because we don't know if anyone out there is listening. Our challenges to communicate today are different from past years and may be even more difficult. Ag communicators who understand this and work even harder to fugure out ways to get people to listen will always be in demand.

How do you get people to listen in this constantly changing, rapid paced world? Well, here is where some things never change. First, your message must be targeted toward the interests and wants of the person you are trying to reach.

Yes, communications 101. It needs to be said or written in his/her words, not yours. Blaise Pascal once said, "Anything written to please the author is worthless."

Next the person you are trying to communicate with must trust you and your message. How do you build trust? It's simple - be trustworthy.

*Be honest in everything you say and do.

*Don't fudge the truth.

*Don't leave out information just because it challenges your message.

*Never lie, never half lie.

*Deliver your message with a medium people trust.

The Golden Rule still works, but it needs to be modified a little. Instead of treating people the way you want to be treated, treat them the way they want to be treated.

The future of agricultural communications is exciting and thriving thanks to all the new communication vehicles available to us today. It is and will remain a dynamic business and career path. But, with any profession it's important to accept and embrace the changes affecting that profession while keeping and strengthening those things that don't change.

Jack was awarded the Ag Communicator of the Year in the media category.

Agricultural Communications -- An Exciting Industry Now and in the Future

by John Finegan, President of Beck Ag Com, Inc.

As I think about the future of communications in the agricultural market I draw some direct parallels to the creation and evolution of my own company, Beck Ag Com. What we have built, an essentially virtual corporation, would not have been possible without the communications technology made available to us within the last few years.

Do you remember what it was like doing business without e-mail? Think of the impact the Internet has made so far and imagine that we're only in the first inning of the game. Just a short time ago it would have been unthinkable to go on-line and use other companies' computers. Now we do it every day. We order products, book our travel, seek and find valuable information, etc. all on-line. Beck Ag's clients can check progress on their projects by logging on to our site and viewing real time data.

All of these great new communications tools plus the many new crop production advances and value added crop traits coming to market are shaping an exciting industry to be in now and for the foreseeable future. Several of Beck Ag's seasoned professionals (the majority of our team has over 20 years in the Ag business) have expressed to me they wish they were starting their careers over again in these dynamic times.

Along with all this progress, agricultural marketers have been challenged to create innovative ways to communicate their message. The old ways of shotgun, mass advertising have given way to more targeted approaches that use our ability to personalize the message and engage our customers in a dialogue.

Imagine that the average person sees about 3,000 marketing messages per day. The old model drives marketers to interrupt prospective customers and hope they listen! Good luck trying to interrupt people who don't want to hear from you. The new model says that we can most effectively talk to these same potential customers whenever it's in our mutual interest.

One approach dating back to much simpler times that marketers in all industries are using more and more is word of mouth marketing. My wife, for example, uses an e-mail product called HotMail. You've probably heard of it, but not because of a big ad campaign, It was spread in a very deliberate way almost exclusively by word of mouth. We have seen a resurgence in the use of "word of mouth" marketing that surveys show is being extremely well received by agricultural professionals. An 1835 quote by Charles Colton captures part of the reason why this is ... "It is far better to borrow experience than to buy it". Adroit marketers can offer their prospective customers a chance to "borrow" new product experience from their peers, thus providing them with a powerful method to overcome the typical resistance to change.

The customer base in agriculture these days has greater ability to research products, decide which inputs best fit their needs and search for the optimum mix of services and price for their operation, all from the comfort of their own home or office.

In essence they have the USDA, basic manufacturers, retailers, university experts, consultants, their peers ... I could go on ... all within a few clicks. These agricultural professionals are increasingly stretched for time and savvy ag marketers will focus on ways to deliver information that allows for the most efficient use of their customers' time.

But information alone is not the answer. New communication technologies have multiplied the sheer volume of information available ... to the point of overload. Information that is customized and translates into useful knowledge for customers will be the key to successful marketing. Even a good steak dinner doesn't get most ag professionals to give up their precious time to learn about new products and services. Marketers will need to increase the dialogue with individuals in their target audience and continue to develop more of an intimate relationship with every customer.

John was awarded the Ag Communicator of the Year in the agency category.

Ag Communications and the Future

by Kip Pendleton, Chairman of DirectAg.Com

My bias is simple: "marketing leads." As I enter my 19th professional year in agriculture I cannot imagine a more exciting time for our industry. DirectAg.Com was founded last year to facilitate opportunities for producers and manufacturers in agriculture through increased customer intimacy and business transformation.

During a recent chat session on our site, Francis Childs, a three-time winner of the National Corn Growers Yield Contest, was asked, "Do you recommend that young people get into farming? Or is it just too risky?" His answer, "Farming is a great way of life, but it is going to continue to be a challenge. They [future farmers] have to be very business orientated or they will not make it. It [farming] must be treated as a business."

I ask the same question about agriculture: "are we ready to capture the exciting times ahead and focus on our business like the producers we serve?" Goldman Sachs published a study in September 1999 that identified ag as the fifth largest e-business opportunity, with an estimated $39 billion in e-business in ag by 2003. The reason for this is the capital-intensive, 11-step food chain; poor automation; lack of digital information; and the fact that information is not shared between companies or links in the food chain.

The study not only pointed to expected cost savings but also the revenue opportunities in value creation, identity preservation and branding. This requires a new level of automation and e-commerce opportunities from today. As marketers, we need to embrace and drive these innovations. I believe the future of Ag marketers is vested in these items, not on the traditional mission of brand and product.

The other reality is that capital for agriculture is hard to attract, because of our inefficiencies. One new area has been in e-commerce which allows agriculture to market products based on demand and value specification. This is a real opportunity for marketing. Collaborative efforts like DirectAg.com can quickly bring these benefits forward and are a key to reducing the capital necessary to succeed. In fact a recent survey showed producers favor purchasing from independent neutral marketplace sites, like DirectAg, to manufacturer sites, 64 percent to 13 percent.

DirectAg.com provides producers knowledge, value and convenience on their time and in the way they request it. We focus on producers who are on-line, a group with large operations and sophisticated in their knowledge. In fact, 90 percent of the commercial producers who are 25-45 years old, produce 43 percent of agricultural production are on-line. We all must understand this group better; they have not been extremely loyal to brand or dealer, and are likely to double the land they own and triple the land they rent over the next five years.

E-commerce also provides a new and effective way to market to smaller, sundowner farmers, another growing group we must learn to effectively market to. We work with over 30 organizations and involve local distribution to create the best customer experience. There is no extra transportation; there is easy payment and no bad debt; there is built in satisfaction feedback loops; there is decreased inventor and 24 by 7 convenience.

With the organizations we work with, we're learning more about customer backgrounds, preferences and other meaningful input. I receive daily e-mails from producers and share a newsletter every two weeks with our registered users. Customers tell us what they want and we listen and communicate with manufacturers. We are focused on meeting the needs of our 23,000 registered users that need results in an improved bottom line, not cheap inputs.

I have personally talked about the ag industry and the value of e-business transformation more than 70 times publicly since we formed in 1999. The talks have focused on a future we all can move to. The e-commerce tools we use in agricultural marketing can provide one-to-one real-time marketing opportunities and facilitate infinite low-cost campaigns across a season. After all, creating value and matching products to individual customers is the role all of us in NAMA play.

Kip was awarded the Ag Communicator of the Year in the agribusiness category.