AGRILIANCE RELIES ON PRINT.A little-known company set out to tackle a well-known problem with a brand-new product ... and chose print to lead the charge. Agriliance, based in Inver Grove Heights Inver Grove Heights, city (1990 pop. 22,477), Dakota co., SE Minn. A suburb of St. Paul, its manufactures include motor-vehicle and aircraft parts, asphalt, feeds, consumer goods, building materials, paper products, and medical equipment. , Minn., was formed early last year as the agronomy agronomy (əgrŏn`əmē), branch of agriculture dealing with various physical and biological factors—including soil management, tillage, crop rotation, breeding, weed control, and climate—related to crop production. marketing business of regional cooperatives Land O'Lakes
And why print? Agriliance's director of advertising and communications, Annette Degnan, lists many reasons, but emphasizes three main ones. "Our customers -- dealers and farmers -- are heavy print users," Degnan says. "I like to have our message presented in a package of news and information that our customers use." Degnan says she likes that print is "tangible. You have to touch and hold a magazine. The reader decides when and where, so they're in the right frame of mind to seek information." And, from an internal perspective, print advertising allows Agriliance more opportunity for merchandising to its sales force than broadcast, Degnan says. "You can send a salesperson reprints of an ad," she says. "Sure, you can send tapes, too, but I don't think they get played. "When you run ads full circulation, the entire sales force sees them. If I'm running a southern regional radio program, the guy in Ohio may not hear it," she says. Magazines offer a cost-effective way for Agriliance to reach its audiences repeatedly throughout the year "Print advertising is not a cure-all," Degnan says. "It's one little piece of a marketing program. What we try to do with print is support the field sales effort. With print, we can get into our customer's office at least eight times a year." Readers, whether they are farmers, dealers or salespeople, can refer back to a print ad weeks after a publication arrives. "I have to think that some people are like me and have magazines stacked all over," Degnan says. "There's a little bit longer shelf life with print." While Agriliance's communications efforts to tell pork producers, soybean soybean, soya bean, or soy pea, leguminous plant (Glycine max, G. soja, or Soja max) of the family Leguminosae (pulse family), native to tropical and warm temperate regions of Asia, where it has been growers and dealers about itself and Barrier also included radio, the focus was on print. Minneapolis agency, Colle+McVoy, worked with Degnan to create product ads, company positioning ads, radio spots, brochures, news releases and other materials. The resulting programs recently won national Best of NAMA Na·ma n. pl. Nama or Na·mas 1. A member of a people of southwest Africa. 2. The Khoikhoin language of the Nama. Awards, sponsored by the National Agri-Marketing Association, in three categories: new product introduction, black & white or color spread -- single, and trade publication ad -- series. The new product package for Barrier won the overall Best of Show -- Advertising award. The series that won the trade ad category was created to let dealers know that Agriliance had been formed. Large photos of sand dunes sand dune Hill, mound, or ridge of windblown sand or other loose material such as clay particles. Dunes are commonly associated with desert regions and seacoasts, and there are large areas of dunes in nonglacial parts of Antarctica. , a glacier glacier, moving mass of ice that survives year to year, formed by the compacting of snow into névé and then into granular ice and set in motion outward and downward by the force of gravity and the stress of its accumulated mass. and ocean waves dominated the two-page spread ads, which ran in Ag Retailer, Dealer and Applicator ap·pli·ca·tor n. An instrument for applying something, such as a medication. applicator, n a device for applying medication; usually a slender rod of glass or wood, used with a pledget of cotton on the end. and Crop Life. "The series was created to show the collective strength of the cooperative system," Degnan says. "Colle+McVoy used compelling, powerful images to provide stopping power stopping power Radiation oncology The ability of a material to stop ionizing radiation; alpha paticles are stopped by a piece of paper, gamma radiation by thick lead shielding Radiology The density of a tissue reflected in an image's whiteness; white on the page. We wanted to stand out in those books as a leader with a lot of resources that retailers could draw on." Agriliance ran another series of company-positioning ads in an internally produced publication, Cooperative Partners, which is sent to 330,000 farmers and ranchers in 23 states. These ads celebrated farmers' role as caretakers of the soil. "Colle+McVoy presented those two campaigns as either/or options," Degnan says. "I knew we had just one shot at this new-company announcement and the opportunity to put a big message out there. I liked the `resources' campaign for the trade publications and I felt the `caretaker' campaign was perfect for Partners magazine. So we produced both campaigns." The "caretaker" ads struck a chord with readers, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Degnan. "We've gotten a couple of requests for reprints for the ads that ran in Partners," she says. "How often do you get reprint reprint An individually bound copy of an article in a journal or science communication requests for ads?" While she concedes that good broadcast ads also can be powerful, Degnan says she jumps at any chance to work on a print ad. "There's something about having a powerful photograph, a really good selling promise and great writing," she says. "That combination in a print ad is pretty hard to beat." Debby Hartke is a writer and communications consultant based in St. Louis, Mo. |
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