How to sell to farmers

By DITA DE BONI marketing writer

Whenever a sector regains its health and starts to display a rosy bloom, you can be sure marketers and advertisers will be bent over their laptops and calculators a short distance away.

Although the creation of GlobalCo, exported speciality cheeses and genetically modified calves are putting New Zealand's revitalised farming industry on the map, nothing says the rural sector has arrived quite like a marketing conference in its honour.

The conference, to be staged by the Institute for International Research in Auckland at the beginning of September, promises to "deliver a true picture of the rural market and to provide insights on how best to capture and keep rural customers, whether they be farmers, growers or lifestyle-block owners."

About 15 per cent of the population is deemed "rural."

Pastoral exports are expected to grow almost 30 per cent to $12.1 billion in the year just ended - about 90 per cent of total production.

Each of 14,500 dairy farmers received a $70,000 lump-sum payout at the end of the 2000-01 year. And the overarching story is one of growth, although certain sectors within the overall picture, such as apples and wool, are in reverse.

The sector's profile is also changing. Farming has suffered a perceptional bodyblow from sustained images showing despondent farmers walking off their charred, swamped or parched lands. A new crop of educated farmers, alongside experienced older farmers who have weathered the economic battering, make a potent new demographic.

All of which is not lost on a breed of marketers who have gone forth to understand this old world/new world sector.

One company which won an international award for marketing excellence with a campaign designed for the rural sector says marketers should bear in mind a few fundamental things when trying to reach this most down-to-earth of communities.

The award-winning campaign was devised by the local branch of chemicals and materials company DuPont for its brushweed-killing herbicide Answer. It was judged to be the best campaign of all products within its $US28.3 billion business operating in about 70 countries and employing 93,000 people worldwide.

The campaign was created with DuPont's local agency, Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB), and both agency and client are revelling in their win. Perhaps anticipating a typical city-dweller's concerns, they immediately refuse to enter into a debate about whether herbicides are kosher, but are happy to outline their tactics which helped to ensure Answer regained its sizeable market share after heated competition with its main competitor, Dow.

FCB's Des Shaw, campaign director, and Murray Watt, writer and a farmer himself, say the campaign was given its initial fillip by the product.

Back in 1986, DuPont's first answer to gorse on farms around New Zealand was a product called Escort. It gained a 16 per cent market share but was considered expensive, complex to mix and generally too fiddly.

Promotional campaigns for Escort produced little or no effect on Dow's domination of the $10 million-plus market with Grazon and Tordon.

Answer proved to be the answer - a similar product to Escort but at a fraction of its cost, says Mr Watt.

"You didn't need to be particularly clever to sell it, it was a dream. But being so cost-effective, the opposition spent huge amounts combating the newcomer."

DuPont has fought back to achieve about 50 per cent market share - a substantial clawback considering Dow has thrown all its resources behind its products, even offering free aerial spraying of its gorse killers in some campaigns.

But Answer's pricing was not the only thing the marketers exploited. Five years ago DuPont started testing the product and invited FCB to come and film the trials.

When the product came to be launched, almost every farmer perceived to have a gorse problem (most do, although some areas, such as Canterbury, are less affected) was offered free tickets to blockbuster movies in cinemas, town halls and clubs throughout the country. Before the movie was shown, an eight-minute infomercial for Answer was screened.

Potential distributors of the product were also invited. Both DuPont and FCB say distributors are essential to a rurally bound product's success and "education and partnering" critical parts of the marketing mix.

"Farmers are suspicious of new products," says Mr Watt. "They generally won't use something until their neighbour has used it and so we were trying with the movie idea to break down those barriers quicker."

The advertorial and subsequent television campaigns were also distinctive. Shot on video, with the most basic of graphics, a Colin Meads-like voice-over ("farmers like a South Island accent," the FCBers say) and bald comparisons with the competitor's product, the ads seem like a tinny, countrified version of "if you drink and drive, you're a bloody idiot."

But that is what works, says Mr Shaw. "Our research found farmers were generally sick of ads that were full of high jinx and flash visuals but did not contain enough facts. They want a straightforward message with sufficient information."

Don't farmers feel patronised by the blatant, no-frills approach? "There is that issue, but the fact remains that balder statements and messages work better. The ads worked very well and we sold huge quantities of the product."

The two men say television is by far the most important medium, with no ads placed after 9.30 pm as that is when the community tends to retire.

"There are three things farmers like watching and are very loyal to," says Mr Watt. "TV One, the news, and sport, with the weather another particularly popular segment. The ads were placed in those slots, with some supplementary coverage in the farming press, point-of-purchase promotion and limited radio coverage."

The internet's ability to supply the community with real-time information is increasingly popular. Between 50 and 60 per cent of all full-time farmers are internet savvy.

Alison Andrew, chief operating officer of Fencepost.com, agrees that farmers like the straight message. Fencepost - launched two years ago - is the leading rural website in the country, averaging 32,000 hits a week.

"Some people make the mistake of assuming that rural people are out of the mainstream, that their lifestyles are much slower and that they are not as switched on as other people," she says.

"But we find farmers are sensible business people who have weathered difficult times and they are astute. They need a good-value proposition, something different, something valuable to be interested."

She agrees that word-of-mouth is important in the sector, which translates to the popularity of rural chat sites on the internet.

The web appeals because it can be accessed any time during a farmer's working day.