Since my professional publishing career began 43 years ago (a Coke and a Hershey bar were remuneration for stuffing Dad’s ag newsletters into #10 envelopes), I’ve seen a lot of changes. Those changes include some excellent and creative means of informing, educating and communicating with ag audiences. And well, some head-scratchers, too.

Since my return to ag media 21 years ago, I’m rarely impressed by the fluffy PR from ag suppliers about their latest racecar, sports tournament or recording artist “sponsorship” deal. And sitting in the stands at Camp Randall Stadium (the home of the Wisconsin Badgers) watching an ag machinery OEM advertise to a crowd of mostly suburban folk makes me “see red.” No, not the “In the Red Zone” brand sponsorship that gets queued up every time the ball crosses the 20-yard-line; that’s another matter altogether.

Rather, the scoreboard message that pokes me every time is the commercial promoting a specific and highly expensive type of farm machinery. Marketers tell me that this “smaller” winged scoreboard ad runs about $45,000 – for the right to be “flashed” twice per quarter in front of a college football crowd of 80,321.

That’s a hefty price tag, but even more so when you consider this: the average retail sales of this type of machinery are about 50 units per year – in the entire state. That means that IF every one of the state’s high-income farmers are in the stands that day – and a big if – then this marketing spend has an audience waste of 80,271 (that’s capacity crowd minus 50 potential sales). Try to get that percentage of market penetration to show up on your calculator.

It’d make more sense for this OEM to redeploy those dollars toward “blue light specials” to put the units into a new customer’s hands. At least you could call that a market share gain, while giving the local machinery dealers a chance to pick up service from the additional machine populations.

Branding Overload

Wall Street Journal writer Jason Gay also recently wrote about sponsorship overload. He was spurred to comment after noticing Strauss, a German workwear supplier, had purchased logo’d real estate atop all MLB players’ postseason helmets.

Gay’s satirical piece covered much of my sentiments – the side patches on baseball caps, shoulder ads on jerseys, and the endless new jersey produced for every occasion under the sun. His musings also included: “Sell off every cubic inch of the stadium to Madison Ave. Paint the grass Gatorade blue. Turn the foul poles into soft drink straws. Make the bases into Pokémon characters.”

Like The Wall Street Journal, sponsorships are part of my livelihood, too. But where do the unrelated corporate sponsorships – and their noise and over-stimuli – end?

Remembering ‘Target Market’

I may not be imaginative enough to understand the creative flair behind ideas hatched in the bean-bag chairs I’ve seen in ad agency work areas. 

I could be missing something. So, someone please tell me … How do logos on the hoods of racecars, graphics overlaid onto broadcast versions of MLB pitcher mounds, and big-ticket sponsorships of motorcycle races, golf/tennis tournaments and recording artists lead to greater adoption of machinery and supplies?

In my marketing studies, defining your target audience was Job 1. The marketing strategies then had to focus and align with the customers most likely to want and need your product, and to find a way to “meet them where they live.” You don’t need to be a Chief Marketing Officer to understand that a pile of money thrown at an attempt to peddle high-end ag machinery to non-farmers ain’t the best use of a buck. Because every dollar wasted is one that cannot be invested for meaningful results.

The current age’s corporate sponsorship “black hole” may be second only to the waste seen in businesses buying their way into evidence of their own Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) statements. Or, more recently, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives that opened a new spending spigot while opposing the very ideal they were meant to achieve.

Seek Waste & You Shall Find It

You always find wasted dollars if you search for them. But more costly is the compounding effects of the first dollar wasted. I’ve seen first-hand how unnecessary rebranding programs chew up a year of time and require too-many-to-count manhours birthing – and refining and approving – new logos, slogans, websites, photography, literature reprints and apparel. 

You see, if the agencies aren’t being paid to kill off a manufacturer’s “old” brand while rebranding it with a “new” image, they aren’t getting billable hours either.

Farm equipment dealers know how even a miniscule tweak to a logo requires a sign to come down. In a lot of cases, customers can’t even distinguish the changes in the expensive new sign being hung. 

When you start looking for it, you’ll find agribusiness dumping tons of wasted money all around you. Perhaps it’s driven by ego, access to celebrities, rights to a game-day suite or an invitation to highly exclusive donor receptions. 

Winners & Losers

But as these expensive sponsorship choices are made, legitimate and targeted opportunities within the ag supply ecosystem are at risk of going unfunded. I’m arguing about service journalism in all its forms, educational events, technology transfer workshops, consortiums and charitable groups that keep farmers going.

Not all such organizations are going to survive the tough times ahead in 2025. Or if they do, they’ll be some distant version of their prior selves.

If business truly believes in the head-nodding notion that an educated customer base lifts all ships, why keep those ships in dry dock?

A Commitment to Steward

Do I have a stake in this debate? You bet. We here at Lessiter Media want to earn these dollars. And we’ll commit to using them for industry progress via knowledge transfer and peer-to-peer learning – what our existence is all about. 

We want dollars that can lead to additional pages in our publications. For editor travel. For state-of-the-art camera and video equipment. For investments in staff talent and training. 

We also want to bring more industry leaders to our conferences to personally share their practical knowhow, mentoring and expertise. We want to pursue the worthy aims of our new nonprofit, the Conservation Ag Foundation. And we want to add to our lineup of 6 events and pursue the other ideas that our audiences are asking for in an assembly of the best of the best.

And we’ll promise to be a good steward of those dollars. Because ag deserves the best learning opportunities to stay ahead and do more with less.