One of America’s favorite days is nearly upon us. Next Sunday, football fans – and non-football fans alike – will gather to stuff our gullets with wings, nachos, pizzas and dips while making all sorts of wagers on traditional Super Bowl party games, on the odds of wardrobe malfunctions and the over-under on Taylor Swift sightings. And of course, to weigh in on who had the best TV spot, which CNN reported last week costs about $8 million for a 30-second spot.

That is nearly $267,000 for each second of airtime.

So I’m dusting off one of my older rants (see below) ... That is, putting drunk-sailor-like spending in the crosshairs while legitimate causes go unfunded. Seeing what Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have turning up provides hope for Hawkish fellas like me. Every dollar wasted is one that could be put to legitimate use.

By the way, who else would like to see Musk take a side-gig? For starters, he could examine major-line OEMs’ spending and what amounts to a “tax” on distributors, dealers and customers.

Dealers Weigh In

Last fall, after I’d seen a tractor executive openly gushing on LinkedIn about its NASCAR sponsorship, I inquired about the indirect, or sometimes direct, “tax” that dealers were expected to "pick up" as a cost of doing business. The thoughts of two dealer execs are shared below, along with another (see sidebar article further down).

Don Mikes, president and CEO of 12-store Hoober Inc. of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia -- doesn’t place much value on manufacturers’ spending a pile of money on sponsorships for race cars, scoreboards, musicians, etc. “While it may feel ‘cool’ to see your name in the big lights, it’s not a targeted use of funds, and the vast amount of the audience will never be a prospect for our products or services.”

Mikes would rather see resources used to produce agricultural content, citing social media, YouTube videos, website content, materials for the dealer to align with and which spotlights the farmer, the community that they serve, and the products they’re running. “Also wrapped up in this would be alignment and engagement/events with tech schools, the FFA and other ag-related organizations in those communities. Spotlighting the farmer and helping to encourage more young adults to pursue a career in agriculture would be a far more beneficial use of funds for the industry, the manufacturer and the dealer,” he says. 

Dan Webb, General Manager of 6-location Webb's Machinery Ltd., based in Western Canada -- noticed the major OEMs’ pursuit of sponsorships of musicians, athletes and sporting events. He also pointed out Case IH’s partnership with Metallica on a skid-steer and with the NFL’s Green Bay Packers (at least it wasn't the Chicago Bears or Minnesota Vikings...). 

Webb isn't a fan of such use of his OEM’s resources, stating that meet-and-greets with a celebrity or sponsored events don’t help close major purchases like a combine or sprayer. “It’s the parts, service and expertise we provide as well as the trust we build with our customers that drive sales.”

He says that manufacturers “should focus on sponsorships that have a direct, tangible impact on their customers, rather than investing heavily in celebrity or sports team endorsements that may not resonate. Keeping our current customers engaged and satisfied is far more important than attracting new customers who may only purchase smaller items.”

Webb does appreciate New Holland’s sponsor of Curling Canada, as “curling rinks serve as a social hub for the farming community in rural Canada,” he says, noting that farmers themselves comprise the sport’s athletes. “This type of sponsorship directly connects the brand to the farming lifestyle, which resonates with our customers.”

Another positive example, he says, is New Holland’s partnership with Lakeland College’s Student Managed Farm in Vermilion, Alta.

“New Holland has been providing new equipment including a seed drill, tractors, skid steers and combines to the college for over 12 years. This sponsorship exposes future farmers to New Holland’s equipment and helps them envision using it on their own farms in the future. With more than 1,000 young farmers from across Western Canada visiting each year, this partnership provides valuable, hands-on experience with New Holland machinery.

Support What You Want to Exist

Some of these OEMs have presumably arrived on this spending via ego or a way to reduce taxable income. But there are other legitimate destinations for those dollars, including those of us working to see that your customers are well-informed about agronomy, new practices and the latest innovations coming out of your R&D departments – and how to apply them.

Chew on this ... What happens if the customer doesn’t have the base knowledge needed to successfully use your equipment? Will he buy it? Will he stay with it? Or will he never change from how Dad and Grandpa did it and merely ‘hope for the best?’

You see, customer knowledge isn’t free, nor is it assured. 

Let me talk straight with you. In mid-January, we completed our 33^rd annual winter conference for farmers. We’re grateful for the suppliers who support us and whom invest because they agree that an educated customer raises all ships. Their financial support – along with the farmers’ gratefulness – keeps us working at it year after year. 

But as I presume many similar ag media entities face, support for educational conferences is drying up due to “budgetary pressures.” Or perhaps more accurately, budgetary pressure exists because of NASCAR, scoreboard advertising and other ego-lathering programs that swallow every dollar before new budgets are even assembled. 

Would you be surprised to learn that hotels are charging $144 per gallon of coffee (or about 4 times more than a single Starbucks cup)? Or that a networking lunch is $70 per plate? Or that we spend 18 cents in attendee promotion for every $1 in registrations? We’ll have a quarter-million in expenses committed before lighting the podium for the first presentation.

That’s what life is like these days in running national educational conferences. And while we’re called to something greater than the P&L and will continue to march on, some others, I’m afraid, won’t make it.

If you care about an educated customer base, or service journalists monitoring what’s happening in your space, consider what things look like if these enterprises cease to exist. We call that the “It’s a Wonderful Life” question around here. I’ve been told a few times over the years how the world would’ve looked entirely different had my dad, Frank, and all of those who followed us, chosen to pursue a different calling.

In fact, many moons ago, there was a significant manufacturer who expressed that while he didn’t want (or couldn’t get budget) to advertise with us, he wanted to make a contribution in the name of “research.” I wasn’t smart enough to pick up what he was laying down at the time, but it became clearer later that he wanted to make sure we’d stick around. That we’d continue to watch, report and provide the knowledge that translates into positive change for the industry. 

Can your business thrive without a NASCAR sponsorship? I think so.

How about a un- or misinformed customer base? Or an industry behaving like the Wild West, with no watchdog monitoring?

You’ll have to answer those two questions for yourself ...

Related Content: Put Wasted Dollars into Financing

Original Post: October 12, 2024

How About Spending Where a Return is Always Found?

Does agribusiness believe an investment in education pays? Sailor-like sailing in favor of unrelated sponsorships indicates otherwise …

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 minuscule 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.

Related Content: Put Wasted Dollars into Financing