The Story on Farmer Decision Making
Article #5 of 9 in “Unconventional Thinking”
Farmers should not be thought of as stereotypes, they are archetypes. If you’ve been following this series, you will have noticed our concerns over the terms farmer, farm, and farming. One of the reasons we slip into describing farmers by their farm attributes is that it is easier to find terms that describe meaningful differences between farms and farming systems. We don’t seem to have great terminology to discuss meaningful differences among farmers. In fact, sometimes our language does not recognize any differences at all! All too often we hear someone mention the idea of a “large scale progressive farmer“ - a stereotype indeed!
A stereotype is a preconceived and oversimplified idea of the characteristics which typify a person or situation. When we talk in stereotypes, we are not talking about a real person. As we know, not all “large scale, progressive farmers” are similar in their goals, motivations, or purchase behaviors. While there is a stereotype of a farmer, it is by definition preconceived, oversimplified, and for marketing purposes, simply wrong.
“We don’t have terminology to describe meaningful differences between farmers”
So what is an agri-marketer to do? Over the years I’ve seen a number of segmentation studies that attempt to provide labels and definitions or profiles of subgroups of farmers. Unfortunately, most of these end up sitting on the shelf - for a number of reasons likely, but not least because they fail to tell a story that is recognizable to us as readers, making it difficult to initiate action. We end up with cobbled together labels like “progressive independents and “tech-savvy managers.” These labels convey little meaning outside of a careful reading of the study itself. Seriously - wouldn’t you expect someone who is “progressive” to be relatively “tech-savvy”. Wouldn’t someone who is a “manager” is relatively independent as well?
Finally, we make the assumption that being a “farmer” is what the farmer wants to be identified as in the first place! A few years ago we had the opportunity to do very in-depth, half-day interviews on over 100 farms. In every interview, we asked what we call the “epitaph” question. The lighthearted version being “when you walk into a setting that involves a mix of people, how do you introduce yourself?” The heavier version being: “what do you want your eulogy to be about?” In either case, the word farmer or farming seldom came up - people have higher goals in life.
“We should market to who THEY think they are”
And finally, If we want to market effectively to people, we should not market to who WE want them to be, we should market to who THEY think they are - their own sense of identity and motivations. We have spent enough time with farmers using both qualitative and quantitative techniques, to see that patterns exist in farmers' own personalities and identities. Instead of thinking in stereotypes, think about archetypes. The term was popularized by psychologist Carl Jung, a pioneer in the science of archetypes. He believed that there were elemental patterns that helped shape our identity. We are alternatively, Heroes, Sages, Rulers, or one of 9 other types. We’re sure you’ve encountered the cynical farmer who doesn’t believe the data, who is always suspicious of your motives and who doesn’t show loyalty to any particular supplier. You’ve just met a version of the Rebel archetype. Someone who needs very different handling than the ever-optimistic and entrepreneurial Creator archetype.
In the next post, we will look at how these archetypes can be applied to people who farm, as a mechanism for generating empathy and a better understanding of the types of experiences they desire.
