It’s About the Farmer - Not the Farm (REDUX)
Article #2 of 9 in “Unconventional Thinking”
Agri Marketers have a tendency to think that the quantifiable aspects of a farm are inherently insightful of the farmer. Nothing could be further from the truth. A senior marketer from a globally recognized brand once proudly stated that his organization “focused on building products for the $10 million farm.” The size of the farm may indicate the potential scale of the opportunity and perhaps dictate some of the user requirements but it provides no insight into customers as people. More importantly, it makes the assumption that decision-makers for one farm are identical in their preferences, motivations, and buying journey to those of other farms.
“Farms don’t make decisions, people do”
The industry suffers from a potentially harmful conflation of the terms farmer, farm, and farming. Farms do not make decisions, people do. A cursory glance at any farm-oriented media will show that the vast majority of products are “positioned” in terms of a technical problem to be solved, or an opportunity to capitalize on. In other words, the “farm” and “farming” are stand-ins for the actual decision-maker - the farmer. Presumably, many in this industry do not perceive this conflation as a problem. It has continued for some time and shows no sign of disappearing. We can’t blame anyone for this situation. It is the conventional view in which the farmer's identity is intertwined with that of the farm itself. But there is a huge amount of thoughtware and technology available to the industry to help provide a different perspective.
We believe that any organization that wishes to create, build, and sell products to farmers needs to comprehensively understand the value of its products or services in three distinct dimensions:
The value to the FARM on which their product will be used. This answers the question of the magnitude and priority of the opportunity to the marketing organization and is primarily an issue of business entity, scale, firmographics, and geography.
The value within the FARMING system which is employed on the farm. This provides a specific context to locate and communicate the economic value drivers for the product.
And most importantly, the value (or values) to FARMERS: living, breathing people who farm, have complex and often contradictory motivations, influences, and systems of belief. This is primarily an understanding as to how the product or service helps them achieve their goals and motivations.
“The size of the farm provides no insight into the farmer.”
Old habits die hard. It's easy to slip into the familiar terminology of farms and farming. That is part of the problem - we don’t have consistent and clear terminology to describe farmers as people. We hear terms like “progressive” and “business-like” but these terms still have a lot of ambiguity. To be customer-centric, we need a better way to describe the people who are our customers. We’ll provide more insight into that topic in an upcoming post!
