We’ve all probably seen our fair share of viral internet posts by now. From cat videos to goats in pajamas to funny stories and solo rants of people in their car, there are all types of posts that have viral characteristic properties.
For me, when it comes to shareable Facebook posts, memes seem to do pretty well. So do funny child or animal videos. Topics that are controversial — myth busting posts — can resonate. Articles and infographics about GMOs tend to be pretty popular as well.
But there’s one other type of post that you might not expect does pretty well: food companies and their positive marketing towards farmers!
Here are two examples worth noting that I’ve experienced:
This is a story I shared that happened to me at my local Culver’s that ended up reaching 1.2 million people on Facebook alone, with nearly 6,000 reactions and over 1,000 shares. Culver’s does an excellent job of thanking farmers and celebrating the work they do. They also pride themselves on sourcing from as many smaller, local family farms as possible, while donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to FFA and ag education programs. It’s also worth noting their advertising is educational in manner for farming too! Yay Culver’s!
Another post that deserves to be highlighted is this one from Domino’s Pizza:
I met company spokesman Tim McIntyre and have been to the Domino’s Pizza headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They even have a little farm at their HQ campus! They love promoting farmers while having trust and faith in them and source the best ingredients from great American farms — AND Domino’s has done a great job standing up to animal rights activist extremism. A lot of their pizza boxes and marketing celebrates and highlights the work that farmers do, and the online agricultural community has done a great job thanking Domino’s for being kind to them. Check out the hashtag #farmersthankdominos on Twitter especially for the goodwill that has been circulated for their awesome pro-farmer marketing.
These are just a couple of examples, but you can find more companies here. It just goes to show that when brands stand up for us as farmers and ranchers, it can have a wonderfully positive impact on social media and their businesses.
Have you had any similar experiences? What companies do you know that have done a great job promoting agriculture in a positive way? Definitely give them a shout out in the comment section below and remember to thank them and talk about it with others on social media, as these posts are clearly appreciated!
It’s funny … it’s easy for food companies to slap a bunch of misleading labels on products to try and sell something, but is that really a good long term solution? Perhaps people can only be deceived for so long before losing trust and faith in the entire food supply over all. I think people moreso care about having local food that’s delicious and high quality from awesome family farms. Education and transparency are key; maybe if food companies highlighted this instead of coming up with the next buzzword, the industry would be more trusted overall.
I’ve also noticed that deceptive advertising allows companies to go viral in a bad way. Any publicity is still publicity, but I wanted to share positive examples to raise awareness on what happens when marketing efforts are kind to farmers and hope this will be the new trend in advertising.
Michelle Miller, the Farm Babe, is an Iowa-based farmer, public speaker, and writer, who lives and works with her boyfriend on their farm, which consists of row crops, beef cattle, and sheep. She believes education is key in bridging the gap between farmers and consumers.
