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Since I just mentioned one commodity group’s new television commercials, why not point out another? According to a story in Adweek (I couldn’t find it on the Cotton, Inc. website) a new series of commercials will kick off during tonight’s MTV Awards show. The ads are produced by DDB.

While looking around for more information on the spots I did come across the Cotton, Inc. consumer site “Fabric of Our Lives.” They have a very cool product for your Ipod, a cotton hoodie. Can’t leave your Ipod naked now can you?

Ag Group, Agency In the ZimmCast you can hear my interview with Cindy Cunningham, vice president for communications, National Porkboard, at the recent Ag Media Summit. The “Other White Meat” campaign continues to run with a new addition to the tagline “Don’t be blah.” You can see the full series of tv commercials and listen to the radio ones here.

You can listen to the ZimmCast here (2.3MB MP3) Besides the broadcast commercials the Porkboard created a new website for this campaign which is very colorful. It’s called “The Daily Pork.” The campaign was handled both in house and working with The Richards Group out of Dallas.

Ag Group, Ag Media Summit, Audio, Podcasts, ZimmCast AMVAC Chemical Corporation is a subsidiary of American Vanguard Corporation and they had 2 big announcements this week. To start with they announced receipt of a registration from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for Impact™, a new herbicide, for use in field corn, seed corn, sweet corn and popcorn. AMVAC expects to initiate sales of the herbicide to U.S. corn growers beginning in the spring of 2006. Additionally, they announced a partnership with Pioneer Hi-Bred for a marketing program for AMVAC’s SmartBox® closed-handling system. Pioneer® brand seed customers now have the opportunity to qualify for a discount on the purchase of a SmartBox system.

I think that it was interesting to see the release sent out to general media through national news wire services. They didn’t just target this to farm reporters. Wonder why? Could it be that the relatively low cost to produce and distribute news releases is worth the money? Farmers get their news from a lot of places. I’ve always wondered why companies don’t use more public relations vehicles to deliver their message.


Sometimes you see a story and think “Isn’t that just ridiculous?” It happens way too often these days. This one involves McDonalds. According to an AP story on Oregonlive.com, a judge is “allowing” Mickey D’s to conduct an $8.5 million educational campaign to settle a lawsuit brought against the company for failing to reduce its use of partially hydrogenated oil. What is the deal here? Is there some kind of law that I don’t know about that says a company has to use a certain kind of cooking oil? Give me a break!

That money actually is going to be used by giving the American Heart Association $7 million to do the educational campaign. I wonder how much of that will go to salaries and benefits. To really make you wonder, the other $1.5 million has to be used by McDonalds to proclaim to the world that it didn’t follow through on a “pledge” to convert to healthier cooking oil fast enough. Oh, and by the way, the company will have to pay about $2 million in attorney’s fees and court costs!

Something is missing from this story. How about common sense? Do you go to McDonalds and order french fries because they’re part of a low fat diet? No.

Sorry, I just couldn’t help but point out the stupidity of some people who have nothing better to do than complain about something that multi millions of people starving in other parts of the world wish they had. This is the kind of thing that leads to so many educational and nutritional programs that try to educate people who aren’t willing to take responsibility for their own decisions. Did you know there’s an organization trying to ban partially hydrogenated oil? As one “old” friend of mine likes to point out, everything he ate growing up was cooked in hog lard. Of course he doesn’t sit in front of a computer or tv all day either. If you’ve ever wondered who Alice In Dairyland is then wonder no more. Maybe you’ve never even thought about it either but now you’ll be in the know. Alice started back in 1948 and is a program of the Wisconsin Dept. of Agriculture.

This year she’s Gena Cooper and you can meet her right here. I interviewed the reigning Alice at the recent Ag Media Summit. She describes herself and her role as an ambassador for Wisconsin agriculture.

You can listen to my interview with Gena or Alice or whatever her name is here (1.2MB MP3)

Audio, Government

I know you probably get tired of hearing me talk about farmers and the internet but I think there’s a lot of ag communications folks out there who just aren’t “getting it” yet. In fact, I dare say there’s almost a resistance to using new internet technologies to reach farmers and the ag community. Part of it is a lack of knowledge by the people doing the agrimarketing! That’s why professional development opportunities like NAMA Boot Camp are so important. But I would encourage all agrimarketers to go to other types of professional development opportunities as well.

This comes up as I recently received another USDA release announcing $34.6 million in rural development grants. For the first time some of this money will be used to develop broadband internet access using power lines! The states where this money is going are Alabama, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire and Virginia. The release quotes “These investments are part of the Bush Administration’s effort to bring universal access to all rural households and businesses by 2007.” If successful no one (farmers) in rural America should be able to say they can’t get high speed access. The ease of using it will continue as well. New products are announced every day (just check out Engadget).

I still haven’t figured out how to get some of that money. I mean, I live in a rural area and promoting ag communications using the internet after all.

Government, Internet The latest news from Vermeer Manufacturing Company was sent out today in the form of a Talking News Release. With all the increase in ethanol use there’s more pressure to bale cornstalks. So the company offers some ideas on how to handle the challenges this creates especially for equipment.

You can see the release here (Word doc).

Agribusiness, Audio, Talking News Release Maybe you remember those cows when they were in Chicago. Well they get around and now they’re in Wisconsin. As reported on World Dairy Diary today (a ZimmComm blog) the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board is responsible for this. In fact, this is big business. The CowParade even has its own website. For information about Wisconsin go here. These shameless promoters of all things milk will be at the World Dairy Expo and so will AgWired.

There will be some official CowParade Wisconsin cows – “Say Cheese, Wisconsin” by Bruce Bodden and “Where the Cows Are” by Steven Kozar. When they get us photos we’ll share them.

I actually first found out about this on the Wisconsin Radio Network site. You can listen to a story they did on it here. If you’re a member of the National Agri-Marketing Association you might have it in your inbox or your mailbox. It’s time to toot your own horn with your entry in the 2006 Best of NAMA competition. You can find all the information you need online. Looking to the north it looks like the Canadian Agri-Marketing Association is having a Best of CAMA with the theme “Change is Alive in 2005” but there’s nothing on their website. If I find more I’ll pass it along. In this week’s Missouri Beef Industry Council report we talk about child nutrition programs funded with beef checkoff dollars. Cindy interviews Dean Carroll of Clarence, MO, who just recently attended his last official meeting as an MBIC board member after serving for six years.

You can listen to the MBIC Report here The MBIC Report is a weekly AgWired podcast which you can subscribe to using the link in our sidebar.
