What We Do
DIY better PR
There are hundreds of ways for farmers to:
- Promote the benefits of farming
- Educate consumers about how their food is produced
- Build a positive image of farmers
- Generate greater support for farming from the public, opinion-formers and hence MPs
No-one is currently doing this well, so anything that farmers do themselves will make a huge difference.
10 easy things to do:
- Posters in farmers' fields
- Informative farm signage
- Messages on lorries, barn doors, grain silos
- Car stickers
- Live radio phone-ins
- Contact national newspaper journalists
- Contact TV programme-makers
- Give a talk
- Leverage the county shows
- Run a local competition
Posters are one of the earliest forms of advertising. Posters pre-date TV, radio and cinema advertising, and are an excellent way to get a message across. Information on farm signs aimed at walkers, or large roadside posters aimed at drivers, provide very low-cost options. Farms that border villages, towns or public footpaths could easily use home-made posters to communicate with the public by following just a few simple rules:
1. Posters in farmers' fields
• Make it big
- Traditional roadside posters are 20’ x 10’ (48 sheets)
- Major roadside posters are 40’ x 10’ (96 sheets)
- One large/enormous poster will attract more attention than 20 small ones
- Make the words as big as possible so that anyone can read it
- Imaginative statues and structures are even better (e.g. Camel and Willow Man on the M5, straw statues on A303)
- Use farmers' fields beside major roads, schools, hospitals or railways
- Posters do not have to 'ruin the countryside' if you use natural creative approaches (e.g. carved wood or straw bales)
- Tenant farmers may need to get the landowner's permission. But if the landowner will not oblige, find a field owned by another farmer and use this
The recent publicity about the negative impact of advertising in farmers' fields is quite right. The CPRE has been running a campaign to get rid of unattractive advertising for bathrooms, MacDonalds and other corporates. But farmers are allowed to educate the public using their own land, and put up temporary posters for rural shows. In addition, tasteful and attractive structures can enhance the countryside and are extremely popular with the public.
• Five words only
- Make the messages clear and simple
- Use under five words
- Use positive messages about farming or funny comments about the problem
- A great example of a farmer's poster, written in big white letters on an old muck-spreader, is ‘Government Think Tank’.
• Prime locations
- Posters placed along the major roads are very powerful
- Or use other major public corridors (e.g. railways) and outside events (e.g. concerts) to reach people
- Use existing structures as well (e.g. grain stores or barn doors)
• Humour works
- If you make people laugh, they remember what you have said for longer
- Avoid swear words and crude jokes. Both are unacceptable and will offend rather than impress
- Avoid exclamation marks. If you need to use them, the message isn’t good enough
• Flatter your audience
- Always respect who you are talking to (i.e. the target audience).
- Do not undermine your audience (e.g. only one in three adults know how potatoes are grown) and test the message out on other people first.
- Only undermine your competitors (e.g. cheap foreign imports)
• Be positive, not negative
- Promote the good points (e.g. your farm). But don’t do this by knocking other farmers
- Undermining neighbouring farmers leaves a nasty taste in the mouth
- This approach indicates self-interest and weakens the message
- It is fine to be rude about the Government and other companies, but not about other farmers
2. Informative farm signage
• Any location
- Footpaths, parking places and roadside fields provide excellent places to communicate with the public
• Home-made signs
- Get the kids to paint information on plywood to explain ‘how food is produced’ or ‘what is being grown’ for walkers and urban households:
'Summer crop of Wilja potatoes.'
'Spring barley harvested in Sept for real ale.'
'Oil-seed rape grown for energy fuel.'
'Wheat for bread and biscuit flour.'
• Copy good ideas
- Many companies have developed successful ways to communciate with the general public. All these techniques can be copied.
- English Heritage uses large-scale maps to explain about the historical landscape at key locations. Farmers could use laminated OS maps on wooden boards to educate the consumer about the farm landscape
- Farm shops provide signage on seasonal produce. All farms could do the same for their crops being grown
- Local councils provide detailed planning application notices on yellow laminated paper pinned to posts or trees. Farmers could provide information about their farm (e.g. how crops are being grown or what to look out for) in the same way. For example:
- An overview of all the birds nesting in the area. Encourage the public to look out for certain birds nesting in the area
- Information about the sheep farming calendar combined with public information about the dangers of pregnant mothers (ewes) losing their lambs when worried by dogs. Request for dogs to be kept on the lead at all times when walking through the fields to help protect the unborn lambs. Associated cost of losing each lamb around £300
- South Devon cattle summer grazing area.
- Grass to be cut for silage (i.e. winter animal feed)
3. Messages on lorries, barns and grain silos
The same rules as posters, but on anything visible.
4. Live radio phone-ins
- Radio stations provide free air time via phone-ins
- There are several live phone-ins on national and local radio stations every day. So, each day presents a new opportunity
- Farmers can talk to millions of people just by picking up the phone
- Farmers can help to educate the nation about what farmers do all day (e.g. the highs and the lows of farming) by providing an insight into the daily life of ordinary farmers. This could be through anecdotes or amusing stories. For example, Radio One – Jo Wylie's show 'What Rocks and What Sucks.' For example:
"1,000 hectares of wheat ready to harvest…its just started raining, so I can’t get combining."
"Two lovely new calves born on the farm today… tested for TB and got a positive reactor."
5. Contact national newspaper journalists
- Get to know a couple of journalists from other areas of the paper (e.g. news, consumer affairs, environment, health)
- Contact them when something happens that effects their readers (e.g. no longer able to guarantee a supply of fresh milk from farms in their area because too many farms closing down, cheap chickens are being imported from China)
- Journalists are not interested in sob stories about farmers going out of business, lots of people lose their jobs every day. But they are interested in stories that may effect their readers’ lives. So, the story must be presented from this angle (e.g. the local abattoir is closing down, so readers will no longer be able to buy local beef; or when the farm goes out of business, the farmland will be sold off to property developers)
- Take a photo of something interesting and send it to the national newspaper
- Don't despair if the story doesn't run. Just keep trying. Keep finding new contacts. And find people you like talking to
- Read the national newspapers and make a note of the journalists that write good pieces. Contact them when you are in a good mood to find out what they write about. Don't ring them when they are really busy (afternoons and evenings), or when you are in a bad mood about something. Ask them if they are interested in farming stories
- If not, try someone else. If you have a story, send the details by email or post. Don't write the story yourself, just provide the bare facts
- If you don't want to be named in the article, let the journalist know each time you speak to them
- Offer to help the journalists find other farmers who will endorse your story or be named in the paper
- Link up with other farmers to provide several angles on the same story. This may help the journalist to sell the story to their editor
6. Contact TV programme-makers
- Get to know the BBC and programme-developers (e.g. phone the switchboard or ask for a tour)
- Do the same for the independent TV companies. Make a note of the company name at the end of programmes for ITV or C4 and then contact them
- Think up ways to get positive farming stories onto TV programmes. Some suggestions are:
- Keep finding new people in the TV industry to talk to
- Find out who develops the programmes you like and contact them. Ask them if they thought about a programme on dairy farming, growing fruit, growing vegetables etc.
- Offer to help the TV programme-makers find farmers who would be good on TV
7. Give a talk
- Offer to do a talk at the local school, WI or church about the farming calendar
8. Leverage the county shows
- Invite journalists from the national media to the county shows and show them around the livestock and local food areas
- Encourage the county show organisers to use more engaging comperes at the showground to attract the public to the main farming areas (these are currently under-exploited). This could even include celebrities. The French do this very well at SIA by providing escorted tours and information leaflets, as well as professional speakers to introduce the animals and events in the main ring. They create a huge buzz of excitement among audiences as a result. There is no doubt that farming is much more greatly valued by the wider French public as a result
9. Car stickers
- Make your own messages out of laminated coloured paper
- Use the local library computer or local school children if you don't have access to PowerPoint computer programmes at home
10. Run a competition
- This could be with the local radio station, newspaper, school or youth club
- Offer prizes and fun things to do related to farming
- Consider reaching the urban areas (e.g. London) via local or national radio stations (e.g. Capital Radio or Classic FM) and offering prizes from a group of farmers (e.g. B&B holidays, local farm-produce hampers)
Finally, there is no point hiding behind other organisations. If farmers want the benefits of better PR for farmers, then farmers need to do this themselves.
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