DKY Helps ADM Exceed Regenerative Agriculture Targets
Connecting with farmers to support ADM’s ongoing sustainability efforts.
BACKSTORY
In 2022, ADM received a grant from the USDA to provide incentives to farmers who adopt or expand sustainable agriculture practices like regenerative agriculture. Even though shifting to regenerative practices can benefit the climate as well as farmers’ bottom lines, change is hard – and realizing those benefits can take time.
Thus, ADM needed to talk about this new program in a way that resonated with farmers and acknowledged the challenges they faced while also emphasizing the long-term benefits of regenerative agriculture. In addition, the company needed help raising awareness about the program among the thousands of row crop farmers to meet program enrollment goals.
BRAND DEVELOPMENT AND LAUNCH
DKY worked closely with ADM to develop a brand identity for the new program. The name, ADM re:generations™, referenced regenerative agriculture as well as the importance to farmers of passing on their operations to the next generation.
ADM re:generations was launched at the 2022 Farm Progress show in Boone, Iowa. By year’s end, 1.2 million acres of cropland were enrolled in ADM re:generations, exceeding the 2022 enrollment goal by 20 percent.
In 2023, we transitioned from “launch mode” to “growth mode” to help ADM meet an even more ambitious target: at least 2 million acres enrolled in ADM re:generations by the end of the year.
CAMPAIGN
We developed a plan to drive awareness for ADM re:generations and promote farmer interest and engagement in regenerative agriculture. Our 12-week campaign included a combination of traditional and digital marketing tactics covering both paid and earned media. The aim was to position ADM re:generations as one of the industry’s easiest and most trusted regenerative ag programs, which would in turn help drive enrollment.
A mix of programmatic advertising, organic and paid social, as well as video storytelling helped drive traffic and enrollments. In addition to ad placements in national agricultural trade media, we also engaged hyperlocal publications in specific markets across 18 states. Earned media efforts focused on highlighting ADM’s commitment to ensuring farmers received every dollar of the USDA grant administered by the company.
GOALS
- Develop a brand identity to help ADM communicate the benefits of its USDA-funded regenerative ag program.
- Position re:generations as simple and farmer-centric, rather than complex and requiring long-term contracts.
- Execute a 12-week campaign combining traditional and digital marketing, including earned, owned, and paid channels.
- Ensure that farmers enroll at least 2 million acres in the program by the end of 2023.
- Tell farmers that ADM was ready to reward them for responsible stewardship of their land.
TAKEAWAYS
It pays to invest in research that lets you really know your audience: insights gained from research we conducted prior to the ADM re:generations brand development were key drivers of both the regen offering design and the campaign messaging used to promote it.
Targeted campaigns are more effective and efficient when layered on top of ongoing communications efforts: thanks to a steady stream of engaging content on the ADMadvantage.com website, we had a deep well of ideas and assets to deploy in our campaign. Insights from our “always-on” content operations also helped us know which channels and messages worked best.
Prepare to launch across a range of channels: smart planning allowed us to execute a campaign combining a range of paid, owned, and earned channels. This omni-channel approach brought benefits in efficiency, reach, and impact.
IMPACT
The surge in visitors during the campaign period had a sustained, positive impact on site traffic. To date, re:generations content on ADMadvantage.com has been viewed roughly 25,000 times by nearly 12,000 people. Visitors also engaged with ADM re:generations content 57 percent longer compared to the site average – further evidence that our campaign efforts helped connect a curious audience with relevant, engaging content.
ADM also succeeded in enrolling more than 2.8 million acres by the end of 2023, beating the target by over 40 percent. By adopting regenerative ag practices through the ADM re:generations program, farmers have already cut CO2 emissions by 253,000 MT from the benchmark and sequestered 115,500 MT of CO2, equivalent to taking more than 80,000 cars off the road for a year.
