As Syngenta Crop Protection Canada, Inc. prepared to launch Broadband, a new premium herbicide that also signalled the debut of a whole new modified category for the company, they knew they had their work cut out for them.

Agriculture is a challenging business, and farmers have too much at stake to risk their harvest on a new product without being thoroughly convinced of its effectiveness. “This was year one of a new product launch and a new modified category launch,” says Rob Milliken, Marketing Communication Manager for Syngenta. “Farmers are usually buying a product that controls grass weeds in one box and a product that controls broadleaf weeds in another box. What Broadband does is combine both of those boxes into one. So it was a launch of the brand name as well as a new concept and our job was to try and make the decision that the farmers have to make less complex.” The objectives that Syngenta laid out for the debut season were to have 500,000 acres treated with Broadband, and to achieve 2.3% of the market share in cereals overall. Specifically, they were hoping to cover 1.4% of the market share in wheat and 5.3% in barley. To help them achieve these objectives, Syngenta enlisted the help of its Agency of Record, Bos Advertising. Together Syngenta and Bos developed an integrated multimedia campaign that was able to break through the chatter and deliver the message that farmers needed hear. “Normally, agriculture companies will partner with agriculture advertising and marketing agencies because it’s such a technical business,” says James Sauter of Bos. “Syngenta wanted to go more towards fresh thinking, more mainstream marketing. We’re using mass advertising techniques in a sector that’s not used to seeing that.” The campaign incorporated mass market print ads, online support, point-ofsale advertising as well as a critical direct mail component with the overarching message being “Broadband: It’s just less complex.” Once the other forms of advertising had been in-market for a certain period of time, select consumers received a blank Rubik’s cube, coloured stickers included separately, with the accompanying tagline: “The best solution is often the least complicated.” “We had competitors launching new products at the same time and in that same modified category, so we had to fight for our line space,” says Milliken. “The direct mail added to the mass campaign. The Rubik’s cube just kind of tied the whole message together around the complexity. It was unique enough that it got opened.” The ability to capture the attention of consumers at the expense of other brands was made even more crucial by the fact that Syngenta only has one opportunity every year to convince consumers to try their product. Farmers would normally purchase an herbicide like Broadband once a year, sometime between mid-May and mid-June. “Farming is a very cyclical business,” explains Sauter. “They plant their seeds once a year, they fertilize once a year and they hope they get a good harvest. If they want to take another shot they have to wait until next year. There is so much risk involved, so the barriers of conversion are quite significant.” Syngenta chose to target over 3,000 Western Canadian producers of cereal crops, primarily wheat and barley, for its direct mail campaign. Agriculturally viable land in Western Canada is divided into three different soil types and Broadband was designed for a zone that is referred to as the “black soil” zone, which is characterized by higher organic matter and generally richer soil. “The Broadband direct mail campaign was targeted to that black soil zone because that includes the weeds that Broadband controls the best and it is the place where farmers are willing to pay for that type of product,” explains Milliken. The farmers in this region are inundated with information about similar products at the same time every year. Although this situation is obviously less than desirable from an advertiser’s perspective, the only real solution is to ensure that your message will resonate the most clearly with the farmers identified as Broadband’s target audience. “How do you take a very complicated message and make it simple?” asks Sauter. “In every project that we do for Syngenta we’re dealing with a chemical that has an active ingredient and has a different way of being applied and different timing and everything can be really finicky, so the way you package that message is the key. You need to understand the product quite well and I think what Syngenta was looking for in Bos was the ability to simplify a complicated message.” While the ability to stand out from the crowd was a critical element of the direct mail package, it was important to tread carefully so as not to make the wrong sort of impression. “We walk a fine in terms of breaking through clutter,” says Sauter. “Farmers tend to be very practical and they don’t like to see wastage. We have to break through the clutter but we can’t use the sizzle. So when we do these types of dimensional pieces we have to continuously be aware that we’re not being overly frivolous without a purpose.” Despite the myriad challenges that shaped this campaign, the results speak to its effectiveness. Broadband achieved all sales objectives in its first year. The brand was adopted by 2.3% of wheat and 6.8% of barley producers in Western Canada. ``The product was a success and we are going full steam ahead with it and hope to expand the number of acres that are treated in 2010,” says Milligan.

http://dmn.ca/Articles/DM_May_2010(web).pdf