God Made a Factory Farmer

[darkstar965]

If you didn't see the Super Bowl or Super Bowl ads, one of the most talked about was an ad for Dodge Ram Trucks featuring "the American Farmer" and narrated stoically by Paul Harvey. If you didn't see that, can see it here.

This satire, of that same ad, is pretty funny stuff...in a gut-punching way.

[dcandohio]

If you didn't see the Super Bowl or Super Bowl ads, one of the most talked about was an ad for Dodge Ram Trucks featuring "the American Farmer" and narrated stoically by Paul Harvey. If you didn't see that, can see it here.

This satire, of that same ad, is pretty funny stuff...in a gut-punching way.

The Paul Harvey narrative was very moving. However, as a marketing professor, I just can't laud the ad because I had to watch it a second time to know what product it was promoting. The purpose of advertising is to help customers develop a cognitive or emotional preference for a brand. Entertainment or emotion-producing value of the ad execution is secondary to the brand-development goal. If people aren't talking about Dodge Ram (and I had to watch the ad twice before I realized it was a truck ad...I thought at first is was going to be an ad for FARMING) then the ad is a business failure. Lots of ads that win awards for creativity or execution actually suck at building the brand or selling any products. Maybe that's fine for viewers, but as a business decision, it's bad.

The satire is great, and actually makes the same point I made. You can use iconic images of farmers to cause a well-learned emotional reaction, even when the reality behind that image is drastically altered, but what the heck does that have to do with selling trucks?

[qwertyy]

The Paul Harvey narrative was very moving. However, as a marketing professor, I just can't laud the ad because I had to watch it a second time to know what product it was promoting. The purpose of advertising is to help customers develop a cognitive or emotional preference for a brand. Entertainment or emotion-producing value of the ad execution is secondary to the brand-development goal. If people aren't talking about Dodge Ram (and I had to watch the ad twice before I realized it was a truck ad...I thought at first is was going to be an ad for FARMING) then the ad is a business failure. Lots of ads that win awards for creativity or execution actually suck at building the brand or selling any products. Maybe that's fine for viewers, but as a business decision, it's bad.

Not necessarily...

Unless you are a farmer in addition to being a marketing professor, you weren't their audience. That ad clearly targeted rural communities who would be attracted by that narrative. Despite the fact that commercials are one of the compelling features of the Superbowl, viewers still tend to chit chat during game breaks. Here, the lead-up to the product reveal was long enough to draw in the attention of their targeted audiences ("shh--this is interesting!") and create an affinity with the product. The reveal was probably too late and too short, but the intent was to make one specific population form the opinion that Dodge Ram *gets* them and admires them. It's the same strategy that atrocious-sounding Budweiser Black Crown used to market its product solely to young, urban viewers at the expense of the rest of the market.

One can argue whether it's cost-effective to spend millions of dollars for the production and placement of an ad that only is meant to influence a small portion of the population, but Dodge clearly wanted to reach a very specific consumer base, and their ad was extremely effective at doing so.

[Anna Blume]

The ad celebrates a certain kind of farmer: the one that benefits from the Farm Bill and not the small, family farmer of organic vegetables down in North Carolina. Look at the types of fields and farmlands depicted. Ranches with calves to rustle, not the space for pasture-raised chicken separated from greens by barbed deer fencing. No one's harvesting fava beans that nurture soil, throwing cuttings on the compost heap or sitting on a front porch strewn with muddy Bogs, sipping kombucha and reading Wendell Berry to the dog.

[darkstar965]

I just posted the links because I thought some might enjoy the satirical ad. Nevertheless, the discussion about the original ad's effectiveness is interesting. I'd add just a few points.

- there is clear, significant and obvious overlap between what I'll call the "farm community"* and football fans

- the ad also has political overtones which, imho, were intended and which also overlap the target market for the brand and ad

- it's exceedingly difficult for any advertiser to measure efficacy of brand spend. While much debated by experts, this has been the subject of too many books, consultants and business school research efforts to count

- finally, because it so difficult to quantify the impact of an individual ad on an advertiser's future financial performance, companies will often form judgments based on other, less-objective factors. The Corporate Marketing department/Head of Marketing usually has the most at stake since they typically own the agency relationship and maybe even played a role in the ad's development. A CEO or business unit head will almost certainly be involved given the dollars at stake for superbowl. Sales is key, since they'll be the ones hearing anecdotal customer reaction in the field and because, if they say the ad is driving traction in the market, the rest of the company will usually fall in line. And, sometimes, Finance or a CFO will be involved as well. So, at the end of the day, a company will often feel its ad has been successful (absent much substantial proof) if Sales is bringing back lots of positive feedback, if the CEO loved the ad and gets good feedback on the golf course or from other CEO buddies and if the Finance guys simply don't say too much because they'll more likely emphasize the cost with uncertain return.

Anna's of course right in who the ad targets. Sad but true simply because the ad's target, unlike the small, family farmer, is thought to be the much larger market for trucks. That's what makes the satirical ad funny--it mocks that "big farm" and industry focus very directly.

There is that adage in Marketing about a company knowing that half of the money it spends on advertising is wasted and "the trouble" being that they never know "which half" it is. Despite all the new metrics, data mining, research methods and social media we now have, that's as true now as it was 50 years ago. FWIW.

* "farm community" as a demographic is meant to be very broad and inclusive, including not just farmers but all those who live in farm belts, work for organizations that support or sell to farms or, for any reason, identify with farms and farmers.

[TedE]

What's kind of sad is that this ad is not actually targeting the farmers depicted: it's targeting people with the money to spend on a $35K+ truck with a cushy leather interior and sat nav to drive to the grocery store or their desk jobs, but they want to *feel* like they are somehow connected to this way of life. The farmers depicted in this ad are likely driving older trucks that actually get used as pickups and probably wouldn't buy what the ad is actually trying to sell if they did buy new. It would have been much less cynical for them to show an old, beat up Ram truck at the end which would imply, "Hey, we've been here for farmers in the past and our products are still working for them. So there's that".

[darkstar965]

What's kind of sad is that this ad is not actually targeting the farmers depicted: it's targeting people with the money to spend on a $35K+ truck with a cushy leather interior and sat nav to drive to the grocery store or their desk jobs, but they want to *feel* like they are somehow connected to this way of life. The farmers depicted in this ad are likely driving older trucks that actually get used as pickups and probably wouldn't buy what the ad is actually trying to sell if they did buy new. It would have been much less cynical for them to show an old, beat up Ram truck at the end which would imply, "Hey, we've been here for farmers in the past and our products are still working for them. So there's that".

Not sure. I partly agree with you but also think the reality of modern industrial farming is that many of the "farmers" are now actually employed by the large commodity and food companies. With and without aggressive GM-provided financing, they buy new trucks. But again, the BIG market for the ad ranges way beyond any people working on farms-including those who feel "somehow connected to this way of life" as you wrote..

[dcandohio]

Not necessarily...

Unless you are a farmer in addition to being a marketing professor, you weren't their audience. That ad clearly targeted rural communities who would be attracted by that narrative. Despite the fact that commercials are one of the compelling features of the Superbowl, viewers still tend to chit chat during game breaks. Here, the lead-up to the product reveal was long enough to draw in the attention of their targeted audiences ("shh--this is interesting!") and create an affinity with the product. The reveal was probably too late and too short, but the intent was to make one specific population form the opinion that Dodge Ram *gets* them and admires them. It's the same strategy that atrocious-sounding Budweiser Black Crown used to market its product solely to young, urban viewers at the expense of the rest of the market.

One can argue whether it's cost-effective to spend millions of dollars for the production and placement of an ad that only is meant to influence a small portion of the population, but Dodge clearly wanted to reach a very specific consumer base, and their ad was extremely effective at doing so.

I know I am not the target audience. Clearly. I wasn't commenting based in whether the ad was relevant to ME, but whether is was relevant to a target market who would feel connected to the brand through the ad. But I'd like to know whether that rural community consumer is, in fact, their target audience. If so, the cost of execution and placement will likely cost far more than the subsequent increase in sales.

And I don't have any of their data, but I wonder about the size of that rural community market and their intentions to buy expensive new trucks in the next year.

If this is the beginning of a major rebranding effort, then it will be interesting to see if it succeeds over the long term.

Another relevant point is that younger people (e.g. mid 30's on down) don't know Paul Harvey and don't give a rat's ass about "the rest of the story." The people who knew and loved Harvey are aging out of a lot of product categories. I suspect this ad will do more for the legacy of Paul Harvey than for Dodge.

[johnb]

The ad celebrates a certain kind of farmer: the one that benefits from the Farm Bill and not the small, family farmer of organic vegetables down in North Carolina. Look at the types of fields and farmlands depicted. Ranches with calves to rustle, not the space for pasture-raised chicken separated from greens by barbed deer fencing. No one's harvesting fava beans that nurture soil, throwing cuttings on the compost heap or sitting on a front porch strewn with muddy Bogs, sipping kombucha and reading Wendell Berry to the dog.

What's kind of sad is that this ad is not actually targeting the farmers depicted: it's targeting people with the money to spend on a $35K+ truck with a cushy leather interior and sat nav to drive to the grocery store or their desk jobs, but they want to *feel* like they are somehow connected to this way of life. The farmers depicted in this ad are likely driving older trucks that actually get used as pickups and probably wouldn't buy what the ad is actually trying to sell if they did buy new. It would have been much less cynical for them to show an old, beat up Ram truck at the end which would imply, "Hey, we've been here for farmers in the past and our products are still working for them.

I know I am not the target audience. Clearly. I wasn't commenting based in whether the ad was relevant to ME, but whether is was relevant to a target market who would feel connected to the brand through the ad. But I'd like to know whether that rural community consumer is, in fact, their target audience. If so, the cost of execution and placement will likely cost far more than the subsequent increase in sales.

And I don't have any of their data, but I wonder about the size of that rural community market and their intentions to buy expensive new trucks in the next year.

I think it would behoove you folks to have another look at what's actually going on out in the field, and with less romanticization of rural life.

It so happens that I live in a rural area of North Carolina. Here, there are very many shiny Ram (and Ford, and Chevy, and GMC) pickups, seemingly as common as cars. They are driven by all types of people, including small-scale farmers. They are big, and they are often equipped with lots of nice options. This area and others like it are the market for these vehicles. It is a huge market; the Ford F-150 pickup has consistently been the largest selling vehicle (not truck, *vehicle*) in the US for many years. Not only are these big sellers, they are extremely profitable for the big three, and for that reason the imports have been trying to get into the act for a while as well; Toyota has a plant in Princeton, Indiana that was built specifically to produce pickups and SUV's, and another one in Texas. Both "real" small ranchers and those who identify with them, and others who don't, drive these things. They regularly march into the local dealers and buy them. These days even our local "guest workers" are often (I would even say typically) seen driving nice shiny pickups.

It was a feel good ad, but it was also well thought out and well targeted.

Full disclosure: I have a Dodge Ram 3500 diesel pickup, that in my case is used to pull a 13,000 lb. RV (fifth-wheel trailer), in which I am sitting in Ft. Pierce Florida as I type this. It gets about 12.5 MPG when pulling the trailer, and about 21 otherwise. So we probably burn less fuel than those who fly.

It was 80 F today.

[Michael Landrum]

I'm a little bit confused--maybe more so for assuming Paul Harvey is a preacher or some type of "man of the cloth".

1) Isn't god creating something on the eighth day kinda like me going to the grocery store getting everything I need to make my Seven-Layer dip, getting home and getting all settled in on my BarcaLounger and then going "Oh shit, I forgot the Tostito Scoops!" and then going back out to the store?

2) Didn't god already make a farmer whose offerings he wasn't too psyched about so the farmer got all pissed off and killed his brother?

3) Does that mean that the "small, but important and growing, highly symbolic" target niche is Doomsday Preppers who want a good truck to run over their brethren with and the Dodge Ram is just such a truck? I mean, from a biblical-based marketing point of view, the whole ram thing is very clever and makes a lot of sense.

You guys are all smart. Can someone figure this out for me?

[DonRocks]

I for one really appreciated the two-second photo of the black man at the 47-second mark.

The Ninth Day.

[Anna Blume]

2) Didn't god already make a farmer whose offerings he wasn't too psyched about so the farmer got all pissed off and killed his brother?

Go back one. His dad was the first farmer: Adam's punishment for Original Sin was to dig the earth. Eve's punishment was giving birth to the son who offered the rejected grain; the accepted offering was from the son who grass-fed his humanely raised animals.

[dcandohio]

And yet another one, this time for a very different purpose.

[darkstar965]

I'd never before heard of these guys.

I thought this was a joke in the best 'beat a dead horse' tradition.

It isn't.