Case Study

State Agriculture Associations (Midwest)

REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
Agriculture

Helping agriculture producers proactively tell their story to their communities.

THE CHALLENGE

Three states’ agriculture industries were feeling increased pressure from activism, local community concerns and litigation, unbalanced media coverage, and regulatory pressure. This friction had the potential to decrease both the supply and demand of their product and inhibiting farmers’ freedom and license to operate.

Amid this pressure, the need for a compelling and persuasive community narrative was clear: to provide industry communicators and like-minded allies across the three states with the process and tools to drive effective proactive communications, combat misinformation, and build a reservoir of goodwill for modern agriculture at the local community and state levels.

OUR STRATEGY

Using input from a robust framing phase (including secondary research, media review, producer input and stakeholder discussions), an early Community Narrative draft was established, framed around key audiences, relevant issues, and desired outcomes.

Next, qualitative (4-day online BrightBoard community) and quantitative research were conducted with target stakeholders to define community, test early narrative elements, opposition messaging, and new issues. The policymaker’s perspective was also included via interviews with state and local officials.

IMPACT

Based on the insights, we built a Communication Architecture that mapped out the messaging by audience to communicate the desired narrative across key touchpoints.

To make the strategy fully actionable, a Community Engagement Playbook was developed that provided engagement, messaging and terminology guidance tailored for each audience and their key concerns, comprehensive support points and best practices for media and public engagement.