AgEmerge: Are Their Promotion Strategies as Innovative as Their Speakers?

    COVID-19 has brought on a surge of media innovation to support news sharing over digital platforms. Social networking has skyrocketed, with businesses and organizations finding unique ways to reach their target demographic. According to J.P Morgan Statistics, “the Snap community increased by 11 million daily active users to an average of 229 million, communication with friends increased by more than 30 percent during the last week of March compared to the last week of January, and larger markets experienced spikes of more than 50 percent." Therefore, AgEmerge, a yearly event ran by Ag Solutions Network, is also looking for new ways to promote their event set for the end of January 2021. I had the opportunity to conduct interviews and film content for their 2019 conference. AgEmerge is typically hosted in Monterey, California and brings several industry leaders together to discuss emerging strategies in regenerative agriculture. However, the pandemic has forced the conference into a virtual format for single day. The event has been utilizing several new media strategies to inform their intended audience, but is it working in their favor? 

The harshest criticism first...

    In my opinion, AgEmerge’s promotional strategies vary in how effective they are. Looking at the various media outlets, I found their YouTube, Instagram, newsletters, and blog to be more of a detriment in terms of time spent vs. intended outcome. Ag Solutions Network recently started posting videos of keynote speakers from past conferences onto their YouTube channel. They were active on YouTube in 2019, then stopped production until a month ago, with only three videos being uploaded between 2019 and 2020. Their videos averaged under 20 views, with the lowest viewership being 0 views and the highest having 209. In the last month, no videos have seen success on this platform. I don’t believe that YouTube is the form of new media that would help the event reach it’s demographic, nor are the videos motivating viewers to attend the conference. Most innovators in the agriculture industry are middle-aged, and do not get their news from this platform. The same could be said about their Instagram, as it has been inconsistent and has very little engagement. I also see a problem with posting the most important parts of the event, since users could wait a little longer and watch the highlights online for free instead of paying hundreds of dollars to attend. Their newsletters and blogs have also ceased to exist during the pandemic, with the last posts being from May 2020. I feel like the newsletters and blog, both found through the event website, would be better ways to reach their crowd of attendees but are not being utilized. My final point for all of these forms of new media is that none of the listed avenues have an actual advertisement to sign up for the 2021 virtual event. I feel like all of their platforms should be focused on advertising to get more agriculturalists aware of this networking opportunity. 

        

The Good..

        While AgEmerge has been lacking in some forms of media, they have been excelling in others. A major outlet for agriculturalists has been through podcasts. I myself have been binge-listening to several podcasts that align with my interests, including outlets like Ag News Daily and Ag Law in the Field.  Podcasts have become a trending new media, especially in the past year. AgEmerge has posted a podcast twice a month, and has been following that frequency for years. I think that this podcast has been successful in their efforts of promoting new agriculture techniques. It is easy for an “on the go” person to listen to AgEmerge while completing their daily work. They have also done well in their email communication. Although this isn’t technically a “new” form of new media, I think that it is as essential outlet based on their middle-aged demographic. Email had stayed as a main form of business communication since it’s conception in 1971. AgEmerge sends out an email whenever a podcast is posted, or a special announcement needs to be made. They also can be found on Facebook, averaging 3 posts a week with approximately 400 followers.  Lastly, they joined the twitter community in June 2018 and frequently retweet innovative agriculture content. They average around 2 posts a week, and surprisingly have a few hundred followers.  

In Conclusion....

        Overall, I think that AgEmerge is spreading their message effectively, but could definitely expand their audience with a few changes. I think that the main point of concern I found is that there is very little promotion on their platforms regarding their upcoming event on January 25th, 2021. This conference is usually extremely expensive, but makes up for the cost with the atmosphere. Located in Monterey, the event has been placed in the Monterey Plaza Hotel and Spa. This made the multi-day event like an agriculture-infused vacation for industry leaders. It will definitely be a test for Ag Solutions Network to see how the attendance will change due to the online format. They dropped the registration fee from a few hundred dollars (not including hotel fees) to just 75 dollars, dropping down to seven speakers. The speeches will be available to view from the 25th to February 12th, which can be nice for those agriculturalists with busy schedules. I think that this event has the potential to be successful if they focus more into spreading the word. There has been one email reminder, one post on Instagram, and one on YouTube to remind users to sign up. It is extremely easy to miss these advertisements and assume AgEmerge wasn’t going to happen at all due to the pandemic. 

        If I could recommend a solution, I would look into making a shareable ad on Instagram or Facebook that will pop up on users’ feeds that share similar interests with the event. Spreading the message of the conference with why the user needs to attend can improve their numbers, and get innovators invested for conferences in the future. I also would suggest not posting their keynotes on YouTube and remain more ambiguous, as people may feel that they don’t need to pay money to attend. I believe that AgEmerge is an amazing opportunity to share ideas with like-minded individuals, but could improve their following by utilizing these recommendations. 

Brittney Thompson