On Wednesday I attended a couple of sessions at a Rural Marketing conference – not because I’m interested in marketing to rural folk, but because those sessions were about online marketing (at least that’s what it said in the brochure).
The sessions in question were to be given by a guy from the Met Service, who I think do a great job with some of their online products. I was looking forward to an informative and interesting presentation…
Alas, it was not to be… The conference organisers had spent most of the 2-day conference trying to break down the stereotype of the hay-chewing, gumboot-wearing, slightly dim farmer. The dude from the Met Service had clearly not taken this on.
He treated us to pearls of wisdom like :
- Advertise on the Met Service Rural site, because that gets the most traffic…
- …although actually, most farmers don’t know how to use the internet, so you should really spend your money in print or TV (this from a guy who was giving an online marketing talk!)
- …but if you insist on doing online marketing, just take your print ad and bang it up online… on the Met Service Rural site – because it gets the most traffic…
- Put a cow or other farm animal in your online marketing because that’s what will get the farmer’s attention… (at this stage I was looking down and thought I had mis-heard, so I looked up… and sure enough there it was on his powerpoint slide: ‘Picture of cow or other farm animal’
- Keep it simple (presumably because the farmer is a bit thick and can’t read long words…)
- …oh and advertise on the Met Service Rural website because it gets the most traffic…
Met Service dude then proceeded to show us an example of a successful banner they had put on their site (for just five grand!). It was flouro yellow and flashed the lucky draw message so fast, I’m shocked no-one in the audience had an epileptic fit!
I was comped to this conference, but I assume that at least some of the people there had paid $1495 + GST to attend and listen to this condescending drivel. Lucky for Met Service guy, the room was packed with marketers instead of farmers. If there had been any farmers there I’m pretty sure they would have taken him out into the carpark and kicked his head in…
Poor show Brightstar! Surely you have some responsibility for the calibre of the speakers at your conferences…