Thanks to a heads up from the Association for Downloadable Media I read a great article by Jim Meskauskas, iMedia Connection. He writes about media planning and buying and this one is titled, “Your outdated planning process and how to fix it.” He gets right to the point in the subtitle:
The way audiences use media has changed, but agencies’ planning processes have not. Here’s how marketers need to adapt for the platform-independent future of media consumption.
Platform independent media consumption. Interesting term we’re hearing more of lately. The old platforms are not working so well. Look at what’s happening with newspapers. So what does he think of today’s media buyers and planners?
Today, media planners and buyers still focus on determining the right platform for carrying messages, the currency for placing that message and the metrics for determining the success or failure of that platform. The audiences that planners and buyers wish to reach, however, do not think of their media consumption this way. Thus, much of the planning landscape is being neglected by the discipline’s practitioners. They end up measuring the potential of a platform rather than the content associated with an ad message. In short, planners and buyers are measuring forests without knowing anything about the trees that are in them.
He also has an interesting new way to define what we have been calling podcasting.
Portcasting
“Portcasting” is the term I use for what in the past would have been called podcasting. Because the near-future of media usage is based on its portability, “port” is the operative descriptor for the media being “cast.”
It’s a good read and I appreciate your thoughts on it. If you’re in the agency business consider this last excerpt:
If they hope to maintain relevance in the coming years, agencies must find a way to address the meaning of platform-independent content and the need for real cumulative media effectiveness measures across platforms.
I think some of this will be included in my social media breakout session at the upcoming NAMA conference.
Besides the new Genuity brand, Monsanto was also promoting other brands at Commodity Classic. One such brand is Acceleron, a seed treatment system. I’m sure there are still people who aren’t quite sure just what Acceleron is. To help explain it, I spoke with Tom Schaefer.
He says they launched the product line last fall. They had in-field plots out and saw great performance and yield increases. He says growers should know that the beans will be a different color and they’ll see good plantability and early season performance. There is a pretty tight supply this season on Round Up Ready Yield on bean varieties so he suggests calling your dealer now.
New Acceleron™ Seed Treatment System helps maximize the performance potential of your seed and traits right from the start. Designed to complement new seed and trait products, Acceleron can improve stands and plant health to help maximize the performance potential of your crop.
Available in 2009 as a feature of Genuity™ Roundup Ready 2 Yield™ soybeans. Followed by the introduction of corn in 2010 and expansion into other crops and vegetables in 2011 benefiting hybrids, varieties and traits across a broad geography.
You can listen to my interview with Tom here: cc-09-monsanto.mp3
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There are a number of vaccines currently on the market for hog producers to control PCV2 and associated diseases. The question for producers is, which one is best for them, especially given today’s challenging market for the hog industry.
Some of the vaccines are single dose, some require more than one injection – and most are designed for healthy pigs over the age of 3-4 weeks. A number of studies have been done on the vaccines available and what producers can expect when using them. Some of those studies were presented at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Swine Health Seminar in Dallas on Friday.
Dr. John Waddell with Sutton Veterinary Clinic in Sutton, NE presented his findings on the evaluation of Ingelvac Circoflex on growth performance of pigs in a subclinical PCVAD herd. “We found about a tenth of a day average daily gain in the finishing phase, which equates to about 8-10 pounds at finishing,” he said.
Listen to an interview with Dr. Waddell here: bivi-09-dallas-waddell.mp3
Dr. Paul Yeske with the Swine Vet Center in Minnesota talked about the effect of different PCV2 vaccine protocols on weaned pig performance to slaughter weight. “We learned that the vaccination for PCVAD is effective no matter which vaccine they use,” Yeske said. The main difference they found was that the single dose vaccines resulted in less treatments overall for the animals. “Certainly anytime we can reduce labor is helpful for producers.”
Listen to an interview with Dr. Yeske here: bivi-09-dallas-yeske.mp3
Dr. Joel Nerem with Minnesota’s Pipestone Veterinary Clinic compared the efficacy of a couple of different vaccines on the market, and once again found very little significant difference between them. “What we found was that the one dose CircoFLEX at weaning was equivalent to the two-dose product we were on,” Dr. Nerem said. But a big difference they did find was in mortality, “The CircoFLEX was the only treatment that was statistically different from controls.”
Listen to an interview with Dr. Nerem here: bivi-09-dallas-nerem.mp3
Download the interviews here:
Dr. John Waddell
Dr. Paul Yeske
Dr. Joel Nerem
BIVI 09 Dallas Photo Album
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Porcine circovirus type 2 – better known in the swine world as PCV2 – has become increasingly important for hog producers to control through the use of vaccines.
One of the world’s leading researchers on the topic gave a comprehensive presentation to swine vet practitioners on Friday at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica swine health seminar in Dallas. Dr. Tanja Opriessnig with Iowa State University discussed some of the recent research in the field and the commonly asked questions regarding PCV2 vaccines.
Listen to an interview with Dr. Opriessnig here: bivi-09-dallas-tanja.mp3
Download the interview here: Dr. Tanja Opriessnig
BIVI 09 Dallas Photo Album
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- The 910GH is a new backhoe offering that fits New Holland’s sub-compact (<30 hp) tractors. Easily transported between job sites, the 910GH is designed for working in close quarters.
- AgriLabs is awarding a total of $1,500 for scholarship grants to three state associations: The Nebraska Cattlemen Foundation, Lincoln, Neb.; the Oregon Cattlewomen in Salem, Ore.; and the Oklahoma Cattlewomen, Oklahoma City, Okla.
- The American Soybean Association will serve an array of soy-based foods to members of Congress, government officials and industry representatives at the Seventh Annual Congressional Soyfoods Lunch on Wednesday, March 11.
- With 236 companies exhibiting in 943 booths, the 2009 Commodity Classic Trade Show set a record in Grapevine, Texas, for the largest show in the history of Commodity Classic. More growers attended Commodity Classic this year than in 2008—1,513—with total attendance of 4,527.
After just getting home I saw that my copy of the Jeff Jarvis book, “What Would Google Do?” has arrived. I highly recommend reading this book and I’ll probably do an occasional post about something I find in it.
For starters, on the first page:
The mass market is dead, replaced by the mass of niches.
Boy, how hard is that for the traditional marketer to accept much less understand?
How about:
Owning pipelines, people, products, or even intellectual property is no longer a key to success. Openness is.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked why all the information we publish is “free.” Why do we teach other people about new media? Or as most put it, “to do what you do?” Why would we place our content online, especially in platforms like YouTube or Flickr?
Hmm. Let me think about that for a minute. Could it be because that’s where the people I want to interact with are? Could that be where your customers or members are?
The Dixie Deer Classic will end tomorrow but I won’t be here. I finished up my work with the Drive Green Tractor Utility Show this afternoon.
It wasn’t all hard work though and I had time to wander around. Today they had a flea market on the grounds that was huge. Apparently it’s every Saturday on the North Carolina State Fair grounds. The weather couldn’t have been more picture perfect. I took a few and added them to the photo album.
As they measure or score more and more deer racks, the number of “trophies’ lining the walls gets bigger and bigger. Here’s a shot of just one side of the area where they do it. Your first rack can be measured and entered in competition here for no charge but then your next one is only $5.
Dixie Deer Classic Photo Album
For you tweeters, this headline must have caught your eye. After all, most of us are on Twitter to try to project a message about our place of business, our passions and the things that interest us. An increase in your following with increase your ability to spread your messages to a wider audience. My Twitter life has substantially increased since the first day I signed on to give it a whirl. I’m still figuring things out, but I have decided it’s a fun way to let everyone know what I’m up to and stay in contact with other professionals. If you are on Twitter, and you are interested in my adventures, my two accounts are AmandaNolz and BEEFMagazine.
Anyway, I found an article at the Poynter Institute titled, “10 Ways to Increase Your Twitter Followers.” The article was written by Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg and the cofounder of Pounce and Revision3. (Photo courtesy of Poynter Institute.) Kevin has over 88,000 followers on Twitter, and he is the second most followed person, after President Obama. Here is a little excerpt from this very useful article. I took home some important lessons from this article, and I hope you do, too!
1. Explain to your followers what retweeting is and encourage them to retweet your links. Retweeting pushes your @username into foreign social graphs, resulting in clicks back to your profile. Track your retweets using retweetist.
2. Fill out your bio. Your latest tweets and @replies don’t mean much to someone that doesn’t know you. Your bio is the only place you have to tell people who you are. Also, your bio is displayed on Twitter’s Suggested Users page. Leaving it blank or non-descriptive doesn’t encourage people to add you.
To read the entire article or learn more about Kevin Rose, link to Poynter Online.
After a busy week of tests and projects, I finally headed out of Brookings to start SDSU’s Spring Break. While I’m not headed to Cancun like a lot of my classmates, I have a week of fun things planned to do, both work and play. While I was on my way home yesterday, I stopped at Schlagel Farms to work on a story about their century old farm. Here is owner of the homestead, Mona Schlagel, at the original site near Raymond, S.D.
Established in 1899, the 160 acres of this plot was established during the Homestead Act. The Homestead Act allowed for a pioneer to own the land they settled on after five years if they built a house on it, plowed the land, dug up a well and actually lived there. The Schlagel family traveled from Illinois to South Dakota to pursue a new life, and in 1906, the homestead was finally theirs. Since then, this plot of land has continued to stay in the Schlagel family. In 2008, they were recognized at the South Dakota State Fair for their century farm.
Today, I thought I would share a little piece of Dakota history with you. To understand who we are, we have to understand where we come from. South Dakota has a rich history of pioneer settlements, Indian wars, weather challenges and tales of the Wild West. Later this week, I will be experiencing this rich history with my Spring Break trip to the Black Hills. I will share my photos from my journey as the week progresses. Have a great weekend!
Who would have thought that an aviation museum would be a good venue for a party? But the Frontiers of Flight museum near Love Field was really a great place for Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica to wrap up its Swine Health Seminar in Dallas on Friday.
The theme was “Take Flight with Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica” and like all BIVI events, it was first class. The food was great, the band was awesome and everyone enjoyed the company and the atmosphere
One of the very cool things was a great place for kids to play while the adults mingled. They even got their own special menu of pizza and chicken nuggets!
The museum itself was pretty fascinating – put it on your list of to-dos next time you are in the Dallas-Fort Worth area – which, by the way, is known as the Aviation Capital of the World – I learned something new today! The museum features everything from the pioneers who realized their earliest dreams of flying; the aviators of the “Golden Age of Flight” in the ’20s and ’30s; all the way up to the jet and rocket age of today.
Check out lots of fun photos from the event here: BIVI 09 Dallas Photo Album
The president and COO of Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica opened BIVI’s 2009 Swine Health Seminar in Dallas on Friday before a group of nearly 300 swine veterinary professionals.
George Heidgerken says events like these are important for BIVI to deliver answers to questions their customers have. “This is a wonderful forum to deliver those answers,” George told me. The seminar included presentations from a number of researchers who presented the results of studies related to PCV2 vaccines.
George says BIVI is helping swine producers meet the challenges of a down market in a number of ways. “Providing safe and efficacious, and even more efficacious, products into the marketplace; escalating our spending on research and development so that there is always a flow of new products; and investing in our manufacturing capabilities so that we ensure a continuous and long-term supply of vaccines and products that help the producer make more money – or lose less.”
Listen to an interview with George here: bivi-09-dallas-heidgerken.mp3
Download the interview here: BIVI president George Heidgerken
Check out a photo album from the BIVI event in Dallas on-line here: BIVI 09 Dallas Photo Album
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The world faces some serious challenges… as pointed out in a Farm Foundation report released last December (see my post from the Food and Agriculture Policy Summit). That report identifies six major areas of challenges with a role in agriculture’s ability to provide food, feed, fiber and fuel to a growing world: global financial markets and recession; global food security; global energy security; climate change; competition for natural resources; and global economic development.
To help find solutions to these problems, Farm Foundation has announced a competition to award $20,000 in prizes for the most innovative and public policy options coming from the public:
“Agriculture globally faces the challenge of how to provide food to a world that is expected to have 9 billion people by 2040,” says Farm Foundation President Neil Conklin. “This challenge exists at the same time that we are already seeing pressures on global resources, as well as increased demand for agriculture to provide not only food, but feed, fiber and fuel.
“It is not clear that today’s public policies-designed to deal with issues of the last century-provide appropriate tools and incentives to address the challenges of the next 30 years,” Conklin continues. “Farm Foundation is offering this competition as a catalyst for innovative ideas and approaches.”
If you have an idea, get it into the Farm Foundation through this Web site (more information is also available there) by June 1, 2009.
The project is directed and led by Farm Foundation with financial assistance from the Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Corn Growers Association, the National Pork Producers Council, and the United Egg Producers.
He says he’s grown old with the Dixie Deer Classic. But Bruce Blackwell, General Manager, doesn’t look old to me. I caught up with him relaxing on a golf cart this afternoon. I made him get up for a picture though. He says the show started in 1981. He says the easiest way to describe the show is, “a great big convention for hunters and outdoorsmen.” The exhibits haven’t changed but there are more of them that include outfitters, equipment and art.
Of course we talked about John Deere’s involvement in the show. Additionally, he spoke about how this year they opened early on Friday to bring out over 300 school children who actually attended public school approved classes on site.
You can listen to my interview with Bruce here: dixie-deer-classic-blackwell.mp3
Dixie Deer Classic Photo Album
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The Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica swine health seminar is about to get underway here in Dallas. The event is being held just prior to the start of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians annual meeting, which is here along with Pork Forum.
Our friends at BCS Communications are coordinating the event and are busy right now registering people and getting ready for the seminar. Following the seminar, we’ll be taking off to the Frontiers of Flight museum for the BIVI party.
Here’s another case of the shooter getting shot. And I don’t mean Deer or Deere.
I’ve been on and off the computer today here at the Dixie Deer Classic and loving the free open wireless internet access. There’s no formal media room but since I’m working for the Drive Green Utility Tractor Show today and tomorrow, I had no problem pulling up some table space in one part of the exhibit. Traffic has been picking up all day here and I’ve heard that it’s going to be crazy later on and this weekend.
I know hunting isn’t “agriculture” but . . . there are a lot of farm folks wandering around. This morning the show hosted large groups of urban school children who attended workshops and got some great first hand experience with hunting and wildlife. After seeing lots of comments lately about how out of touch our urban population is with farming, I think this is a good thing.
Dixie Deer Classic Photo Album
I don’t know is he’s really called the Deer Measurer but he is one and he says, “Have tape measure, Will travel.” He’s Dave Boland and he’s an official measurer for Pope & Young, Boone & Crockett, Long Hunter Society and the North American Shed Hunters Club. He explained the process for coming up with the measurement to score deer racks. I’ve got a bunch of racks but I’ve never had mine measured or mounted. I’m still waiting to get one that’s worth it.
Here at the Dixie Deer Classic he’s been busy. He says that the definition of trophy is the biggest deer you’ve killed. So, anyone can bring their mount or rack in and have it measured and it will be a trophy for them. I like that idea. For you serious hunters out there, he does say that long tines are the key to big scores.
You can listen to my interview with Dan here: dixie-deer-classic-measurer.mp3
Dixie Deer Classic Photo Album
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I didn’t know that media room services were already changing. Apparently at Pork Forum you now get a neck rub while you’re slaving over your computer. Andy Vance, ABN Radio, seems to like the new treatment he’s getting from Cindy Cunningham, National Pork Board. Here’s a little information about this year’s program.
We’ve chosen for our theme this year: “Principles, Practices and Proof: The Path to Success.” Producers who have followed news reports about our industry in recent months know that this is a theme that should give us much to discuss and debate. Delegates last year approved the industry’s Statement of Ethical Principles. One of the questions before Delegates this year will be what’s next in the industry’s efforts to create a positive public image.
While I’m in Raleigh, Cindy (my Cindy) is in Dallas doing some work for Boehringer Ingelheim. I’m sure we’ll learn more about that soon.
I’m on location in a deer hunters paradise. Well, I’m not in the woods looking at a big buck but I am at the Dixie Deer Classic. This is a big show at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds. John Deere has their Drive Green Utility Tractor Show set up here and I’m actually posting from one of their displays since the grounds have free open wireless access. How’s that for a concept?
The first guy I met when I walked in was Reece Untz, Porta Climb, Inc. He’s pictured here with his granddaughter on one of his products. I let him get my coverage of the event started by doing a short interview. Reece says he was here at the first Dixie Deer Classic and that they get between 15-18,000 people through. Things started a little slow this morning but then it is a work day. I’m betting this place will be packed by tonight since it’s open until 9pm.
Reece says they make a Cadillac product and in fact I think I have a relative with one of these stands. They don’t look like they’ll fit in an overhead on a plane but I’m thinking they would be very comfortable in the woods this November.
You can listen to my interview with Reece here: dixie-deer-classic-porta-climb.mp3
Porta Climb® tree stands are made with an all steel, welded construction. Their durable design makes them sturdy enough to last through many seasons of hunting wear and tear. The Cadillac Stand and the Convertible Stand can both have carrying straps added for ease of transport through the woods.
Dixie Deer Classic Photo Album
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- Arkion Life Sciences has received a Section 18 Crisis Exemption to market Avipel Corn Seed Treatment in Louisiana effective March 1, 2009.The EPA approval means that Louisiana farmers can use Avipel to protect field and sweet corn from marauding blackbirds and grackles for the 2009 planting season.
- Dow AgroSciences LLC and Schillinger Seed, Inc. have entered into a licensing, research and development agreement for the commercialization of transgenic commodity soybeans.
- Murray Wise, founder and Chairman of Westchester Group has been named a recipient of Iowa State’s Distinguished Alumni Award.
- American Business Media has announced the availability of a new whitepaper that helps b-to-b media companies leverage Web 2.0 and social media tactics and technologies: “Leveraging Web 2.0 for B2B Media – Ideas & Best Practices.”
The Atlanta Motor Speedway is declaring Sunday, March 8, as “Georgia Peanut Farmer Appreciation Day” during the Kobalt Tools 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race in recognition of Georgia’s official state crop.
It’s a show of support to Georgia-based peanut farmers who have been suffering due to the recent difficulties facing the industry, with the whole salmonella in peanut products problem.
The Georgia Peanut Commission will have a trackside billboard advertising Georgia peanuts, sampling opportunities on race day and a role in the Kobalt Tools 500 pre-race festivities. In addition, the Commission will have a sampling location and display in the Atlanta Motor Speedway Display Lot.
It is important to note here that the peanut industry is working closely with the Food and Drug Administration to address the salmonella issue and make sure that any tainted products are found and recalled. It is unfortunate that the actions of one company, the Peanut Corporation of America – which knowingly released a product with potential salmonella contamination into the food supply – is causing our good farmers to suffer. But – they will prevail and ultimately win this race. Go peanuts!!!
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In this week's program Chuck talks with David Armano, Global Innovation and Integration.
