I visited with Ann Irvin to learn how they got this beautiful place started. Ann says she grew up on a farm and wanted to get back to that lifestyle. At first they were just interested in having a place to go and have a garden. But they found a larger piece of property and after a drive through central Florida where they stopped at a winery they got the idea to start their own winery. They grow their own grapes and have learned along the way.

Irvin~House Vineyards is the only domestic winery in Charleston, SC. We grow the grapes, harvest them, make the wine, and bottle our wines on the property.

Even the grapes we grow have Southern roots. Our wines are hand-crafted from the humble muscadine grape . This sweet grape with a fruity aroma grows practically everywhere in the South. People tell us how the taste of muscadines transport them back to their childhood.

In addition to the winery, the Irvins also work with a local tea plantation to make the first ever hand-crafted sweet tea flavored vodka called Firefly.

The Firefly Distillery is located on Wadmalaw Island, South Carolina, 30 miles south of Charleston. We don’t have the bright lights of the big cities. The pace is a little slower down here. We have plantations, hundred-year-old oak trees and dirt roads. Everyone is your neighbor and folks enjoy relaxing on the front porch swing, on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It’s where you can hear the crickets chirping at night and you can still see the fireflies light up the sky. It was this wonderful environment and the special ingredients found right in our own backyard that inspired us to created handcrafted vodkas unlike those made anywhere else.

Listen to this week’s ZimmCast here: The Irvin~House Vineyard

Thanks to our ZimmCast sponsor, GROWMARK, locally owned, globally strong, for their support.

The ZimmCast is the official weekly podcast of AgWired. Subscribe so you can listen when and where you want. Just go to our Subscribe page.

I visited with Lyle about his recognition at the meeting and he says he’s very honored and humbled to be part of the inaugural presentation and especially to be inducted along with an ARC founder, Don Lerch. Lyle talks about how the communications business has changed over the years from before we had integrated marketing and how agencies have adapted. When it comes to today’s social media world he says the role of the public relations professional has not changed but how a message is delivered has.

Listen to my interview with Lyle here: Interview with Lyle Orwig

2012 ARC Annual Meeting Photo Album

In my conversation with Paul and Don I learned that ARC was founded to combat the very negative publicity that agriculture was receiving after World War II. Sound familiar? Don says it was due to the impact of science and technology on farming and fear and a lack of understanding on the part of the consuming public. So ARC was formed to mount an effort to try and overcome this problem by getting positive and truthful information into the media. In fact, many of the original members were in the media.

I hope you enjoy this conversation since it will give you a really good perspective on not only the Agricultural Relations Council but where we’ve been in the fight to get a growing non-farm public to understand where their food comes from.

Listen to this week’s ZimmCast here: ARC History With Paul & Don

2012 ARC Annual Meeting Photo Album

Thanks to our ZimmCast sponsor, GROWMARK, locally owned, globally strong, for their support.

The ZimmCast is the official weekly podcast of AgWired. Subscribe so you can listen when and where you want. Just go to our Subscribe page.

In addition to these awards I will be sharing interviews with the first inductees into the Agricultural Public Relations Hall of Fame, Lyle Orwig and Don Lerch. You can their photos along with many others from this year’s meeting in the photo album.

Post Update: You can find the complete list of winners here:

Golden ARC Award Winners (pdf)
Merit Award Winners (pdf)

2012 ARC Annual Meeting Photo Album

I’ve got interviews to share in the coming days. We were on a bus all day and I’m hoping to get today’s photos uploaded before our awards dinner this evening. If that doesn’t work then I’ll finish up after getting back to ZimmComm World Headquarters tomorrow.

2012 ARC Annual Meeting Photo Album

Mace Thornton, President, Mike Opperman, First vice President, Janice Person, Second Vice President, Rebecca Colnar, Secretary/Treasurer, Deron Johnson, Immediate Past President, Erik Ness, Director, Amy Keith McDonald, Director, Daren R. Williams, Director, Keri Geffert English, Director.

Congratulations to all of them.

The organization is nearing 100 members as it continues to rebuild. If you have not become a member, please take time to fill out the membership form and send it in. The focus is agricultural public relations and I know a lot of you work in that area. Your participation and support would be greatly appreciated!

Next year’s ARC Annual Meeting will be in Austin, TX at about this same time of the year. More on that later as plans get made.

2012 ARC Annual Meeting Photo Album

Carla says that two very successful parts of this program are Field Moms and a Mom’s Meetup. In both of these there is a real interaction with moms who have not grown up on the farm and are willing to learn more and share their experiences which might include visiting a farm.

Listen to my interview with Carla here: Interview with Carla Mudd

2012 ARC Annual Meeting Photo Album

We’re inside this afternoon for presentations before going on a farm tour tomorrow that includes a visit to the Clemson Research Center. Annual Golden ARC awards are tomorrow night before the meeting concludes.

2012 ARC Annual Meeting Photo Album

I’ll be taking some photos and doing some interviews which will be posted here on AgWired so don’t despair if you couldn’t make it.

The first photos are online and I’ll be adding to them here: 2012 ARC Annual Meeting Photo Album

To get a preview of this year’s ARC annual meeting agenda I spoke with ARC President, Mace Thornton, AFBF. Mace says more people are attending this year which marks the third year of growth for the revitalization effort that’s underway to grow ARC into the organization that it once was. The Golden ARC Awards program is also larger with more entries this year too. Mace also points to a new element of the program – the inaugural inductees to the new Agricultural Public Relations Hall of Fame. We’ll be honoring Lyle Orwig, Charleston Orwig and Don Lerch, an ARC founder. Find out more about the program in this week’s program. If you think you still want to attend it’s not too late if you get your registration done now. If you can’t make it then check AgWired or you can also follow the conference hashtag on Twitter – #ARC12.

Post Update: The official Twitter hashtag for the ARC Annual Meeting is now: #AgRC

Listen to this week’s ZimmCast here: Preview of ARC Annual Meeting

Thanks to our ZimmCast sponsor, GROWMARK, locally owned, globally strong, for their support.

The ZimmCast is the official weekly podcast of AgWired. Subscribe so you can listen when and where you want. Just go to our Subscribe page.

“We are thrilled to recognize these winners,” said Lynn Henderson, Agri Marketing magazine publisher and award sponsor. “This new award program for ag PR professionals who have distinguished themselves and promoted this profession is long overdue.”

The annual competition will include nearly 40 categories for agricultural public relations activities conducted in full or partially in the year 2011. Re-instituted in 2009, the Golden ARC awards program began in 1990. The contest recognizes the stellar work created by professionals in the agricultural industry.

The entry fee for the first entry for non-ARC members is $300 (includes a membership fee). Additional entries are $125 each. More information is available at www.GoldenARCawards.com or at the ARC website, www.agrelationscouncil.org.

For additional questions, please call the ARC office at: 952/758-5811. Or review the nomination form on the ARC web site at: www.agrelationscouncil.org. E-mail ARC at arc@gardnerandgardnercommunications.com.

The Golden ARC Awards Program consists of two divisions, the “Campaigns Division” and the “Tactics Division.” Within each division, individual categories exist. Check out the rest of the site for more information on how you can win in 2012.

Keep the ARC Annual Mtg. on your calendar. It’s scheduled for March 21-23 in North Charleston, SC.

The classes will use the APR study guide, which is downloadable from the Universal Accreditation Board website at http://www.praccreditation.org/Forms.html. Also on the website is the application form you will need to fill out once you feel you are ready to move forward with the readiness review and the exam. Participants do not need to fill out the application or pay any fees for the classes being provided by ARC.

The classes will be scheduled on Wednesdays for 10 weeks beginning Oct. 12 and ending Dec. 21, with Nov. 23 being skipped so participants can focus on Thanksgiving. After the new year, Ken will work individually with those who have completed the class and want help preparing for a local readiness review.

Watch for more information from ARC on the program for the meeting. If you’re interested in serving on the program committee, please contact the ARC office at (952) 758-5811 and ask for Den or Barb.

Thornton said a committee will be formed soon to develop criteria. This announcement is another in a series of developments over the past two years that has brought the ARC back to prominence. The ARC also recognizes creative work with the Golden ARC Award Program, also recently re-instituted by the organization.

If you’d like to serve on the committee please contact ARC President Mace Thorton or ARC Executive Director Den Gardner.

At the Agricultural Relations Council annual meeting in Ft. Myers last week, we had a presentation from The Center for Public Issues Education – or simply the PIE Center – which is located at the University of Florida’s Institute for Food and Agricultural Sciences (Go Gators!). The center is only a couple years old and was established with the mission “to enhance the understanding of agriculture, natural resources, and the environment by providing research-based solutions that address societal issues and raise public and policy maker awareness.” Increasingly, that has meant the use of social media, including blogs, Facebook and Twitter so they have gotten more interested in helping agricultural groups manage, monitor and measure the effectiveness of this new communications tool.

Dr. Tracy Irani (pictured) is Development Director for the PIE Center and she talked about the rapid adoption of social media and how agriculture has become part of the conversation, like it or not. She notes that social media actually has an advantage over traditional media when it comes to measurement. “We know that most of the traditional media metrics are based on the number of eyeballs or number of listeners,” she explains. “That’s where social media has an advantage because the return can be looked at on the basis of who’s in the network, who’s actively using, viewing, posting in a social media environment.” In other words, traditional media can tell you how many potential viewers or readers you might have, where social media can show how actively involved they are by retweets, comments, messages, etc.

PIE Center Media Specialist Kevin Kent got into some of the nuts and bolts of monitoring and managing social media. He gave a list of ten social media metrics to monitor, which include SM leads, engagement duration, membership increase, activity ratio, conversions, brand mentions, loyalty, virality, and blog interaction. Kevin also talked about being specific about what you want to measure, focusing more on quality than quantity and setting goals, and the use of social media Best Management Practices – like using social media with other communications tools, limiting posts to make them easier to monitor, and engaging in conversation channels.

Listen in my interview with Tracy and Kevin here: ZimmCast 294 - PIE Center

This week’s program ends with a song from Music Alley called “All You Can Tweet” by The FuMP.

Thanks to our ZimmCast sponsor, Growmark, locally owned, globally strong, for their support.

The ZimmCast is the official weekly podcast of AgWired. Subscribe so you can listen when and where you want. Just go to our Subscribe page

The leadership of ARC is energetic and believes that public relations for agriculture is more important that ever. “Agriculture public relations is a different kind of an animal,” said Mace Thornton with the American Farm Bureau Federation, who is the new president of ARC. “This is the organization that really specializes in bringing PR people to the table in agriculture so we can talk about common challenges and discuss strategy and tactics.”

Mace says the organization is experiencing a resurgence in popularity and membership growth, after hitting a low about five years ago. ARC now has over 80 members – twice what it had about this time last year, and Mace credits the strong support of leaders like outgoing president Deron Johnson of Rhea and Kaiser. Mace and Deron are both pictured here during the Golden ARC award ceremony. That award program is also experiencing new interest after being revived last year.

We really enjoyed a great program during the meeting, starting with a panel discussion on Florida agriculture’s water and fertilizer issues. We also heard from the University of Florida’s Center for Public Issues Education on measuring the effectiveness of social media (more on that later) and from Gary Myers, former owner of Morgan and Myers, about Strategic Thinking on PR.

After a sunset dinner cruise on Thursday night, the business meeting was held Friday morning and followed by a great tour arranged by Gary Cooper of Southeast Agnet. The group visited Worden Farms, an 85-acre certified organic family farm in Southwest Florida, and Longino Ranch, a diversified citrus and cattle operation near Arcadia. There we enjoyed a Florida cracker cowboy meal of fresh venison appetizers, perfectly grilled steaks, homemade beans and can’t-get-it-anywhere-else boiled swamp cabbage. Just mmmm, mmmm GOOD!

The ranch was a great example of diversified agriculture and environmental stewardship. Not only do they produce cattle, citrus and timber on the operation, but they also maintain a preserve for endangered gopher tortoises.

Listen to my interview with Mace about the ARC meeting here: Mace Thornton Interview

2011 ARC Meeting Photo Album

Other organizations winning multiple awards included Osborn & Barr with three Golden ARC Awards and four Merit Awards; Syngenta Seeds with two Golden ARC Awards and three Merit Awards; CHS with two Golden ARC Awards and two Merit Awards; Charleston Orwig and Dairy Management Inc. with two Golden ARC Awards and one Merit; Egg Farmers of Ontario, David & Associates, Pfizer Animal Health and Bader Rutter & Associates each with two Golden ARC Awards; National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and Rhea + Kaiser (Bayer CropScience) with one Golden ARC Award and two Merit Awards each; and Arm & Hammer Animal Nutrition with one Golden ARC Award and one Merit Award.

The American Farm Bureau Federation won in the podcast category for their “FoodieCast Thanksgiving Special” and in the Blogs/Electronic Newsletters category, the winner was – ZimmComm New Media for the National Corn Growers Association Corn Commentary blog! Congrats to all!

Find out all the winners in all the categories here.

Here is my photo album from the event – 2011 ARC Meeting – not the best photos I have ever taken since I was just using my little “toy camera” (Canon Power Shot). We were getting our good cameras and lenses serviced and checked out for Commodity Classic next week. If any ARC members (like Janice or Amy who were using better cameras) would like to send me some, I will add them to the photo album.

The Ag Relations Council annual meeting enjoyed a dinner cruise on the Gulf of Mexico with near perfect weather – okay, it was perfect. We even got treated to a couple of friendly dolphins playing around the dock and the boat.

Today we are out touring fruit, vegetable, citrus and cattle operations in southwest Florida, courtesy of Gary Cooper with Southeast Agnet. Hope to upload photos later but the upload speed at the hotel is really not good. I am doing this post from our first tour stop – Worden Farm. More to come….

The Agricultural Relations Council (ARC) has extended the entry deadline for the 2011 Golden ARC awards. Entries for the competition are now due in by 5:00 pm (central time) on December 14.

“The original deadline for entries was so close to Thanksgiving, we had feedback from several companies regarding challenges they encountered due to the holidays,” said Amy McDonald, Golden ARC contest manager. “To make it easier for our entrants to submit all their best work, we chose to move the deadline back ten business days.”

The annual competition will include nearly 40 categories for agricultural public relations activities conducted in full or partially in the year 2010. Re-instituted this summer to recognize 18 Golden ARC winners and nine merit award winners for 2009 public relations activities, the Golden ARC awards program began in 1990. The contest recognizes the stellar work created by professionals in the agricultural industry.

ZimmComm New Media was proud to pick up two of those awards this year on behalf of work we did for our clients – the Renewable Fuels Association (podcast) and John Deere (blog).

Get details on categories and contest entry forms on-line at goldenarcawards.com.

Ultimately, ARC will contribute to developing two tracks of “ARC-approved” PR sessions that will take place during the 2011 conference, said Den Gardner, executive director of ARC. “This new partnership with NAMA gives ARC a bigger platform from which to promote the art and science of agricultural public relations,” Gardner said. “It also fits with our mission to give ARC members who attend allied meetings a great opportunity to stay connected to ARC’s timely and relevant PR programming throughout the year.

I spoke with her about the awards program so we get a better understanding of what these awards are for, how they are judged and what to look for in the future. The contest began in 1990. This year there were 40 entries and there were 19 Golden ARC Award winners and 9 Golden ARC Merit Award winners. The judging was done by the Florida Chapter of PRSA so these were looked at from the standpoint of the “science of PR.” It’s a more objective judging strategy than other awards in the industry. Next year’s awards will be presented at the ARC annual meeting so the deadline for entries will be announced soon.

2010 Ag Media Summit Photo Album

ARC President Deron Johnson, Rhea & Kaiser and Golden ARC Awards Contest Manager, Amy Keith McDonald, McDonald Marketing Communications, presented the awards. ZimmComm New Media won two awards in the Tactics Division. Working with BCS Communications for John Deere we won for the blog, DriveGreenTractors.com. Working with the Renewable Fuels Association we won for the podcast, The Ethanol Report. These are the first Golden ARC Awards we’ve ever won and Cindy and I are very excited about it.

I interviewed Amy about the awards program and will post that for you soon. Photos of all the winners are in the AMS photo album. Thanks to Mike Opperman for taking my photo!

2010 Ag Media Summit Photo Album

I spoke with Mark Ingbritson who is keeping an eye on the auction area. He says the proceeds are split between ARC and AMS to help out students.

2010 Ag Media Summit Photo Album

First, attendees at the PR Workshop “Characteristics of a winning public relations program” will be treated to a dissection of one of the campaign winners from the 2010 contest. Following that seminar, the winners and merit selectees from about 20 categories will be announced by Contest Manager Amy McDonald of McDonald Marketing Communications and ARC Board President Deron Johnson of Rhea + Kaiser Marketing Communications.

Unlike other competitions in agricultural marketing communications, our competition will be judged by public relations professionals with no ties to agriculture … we are stepping outside the common judging pool and having North Florida Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) members judge our contest.

Contact contest manager Amy McDonald if you have any questions.