The next stop in our series of conversations with agency leadership is Weber Shandwick. In this week’s program you’ll hear from JoDee George and David Krejci. Since our theme is all about “what’s new” you’ll hear them answer – Farm and Food Advocacy Practice. It’s a timely focus and one they’ve been working on for some time. As they told me, “Advocacy Starts Here.”
Social media takes up a good portion of our conversation. No surprise there. Since it is a specialty of David’s I asked him to talk about how they measure social media use in terms of results for their clients. He makes some excellent points about not only looking at numbers but creating bench marks to gauge effectiveness. JoDee adds that they also like to take that kind of information and integrate it with the overall campaign for a client that still needs to include traditional media components. David also mentions a very new program the agency has created for their clients called Firebell. It basically puts their client through a simulated real time social media crisis. Practice makes perfect, eh?
I’ve mentioned many times recently how dairy farmers seem to have really jump started social media advocacy and pointed to a Weber Shandwick client, Dairy Management, Inc and their MyDairy program. You can still listen to an interview about that from a recent World Dairy Expo that Cindy did that included Polly Ligon O’Grady, also part of the leadership team at Weber Shandwick.
ZimmCast 283 - Weber Shandwick - Farm and Food AdvocacyThis week’s program ends with some music from Music Alley. It’s called “Can I” by MSU Orchestra.
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Ten diverse agricultural organizations are conducting a press conference right now in Washington DC to urge Congress to act on estate tax reform during the lame-duck session.
Headline was Nick’s topic at NAFB Trade Talk this year. He is pictured here on the right being interviewed by Gary Jackson of ABN Radio. Nick says that Headline is labeled on over 90 crops, from sugar beets to legumes, soybeans, corn, wheat, to citrus and sugar cane. “A very widely used product and that just proves how effective the active ingredient is and what kind of performance we’re seeing from it,” Nick said. Headline AMP was just launched this year and Nick says it was used on about 500,000 acres this season. “Headline AMP is everything Headline is, plus metconazole, a new triazole for corn, and that’s bringing added disease control.”
And while we are on the BASF beat, I also talked with Dr. Dan “the Kixor man” Westberg about the amazingly successful launch of Kixor herbicide products this past year. “With over 10 million acres treated this year with our family of products with Kixor herbicide technology, it’s the most successful herbicide launch in the last 20 years – a real testament to the fact that growers were looking for better broadleaf weed control,” Dr. Dan said. After a year on the market, Dan says they have updated the 
During the recent NAFB convention Trade Talk session this was one of the items that came up in 

