Golden ARC Awards Deadline Extended

Cindy Zimmerman

If you didn’t get your entries for the 2011 Golden ARC awards prepared because you were busy with the holiday last week, not to worry – you have a little more time now.

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.

ARC

Survey Drawing Winner

Cindy Zimmerman

The Survey Monkey has spoken and the winner is …. drum roll, please….

Jamie Wilson with the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan

Jamie reads Domestic Fuel and says she is most interested in stories related to ethanol. We sincerely appreciate her taking the time to fill out the survey so we can learn more about our audiences on all the various ZimmComm on-line publications. All the survey entries for November were entered to win $250 and Jamie’s name was picked out of the hat this morning. All those who have already filled out the survey will remain in the running for the next drawing at the end of this month for another 250 bucks.

Some interesting results we have found so far from the first month of our survey:

Domestic Fuel got the most survey responses, which makes sense since it has the most traffic. The majority of respondents were either existing producers (12.5%) or in marketing/sales for biofuels (10%)

On World Dairy Diary, one quarter of respondents said they were actual dairy farmers and over 35 percent said they followed WDD on Twitter.

Over 30% of the respondents for Agwired are in advertising, marketing, communications or public relations. Almost 40% said they read Agwired 4-7 times a week and the same amount follow on Twitter.

One third of the respondents on Precision Pays are crop farmers and all of them grow corn and soybeans.

We have almost enough entries at this point to be statistically significant, which is great, but we intend to keep it going at least through the end of January. The more responses we get, the better we can know who is in our audience to serve you better. Yes, we have to ask for all the personal info like name and address, but we will not share that with anyone else. We just simply want to get a better handle on who you are and what you want to read about.

So, if you have not responded yet, take the survey now by clicking here for this website. Jamie – your check is in the mail and we hope you enjoy the extra holiday cash!

ZimmComm Announcement

BCS Open House

Chuck Zimmerman

It’s holiday time and that means open house at BCS Communications.

Here are the B, the C and the S in their holiday outfits. Can you guess who is who? If you can’t then you should stop by this evening and find out.

I’ll be there once again and am glad they ordered some clear weather this year.

Agencies

Zimfo Bytes

Melissa Sandfort

    Zimfo Bytes

    AGROPRESS Celebrates 6 Years

    Chuck Zimmerman

    Some of my friends I’ve come to know through the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists just held a big party in Serbia. Happy anniversary AGROPRESS and congratulations to Goran Djakovic!

    The Serbian Association of Agricultural Journalists AGROPRESS has celebrated its 6th ANNIVERSARY. On that occasion, more than 200 journalists, representatives of diplomatic corps, partner organizations, educational institutions, managers of companies and friends of AGROPRESS gathered.

    Addressing the audience President of the Board of Directors Goran Djakovic reminded of Association’s activities during these six years in which more than 90 events was organized in the country and abroad. He stressed that AGROPRESS organized the very first Fair of Women Entrepreneurs in Agribusiness and five professional conferences in which more than 1200 domestic and international experts participated.

    Presenting perspectives and future activities of the Association, Mr. Djakovic announced the establishment of the Fund for Promotion of Serbian Agriculture in and out of country, and as an important part of this project 60 foreign journalists will be hosted next year in May. “AGROPRESS will continue its work on the project Women Entrepreneurs in Agribusiness, as well as on a new project – high quality magazine destined to professional agricultural producers”, added Mr. Djakovic.

    I would be happy to attend their BALKAN TOUR 2011 – Serbia which is the one referred to in May if anyone would like to discuss a sponsorship.

    International, Media

    Advocacy Starts With Weber Shandwick

    Chuck Zimmerman

    ZimmCast 283The 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 Advocacy

    This week’s program ends with some music from Music Alley. It’s called “Can I” by MSU Orchestra.

    Thanks to our ZimmCast sponsors, Novus International, and Leica Geosytems 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 a Subscribe page

    Agencies, Audio, Social Networking, ZimmCast

    Death Tax Press Conference Audio

    Cindy Zimmerman

    In case you were not able to tune in for the estate tax press conference, here is the audio with statements from all the major ag organizations participating. That includes the American Farm Bureau Federation; the American Soybean Association; the National Association of Wheat Growers; the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association; the National Corn Growers Association; the National Cotton Council; the National Farmers Union; the National Milk Producers Federation; the National Pork Producers Council; and the Public Lands Council.

    Death Tax Press Conference
    Uncategorized

    Soybean Growers Appeal to Congress

    Cindy Zimmerman

    Soybean farmers are in Washington D.C. this week for a little lame duck.

    In addition to uniting with other agriculture groups urging Congress to fix the “death tax,” American Soybean Association (ASA) farmer-leaders are participating in a biodiesel fly-in to discuss renewing the biodiesel tax incentive that expired at the end of last year.

    Participating from ASA are grower-leaders Joe Steiner of Ohio, Bob Henry of Kansas and Darryl Brinkmann of Illinois. These ASA leaders are joining with farmers from state soybean associations, biodiesel producers and others in the biodiesel industry to push for passage of legislation to extend the biodiesel tax incentive during the lame duck session.

    ASA, Biodiesel, Soybean

    Ag Groups Unite for Estate Tax Reform

    Cindy Zimmerman

    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.

    Scott Bennett (pictured), Virginia Tech University student and active participant in his family’s livestock operation, did a really nice job speaking on behalf of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association – noting that he was the youngest of the speakers and very concerned about the impact a high “death tax” could have on future farmers and ranchers.

    The conference is being live streamed right now on BeltwayBeef.com – thanks to the superior social media skills of NCBA’s Mike Deering!

    Ag Groups, NCBA

    New BASF Plant Health Education Website

    Cindy Zimmerman

    BASF Corporation has just introduced a new online, interactive educational module – planthealtheducation.com. The new learning program is customized by region and provides growers with education on disease control, Plant Health benefits and resulting yield advantages of F500®, the active ingredient found in Headline® fungicide, Headline AMP™ fungicide and TwinLine® fungicide.

    “This educational session gives growers an in-depth look at F500 and will help growers evaluate the science behind Plant Health and the disease control of these products,” said Nick Fassler, BASF Technical Market Manager. “It lays out key information about fungicides, including disease control, harvest efficiency, and other Plant Health benefits of fungicides.”

    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.”

    Listen to my interview with Nick where he also talks about special offers for growers. Nick Fassler Interview

    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 Kixor product line so that one can be used on both corn and soybeans and changing the name from Integrity to Verdict.

    Listen to Dr. Dan discuss the Kixor launch and what’s coming down the road from BASF. Dan Westberg Interview

    BASF, NAFB