Just prior to the start of today’s parade Michael Peterson posed for a number of pictures. I’ve got them all and will make them part of my end of the event photo album.
Here he’s on the New Holland tractor with an FFA member who’s name I didn’t get. If you know it, please use the comment feature to let us know who he is. Also pictured on the left is Jimmy Wayne.
Here you can see that New Holland and the Country Music Association are tied together. This tractor will be signed by the participants in Sunday’s Michael Peterson Celebrity Boomer Tractor Race.
Then the tractor will be auctioned off on Ebay and the proceeds will go to charity. This should be interesting since we just got to see the course this afternoon and let’s say that “it’s not flat” eventhough it’s in a downtown parking lot. This should be interesting.
Before things kicked off today Michael Peterson checked out the tractors. Here he’s looking over the New Holland TZ22D which will be part of Sunday’s big race. I’ll have more on this later.
I got Michael to walk over to a shady spot for a couple minutes for the first of several interviews I plan to do with him over the next several days.
To get us started he explains why he’s here. You can listen to our interview here: 
Michael Peterson Interview (3 min MP3)
Michael Peterson posed with the FFA members who took part in today’s parade.
I interviewed FFA member Lindsey Farris (third from left) prior to the parade. She was very excited to be here eventhough it was 90 degrees and those blue jackets weren’t made for the sun.
You can listen to Lindsey here: Lindsey Farris Interview (1 min MP3)
Michael Peterson, country star, makes friends wherever he goes. Prior to today’s parade I caught him with James McCormick, Sales Mgr. for Nashville Tractor (l) (Michael’s center) and New Holland area Field Sales Representative, Mitch Poole (r).
James drove the tractor that pulled the hay wagon in the parade. You’ll get to see his expertise in an upcoming video I’ve got for you.
Okay. I’m back. Had my steak and it was awesome. Now it’s time to catch you up on the New Holland happenings here at CMA Music Fest.
The kickoff event was a Chevrolet parade. This parade featured a number of stars in various Chevy vehicles, including a hay wagon pulled by a New Holland tractor and loaded with FFA members. Here’s the tractors just arriving. The larger one pulled the wagon and the other one will be signed by the celebreties participating in Sunday’s tractor race.
It’s great to see agricultural advertising get noticed in the trade media. Take this post on Adrants. Steve noticed that New Holland is hip and that Colle+McVoy is responsible. You’ll be seeing just how hip, or should I say, “country,” New Holland is in coming days right here.
The Adrants post was for a series of print ads. You can view them from links on the blog post. BTW. I’m glad to see Colle+McVoy using an RSS feed on their website. I’m subscribed now so I can automatically get their agency news updates without using email!
Okay agrimarketers. Here’s something for you to think about. In today’s new media world, press releases can and should be so much more than they typically are. In fact, press releases should be thought of as information vehicles for essentially everyone (media, customers, members, industry). Here’s a “Social Media Release” template. You can find out all about it on PR SQUARED.
Today’s media person is, or should be, in need of way more than just a few lines of text. We need images, links to websites, audio files (Talking News Release!), video, RSS feeds with updates after the release is sent out, ways to provide feedback. Get the picture? It’s not hard to do. Want to send audio to farm broadcasters? No problem, just email them one of these and have your audio pre-recorded and uploaded for them. Oh, and by the way, why not make that same audio available to farmers? How? Podcast it and post it to your own website and let them find it themselves or use a service that posts it to the web like our AgNewsWire.AgWired.com. You can see the PR SQUARED template in action.
Love it or hate it, what is important is that the banal, unhelpful, cookie-cutter press releases of yore have outlived their pre-Internet usefulness. So, to announce the “Social Media Press Release template” (and to show how it might look in the real world) we also put out what may be the first ever press release to use this next-generation format, via PR Newswire.
If you have trouble figuring out how to set one of these up or what some of the components are, just give me a call and I’ll be happy to fill you in.
Before you attend my “Agriblogging and Farm Podcasting 101” workshop at the Ag Media Summit in Portland you’re going to want to pick a cool pre-event tour. They’ve got several organized now so it’s time to get that registration in.
You can see the list with information about them here and sign up for them here (pdf files).
Register for AMS here.
You know agriculture is a big part of biotechnology when Baxter Black is the keynote speaker at a biotech conference. The BioWest 2006 Conference and Expo is open for registration. They’re expecting more than 750 participants at this year’s event, August 23-24, at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver.
They actually call Baxter a headliner! You can find the complete BioWest 2006 program schedule here.
