Holiday Promotions at Osborn & Barr

Chuck Zimmerman December 7, 2006

Just in time for the holidays, Osborn & Barr Communications promotes a few people. Now that’s a nice Christmas gift.

Bob Wells, who started with Osborn & Barr a decade ago, was recently named group creative director for the Monsanto seed trait accounts. The NORDYNE, Inc. account also utilizes Bob’s 18 years of creative experience. Bob has worked on Telly, Addy and Best of National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) award-winning campaigns. He is a member of the St. Louis Ad Club, NAMA and The Central Illinois Creative Underground.

Cindy Hackmann, a seven-year employee of Osborn & Barr, took on the role of account supervisor for the United Soybean Board, Ohio Soybean Council and FCS-Financial clients. Cindy manages daily client interaction, project management and strategic communications planning for these accounts.

Vicky Ho was recently promoted to senior graphic design specialist. Her promotion is recognition of her consistent work and project coordination for the Graphic Studio within Osborn & Barr. Her position requires her to coordinate projects through the Studio, work with art directors in design and production of projects, and work with print production to determine proper production techniques.

Osborn & Barr promoted Michael Berry from account coordinator to assistant account executive on the Account Management team. Michael assists in the project management of the Monsanto Dairy account and also manages trade show participation for the Propane Education & Research Council account. Earlier this year, he served on the 2006 National AgriMarketing Association Boot Camp Planning Committee.

Agencies

Working Breakfast With MBIC

Chuck Zimmerman December 7, 2006

The Missouri Beef Industry Council leaders are on the job here in Springfield, MO. Here’s chairman Andrew McCrea (left) and executive director, John Kleiboeker listening to a report from Missouri Cattle Association executive vice president, Brent Bryant. Andrew is also an award winning farm broadcaster for Brownfield.

I came down just for breakfast and am heading back to the office. We produce the weekly MBIC Report, which is a weekly interview program started long ago by the MBIC. It became a podcast last year. (Subscription link)

I interviewed new board members Pat Wood and Gerald Campbell as well as MBIC Director of Marketing, Dawn Thurnau. Those interviews will be used as weekly reports in coming weeks which will be posted on the MBIC blog.

I wish I could stay but until later . . .

Ag Groups, Beef, Podcasts

Listen In On Blog Talk Radio Tonight

Chuck Zimmerman December 7, 2006

One of the first people I found when I got started blogging was Wayne Hurlbert, Blog Business World. It was a lot of his ideas about how to use a blog as a business communications tool that formed some of my ideas about how to use this great platform.

Well, Wayne’s a podcaster too and on something called Blog Talk Radio. Tonight at 8pm (Eastern) I’ll be his guest on his program “Blog Business Success Radio.” You can listen in live or use these instructions from Wayne if you can’t:

If you miss this very informative show, it will be available for download as a podcast for iPod, iTunes, and MP3 players; or play it right on your computer. To download this, or any other of my guest interviews, go to the Blog Business Success host page and click on Archived Segments. Once there, click on the podcast icon at the end of the episode description, to download the show free of charge for your listening enjoyment. You can also subscribe to the show feed.

Let’s talk with Chuck Zimmerman about podcasting and talking press releases and how they can take your media relations to the next level, on Blog Business Success Radio.

Podcasts

Mobile Markets For Christmas

Chuck Zimmerman December 6, 2006

One of our advertisers is Commodity Update and I can’t tell you how excited I am to watch this company grow. There are a lot of ways Joel’s product can be used and here’s one he shared with me today. One of his clients is Midwest Seed Genetics. Their lucky customers will be receiving a Christmas card from the company with the cover pictured here.

Inside the copy will read, “Our passion is helping you succeed. To that end this holiday season we are pleased to offer you a way to stay informed while you’re on the go. It’s our gift to you. The enclosed gift card provides a complimentary gift subscription to a service that will provide commodity market information directly to your cell phone. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and great success in the year to come.”

Here’s what the gift card looks like.

So their customers will receive a very useful tool to help them stay on top of the markets as long as they’ve got cell phone service. Do you know any farmers (your customers) who don’t have a cell phone? Can you think of a better gift for a farmer this Christmas?

Great idea guys. In fact it’s so good that Joel says Silveus Insurance is doing it too!

Agribusiness

WHITWORTH X BALLOUing

Chuck Zimmerman December 6, 2006

I heard from Doug Ballou today and guess I just missed the announcement for his new company, WHITWORTH X BALLOU. I wish him the best of luck and look forward to hearing more about how things are going.

Veteran marketing executive Doug Ballou has founded WHITWORTH X BALLOU, an organization and business development firm that assists clients improve their marketing effectiveness and organizational performance. Located in Kansas City, Missouri, WHITWORTH X BALLOU offers a comprehensive menu of services to plan, implement and integrate the components of a sales, marketing, and internal performance playbook.

Charter clients of the new firm include MachineryLink, Inc., Kansas City, MO; Ingenuity!, Wichita, KS; Finity Technologies of Lenexa, KS, and Marketlink, DesMoines, IA.

To discuss your project needs and a list of client references contact Doug Ballou.

Agencies

All is Well With Alltech

Chuck Zimmerman December 6, 2006

I’m in Springfield, MO safe and sound. Driving west into the sun with everything covered in white was a painful experience. I guess I could have timed that better.

My first stop here was the local Alltech office and a short visit with Hillary O’Banion the office manager. She’ll be setting up a booth here at the Missouri Cattle Industry Convention sometime tomorrow afternoon. Unfortunately I’m here for a quick visit and will be back at ZimmComm headquarters by then.

Besides all the products for the agricultural industry that Alltech features they also own a brewery and have some of the best beer I’ve ever tasted. You can see some of the product on display in front of Hillary. I’m very happy to say that those “samples” will be going home with me. My plan is to drop off a few to a local distributor friend of mine in central Missouri and see if he would agree to start making Kentucky Ale available in our area.

Thank you Alltech. I hope you have a great show here in Springfield.

Agribusiness

Are Pigs in Pain?

Chuck Zimmerman December 6, 2006

Before heading out to the Missouri Cattle Industry Convention I thought you might want to know that piggies in Belgium are in pain. Actually an animal rights group has created a PR campaign to create awareness.

This is why you need to think about how to get involved in the online conversation folks. This campaign has: a website, a blog and a a YouTube music video which has been viewed a couple thousand times already. The group is GAIA for animal rights.

Via Adrants.

International, Pork

FCC Rules on Farm Journal Petition

Chuck Zimmerman December 6, 2006

As I reported previously here on AgWired, Farm Journal Media had filed a petition with the FCC regarding RFD-TV’s use of non-commercial DBS (direct broadcast satellite) channels. It’s not a real complicated issue but you have to read through some of the documents to get a handle on it.

Yesterday I received a notice from Farm Journal that the FCC has ruled on their petition. You can find a copy of the Order & Declaratory Ruling at that link.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) today granted Farm Journal Media’s November 2005 Petition for Declaratory Ruling against RFD Communications, Inc. (RFD). The FCC concluded that RFD, in acting like a commercial enterprise, does not meet the criteria to be classified as a non-commercial educational programmer for FCC purposes. As a result, RFD’s commercial programming disqualifies the channel from carriage on the Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) channels set aside by Congress for the exclusive use of noncommercial entities.

I placed calls and emails to both Farm Journal and RFD-TV to try to find out just exactly why Farm Journal did this and what this means to RFD-TV. Jeff Pence from Farm Journal responded “Farm Journal is not issuing any public comment or statement with regard to Monday’s Ruling. We feel that we’ve clearly stated our position and case in the filings to the FCC, and in our press releases.” He forwarded me a number of pdf files of these documents which really helped clarify the situation and I appreciate that.

As soon as I hear from RFD-TV I’ll update this post and/or do a new one. Both of these companies touch a lot of people involved in agricultural marketing so I hope this works out for the best of all involved.

Media

Learning More About MO DNR

Chuck Zimmerman December 5, 2006

For the first time in a couple of years I got to attend a Mid Missouri Agribusiness Club meeting today while someone else ran it. It’s much more relaxing this way.

Today we had our Missouri Department of Natural Resources Director, Doyle Childers, speak. I have to confess that it was more interesting than I thought it would be. For one thing the DNR here in Missouri implements EPA regs unlike states where EPA does it themselves. So as you can imagine DNR then has a hand in a lot of things important to anyone trying to farm. Childers says they hope to automate a lot of the permitting that has to go through their department in order to speed things up and decrease the man hours involved.

Water was a big topic of discussion. Bioenergy came up and Childers said that his department needed to become more involved in it as well.

He said that in his two years as the state DNR Director he was most proud of the closer working relationship DNR has with the ag community and the updating of their website to make it easier to find stuff.

Ag Groups

It’s Now a New Media Expo

Chuck Zimmerman December 5, 2006

I haven’t been able to attend either of the first two Expos but maybe the third time will be a charm next year. It used to be called the Podcast & Portable Media Expo. I’m pretty psyched that they’ve changed the name to Podcast & New Media Expo.

If you really want to learn about this whole new media thing we’ve been trying to help you understand you can either: 1. Set up a personal ZimmComm New Media consultation or 2. Attend the Podcast & New Media Expo.

The next one is scheduled for September 28-30 at the Ontario Convention Center in Ontaria, CA. The Expo covers these topics:
Audio & Video Creation
Business Podcasting
User-Generated Content
Sponsorship & Advertising Models
Audio/Video Podcasting 101
New Media in Education
New Media in Music Promotion
Virtual World Business & Marketing
Social Networking
Delivery, Syndication and Licensing
New Monetization Models
Mobile Content

Podcasts

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