Whoops. We Used The High Fat Oil

Chuck Zimmerman

Sometimes you see a story and think “Isn’t that just ridiculous?” It happens way too often these days. This one involves McDonalds. According to an AP story on Oregonlive.com, a judge is “allowing” Mickey D’s to conduct an $8.5 million educational campaign to settle a lawsuit brought against the company for failing to reduce its use of partially hydrogenated oil. What is the deal here? Is there some kind of law that I don’t know about that says a company has to use a certain kind of cooking oil? Give me a break!

That money actually is going to be used by giving the American Heart Association $7 million to do the educational campaign. I wonder how much of that will go to salaries and benefits. To really make you wonder, the other $1.5 million has to be used by McDonalds to proclaim to the world that it didn’t follow through on a “pledge” to convert to healthier cooking oil fast enough. Oh, and by the way, the company will have to pay about $2 million in attorney’s fees and court costs!

Something is missing from this story. How about common sense? Do you go to McDonalds and order french fries because they’re part of a low fat diet? No.

Sorry, I just couldn’t help but point out the stupidity of some people who have nothing better to do than complain about something that multi millions of people starving in other parts of the world wish they had. This is the kind of thing that leads to so many educational and nutritional programs that try to educate people who aren’t willing to take responsibility for their own decisions. Did you know there’s an organization trying to ban partially hydrogenated oil? As one “old” friend of mine likes to point out, everything he ate growing up was cooked in hog lard. Of course he doesn’t sit in front of a computer or tv all day either.

Uncategorized

Meet Alice In Dairyland

Chuck Zimmerman

Alice In DairylandIf you’ve ever wondered who Alice In Dairyland is then wonder no more. Maybe you’ve never even thought about it either but now you’ll be in the know. Alice started back in 1948 and is a program of the Wisconsin Dept. of Agriculture.

This year she’s Gena Cooper and you can meet her right here. I interviewed the reigning Alice at the recent Ag Media Summit. She describes herself and her role as an ambassador for Wisconsin agriculture.

You can listen to my interview with Gena or Alice or whatever her name is here Download MP3 File (1.2MB MP3)

Audio

Universal Internet Access By 2007

Chuck Zimmerman

I know you probably get tired of hearing me talk about farmers and the internet but I think there’s a lot of ag communications folks out there who just aren’t “getting it” yet. In fact, I dare say there’s almost a resistance to using new internet technologies to reach farmers and the ag community. Part of it is a lack of knowledge by the people doing the agrimarketing! That’s why professional development opportunities like NAMA Boot Camp are so important. But I would encourage all agrimarketers to go to other types of professional development opportunities as well.

This comes up as I recently received another USDA release announcing $34.6 million in rural development grants. For the first time some of this money will be used to develop broadband internet access using power lines! The states where this money is going are Alabama, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire and Virginia. The release quotes “These investments are part of the Bush Administration’s effort to bring universal access to all rural households and businesses by 2007.” If successful no one (farmers) in rural America should be able to say they can’t get high speed access. The ease of using it will continue as well. New products are announced every day (just check out Engadget).

I still haven’t figured out how to get some of that money. I mean, I live in a rural area and promoting ag communications using the internet after all.

Internet

CowParade In Wisconsin

Chuck Zimmerman

Wisconsin Cow ParadeMaybe you remember those cows when they were in Chicago. Well they get around and now they’re in Wisconsin. As reported on World Dairy Diary today (a ZimmComm blog) the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board is responsible for this. In fact, this is big business. The CowParade even has its own website. For information about Wisconsin go here. These shameless promoters of all things milk will be at the World Dairy Expo and so will AgWired.

There will be some official CowParade Wisconsin cows – “Say Cheese, Wisconsin” by Bruce Bodden and “Where the Cows Are” by Steven Kozar. When they get us photos we’ll share them.

I actually first found out about this on the Wisconsin Radio Network site. You can listen to a story they did on it here.

Audio

Best of NAMA & CAMA

Chuck Zimmerman

Best of NAMA -2006 - Jazzed
If you’re a member of the National Agri-Marketing Association you might have it in your inbox or your mailbox. It’s time to toot your own horn with your entry in the 2006 Best of NAMA competition. You can find all the information you need online.

Canadian Agri-Marketing AssociationLooking to the north it looks like the Canadian Agri-Marketing Association is having a Best of CAMA with the theme “Change is Alive in 2005” but there’s nothing on their website. If I find more I’ll pass it along.

NAMA

Child Nutrition Programs & Beef Checkoff Dollars

Chuck Zimmerman

MBIC ReportIn this week’s Missouri Beef Industry Council report we talk about child nutrition programs funded with beef checkoff dollars. Cindy interviews Dean Carroll of Clarence, MO, who just recently attended his last official meeting as an MBIC board member after serving for six years.

You can listen to the MBIC Report here Download MP3 File

The MBIC Report is a weekly AgWired podcast which you can subscribe to using the link in our sidebar.

Ag Groups, Audio, Beef, Podcasts

BASF Moves To Quarry

Chuck Zimmerman

Quarry Integrated CommunicationsSome congratulations are in order for Quarry Integrated Communications for obtaining significant new business from BASF! We knew the U. S. crop account was up for review and it has moved.

I spoke with agency partner, Glen Drummond, this morning and he says their relationship with the company goes back a number of years. Glen works with the agencies interactive/web business. I hope to interview an agency representative who works directly on the new BASF business soon and will have more information to share at that time.

Agencies

Arbitron Measures Podcasts

Chuck Zimmerman

ArbitronJust yesterday I posed the question “I wonder when Arbitron will begin ratings for podcasts?” Guess what they announced today?

Arbitron Portable People Meter System Successfully Tracks Podcasts; State-of-the-Art Audience Measurement System Demonstrates It Can Track Listeners of Alternative Radio Technology

With podcasting making headlines as one of the latest technologies being embraced by terrestrial radio broadcasters, Arbitron Inc. (NYSE: ARB) has demonstrated that its Portable People Meter (PPM(SM)) system has the ability to track audiences who listen to this new method of radio programming. During the week of July 18, Arbitron encoded several podcasts by Clear Channel’s WHTZ-FM (Z100) in New York, that were uploaded to the podcast portion of Apple’s iTunes Music Store. The Z100 podcasts were then downloaded to an MP3 player and played over headsets using the PPM headset adapter. The PPM detected and recorded the unique identification codes that were embedded in the MP3 file.

Granted this is just a test of one station that’s podcasting and granted that podcasting of “big media” isn’t really where I think podcasting will be most successful but it’s a start and shows that even the big boys like Clear Channel consider it serious! Thanks to Steve Rubel for the alert!

Heads up folks. You and I can do it ourselves. In fact we are doing it. Want us to help you do it?

Media, Podcasts

New D&PL Website

Chuck Zimmerman

D&PL WebsiteD&PL have announced a new website design. The work was done by Brighton Agency in St. Louis. It would be tempting to critique it here and I’m wondering if you’d like me to offer critques. Let me know by way of feedback.

I will offer one quick idea. From the media’s perspective it would be nice if there was a way for me to subscribe to future information like news releases. There’s a location for news releases but I can’t subscribe to them. I would suggest setting up an RSS feed of them that I can subscribe to instead of email. As it’s set up now I would have to send an email to a contact from the “Contact Us” section to get on a mailing list. Although you see a lot of RSS feeds set up on news sites like the Washington Post, anyone can do it and integrate it into their web strategy.

I like the neat little weather tool that’s on the site. You enter your zipcode once and any time you log on you get your local weather on the page! I don’t farm but I’m a weather fanatic, just ask Cindy. You know how important weather is to farmers. Great idea.

New D&PL Web Site sets Standard for Technology, Service – Company site designed to meet needs of producers, distributors and retailers

Expanded services, improved sales and technical support, and more variety information are just a few of the improvements to the newly designed Delta and Pine Land Company website: www.deltaandpine.com. Working with its marketing partner, Brighton Agency in St. Louis, D&PL gave its Web site a total re-build. The new site went live August 10.

For more information contact Leigh Korb, 1-800-490-2686.

Agencies, Agribusiness, Internet