Grain Farmers of Ontario Annual Report 2016

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10
Communications
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MEGHAN BURKE, MANAGER,
COMMUNICATIONS
THE CHALLENGES AND opportunities
around social license have been a top concern
and priority for the communications team
this year. Earning and maintaining the ongoing
acceptance of grain farming practices and the
uses of Ontario grains by the broader non-
farming community has become a key area
of focus. To do this, we’ve utilized many
mediums to help the public get to know and
connect with grain farmers. Our goal is to
build credibility and trust of grain farmers
and the grain industry.
Social media has been a key strategic tool in
this pursuit and we’ve successfully grown our
online influence exponentially. This success
was recognized by the Canadian Agri-Marketing
Association in fall 2015, where we were
awarded Best of Social Media.
While we are pleased with this success, the
quest for social license does not have an end
date; social license changes as perceptions
shift. We know societal opinions and beliefs
are fluid and influenced by countless factors.
For these reasons, our approach to social
license must be flexible, adaptable, and
always credible.
GOOD IN EVERY GRAIN
One strategy this year was to extend existing
trust in one particular grain farmer, reality
TV star Chris Soules (aka Prince Farming),
to Ontario grain farmers. Soules farms over
6,000 acres of corn and soybeans and became
famous on shows such as The Bachelorette
and Dancing with the Stars. With nearly a
million followers on his social media platforms,
Soules has become a household name for many
and appeals primarily to young women, who
we know to commonly be the food-purchasers
in a family.
We leveraged his popularity and the natural
trust the public has for him, by bringing him
to an Ontario grain farm and facilitating a
packed schedule of media appearances over
two days in October. His celebrity status
opened mainstream media doors we’ve not
been able to access previously, and through
TV, radio, print, and online interviews we
reached over 22 million people with messages
about conventional grain farming and the
Good in Every Grain here in Ontario.
Building on the success of this media tour,
we conducted a similar program with Yvette
d’Entremont, known online as the SciBabe,
following her presentation at the 2016 March
Classic. With a focus on mythbusting,
SciBabe reached over six million through the
many outlets we arranged over a two day
media tour.
While these programs focussed on urban
audiences, we took a broader reach with the
expansion of our Ontario Hockey League
(OHL) sponsorship and a new initiative called
farmer-cards. We developed a custom card,
like a hockey card, for each OHL team. Each
card featured a photo of the team mascot
with a local farmer on their farm, with some
fun facts about the grain farmer on the back.
The featured farmers attended a game night
to hand these cards out personally and connect
with the crowd. The OHL has been a great
partner, allowing us, along with Spirits Canada,
to host a reception for the team owners and
governors — a privilege no other sponsor has
been offered, and one we really enjoyed
and appreciated.
Beyond the events and media tours, content
remains king with the Good in Every Grain
campaign and a new emphasis on health and
wellness information received a big boost with
the ongoing help of registered dietician and
farmer, Lisa Mardlin-Vandewalle. Lisa has
created original content for the Good in Every
Grain website and a new brochure, ‘Get Healthy
with Grains’. She has also added a health
component to our exhibit by incorporating
models of arteries and fat to help people
visualize the benefits of grains in a balanced
diet. And, because good eating and good
activities go hand-in-hand, we leveraged our
work with the Toronto Scotiabank Waterfront
Marathon and Lisa’s expertise using
#TrainwithGrains to share healthy recipes to
fuel exercise.
MEMBER COMMUNICATIONS
We want to continuously improve
communication to our farmer-members,
which is why we conducted a membership
survey this year, completed December 2015.
We appreciate the time and effort put in by
many farmer-members, as we received nearly
2,000 completed surveys, giving us great
insight into farmer-member needs and
preferences. The Ontario Grain Farmer
magazine remains the top ranking method
of communication chosen by our members,
with face-to-face events the next preferred.
An area that needed some attention, however,
was our online and mobile offerings. With that
noted, we dedicated efforts to improvements
in those areas and relaunched a modernized
and mobile-friendly Grain Farmers of Ontario
website ). The content has been
streamlined to load quickly on all internet
speeds and the updated design accommodates
all usability levels and is compliant with
accessibility standards.
Another tool that needed a revamp was the
SellSmart app. Launched in 2011, this app
was ahead of its time, designed to give Ontario
grain farmers real-time price data for their
crops at local elevators, as well as set price
alerts. The app received a complete rebuild,
to be compliant with new operating systems
and to allow better management and usability
of the app. Download it, and other grain-
farming apps, from your app store (free of
charge) or at ä