updates

Made some substantial changes in my thinking after meeting with Christie yesterday - many of them have been coming out as I look at a new website template. (incidentally, wordpress is way harder to use than blogger, but can do cooler things)

here's a summary:
1. Marketing Objective - after considering the idea that we're earning share from the farmers market, it was rightly pointed out that what we're really doing is taking FM customers and engaging them further. the sketch below was helpful.
2. Target Audience - I'd started out with the demographic characteristics of women with college degrees only because they are typical FM customers. Turns out this doesn't make sense, either from an earn share perspective (where my target would just be FM customers generally), or from a stimulate demand perspective (where i want as many customers as possible). Men, you're back in. Sorry to have slighted you like that.

3. FE - Basically I'd already determined that Bike & Beer wasn't a great fit with my positioning generally, since it's all about hands-on local food stuff. I think it's still a conceptual fit, just not a marketing fit. So, i'm going to keep the FE "SIMBY Agritours" but focus only on the farm tours, maybe market some of the others (wine & chocolate, bike & beer) separately, or else bury them in the "group tours" section of the site..

4. FOCUS! so the print ads i was playing with before do highlight local food, but they don't do much for my "hands on experience" message. Also "fresh" and "local" are two separate positioning statements, neither of which is directly related to my primary proposition "hands on experience"

MV/DV revisited

Ok i think i finally got it.

Main Variable: need to experience local food
Dynamic Variable: hands on

Acquisition/earn share from farmer's market

Print Ads

I realize that I'm probably getting ahead of myself, but my mind was filled today with some ideas of how to convey the benefits of local food, and then add the "experience" part to it. here's what I came up with:

commentary: I think the message is right, but looks more like a top-of-mind campaign than a raise awareness campaign. there's not enough information about what we actually DO. Also it might be a little to slick and not grass-rootsy enough.

segment

so i think i know what my true benefit/segmentation variable is...

"need for foodie cred"

Unfortunately i think that's the best way I can say it, but we're talking about people (like me) who often find themselves talking about food, recipes, etc, and for whom the "i got this from this little farm up the road I just found out about" story is the favorite one they tell.

It's a little hard to say this without buying into foodie elitism, but I kind of feel like foodie elitism is exactly what I'm selling. I feel a little dirty. Like a true marketer.

Positioning Statement

The more I get into this, the more I realize I'm probably earning share from the farmer's market. It's earning share but then our ultimate objective is to send the customers back to farmer's markets... It's like we're doing their customer retention for them. Oh this gets confusing.

Product attributes

this is a bit of an issue 'cause we have several different products, all with different attributes that seem to speak to different people. here's hoping we can find the common ground.

Search (things you can look up): location, time, date, number of tours, potential activities, whether there's food, cost, size of farm, main products available

Experience (things you know after your tour): feeling of milking a goat/eating peas off the vine/driving a horse and buggy/etc; who other participants are and if you liked them, stories that you have to tell, photos of you doing cool things, relationship with farmer, organization of tour, quality/taste of food, quality of any available products.

Credence (intangibles): gaining farmer/rural street cred, being more of a "foodie", feeling like you're part of a larger local food movement, helping your local economy

segmentation is hard

I've spent the last couple weeks doodling segmentation variable charts in the margins of my notebooks and I'm still a little baffled by the whole thing. I mean, i get that the category leader is supposed to be ahead on the Main Variable, but is this because they do the MV the best? Or just that they are the leader in terms of that MV? Is McDonalds more convenient than Wendy's, or just the market leader in "convenient food"?

This first doodle is of local food experience vs. fun, but it seems wrong. SIMBY is ahead because we deliver a great local food experience, better than Zing or the farmer's market, but we are not the market leaders:
Here it is, revised for the 2nd interpretation.

This is a fun one because I love the idea of stealing share from Zingermans. Having worked there, I can safely say that "we are more fun than Zingermans" is both an honest and potentially lucrative selling point. In truth I think my customers are probably farmer's market customers, but it is weird to earn share from farmer's markets because we're actually trying to promote farmer's markets.

Then I started playing with stimulate demand strategies, which seemed to make the most sense in most contexts.

i'm not sure if i need 2 variables here, but I think we can be a market leader in the "getting to know a farmer" BUT, is this really a variable that applies to a lot of people? I guess I would argue that the answer is yes and that it's a growing number, but this might just be among people I know. it's hard to see outside of my bubble sometimes.

Target Audience

Target Audience: Rachel Hunter is 34, and works in publishing in Ann Arbor. She moved to Ann Arbor from Cleveland two years ago along with her husband Peter, a PhD student at UM. They live in a 2-bedroom condo near Briarwood, and she does most of their grocery shopping at the nearby Busch’s, where she appreciates the fresh produce and great selection of inexpensive wine. She also enjoys shopping with friends in downtown Ann Arbor, especially on weekends in the spring and summer when they’ll visit the shops and sometimes the farmer’s market or Zingerman’s. Rachel and Peter take weekend trips every couple of months, either for conferences or to visit friends and family in various U.S. cities, and also take a few longer camping trips or beach vacations in the summer. During the year, she tries to stay active, and to make time in her busy schedule to enjoy of local concerts, festivals, and parks.

Customer Definition (from previous module, but it goes along with the target audience thing):
Demographic: Women, 25-55, with a college degree.

Geographic: residents or visitors in Washtenaw, Macomb, Oakland, Monroe, Livingston, Wayne or Jackson Counties.

Behavioral: buys from the farmer’s market at least once per year (61 percent of Michiganders say they do, who largely also meet the above demographic characteristics)

QUESTION:
"Rachel" is probably one very valid descriptor of our target audience, but I feel using that description glosses over people with kids, and baby boomer retirees, both of which could be very important segments. It's easy for me to market to "Rachel" because she's pretty damn similar to me, but I don't feel that using this description is going to help me target older customers. Does this matter? should there be multiple targets?

The Good We Do

So I'm pretty proud of this graph, even though it's not directly marketing-related. It's for a grant we're writing and it shows the impact that the tours will have for the farmers that host them. The goal of the project is to create a self-sustaining business model that boosts farmer income - according to this we're set to do that over the next 2 years!

Strategic Quadrant

Should be obvious, since we're a start up, but:

Objective = Acquisition
Source of Volume = Stimulate Demand

Category Definition = Educational Agritourism in Michigan

I guess that's narrow enough for us to call ourselves a market leader.

I toyed with the broad category definition of "day trips," in which case we'd be stealing share from museums, parks, sports games, shopping, etc., but this seemed neither relevant nor useful.

I also thought of "Agritourism" as a category, which is fairly narrow. This category seems to be dominated by single-farm activities: corn mazes, hayrides, U-Pick orchards and the like. We're doing something different from this, in that we are organizing trips on behalf of several farms that are focused on farming, not tourism. Also, we're trying to add an instructional component to all our programs.

Distinctions aside, "growing the category" - be it agritourism or educational agritourism - is pretty important. If nothing else, so I can stop having this conversation:

me: I'm starting a business!
you: Oh great! what kind of business?
me: it's an agritourism company.
you: a what, now? [attempts to exit conversation]

Reverse-Engineered Positioning

Reading through the Positioning area, I'm realizing how much we're guilty of all the chronic problems of a start-up marketing campaign. The good news is that there's a lot of passion and energy. The downside of this is that we tend to run full speed ahead, coming up with taglines, product and price definitions at will, with no strategic planning or even a speck of forethought.

Still, there are clues to our final product in what we've already come up with... So i'm going to try to reverse-engineer them into an STP strategy.

Tagline #1: Sustainability in My Back Yard
Benefits implied:
- learning about sustainable practices
- exploring nearby places - "staycation" appeal
- personalized approach

Tagline #2: celebrate the land, connect with the people, and taste the future.
Benefits implied:
- direct connection with farmers
- meeting new people
- tasting local food
- connection with your local area (staycations again)
- learning new things (ostensibly about the future)
- not sure what celebrate the land means, but i guess some people are into that...

Business Objective

The beginning of a marketing plan, comments and thoughts greatly appreciated:

Fundamental Entity: SIMBY Agritours

Core Competence: building working relationships with a variety of farmers and producers.

Goal: To engage at least 200 people on fun, interactive tours that highlight Michigan's local food economy and promote small, local producers of food and agricultural products.

Time Frame: in 2010, with hopes to double that in 2011.

Search Engine Optimization

One of tonight's many emails to my partner, on marketing. SEO is a field in itself, but it might give us some insight into this whole fundamental entity thing.

hey lauren,
cool - i'm actually going to make a lot of suggestions for the home page... the thing to keep in mind is called "search engine optimization" Basically, thinking about the words that people would search for if they are looking for us, and making sure to use them a lot, first thing, on the homepage.

Some search phrases for us might be:
Michigan Agritourism
Michigan Agritours
Michigan Farm tours
farm tours
sustainable farm tours
local food tour
family farm tour

anything else? I'll think about it a little more - what would people type into google if they're looking for what we offer?

Fundamental Entity

I spent a good chunk of Thursday and Friday at Lauren's house talking about where to go with the business, and about this grant we're writing to USDA to get started. I think both of us were torn between doing all the things that really need to be done right away (scheduling, planning and promoting tours, as well as kicking out this grant), and were having trouble focusing on the "big picture," so to speak. Still, if we want to be effective at writing this grant we need to have a clear statement of what our business is, so we tried...

When initially described, the fundamental entity seemed like the simplest question to answer. We are a tiny company. The entity is SIMBY Agritours (also talked about names, more on that later). BUT, we have several different types of trips we'd like to offer that could (should?) be marketed differently:

- Family & Individual farm tours (mostly recreational and fun, some learning, more expensive, nicer accommodations, more choices, more food - focused on connecting farmers with community of food-interested urban folks.)

- School and group tours (mostly educational, also fun - focused on changing attitudes)

- Adventure/Bike tours (mostly fun, 18-30 crowd, longer hike and bike tours, beer, food, tent camping - focused on exposure to Michigan's food system)

thinking about grant objectives, the family and school tours are totally different. the family tours could increase sales for specific farmers as families visit them at the farmer's market or join their CSA, the school ones more about changing attitudes in general and may not lead to documentable sales. The adventure tours seem too "out there" to include in the grant, but are, i feel, an important niche.

so: am I getting the idea behind fundamental entity? Can we still market all three without diluting our brand? Or should we brand them all separately (which seems silly) but each has a different target market and goal. hmmm.

Yes, Logo.

With all due respect to Naomi Klien and Kalle Lasn, I've officially given in to the marketing world so I can find a way to harness the power of marketing for good. And if Nike ever had anything good to teach me, it's that the first thing you need is a clean, simple, recognizable logo - and then you just put it all over everything. You know, to capture surplus (whatever that means, Christie)

I'm no graphic designer, but I started fishing through some of my favorite foodie twitter hashtags for logos that stood out to me. I'm looking for something that's recognizable even in the tiny twitter who-is-following-me feed, and something that communicates some of what we do. Just in case I ever get to hire a graphic designer to do this, here are some examples I liked:

Exhibit A: Roedale Institute
this one stuck in my head because of the leaves, which is something I'd been thinking when I wanted to name the company "Homegrown Tours." I like the use of both leaves and roots, and the circle makes it easy to recognize.

Exhibit B: Eating Locally
also a circle, this time with an agrarian landscape and a windmill. My objection is that it has nothing do do with food, but it does have a nice calming travel-ish look that makes me want to roam through foothills in Montana or somewhere.

Exhibit C: Slow Food
As one of the most recognizable and most-used logos in our market, slow food's gotta be doing something right. The snail is an obvious message, and the spiral is both visually compelling and ties into the whole closed-system approach. It's widely copied and modified among their chapters (like the SF chapter in the link), which helps them expand their message and the image along with it.

Exhibit D: Earth Eats
the question of including text in your logo is a hard one. On one hand it makes a direct connection to your organization's name, on the other, one nice thing about a logo is the ability to communicate in lieu of or in addition to text. hmm.

Exhibit E: Ag Chat
logo-wise, this one seemed to have it all - the leaves, the circles, and the suggestion of communication and technology. I really like the colors and the simplicity of it as well.

A Little Company

Upon seeing my new blog, Lauren grabbed some of the copy from my last entry and worked it into our "about us" page on the new website. My favorite part of what she wrote were our bios (below). They seem to hit a great middle ground, being relaxed and informal and also conveying our passion for the company, and for working together.

It reminded me of something I saw on the entrepreneurship blog A Smart Bear (a fav of mine) called "you're a little company, now act like one". Jason makes the great point in this post about how when small companies try to look too big and professional they lose one of their core assets: a passionate, involved staff that gives awesome customer service. world, here we come!

WHO WE ARE

Gillian Ream, M.S.

Gillian is a graduate of the School of Natural Resources at U of M. She excels in environmental education and leadership training. She is passionate about issues related to our food and energy systems and to communicating this knowledge to kids and adults. She knows everyone that Lauren knows only a generation younger. Every time Lauren talks to Gillian, she learns something new and exclaims, “What haven’t you done?”

Lauren Zinn, Ph.D.

Lauren is a graduate of an interdisciplinary doctoral program (Urban, Technological, Environmental Planning) from the U of M. She specializes in educational planning and loves to organize events that get people involved, educated, and having fun. She is passionate about bringing a farm-based experience into our urban lifestyles. She knows everyone that Gillian knows only a generation older. Every time Gillian talks to Lauren, she learns something new and exclaims, “What haven’t you done?”

Let the games begin

It's 11pm on Monday, and I have spent 25 hours in class in the last 4 days, including an all-weekend Mediation seminar and the first day of Social Marketing. My mind is full of all this communicating about communication, but I hope this blog will help me make sense of it all.

The exciting news is that I have brand new business, and that I get to spend this class developing a marketing plan for it. I'm launching an agritourism company, which will organize trips for families and school groups to visit family farms. We are hoping to provide fun, relaxing tours that are also educational and that help to raise awareness about good food, healthy eating, and supporting local businesses.

The business has been in the back of my mind for over 4 years, and 4 weeks ago I met Lauren Zinn, another longtime Ann Arborite with a similar plan to mine. She was further ahead in the process than I was, but we decided to start working together, and just last Tuesday filed the paperwork for SIMBY Agritours, LLC. SIMBY stands for "Sustainability in My Back Yard", which I see as a better tagline than a title, but we're not married to it, and it might be something that shifts over the course of this marketing experience.

So far our marketing consists of a flyer, and as of yesterday, a website. www.simbyagritours.com. I'm posting it here as a starting point. It was designed by a 13-year-old who is the son of Lauren's Friend for a grand fee of $25. To his credit, no other web designer would have gotten something up the next day, and this is certainly better than anything I could have done.