South Island Agricultural Field Days is the oldest field days in New Zealand and boasts the country’s largest line-up of side-by-side machinery demonstrations. Held every second year since 1951 it attracts between 18 and 24,000 visitors. The Organising Committee hired Convergence to help lift its profile ahead of the 2007 event and due to the success of the campaign we were retained for 2009.
The solution:
Ahead of the 2007 event Convergence developed a website, new logo and revamped the newsletter. We proposed and implemented a targeted advertising and media relations campaign and prepared nominated spokespeople with media training. Convergence also oversaw the development of advertising material, including scripting and directing a video podcast of the event.
The 2007 Field Days achieved more media coverage than any previous event, with five full pages in the Christchurch Press, 22 in the Rural News, other large supplements in regional and farming publications and a series of special reports on CTV.
In the lead up to the 2009 event Convergence reviewed and updated the communications strategy. We refocused the advertising campaign to include rural community papers throughout the South Island. We also put together a package of editorials about the event and associated issues, along with a selection of case studies about some of the companies and services being exhibited. These were used by farming and rural related media including Rural News, Straight Furrow, Country-Wide, The Press and half a dozen rural community orientated papers throughout the South Island. CTV again ran a series on the event including six interviews with exhibitors. The increased coverage prior to the event led to a record crowd of 23,860, up around 4,000 on 2007.
Ahead of Field Days we published four newsletters aimed at potential exhibitors to provide them with the latest information about the event including the opportunity to register on-line. Using the newsletter to steer exhibitors to the website paid off as the number of hits clearly spiked after each newsletter mailing and especially during the month of March when the event was held. For the first time exhibitor numbers exceeded 300, totalling 330.
During the three-day event Richard Loe of BSport’s ‘on the Field with Richard Loe’ broadcast live from Field Days. Journalists from TV1, Radio New Zealand, The Press, along with about 20 others from various rural media outlets attended. The event gained front page coverage in the Press, a package on One News and another on Radio New Zealand’s Evening Report. Rural related media also covered the event in depth as did local community papers. Several companies used Field Days to launch new products and some organisations, such as AgResearch and Lincoln University, took the opportunity to host media.
Convergence looks forward to working with the SIAFD Organising Committee on the 60th Anniversary of South Island Agricultural Field Days in 2011.
Convergence did a wonderful job. They followed our brief and delivered a fantastic range of articles, newsletter and press releases as well as some great local and national television and radio coverage. The success of a great publicity campaign often hinges on an appropriate ‘hook’ to get the media interested. The so-called ‘recession’ or apparent lack of recession turned out to be a wonderful way to reel in the media punters!
– Charlotte Glass, chair publicity South Island Agricultural Field Days Organising Committee.