In a time when influence is so important, so expensive, and so fleeting with an ill wind, how does agriculture hope to keep pace with high-dollar business trying to get the attention of the consumer?
It is going to cost, it is going to have to be well planned, it is going to cost, it has to have a popular connection, and it is going to cost.
But the corn leaders in Illinois, Iowa, and nationally may have just found a gimmick to achieve the ultimate consumers’ attention.
It is going to happen Thursday night, when the Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees play baseball in Dyersville, Iowa.
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The site of the hit movie "Field of Dreams" will take on major league status when a strong Sox team engages with the ever-popular (or hated) Yankees. Reportedly tickets are going for more than $1,000, just to achieve bragging rights for the fans who can afford it.
But what does it have to do with the corn organizations? Philo farmer Dirk Rice, retiring chairman of the Illinois Corn Marketing Board, says it is all about using the hype of the game to get the attention of the consumers who will be watching.
Rice and colleagues themselves will not be fading in and out of cornfields as did the actors in the movie version of the game. But their strategic marketing messages will appear on the televised broadcast between innings and during other breaks in the game.
Messaging will be focused at consumers, telling them that corn is good, corn-based food products are good, corn-based ethanol is environmentally friendly, and corn should have a positive role in American society.
If one saw such public relations messaging during standard television programming fare, it might have been lost while the lights came on in the refrigerator or bathroom.
But during a real-life adaptation of a popular movie script, there is every reason to believe that the consumer, who happens to be either a baseball or movie fan will get the connection with fields of corn and the original “Field of Dreams” movie.
Baseball broadcast analyst Paul O’Neill, an eight-season veteran with the Yankees, says, “It’s such a great idea, such a cool thing, and I’m glad the Yankees are part of it. The stories and the old-time players, it brings back memories of what the game used to be like….this movie.”
That is exactly what the Illinois, Iowa, and National Corn Grower leaders are trying to achieve, connecting the positive message about corn with the emotional script, with baseball nostalgia, and the excitement of today’s top players.
There is a bit of a stretch between the consumer and what the corn leaders represent, since corn is more of a food ingredient and the feedstock for an automotive fuel. But nevertheless, the corn messages will likely raise the public’s positive rating of corn being one of the good guys, no matter which team it plays on.
The cornfield is where the story begins.
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