Using Billboards For Ag PR

Too often those of us in agriculture just bemoans that fact that many of our consumers don’t know where their food comes from. One ag organization is challenging the industry to do something about it …. in the form of positive ag messages on billboards. Peterangelo Vallis the San Joaquin Valley Winegrowers Association shares his thoughts
Vallis: “You know what, the Almond Board is the most progressive part of California agriculture today because they understand how much money it takes to penetrate the market. We are not in living in 1932. We need to spend money on this stuff. What does a Super Bowl commercial cost? Six, seven million dollars for 30 seconds? It is an insane amount of money — but that is what it takes to move the needle.”
If billboards were put in our nation’s urban centers promoting ag … imagine the possibilities. Vallis continues
Vallis: “So if we wanted to have a campaign and have every billboard in America for one month. Call it ‘Hey, we like to eat month’ or something or ‘your stomach depends on ag.’ It would probably take $20 or $30 million just to make that happen. But if you look at the success that the Almond Board has had — it is a perfect pathway — a perfect roadmap for what all of us in California can do at pennies per pound. There are some commodities that don’t make pennies per pound. But on the whole, a couple of pennies per pound if it is put in the right space and put in front of people. Guess what? They are going to go nuts over the product. Look what almonds have done. If that isn’t a rallying cry for what can happen for anything else. It would be killer — it would be killer for our industry.”