Open Farm Sunday:
PR and stakeholder engagement
Attracting more farmers to open their doors on Open Farm Sunday would be key to satisfying the demand from the general public to visit and find out more about farming and food production.
Overview
To inspire farmers who had not been involved before to step forward to host an Open Farm Sunday event, leveraging peer-to-peer engagement and a multi-channel approach
To retain existing farmer hosts, including those aligned to Open Farm Sunday sponsors, including AHDB, Arla Foods, ASDA, Co-op and BASF
To provide social media strategy support to the OFS in-house team
- 241 events attracting 180,000 members of the public
- Webinars and one-to-one engagement with big name sponsors
- Farmer ambassadors shared their stories
- Multi-media integration to sweat all our comms assets
Our campaign involved inspiring participation through sponsor, stakeholder and influencer engagement and the breadth of media and content channels, as well as strategic social media consultancy.
Goals
Drive Open Farm Sunday farmer recruitment and retention to secure 300 event registrations in a calendar year and drive 30 additional new farm registrations through sponsors’ farming networks
Deliverables
Aligning with big name sponsors and understanding their objectives helped navigate how to better enlist their support and that of their farmer sponsor networks. Maintaining engagement through the campaign was key.
Engaging farmer ambassadors of Open Farm Sunday to share their stories was key to building farmer trust and overcoming their perceived barriers to participating.
- Galvanised interest with a House of Lords launch event for sponsors and influencers
- Created a focused PR strategy, messaging framework and digital tool kit to include video testimonial vox pops and digital assets
- Engaged sponsors directly and via webinars within a framework of touchpoints to engage and achieve sponsor commitments
- Crafted authentic stories for farmers to convey practical advice showing how hosting an event is accessible and achievable on any scale
- Established proof-points to showcase the public’s receptiveness to engage and learn more from this trusted profession
- Inspired interest by presenting novel ideas to engage the public
- Engaged and placed stories and broadcast segments in farming, agricultural and food media titles
- Extensive stakeholder and influencer engagement to bolster channels to reach audiences
- Multi-media integration to ensure continuity across all channels
“Pinstone's wealth of experience, strong industry relationships, and trusted reputation shine through and the team has felt like an extension of ours – fully invested, always going the extra mile, and constantly joining the dots to cultivate meaningful connections"
LEAF Director
Results
The campaign achieved 42 new host farm registrations, with 241 events held that attracted 180,000 members of the public. The PR reach extended to 1.29 million with 94 cross channel media coverage results.
14 sponsors representing leading food and farming supply chain organisations were engaged, leading to enhanced marketing support through their channels.
Added value
Engaging key individuals from multi-national corporates through to grass-roots farmers demanded a Pinstone team approach that connected people and understood differing objectives and motivations to achieve the common goal of promoting the value and importance of farming with nature.
