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market-farming - Re: Adverrtising the Farmers' Market

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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: "jay gee" <jgj23 AT mindspring.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Adverrtising the Farmers' Market
  • Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 01:57:43 +0000


I'm happy to offer the advertising advice and hope that none of you
take offense for my trying to explain in some detail the point I made
earlier. I'm not trying to belabor it but trying to explaining how the
advertising process works and how to use it to your advantage.

Del Williams wrote:
>>>>
Last year we hired a professional to design a graphic for a market logo.
What is the obsession with the cornucopia? That's the first thing people
come up with and, frankly, you can get a number of excellent examples
of cornucopia with any basic desktop publishing program out there.
<<<<

When used appropriately, images enhance the power of advertising
or a logo by associating words with a particular image.

The cornucopia is a powerful image with the ability to strengthen a text
message because it is recognized instantly and elicits positive emotional
associations. [A quick look at my Encyclopaedia Britannica revealed
that the horn of plenty is generally twisted and filled with fruit and
flowers.
It was used as a symbol of prosperity and abundance.] Prosperity and
abundance are not bad associations for the purpose of advertising.

Good logos tell something about what they represent and abundance
is part of what a farmers market offers. That a professional designer
would want to use a cornucopia in your logo was not the easy way
out, it was probably the best solution in their opinion, and after all,
they were the advertising professional.

>>>>
If you're going to pay a professional you ought to get something creative
not canned.
<<<<

When you pay a professional you want something that works well.
Creativity is not as important as being effective is in getting the underlying
message fixed in the minds of your intended audience. Some of the
best advertising and logos out there are not real creative but they
communicate like crazy.

>>>>
The cornucopia is about the harvest and a symbol strongly associated with
Thanksgiving. For spring season sales, it is a misleading image. We don't
have tomatoes, corn, pumpkins, gourds, etc. for sale in the early season.
<<<<

The horn of plenty (HOP) is about more than the harvest. You associate
it with Thanksgiving because that is when supermarkets use it in their
advertising - in an attempt to elicit positive emotions about their store and
advertisements.

>>>
You'd be amazed at the number of customers who expect to see sweet corn
and tomatoes in May in Illinois. The cornucopia would only compound these
problems.

The cornucopia is also a biased promotion of market offerings. We sell
vegetables and fruits, plants, fresh herbs, flowers, jelly and jam,
free-range chicken, eggs, baked goods, breads and rolls, Italian specialty
cookies, fresh pork, popped corn, fajitas, hand sewn clothing, perennials,
etc.
<<<<

If you want your HOPs customized, a layout artist/ad designer/art director
would use the image of an empty big horn basket and roll out the fruits,
vegetables, chickens, eggs, flowers, plants, breads, rolls, popcorn,
fajitas, etc., based on your needs. In the context I earlier recommended,
the HOP would appear in a screened back background, much as a
watermark in ink, and your hard copy would be printed over it.

If used in a 3 cols x 8" ad, the result of a background HOP would make
it large enough to see in detail, even though it was faint.

>>>>
Finally, the average small town/city farmers' market has a limited
advertising budget (if any) to hire professional designers. I would bet
that most markets have no advertising budget. We have increased our vendor
fee by 500% in three years in order to have a basic advertising budget.
Many markets don't even have sales fees much less an advertising budget.
<<<<

The benefit of hiring a professional designer is that s/he creates something
that can be used repetitively. That is the point of having a logo and that
is why department stores spend big bucks on typefaces and layout format
designs.

Having type reset for next week's sale does not require redoing a whole
ad.

I congratulate you on increasing your vendor assessment by 500%
to allow some advertising. From what you said in your private post
the advertising efforts paid off handsomely for the market's opening
day. If your vendors want more of that success, they should make
sure they advertise before and on each market day, not just once
during the season. The effect of the advertising compounds over
time in that each successive ad results in a larger and larger turnout.

>>>>
In the end, and in reference to the original point, when newspapers offer ad
design services, they ought to do design. Anybody can type up an ad -
designers should design.
<<<<

I agree. But then there might be two ideas about what "design" really is.
In a perfect world, politicians would be honest, police would not be
criminals, and weather would be accommodating. I guess we can hope.

Speaking of weather, good weather to you all,


Jay Gee
not a farmer -- but interested in farming







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