Growing the image of cereal

Our client, a peak body for major cereal growers in Australia, engaged Ogilvy Illumination to advise them on the development of a communications strategy to educate and inform Australian growers about drought, which had been devastating the industry for over a decade.

To inform our client’s membership base about the drought in the Murray-Darling Basin, we carried out a two-phase research programme to determine growers’ interest areas and their media habits to inform the communications campaign, followed by a post-communications campaign evaluation phase.

The first phase consisted of desktop research and media audit followed by a series of in-depth interviews and consultation roundtables in different drought-affected regions in South-West New South Wales and Northern Victoria with the cereal growers. Based on this research, a range of promotional materials and a media strategy were developed to maximise attendance at and awareness of the drought information seminars.

The second phase evaluated the efficacy of the communications campaign through in-depth interviews and a phone survey of cereal growers in the affected areas. The results indicated a high attendance rate to seminars in the affected areas and satisfaction with those seminars.