Herbicide Co-Promotion

Client

FMC

Challenge

Among soybean growers, FMC was seeing a lack of awareness surrounding the strength of using Authority® Edge or Supreme herbicides followed by Anthem® MAXX herbicide as a best practice for weed control. Further, soybean growers typically assume that a layered residual approach is not cost-effective.

FMC and Curious Plot were challenged to change habits of growers who were used to a one-and-done postemergence approach with highly resistant active ingredients. We needed to increase program awareness, showcase the agronomic and economic benefits of the FMC program and, ultimately, drive sales.

SOLUTION

Once the insights were applied and objectives were defined, Curious Plot broke the work into two parts:

Phase I – Education: After defining our strategy, we focused on educating and inspiring the FMC sales team on the true benefits of the overlapping residuals program. Curious Plot created a webinar outlining the ROI of overlapping residuals for the FMC marketing and technical staff to present at their internal sales meeting, providing science-based evidence behind the program’s agronomic benefits. The webinar was amended for use with external audiences.
Phase II – Promotion and awareness: Building upon the momentum of the educational webinars, we partnered with Successful Farming to develop a new campaign called the “Weeds Playbook.” Editorial content wrapped the advertising campaign. This integrated approach ncluded cover wraps, page and spread ads, and digital and native advertising on agriculture.com. E-newsletter and podcasts also featured key advertising placements for additional frequency.

RESULTS

Content engagement: We saw the following metrics coming out of the Successful Farming Weeds Playbook campaign. These high touchpoints provided confidence that market awareness for overlapping residual herbicides was affected, making our campaign a success.

6.75+ million impressions (1.42 million+ impressions over goal).
3.06+ million print touchpoints.
38,440 clicks, resulting in a 1.03% CTR.
74,000 podcast listens.
4:05 average time spent on Weeds Playbook roadblocked articles.

Sales impact: Soybean acres treated with an FMC residual herbicide grew from 56.7 million in 2020 to 60.7 million in 2022, a 3% market share increase.