It is time for the 2011 Agri-Marketing Conference. We’re going to be “Harvesting Ideas” in Kansas City, MO and I’ll be your NAMA Blogger once again.

To get a preview of this year’s conference you can hear a conversation I had with conference vice chair, Matt Coniglio, Fastline Publications. Matt provides some highlights and speculates that this might just be the biggest attendance since 2000!

[wpaudio url=”http://www.zimmcomm.biz/nama/amc-11-coniglio.mp3″ text=”2011 Agri-Marketing Conference Preview”]

Hallmark Cards has the whole branding thing down to a science. To share some insight into their history and issues they face today John Courtney, Consumer Understanding & Insight Manager, Hallmark Cards, Inc. spoke at the National Agri-Marketing Conference. John is pictured left of Matt Coniglio, Fastline, who introduced him.

John says Hallmark is celebrating 100 years of the brand. Some milestones include the move to the name Hallmark in the late 1920’s, the Crown Logo was created about 70 years ago and the tagline, “When you care enough to send the very best” was created about 60 years ago. John says that he started with the company when they were getting started with digital and they have created a number of ways for consumers to utilize their products that most recently includes Hallmark Mobile Cards. They also have an interactive social calendar application on their Facebook page too.

You can listen to my interview with John here (mp3).

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

If you use email in your marketing plan do you sometimes wonder if it’s still relevant today? How do you tie it in to new forms of digital communications channels. At the National Agri-Marketing Conference Joel Book, ExactTarget, conducted a presentation titled, “E-Mail Marketing: Strategies, Tactics, Results.” I spoke with him prior to his session.

Joel sees email as the “backbone” of the ongoing strategy for keeping customers connected to the brand. He says email performs best when married to other forms of digital communication (mobile, social). It is vital in helping create “brand fans” who will help spread the message.

Joel provides a number of resources marketers can look to for more information about how to best use email as a key component of their strategies.

You can listen to my interview with Joel here (mp3).

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

The Aggies of New Mexico State University were the winners of the student NAMA competition this year. This is the second time the Aggies have won the top honors, but it has been awhile – so they were celebrating big time!

Other top winners in the student NAMA awards included Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, which took first place for Outstanding Student Chapter; and Iowa State University, which received first place and $3000 for their chapter as the John Deere Signature Award winners; and Mike Gustafson regained his title as “Hard Ass” judge of the year – three times in the past four years!

Curt Blades of Successful Farming was honored as outgoing NAMA Careers chair for his years of working with the student NAMA chapters. He was presented with an engraved beer stein for his heroic efforts!

Congrats to all the winners!

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

In a world of high technology one of our presenters went low tech. He’s Paul Adams, President, Paul Adams & Associates. His session was titled, “Put the “High Touch” Back in Your “High-Tech” World.”

At first I thought he was going to talk about technology but that’s not the focus. He says, “I’m really low tech.” He says we need to get back to more face to face communication in a world of high technology. Hmm. Do we really still do that? He laughed at that question and said, “I don’t know.” His presentation was geared to sales people and looked like it was really well attended.

You can listen to my interview with Paul here (mp3).

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

Each year NAMA honors an outstanding leader in the agribusiness industry.

This year that person is David Seehusen, Land ‘O Lakes. David was presented with the Agribusiness Leader of the Year Award. David has made significant contributions to the industry and made a really fantastic Earth Day speech which I will be adding to this post as soon as I get a copy of it. Dave included a lot of statistics about food production comparing today to years past. He made a great point of saying how new technology can continue to increase food production to feed a growing world population but only if farmers are allowed to use it.

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

Are you afraid of social media? Is the leadership in your company afraid of it? Then you need to visit with David Meerman Scott. He’s a recovering VP of Marketing and author of the book World Wide Rave. He is conducting the NAMA Pre-Conference Workshop, “Conquering the Fear of Social Media.” David will also be the keynote speaker at tomorrow’s opening general session. You can find him on Twitter: @dmscott

I spoke with David before his session and he says that he wants attendees to leave the session realizing that “the companies that aren’t engaged are losing out.” He says this is because people are going on line to search engines and social networks to look for products and recommendations. He also recommends that companies create a social media policy which will help management, legal and employees know what they can and can’t do and that helps create more of a comfort zone.

You can download and listen to my interview with David here (mp3).

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album