Knowing the difference between Friend and Foe on the Farm

How do you know if you get your marketing right?

How do you know that you are working in an exciting area of any sector when it comes to marketing? Is it the enthusiasm of the team you are working with? Is it the number of people who want to work in that area? Is it the investment that you see coming into the sector? Or is it the enthusiasm of the customer who wants to buy your product?

There may be hundreds of possible metrics that you can think of but, for companies that market B2B, I suspect that the celebration of an award that recognises the product and/or the way it is marketed can feature in most people’s top 10.

AlphaBio Control has been researching and developing bio-pesticides for over 10 years, built on the premise that there is a better way of producing high quality affordable food in a way that has a much lower environmental impact. And it has succeeded: the bio-insecticide, FLiPPER® controls problem pests, and the diseases that they spread, whilst having a very low environment footprint and no issues of residues in the resultant food produced. A success story, marked this year by the awarding of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise. Praise indeed.

It should be said that the company does not actually sell directly to farmers which complicates things when it comes to marketing; in the case of FLiPPER®, it is Bayer Crop Science that markets the product and sells it through its distribution chain. The options for AlphaBio are therefore a little more limited since it does not want to cause any confusion at the customer level as to who owns or distributes the product.

That said, the company is delighted to hear that Kiss Communications has won not just one but two awards at the Drum Roses Awards 2021 on the back of its innovative marketing of FLiPPER® for Bayer. The campaign revolved around the idea that the product innately “knows” friend (beneficial insects) from foe (those insects that eat the crop or which spread crop diseases) as a bio-insecticide, beautifully illustrated with a set of specially-commissioned entomology drawings.

AlphaBio did not win this award; it was not even for a marketing campaign commissioned by the company. Nevertheless, we were delighted that the campaign won two awards and are happy to bask in their reflected glory.

And meanwhile, the phenomenon that is FLiPPER® marches on.