Surviving a Culture War Crossfire

As John Deere’s PR Agency of Record for North America for large ag, precision ag, small ag and livestock, we handle everything from media relations and speaking engagements to thought leadership, tradeshows, and reporter education and events. Importantly, we also provide their spokespeople with media training and crisis communications coaching.

Those final two points became incredibly important last July when on the eve of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and during the absolute peak of the summer row crop growing season, John Deere found itself in the crosshairs of the culture wars. An online troll in search of rage-baiting clicks launched a high-profile attack on a handful of high-profile agriculture and consumer brands over their DEI initiatives. Overnight, social media exploded with outrage and accusations.

For a conservative company with a predominantly conservative customer base, this was a potentially devastating assault on their incredibly valuable global brand. More immediately, the controversy and potential shift of customer perception threatened their stock price; a metric so highly prized that it is prominently displayed on live feeds around at their World Headquarter buildings. In this super-heated social cauldron, one false move could generate exponential trouble and draw negative attention to the company.

Fortuitously, Bader Rutter’s PR team was already working at John Deere’s corporate headquarters in Moline, IL, coaching thirty executives through high-level media training on the day the controversy broke. In moments, that training pivoted to crisis communications, monitoring and management. We were activating and living out our crisis playbook in real time.

The brand worked incredibly hard to strategically deprive the fire of oxygen, all by careful, planful, strategic design.

It took nearly a month before the controversy faded behind a new outrage, but happily, the impact on John Deere’s customer’s perception and stock price lasted barely a week. While it dipped 5% that month, it has since resumed climbing. One year later, it’s up 47%.

None of this was media facing so there were no clippings or media coverage. While this may be the visually dullest case study,  living through it left all of us with a lasting impression.