Pioneer
Making Pioneer sound new: The Corn Revolution podcast.
Challenge
We needed to find a new way to reach Pioneer’s 3,000+ sales force and signal major changes. For 10 years they had aggressively pursued new technologies for developing and testing seed corn. They asked us to explain this and their new products with an email campaign.
Solution
Given how revolutionary this was for the company, we wanted a bigger splash. So we made the medium the message. Building on the insight that Pioneer sales reps spend most of their workdays on the road, we created an in-depth twelve-episode podcast.
Telling a scientific story. With scientists.
We hit the road with the farmer/podcast host and a custom-built mobile studio to interview Pioneer’s far-flung team of scientists on location. These first-person explanations of the new advances make for surprisingly compelling listening, even to non-salespeople.
Taking sales education on the road.
We needed a new way to focus the sales force’s attention on Pioneer’s innovative, forward-focused R&D. We started with a teaser campaign of monthly communications, each focused on just one detail of the Corn Revolution story. But the final mailing got their attention: a car-friendly Google Mini with instructions on how to use it to reach the new weekly podcast.
Putting it all online.
Finally, we created a web experience that made viewing and downloading the podcasts simple and intuitive. And rather good-looking too.
