The girl from the Yeo Valley adverts

Continuing the theme of advertising and farming – see Elle MacPherson and Jenson Button – I thought it was time for an update on Yeo Valley, whose advert has been a hit on Saturday night TV.

And specifically, the girl in the Yeo Valley ads.

Alexandra Evans. 21-year-old winner of Britain’s Next Top Model and, according to Now magazine, the ‘most famous woman on Saturday night TV’.

Cheryl Cole might disagree. And Danni Minogue too.

Food scams break a sacred trust with consumers

If you ordered lamb on a menu and it made a point that it was from a farm in Hampshire, that is exactly what you would expect.

And you would be surprised to discover it was actually from New Zealand.

But it is a discovery made recently – among others – by local authorities. And, more worryingly for Welsh farmers, they also discovered in one area that about half the lamb sold as Welsh didn’t actually come from Wales.

In a day and age when the provenance and authenticity of food is a major selling point, the temptation to “add value” by being less than truthful about its origins must be increasing.

Jenson Button and Elle MacPherson – now that’s what I call an advert

Speaking of adverts (see earlier post), our friend the bad-ass west country rapping farmers may well be overshadowed by the people at Make Mine Milk, who have given us today’s lesson #2 in how to connect with a younger audience:

• Fast cars
• Sexy women

Why mess with a winning formula??

So now we have Jenson Button and Elle MacPherson added to the Make Mine Milk campaign line-up which includes Pixie Lott (see point two above) and the A-Team (see point one).

[They did also have usher, who no doubt is a fan of both of the above].

Enjoy:

Jenson Button sports the Nigel Mansell look with his milk moustache

To my homies in the West Country

How to connect with a young audience:

• Embrace rap music
• Cash in on the X Factor

That’s the formula being used by Yeo Valley – purveyors of fine organic produce – in a bid to get their product noticed.

And so they’ve come up with these here bad-ass farmers

And with lines such as  ‘Yo I’m rolling in my Massey on a summer’s day, Chugging cold milk while I’m bailing hay’ (their spelling, not mine) I can only hope that the advert (which airs on October 9) is less cringe worthy than it sounds.

Read the full lyrics here – sorry, we haven’t got the audio yet so you’ll have to make up the tune.

It’s a noble effort. But the same, I remember, was said about John Barnes, Shaquille O’Neal and of course, Jedward, when they all tried their hands at the ancient art form that is rap music.

It remains to be seen how these guys will get on. Will the audience be cringing, scratching their heads, or frantically searching iTunes to find where they can purchase this piece of West-side gold?

One thing is for sure though, its bound to get noticed and YeoValley will stick in the minds of the X Factor audience – at least until the end of the commercial break and the next hopeful bashes out a tuneless version of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing.

Daily Mail clone stories and a serious blood pressure issue

Is it just me or is the Daily Mail waging a campaign to destroy the British farming industry?

I’m no fan of the Mail – in fact few newspapers make my blood boil with such regularity, but this week it has reached new heights.

This morning marks its third front page on the cloned cow revelations which have focused a media storm on one unsuspecting farmer in Inverness.

Under the headline ‘Farmer with 96 Clones : As the big supermarkets vow NEVER to sell clone meat or milk, the Mail tracks down the farm at the centre of the controversy’ it carries a picture of Steven Innes who runs Newmeadow Holsteins.

Ex-Sun editor tells farmers to cheer up to win PR battle

IT was cold – very cold – at the Oxford Farming Conference but some of the messages that came out of it should warm the heart of farmers.

It had looked like food security was going to be the dominant topic. But in the end it was all about image.

Hilary Benn began by improving his among his many farming critics. “I want British farmers to produce as much food as possible. No ifs. No buts,” was the soundbite intended to encapsulate the mood of his speech.  

It worked, with most regular Hilary watchers describing it as his best and most pro-farming speech yet, with the caveat that he will ultimately, as he has always, wished, be judged on what he does.

There was plenty more of interest over the days but there was no doubt that that the best was very much reserved for last.

As the conference was drawing to a close, the IGD’s Joanne Denney Finch unveiled a survey showing, to the surprise of virtually all, how much the public love farmers.

Nearly nine out of 10 wanted supermarkets to stock more British food, with 81 per cent saying farmers should be paid more. Farmers were described as ‘important’ and only doctors and nurses were seen as more hard-working.

Then it got even more interesting as former Sun editor David Yelland delivered a classic ‘good news, bad news’ paper to those who had braved the cold inside the 19^th Century venue until the bitter end.

The good news was that not anything as hostile to farmers as the industry believes, according to conversations Mr Yelland had with national newspaper editors and influential broadcasters prior to his speech.

“The media does not hate you at all,” said Mr Yelland, now a leading PR executive and urbane, thoughtful and quietly spoken, as far removed from the image of a Sun editor as it is possible to be.

With a highly supportive public, too, farmers are, in fact, a ‘marketers dream’ with ‘huge brand loyalty and genuine affection in the hearts and minds of ordinary people’.

But, here’s the rub. Farmers have failed miserably to tap into this goodwill, because they are too miserable. “You are not a cheery lot,” Mr Yelland told suitably glum looking delegates.

That is reflected, he went on, in the negative language farmers use – words like risk, appalled, failure and nightmare – his research unearthed on farming websites like this one.

It is a ‘lexicon of defeat’ and it must be exchanged for some more positive language if farmers are to take advantage of their standing in society.

The first task, he said, is to find the right words and the second is to find the right people to say them. He then ruffled some feathers by questioning whether the NFU had sufficient trust among the public to speak for farmers.

All thought provoking stuff. But is Yelland right? Do the public and media really love farmers? Has the industry let itself down by being too negative? And is the NFU doing a good enough job in promoting the industry.

What do you think? Let us know.