Insight
What We’ve Learned
We’ve all read blogs, self-help books, and podcasts about what it takes to be successful. In some form or fashion, the usual anecdotes emerge, such as you’re responsible for your own success, success isn’t linear, or it’s all about people and networking for leverage.
These are all true. But sometimes, perhaps reflection can serve as a great lesson and inspire your next move forward. You can’t spend your whole life looking back, but some key lessons transcend time.
In the last 15 years, production agriculture has changed, and the companies that provide services and products to agricultural producers have also had to change. And thus, the marketing for agribusinesses has also shifted with the times. To stay relevant in marcomm for agriculture, you need to evolve and grow with each season.
Cultivate is celebrating 15 years of serving agricultural clients in 2026. We’re honored to have helped launch successful campaigns, engaging storytelling, strong brand building, crisis management, PR, and events at all levels over the years. We’ve had social media content and campaigns go viral; we’ve won numerous awards and have enjoyed the many friendships along the way.
We have several things planned to help honor and celebrate our 15 years, as well as what we are looking forward to in the coming years. But first, we think it is important to look back at some of the most important lessons we’ve learned and how they transcend into future direction. Afterall, you must always still move forward and progress. But true progress accounts for where you’ve come from and applies the lessons learned along the way.
In this multipart installation we’re going to share some of favorite work through the years, as well as insights into how agriculture marcomm has changed, progressed and where we see it going.
To start, let’s talk about the biggest lesson: everything changes and everything stays the same. Innocuous, and ambiguous, right? But here’s the thing, the fundamentals of what makes something successful in marketing does’t change because the tools we use to disseminate the campaign have changed. And that’s an important lesson for a lot of brands.
Sure, there are lots of ways to capitalize in the moment on trends and see spikes and boost in your metrics, but those often don’t drive, long-term sustainable growth. More times than not, they are a flash in the pan. And one thing about being in business for 15 years and looking to continue that path, it’s ok to capitalize on a flash boost, but overall, we want strategic, well-planned growth.
We may shoot video optimized for mobile consumption in 2026, but the content of the video still needs to: resonate, elicit an emotional response, and add value. We can’t throw caution to the wind and chase trending audio and dance moves all day. Instead, we should stay true to marketing fundamentals such as understanding your audience.
There is a shift in terminology that also comes with the shift in how campaigns are consumed. But again, the fundamentals and roots are not new. Perhaps you’re working with content creators these days, but 10-15 years ago we were calling them customer testimonial campaigns. Just as you wanted to highlight the right customer to have influence over your target audience, selecting and working with the right content creator to have influence is just as important.
There was a time when brands were encouraged to post daily on social channels to stay relevant, but now it’s more about delivering content that resonates and is rewarded with the algorithm. In fact, too frequent posting of low value content hurts you far more than less-frequent, high-value content. Just as selecting which traditional marketing channels to use for your campaign because costs of billboards, print ads, radio campaigns and mailers were expensive. There is a cost to developing and publishing content that doesn’t hit the mark. No matter where or when you publish, the rule of content is king still applies. In today’s very busy world, the right message matters.
In our next segment, we’re diving deeper into messaging and storytelling. Then we’re going to transition to the growth of digital when it comes to brand storytelling. The digital era has significantly changed how we communicate—not just what is said, but how it is said where you reach your audience with it matters. But you still must have a good story to share no matter where or when.
We’re honored to have served and stood beside clients for the last 15 years, and we look forward to the next 15. Come back for parts two and three where we discuss storytelling and the growth of digital communications for agricultural brands, and lessons that can help set you up for success in your efforts today.
