SLATER, IA: Garst Seed has unveiled a new company tagline and is planning a major PR effort across the farm belt to publicize the motto.
Garst had been using the same slogan as parent company Advanta: "Modern Science, Traditional Values." It will now use the tagline "Commitment, Performance, Technology."
The new line was announced to the company sales force this summer and released to the public at a recent major farming conference in Iowa.
"We wanted to separate the Garst brand by developing a tagline that identifies what we are all about," said Jeff Lacina, PR manager. "We're telling our own story out there."
Lacina this summer hired The Integer Group, an Omnicom shop with offices in Des Moines, IA, to aid him in touting the new tagline. Integer has been alerting Lacina to chances to get Garst, the fourth-largest seed company in North America, included in stories in trade publications.
Lacina has been pitching company executives to agricultural trades and radio stations across the Midwest.
"Radio plays a big part in our communications mix," he said. That's because farmers finishing annual harvests this time of year spend a great deal of time listening to the radio as they work in their fields, he explained.
Top Garst executives will take part in a media tour during October and November that will end at an annual conference for farm broadcasters in Kansas City, MO.
Garst's efforts are timed to gain exposure between now and the end of the year, the period when farmers often make seed-buying decisions for the upcoming crop year.
