The Challenge
Many Canadian growers hold off on spraying fungicides until they see a disease affecting their crops. But this approach has a problem – once diseases are present, the grower’s returns are already taking a hit. To make matters worse, growers may use a fungicide they’ve grown comfortable with, even if it’s not the most effective choice on the market.
As one of the world’s top crop protection companies, ADAMA saw an opportunity to help growers save their investments. With ADAMA’s new, industry-leading MAXENTIS fungicide, growers could prevent high-risk diseases like sclerotinia, mycosphaerella blight and anthracnose from affecting their crops. Now, the company needed our help introducing the product to their audience in a powerful way.
The Solution
We helped ADAMA develop and launch a national ad campaign promoting their new fungicide. Each piece of the creative featured a specific crop – peas, soybeans, lentils or canola – in a way that made the risks of not using MAXENTIS explicitly clear. By asking our audience to pick a side, we positioned the new product as not just the best choice on the market, but the only one.
The print ads ran in a variety of publications relevant to Canadian farmers, and a digital component ran on YouTube, Meta and Google Display. By targeting growers by location, we were able to tailor the crop and disease to reflect their needs. For our Google Display and YouTube ads, we strategically targeted sites relevant to growers and filtered out ones that weren’t.
The campaign ran from January to June of that year. To maximizing our messaging’s importance to growers, we increased ad spend when it was most relevant. In the new year, growers begin planning their crops and products, allowing us to position MAXENTIS as a top contender for those who are proactive about crop protection. In the springtime, many growers begin to see diseases affecting their crops, which meant MAXENTIS could serve as an immediate solution.
To further capitalize on the broad awareness and intrigue created by our “PICK A SIDE” ads, we launched conversion-focused messaging on Meta. These subsequent ads aligned with the campaign’s look and feel and would help further motivate growers with additional support points.
All our digital ads led the audience to the same custom landing page, which gave more in-depth insights on how the product could protect their specific crop and encouraged them to reach out to ADAMA’s team for more info.
In my 11 years here, I’ve never experienced growers asking for a product by name so soon after launch.
— Jodi Starodub, Marketing Lead
Results
It was clear that MAXENTIS stood out to growers. The campaign landing page saw the highest engagement of all ADAMA’s digital properties, with a high engagement rate that was 204% better than their campaign average. The product’s tech sheet was ADAMA’s second-most downloaded resource from October 2023 to August 2024. Overall, the campaign generated 3.6 million digital impressions.
The awareness campaign proved effective at setting our conversion-focused ads up for success. After refreshing the creative, click-through rates increased by nearly 60%. In fact, Meta ranked three refreshed ads “above average”, and their conversions increased 3x-5x.
And above all else, MAXENTIS sold out during the growing season.
204% Higher engagement rate on campaign landing page vs average
3.6 million Digital impressions were generated
60% Increase in click-through rates after refreshing creative
And above all else, MAXENTIS sold out during the growing season.