Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Farming Lesson to Save Your Brand

There is an agricultural practice farmers use called “fallow field farming.” It is the method of planting nothing at all to allow fields time to replenish, rejuvenate, and regain fertility. I got to thinking… this practice of waiting a season to allow for replenishment is exactly what some businesses could use…

Fallow Field Branding

This is the business practice of growing nothing at all to give the company an opportunity to replenish, rejuvenate, and regain fertility.

Rapid growth expectations are thrust upon a business by Wall Street and company shareholders.

If you were to order a brand autopsy to determine the cause of death of products or whole companies, more times than not the marketing pathologist would diagnose: over extending product lines (over planting/soil exhaustion), excessive employee churn (over-tilling), and over stretching the brand (over harvesting) until to the point of ruining their own fertility.

What about the notion of letting the business rest for a season to allow it to rejuvenate?

Instead of aggressively building new stores or launching new products – why not let that part of the business go fallow?

I’ll use Starbucks as an example, but there are plenty of businesses – maybe your own – that could use the opportunity.

What if they could stop planting new stores for a season and instead allow rejuvenation? A replenishment of their nutrients. A few benefits would include…

Provide an opportunity for the product teams to weed out products that aren’t the highest quality or exceeding customer expectations.
Ability for human resource teams to further train existing employees as well as better train new hires.
Opportunity for store managers to focus on their current customers – learn names and drink preferences.
Opportunity store managers to participate more in their community.

Should shareholders allow fallow field branding? Isn’t the short-term pause worth the long-term yield? What do you think? Is this idea genius or a bunch of manure?

Background

It is believed that the practice of leaving fields fallow originated because some cultures were forced to return to their old fields, and found that the infertile fields they left behind had become more productive.

This led to the establishment of a rotation system where each growing season certain fields would be left alone or tilled but not planted, extending the useful production life of a set number of fields. sometimes the fallow fields were used for pasturage for animals, which had the incidental benefit of fertilizing the soil.

It was later found that certain plants, thought useless except perhaps for animal fodder, were beneficial to a field’s productivity, and seeds for these plants were planted in fallow fields.[1]

I learned about fallow field farming working at the Land Pavilion at EPCOT Center at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. As a Disney cast member, I started as the host at the movie “Symbiosis” – a documentary about human interaction with the land. Fallow field farming was one of the various land management systems presented. And now you know.

Source:
[1]Definition from the Rice University School of Science and Technology website.
Photo by tico_bassie via Flickr

This article was originally published on the Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog.

5 reactions

(1)
Tweets that mention Farming Lesson to Save Your Brand | Idea Sandbox -- Topsy.com • Sunday, December 6 2009 at 12:58 am

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by John Moore, John Moore. John Moore said: FALLOW FIELD BRANDING … from @IdeaSandbox … smart stuff … http://www.idea-sandbox.com/blog/2009/12/farming-lesson-to-save-your-brand/ [...]
(2)
Aimar • Wednesday, December 9 2009 at 3:23 pm

I think this sounds like healthy business. The challenge with this kind of farming is that it requires in some cases more hours of work to harvest plentiful.
Unfortunately, many brands/ brandowners are not the happiest if you tell them they need more manpower or have to use their resources in a dramatically different way than they´ve allways done.
A shame, because this is good thinking for sustainable business growth just as it is sustainable farming.
(3)
uberVU - social comments • Wednesday, December 16 2009 at 9:32 pm

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by IdeaSandbox: A farming lesson to save your brand. http://www.idea-sandbox.com/ocfcu...
(4)
GeorgeB • Tuesday, December 29 2009 at 6:26 pm

Couple of observations –
It’s not about “resting” (it’s about ‘reinvesting’..)
One of the key benefits of the fallow cycle is to let the microbes render the prior (crop) residue into useful form to be taken up by the successive (plant) growth.

That is a lesson well worth applying to business – as we also need to plow all the prior residues (lessons learned) back into our process improvement initiatives and re-purpose them for our next business cycle. And like the farmers know all too well, some of it will certainly smell like ‘manure’ (which is rich in nutrients that must be ‘moderated’ so not to burn the new seedlings.)

It’s not about ‘disengaging’..(it’s about ‘differentiation’)
During the fallow season, weeds that could not otherwise be eradicated become painfully obvious in the off-season and can be killed out before the next cycle. The farmer knows what the Master gardener (Creator) also noted that to try to take out the weeds during the growing season can reduce overall production.

Again, that is a lesson for our business efforts – as we also need to focus on the potential issues before we launch into production. Early software releases (with real-time real-user testing/and costly bug fixes) can cripple the brand if not kill the company (and need I mention taking politically-motivated action and launching global initiatives – just “because..”). Weeds in the crop, broken software features, or pork in the legislation all have to be eradicated if we are to reap the intended harvest.

Not all share-croppers are worthy to shepherd the land (or the run the business – or the Country). Those that ignore past lessons or waste precious resources should not be licensed to continue.

The best approach (and sustainable)… IS to follow ALL the concepts and apply all the lessons that nature has to offer for our ongoing introspection. Innovation, fueled by the residues of introspection is sustainable. Introspection is often more insightful during a fallow season…even if it forced on us by the cold of winter (or economic downturn).
GeorgeB´s last blog ..Have – Want – Need
(5)
Paul • Tuesday, January 5 2010 at 12:21 pm

George, thank you for finding and reading Idea Sandbox and for your thoughtful comments!

You help make this a conversation instead of a monologue.