Event Promotional Package

The 2019 growing season was quite challenging for most South Dakota farmers and ranchers. Extreme rainfall and frequent flooding left many producers facing complex crop and livestock production issues. In order to ease confusion for producers and answer tough questions, I organized ten ‘Extension Open House Meetings’ throughout the hardest hit flood areas in South Dakota during the month of June (originally eight were scheduled, then two additional meetings were added additional advertising). The free, come-and-go-style meetings offered expert advice from SDSU Extension specialists, NRCS personnel, RMA representatives, and local crop insurance agents. I chose an informal “open house” meeting style to allow producers to attend at any time throughout the session and ask questions unique to their situation, rather than attending an afternoon seminar that may only partially apply to them. This is not a common Extension meeting format in South Dakota, but it fit the flooding situation well. The most commonly discussed topics were cover crop decisions on prevent plant acres, crop insurance/RMA rules and regulations, weed management, NRCS/FSA programs, general farm business management, and various flood related topics. The meetings were advertised through paid ads and press releases in multiple regional and local print and online media sources, social media, hung flyers, paid and free radio ads and interviews, word of mouth, and email lists. I created the content of the attached flyer, it served as the backbone of the advertising campaign and was used for electronic communications, hung in meeting locations, and served as a base to build other paid advertising. The press release was created based on language used on the flyer and was distributed to multiple media sources across the state and posted on the SDSU Extension website, which had more than 277,000 new users last year. The attached radio interview was aired on the SDSU Extension Radio network that plays five days a week on ten stations, covering the entire state. In total, approximately 100 people (mainly agriculture producers) attended the meetings and more than 20 different personnel from Extension, NRCS, RMA, and crop insurance agencies assisted to make these meetings a success.