Elsoms Seeds

Product launch campaign

Easier soft option.

Lincolnshire-based Elsoms Seeds, the UK’s leading independent family-owned seed specialist and plant breeder, are relative newcomers to the wheat market. Recent breakthroughs in their innovative breeding programme have seen new varieties meet recommended agronomic specifications. Merit, a Group 3 soft winter wheat, is their latest release and we were given the task to create the launch campaign.

The UK’s Group 3 soft market is highly competitive with eight recommended varieties currently available to the grower. Given that the total UK crop is around 250,000 hectares, new varieties like Merit need to shout loud.

Merit trialled strongly in the East of the UK, a region stretching from the Isle of Wight to the Tyne. As a result, commercial confidence in the variety is high with Elsoms aiming to secure a sizeable percentage of the Group 3 market through Merit over time. In addition, it is suitable for both soft milling and distilling and that end market flexibility is a really important advantage for the modern grower.

So how to sell it? Merit’s key benefit is that it offers a robust all-round package with strong genetics, good disease resistance, early maturity and resilience to the UK’s variable weather conditions, making it a reliable and cost-effective variety to grow.

Our knowledge and experience of creating effective messaging in the agri-market quickly flagged that this launch needed to be kept as single-minded and as simple as possible. The positive benefits offered by Merit are hard to beat. So we simply featured them endorsed by ‘Merit makes it easier’, a strong and unbreakable proposition.

The campaign used print titles in the farming sector, online ads, direct marketing via email and social channels to create awareness for the new variety, driving sales into the merchant network.