Introduction
Following recommendations from previous research with the Agriculture Institute of Florida (AIF), the PIE Center tested strategically framed messages about agricultural issues in an effort to determine what works and what doesn’t in agricultural messaging.
In 2010, the PIE Center conducted focus groups to measure consumers’ perceptions of various words and phrases commonly used in agriculture. As a follow up, seeking to understand what information was currently communicated within agricultural awareness campaigns and if these campaigns were successful, the PIE Center conducted a content analysis in 2011.
Based on those two examinations, AIF and the PIE Center embarked on a third project and tested a variety of message frames and appeals with focus groups later that year. Frames present messages in gain or loss terms to encourage and influence the audience to adopt similar frames of reference, whereas appeals portray messages and products as meaningful, believable and desirable.
Across the state, the PIE Center held six focus groups with opinion leaders — young and educated consumers with the ability to share ideas and influence attitudes — to assess their awareness of various issues facing the agricultural industry and their perception of strategically framed messages about the issues.
Key findings
Public understanding of agriculture is multidimensional in nature. Opinion leader participants in this study were interested in knowing more about both the products and the processes involved in agricultural production. The participants wanted details and knew where they would get information if they were inspired to seek it out.
The participants mentioned throughout the focus groups that they cared about issues and topics that were personally important and relevant to them.
Consumers in these focus groups expressed a lot of distrust and skepticism, especially when talking about large corporations. If a message’s construction introduces skepticism, the strategic frames and appeals had no effect.
General Recommendations
Based on the results of the focus groups, the PIE Center recommends the continued research and testing of strategically framed agricultural messages that target specific audiences, such as opinion leaders, urban audiences, media members and policy makers.
Agricultural communicators should constantly work to incorporate personal and emotional content in their messages. Further research should be done to identify topics and issues that resonate with consumers and specific audience segments. Once identified, these components should be worked into regular communication and used consistently in messaging.
Because consumers expressed distrust of large corporations, communicators should focus on small-scale operations when communicating about agriculture. Consumers want honesty and truthful communication about the industry; therefore, the corporate side of agriculture needs to be acknowledged, but work needs to be done to position this aspect in ways that enhance consumer understanding.
Similarly, focus group participants valued transparency. Further research should be conducted to test transparency of the agricultural industry with consumers to establish how different levels of transparency affect consumers’ attitudes and perceptions.
The PIE Center recommends agricultural organizations increase collaboration with Florida’s governmental agencies, land grant universities and commodity group associations to develop consistent and strategic messages. The cooperation would also present opportunities to pool resources for message testing and additional research.
Recommendations for Practitioners
Current communication materials within agricultural organizations should be assessed to establish what is working, what needs improvement, and what is not working. Establishing a solid base of current communication materials and messages will give organizations the opportunity to communicate successfully in the future.
As often as possible, communication materials should be tested with relevant groups of consumers before being released to the public. What practitioners or industry professionals think will be received well might not actually fare well with the general public. Therefore, pretesting communication materials is essential to overall success. By including consumers and opinion leaders, the industry would increase its understanding of the target audience and engage it more effectively.
When using strategic framing in messages, communicators should make sure that frames are being used that are attractive to the target audience. Communication with opinion leaders should focus more on positive gain frames rather than loss frames. By increasing issue-related framing the opinion leader audience will be more influenced by the messages being communicated.
This project was part of a series done in collaboration with Agriculture Institute of Florida. Learn more by visiting Analysis of agricultural awareness campaigns and Testing agricultural words, phrase & photos with consumers, similar projects in this series.
