There’s a big red tent shaped like a barn, kids rushing to pull on as many clothes as they can in this blazing summer heat, and a pig running on a ramp trying to avoid being lassoed. It’s all part of the fun at the Tractor Supply Co.’s first mobile marketing tour: “Follow me to the Fair.”
Running through Oct. 11, this interactive tour is making stops at state and county fairs and Tractor Supply stores, across six states: Michigan, Ohio, New York, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma.
A tent, shaped like a Barn, is part of the 2,400 footprint, and is where all of the interactive games are held, each custom designed for Tractor Supply and its partners. For example, Cub Cadet, sponsors a game where players sit on a riding mower and try to lasso Pickles (the fake pig) and it “runs” down a ramp.
“It’s very unique to us as a brand and a way to integrate our vendors in a unique way,” Diane Bollig, manager of local store marketing for Tractor Supply says.
In a video game, players can move a dog that herds sheep into a pen. There’s a one-way lawn mower race. A bone toss with Purina Pet and a ring toss using Cub Cadet lawn mower belts. Carhartt sponsors a relay race where four players jump into a huge toolbox filled with Carhart clothing to see who can get the most clothes on at once in a limited time. In addition to Carhartt and Cub Cadet, core sponsors include, Purina Animal Nutrition and Nestlé.
“The initial results and enthusiasm has been off the charts,” says Steve Randazzo, president of Pro Motion, the event and experiential agency working on the tour.
“We were challenged to bring their brand to life,” he says. “When we designed this program we designed it with their consumer in mind, their business objectives in mind and the culture of their organization and have come together very harmoniously out in the field.”
Pro Motion hired three tour staffers, as well as local staff in each marketer.
“We spent a lot of time making sure brand ambassadors lived that life style,” Randazzo says. “They had to grow up on a farm, live in rural American, had to shop at Tractor Supply and had to be service oriented.”
As the Tractor Supply hit the road, social media is playing an important role.
The company nixed the standard social strategy of posting a list of tour locations and dates and then geo-targeting the city the tour is stopping in prior to its arrival to generate attendance. Instead, it launched a slow, steady reveal, posting on Facebook and Instagram. It leaked out clues and hints about where the tour will stop next to get people talking and excited about the tour.
An Aug. 11 a post that included an image of the branded truck read: The #TSCFairTour is on the road to the next county fair! Here’s a HINT: It’s tradition for the James E. Strates train to stop at this fair, every year since 1924. What’s your guess?
Some 75 fans “liked” it and one day later Tammy Padget answered correctly: “Erie county fair…” TSC quickly responded saying “Great job Tammy!.” The Fair Tour will be at The Erie County Fair starting today through 8/23!”
“You want people to be excited about where the tour will be going next,” says Brettan Hawkins, social media manager for Tractor Supply Co. “Even if it’s not stopping in your town you don’t want to eliminate interest beyond anyone who isn’t getting it in their city. We want to let people know this is the first year of the tour and they can respond to say, ‘come to my town next year.’ We’re also building excitement for future tours.”
Once on site, brand reps send back a steady stream of photos and other content to post on social as the tour is underway. That stream revealed an interesting insight that Brettan and her team grabbed onto to promote upcoming stops: Pickles the Pig.
Pickles is not a real pig, but rather a fake pig. Kids sit on a Cub Cadet riding mower and try to lasso Pickles as he “runs” up and down a ramp. Photos of kids riding pickles began appearing on social so Brettan capitalized on that to drive attendance and excitement at upcoming tour stops.
Facebook, with its growing fan base of 314,000, is the main hub for “Follow me to the Fair” conversations, photos and comments. Instagram, the company’s fastest growing channel with 12,300 followers, is used to show behind-the-scenes images of the brand reps out on the road.
“We share photos from the road that capture the excitement,
“There is so much going on at the fair experience,” she says, “What do you focus on? It became clear this moving pig had become the star of the show and I started to see kids taking pictures with the pig.”
She put out a call to name the pig over social and two of the people who participated suggested Pickles. The team created a nameplate to attach to the ramp and the two people who picked the winning name won gift cards.
People register to play giving Tractor Supply lots of consumer data to use for remarketing.
“There’s been a really strong engagement,” Hawkins says.
The New York State Fair is the next stop Aug. 27 through Sept. 7. A larger fair than some of the county fairs, Tractor Supply will also work socially with the state’s social presence for unexpected promotions, like giving away a pair of concert tickets.
“It’s about creating a real community that people want to be a part of and highlighting and spotlighting your fans— real customers using our products in real life,” Hawkins says. “We get lots of great photos like the cowboy who wears his new pair of boots to the local rodeo or backyard chicken raisers. Our brand is really a lifestyle brand and we try to highlight that as much as possible.”
Tractor Supply is measuring success of the mobile marketing tour through visual impressions at each stop, impressions from the moving billboard, which is traveling 3,800 miles across the country, as well as coupons directing people to local stores and pre and post surveys to understand awareness.
“It’s a compilation of a lot of things,” she says.
Tractor Supply is a U.S. retail chain of 1,400 stores that offer products for home improvement, agriculture, lawn and garden maintenance, as well as livestock, equine and pet care.
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