BASF
A brand centric approach to crop protection and retailer relationships
As one of the big four crop protection companies in North America – BASF are a solutions-orientated brand rooted in innovation and connectedness. These core attributes needed to be elevated across retail and internal teams, to make the brand more relevant to customers and farmers.
The Challenge
Brand and marketing challenges are broad and deep for businesses that work across many products and categories. North America agriculture crop protection leaders BASF are one such business – managing and marketing many product brands to retailers and farmers. They needed to develop robust brand strategies, reinforce their leadership position and ensure that they stayed one step ahead.
BASF have numerous crop protection brands – famous for setting the standard in new innovations and creating industry staple products. However, due to threats from generic products, proliferation of competitor brands and a focus on product brands, there was a need to unlock the power of the BASF Masterbrand to support a drive for greater brand presence, value and growth.
Our challenge was three-fold. Firstly, we needed to demonstrate the value and importance of the Masterbrand. Secondly, develop marketing pillars and brand strategies to connect the categories and products, and lastly, develop tools and tactics for the sales and field teams, and retailers – those with the power to influence the farmers making the crop input decisions.
The Solution
Over a period of four years, we worked with the marketing team across brand strategy, brand planning, brand architecture, naming, and customer segmentation – helping to shape understanding, uncover opportunities, bring fresh thinking to align BASF’s products and categories, and bring cohesion to internal and external comms.
Initial onboarding with BASF included extensive market understanding, interviews with staff, customers and retailers, sales team ride-alongs – plus interviews and audits in Iowa, Illinois and North Carolina. This enabled our team to fully immerse themselves in the brand and understand the decision-making process for key customers. Working with brand strategist, Jim Dunne, we hosted a number of design thinking workshops in Raleigh, North Carolina. These sessions explored opportunities and generated ideas focused on strengthening relationships with retailers and managing the brand portfolio for simplicity and impact.
In collaboration with the marketing and product teams, we developed a branding framework based on a number of core brand principles, goals and areas of focus. This became the blueprint to guide brand decisions and priorities across internal, field and retail channels.
To enable internal teams to organise their products and services around farming seasons and customers behaviours, we developed tools to connect categories and products, segmentation and communications – creating a more holistic approach.
When it comes to sales, the farmer’s relationship with the retailer is crucial. This area warranted specific attention and the creation of dedicated campaigns communicating the value of the BASF team, expertise and innovation. We developed initiatives that shared thought leadership and advice on retail services, created sales aids and devised relationship building tactics. A kit of parts to help grow the business by growing sales team confidence.
Finally, we helped to build a broader understanding of categories, connected products and how best to communicate them. To do this, we created guidance on how to talk about BASF at all levels – from the Masterbrand to the sector, category, product and seasonal variants. This helped to shift focus from specific product-centric campaigns to a more structured and managed approach.