The World Is Coming to Our Door: Georgia Agriculture Is Ready to Greet Them
A Case Study of One State’s Efforts to Market Agriculture Through the Olympics
By Faith Peppers Extension News Editor University of Georgia, Athens

Introduction

In July and August 1996 more than 1.1 million out-of-state visitors and more than 675,000 Georgians will pass through the streets of Atlanta. The immediate economic impact on Georgia of hosting the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games is projected at $5.1 billion. That is more than 31 Super Bowls or 113 years of commercial fishing in Georgia (Niemi, Albert and Jeff Humphreys, “Dollar Value of Olympics,” Georgia Trend/Business Atlanta, September 1995, pp. 15-17).

The Olympic Games, and all the festivals leading up to and following, will afford the state an unparalleled opportunity to educate this global audience about the South. The University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences is taking advantage of this opportunity in many ways involving as many areas as possible.

Strategy

Because the Olympics will be focused in Atlanta, but competition will be scattered throughout the state (including three events on the University campus), The University of Georgia has unique opportunities to get involved and introduce the land-grant system, Extension and Georgia agriculture in general to a worldwide audience.

The College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences is involved in projects that will reach a variety of audiences, including athletes training in local communities, the international media and visitors to the Games.

Projects were supported through information in employee publications, committee participation and statewide collaborations. Many county Extension agents are serving on community committees to promote their area to visitors to the Games. Extension and college specialists were called in as consultants on projects sponsored by the Olympic planning committee (ACOG), and the college supported employees’ involvement in agricultural-based programs throughout the state.

Implementation

Georgia Agriculture 96

The largest undertaking of the college is its participation in Georgia Agriculture 96, a consortium of 21 agricultural commodities, agribusinesses and educational institutions working to promote Georgia agriculture during the Olympic Games.

The University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences has five members on the committee representing the experiment stations, Extension communications, 4-H, Extension agriculture and natural resources, and college alumni. Fort Valley State College has an additional two representatives on the committee from their agricultural college.

In order to be a member of the committee, each organization contributed $10,000. Because the University isn’t in a position to make such cash contributions, the college instead arranged in-kind donations. The full-time coordinator of the committee is on loan from the experiment stations. The University continues to pay her salary, benefits and expenses.

The College donated 10 hours per week of time from an Extension news editor to handle the committee’s local and state media relations, and donated the use of a new computer to the committee’s headquarters through the closing of the Games. The news staff donated time and equipment to produce a media guide that will be presented to the international media as they begin arriving for the Games. (The guide is available on the World Wide Web, along with expanded information about Georgia agriculture.)

These in-kind donations fulfilled the monetary obligation to have a seat on the board of directors.

Centennial Olympic Park: Georgia Agriculture’s Living Legacy

Georgia Agriculture 96 has two main thrusts during the games. One is Georgia Agriculture’s Living Legacy, an educational plot in the 21-acre Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta. During the Games the three-quarter-acre plot will be planted in Georgia row crops, trees, turfgrasses and ornamentals. Informational kiosks will be placed around the perimeter of the plot to provide educational information about commodities that can’t exhibit in the park, such as livestock and poultry. The kiosks will be equipped with interactive video and possibly robotic replicas of the animals.

The College is involved in the park exhibit in several ways. The committee that will decide what plants will be represented in the park, how to plant them and actually develop and maintain the plot is being headed up by a combination of Extension agronomists and research technicians from the University of Georgia and Fort Valley State College.

The walkways leading up to and through the exhibit will be paved in engraved Olympic bricks. The state’s 4-H’ers, along with county Extension offices, FFA, FHA-Hero and College alumni, are selling the bricks across the Southeast. They have developed their own incentive programs, and the Olympic Committee has agreed to donate $5 for each brick sold by 4-H to the Georgia 4-H Foundation’s scholarship fund.

During the Games, Extension specialists, 4-H’ers and news editors will be in the park to give information about Georgia agriculture to visitors. After the Games, College agronomists will replant the park in native Southern ornamentals, trees and turfgrasses. The plot will then be cared for by Atlanta-area Urban Gardeners, Master Gardeners and the Extension Corporate Gardener groups. A 28-by-28-foot hardscape made from Georgia marble and featuring a map of Georgia etched with the Georgia Agriculture 96 logo, will remain in the park as a lasting legacy to agriculture’s contributions to society.

The American South Marketplace Country Store & Farmer’s Market

The second major project of Georgia Agriculture 96 is the American South Marketplace Country Store & Farmer’s Market. The Marketplace will be open July 17 through August 4, 1996, to offer visitors products and foods native to Georgia and the surrounding states. The Marketplace will be near the Georgia State Capitol, within walking distance of most of the downtown hotels and the major sports venues.

The Marketplace will be a covered, open-air facility that is expected to attract its share of the more than 1.1 million visitors expected in Atlanta during the Games. In addition to corporate exhibitors, the Marketplace will feature local entertainment and family-oriented activities and educational opportunities. A country store will allow smaller agriculture-related businesses to sell their products in the Marketplace.

Each member of Georgia Agriculture 96 will receive a free 10-by-10 booth in the Marketplace. From the booth, the University will distribute information about the land-grant system, the University’s history, the Cooperative Extension Service, the experiment stations and fun facts about Georgia agricultural products.

In addition, a video board will be erected and will constantly show educational pieces about Georgia agriculture and individual commodities. Each contributing member of the committee will be allotted periodic two-minute spots on the video board. Plus, Georgia 4-H’ers will be in the Marketplace performing entertainment numbers and presenting informative agriculture-related demonstrations.

QuiltScape

College and Extension horticulturists were also approached by ACOG to help develop a planting scheme that would reflect the “Look of the Games.” These plants would bring out the designated color scheme and pattern to give a unified look to areas around the venues, local parks, business courtyards and home gardens to promote the Games.

The horticulturists developed a list of plants that would give the desired colors, and will help promote using the list and give educational information on how to plant and grow these plants to have them blooming during the Games.

Also, as a part of the QuiltScape program, Atlanta’s urban horticulture gardens will be planted in the pattern, with some help from corporate sponsors. This will give Urban Gardeners, Master Gardeners and employees at downtown corporations a chance to work together and form a partnership that is scheduled to last beyond the games. Plans are being made for these corporate sponsors to help maintain the urban ornamental gardens in local public housing, public elementary schools and inner-city parks after the Games are over and to help support the Urban Gardening efforts.

Signs will be placed in each garden to reflect the corporate sponsors, the Urban Garden club and Extension efforts.

Summary

I wish I could quote reams of marketing research, sound data and surveys that were conducted by the College to guide us to the projects we have selected to market agriculture to the world during the Olympic Games. But I can’t.

This is, however, a fine example of how to hop onto a moving train.

Georgia agriculture was on the verge of being left out of the Olympics experience. With major corporate sponsors located in the South like Delta, NationsBank, Home Depot and Coca-Cola, it’s easy to get lost in the push and shove for big corporate dollars.

A little organization and good support at ACOG helped us show the powers-that-be at the Olympics that agriculture is the largest segment of Georgia’s economy and a major part of the state’s heritage, tradition and way of life, and certainly deserved a special place in the festivities. They heard us loud and clear.

The support from organizers for the Olympic Park has been tremendous. Even in the face of a potentially explosive situation they have stood by us.

The Atlanta Olympic Games will have all nonsmoking venues, including the park. Yet tobacco is the third largest cash crop in the state. We were really in a dilemma because the Tobacco Commodity Commission was an equal partner in Georgia Agriculture 96, and by all rights should be among the plants represented in the park. ACOG’s response: “You’re not smoking it, you’re growing it.” We will have tobacco in the park plot, not as an endorsement of smoking, but to show how one of Georgia’s leading crops is grown.

In return, we were able to help them put a new face on a project that was getting loads of bad press: the Olympic Brick Program. The ideas was for Home Depot to sell engraved bricks as a fundraiser for the park. When brick sales bombed badly, ACOG was left holding the bag. Enter bright, eager 4-H’ers.

The Georgia 4-H Clubs, along with Extension offices, FFA and FHA/HERO have been asked to sell 40,000 bricks to help support the agricultural exhibit. All bricks sold by the youngsters will be placed in the agricultural area of the park and will be a part of the lasting legacy to Georgia agriculture. Plus, each brick sold will earn a $5 contribution for the Georgia 4-H Foundation. It has given a much-needed spark to the whole brick program.

Another marketing challenge Extension faced was explaining why, even though the corporate sponsor of QuiltScape had paid several million dollars to be the sponsor, our specialists couldn’t promote buying plants from that company over other retail nurseries across the state. A compromise allowed Extension to promote the project without promoting the sponsor, leaving it up the advertisements to promote the sponsor’s name.

The brick program and the QuiltScape program are just two examples of the effectiveness of the tried-and-true county delivery system. The grass-roots acceptance of Extension has helped get those programs off the ground. It has given the College and Extension an opportunity to play in the league of the major contributors and show unique opportunities for corporate partnerships with education.

Any new partnership has its settling-in period. Georgia Agriculture 96 broke new ground when it brought the state’s commodities together for a common promotion. Then it became a delicate balance of making sure each of the 21 partners gets equal billing in news releases, media coverage, the media guide and even in the logo. Finding a commodity-neutral logo was no easy feat. The group decided on wheat since Georgia doesn’t produce much, and it is an easily recognizable symbol internationally for food and fiber.

While we were able to find a niche to get agriculture on the Olympic map, our late entry into the Olympic arena left some obvious missed opportunities. We were not able to secure financial support from some large agribusinesses that normally would have contributed to projects like QuiltScape and Georgia Agriculture 96 because their sponsor-ship dollars were already committed to other Olympic-related events.

Three major sporting events -- soccer, rhythmic gymnastics and volleyball -- will be on the University’s campus. Two of those -- rhythmic gymnastics and volleyball -- will be in the Coliseum, just outside the doors of the University of Georgia Extension Service offices. Lack of planning erased any chance of marketing opportunities to scores of visitors who will pass right by our buildings.

Tight security and limited access to the area will eliminate any activity at this point.

More training on how to promote communities could have been given to the agents. Specialists did put together a two-day workshop on farm tours to help some areas near sporting venues attract visitors. More were needed.

The lack of research on the front end left Georgia agriculture and the University taking opportunities as they were presented by others to promote agriculture during the Olympics. However, when presented those opportunities the College and Extension have taken an active, and, in many cases, leadership roles. Data collection mechanisms are built into the effots to help gauge the effectiveness of the programs in which we will participate.

We have discovered that this is a first-of-its-kind effort. We contacted agricultural interests in other states that have hosted Olympic Games and found that they did not make special efforts to promote the industry during the events. So, we also had no precedent to follow.

Some pre-Games communication has allowed us to gather some needed information. Our site on the World Wide Web allows us to communicate with international journalists and exchange story ideas and arrange interviews and tours before they come to Atlanta to better fit agricultural interests into their schedules. At the American South Marketplace, we have hired a company to do exit polling to see what kinds of visitors attended, and what they learned.

The park plot will remain as a lasting legacy to agriculture for future visitors, and any remaining funds from the plot’s development will be used to set up a scholarship foundation for agriculture students.

Georgia Agriculture 96 will remain in place in some form after the Games. As the world becomes more and more interconnected, and the marketplace becomes more global, there will be many opportunities for the organization to help market Georgia agriculture in the future.

The programs that are now in place will help us introduce Georgia agriculture to the world in 1996, they will help us develop new relationships with large corporate partners and help us educate those in our own state about what the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the Georgia Extension Service does to support the citizens of Georgia.

Post Script

The opportunities to get involved don’t stop at the Georgia borders. Many neighboring states will be represented in the American South Marketplace. These states are participating in several ways. Some are represented by large agribusinesses based in those states who will display their goods in the Marketplace. Some are represented by regional commodity commissions and some state agriculture departments are planning to have exhibits.

The Marketplace is an excellent opportunity for statewide partnerships in education, government and business to display the agriculture industry. For more information on exhibits at the American South Marketplace, call Georgia Agriculture 96 at (770) 446-1229.