Mark Kastel: Local, Direct-Marketed & Organic Foods The Guerilla Marketing Advantage

Value-added marketers know they will never “out-Walmart” Walmart on pricing or Whole Foods on glitz. But many farm entrepreneurs/specialty retails have something these giant corporations can't buy at any price — authenticity. Mark Kastel will walk participants through a set of time-tested guerrilla marketing techniques that the big boys will envy. He will present case studies of how growers and retailers integrate point-of-sale signage, sampling, events, newsletters, speaking events, community involvement and media relations into an extremely low cost and highly effective campaign to tell the story behind your food, farmers market, store or farm.

Mark Kastel is co-founder of The Cornucopia Institute, a populist farm policy research group based in Wisconsin. It is dedicated to the fight for economic justice for the family-scale farming community. Through research, advocacy and economic development its goal is to empower farmers, industry participants and consumers both politically and through marketplace initiatives. Cornucopia acts as a corporate and governmental watchdog assuring that no compromises to the credibility of organic farming methods and the food it produces are made in the pursuit of profit. Actively resisting regulatory rollbacks and weakening of organic standards to protect/maintain consumer confidence in organics. Cornucopia operates in the regulatory, marketplace, legal and investment arenas. The organization also endeavors to protect the interest of family-scale farmer's other marketing vehicles ("local," "farmstead," "community sponsored agriculture") that are being co-opted by corporate interests. Kastel, who worked for agribusiness giants International Harvester , J.I. Case and FMC prior to making the paradigm shift, almost 30 years ago, to sustainable agriculture, lives on a 160-acre organic farm in the rugged hills of southwestern Wisconsin, near the tiny hamlet of Rockton.

Recorded Friday, December 12, 2013