Will the brand’s in-house TikToker help to engage more young people in agriculture?
When the marketing team at John Deere announced in April that they were hiring a “Chief Tractor Officer” — a different kind of CTO for any shareholders out there — their intention was not to find a tractor expert. In their search to find the voice of the next generation of farmers and outdoor laborers, they weren’t seeking a fruit picker or a cattle rancher, either. The first-ever Chief Tractor Officer was to be a TikTok star. And this TikToker was to receive $200,000 for a yearlong contract making short-form videos that highlight all the amusing, unexpected ways John Deere products are used to make a living — and, more importantly, that catch and hold the fickle attention of young people online.
The search for the CTO marks the 187-year-old tractor brand’s official foray into TikTok — a platform first embraced by tweens hungry for coordinated dances and lip syncs — and a seismic shift in the corporation’s otherwise buttoned-up presence online.
To drum up excitement for the new role, the iconic yellow and green sought the help of some faces that would be familiar to the TikTok set. Deere launched its campaign with a two-minute video starring the NFL’s favorite nice guy Brock Purdy, perched high on the driver’s side of a tractor, on a quest to fill the role of the “best job ever.” His 49ers teammate Colton McKivitz made an appearance, too, before cameos of other star athletes and social media influencers flooded in to share why they wanted the job.
Deere announced last month that it had selected TikToker Rex Curtiss out of hundreds of applicants, according to PR Week. He’s a recent environmental science graduate from the University of Washington who amassed a following on social media for his sculptures crafted from red Babybel cheese wax; his application for the role was a performance of an original song in which he did in fact make a tractor out of wax. (Representatives of the John Deere marketing team declined a request for comment about the role, and Curtiss did not reply to a request for comment in time for publication.)
Before Deere made its selection, head of marketing Jen Hartmann did an hour-long interview for the Farm4Profit podcast in which she admitted that there have been lots of similar PR stunts from big corporations pandering to younger audiences with click-bait job titles. (Think Red Lobster’s Chief Biscuit Officer or the Chief Beer and Pizza Officer at the Midwestern chain Casey’s.) But Hartmann told the podcast hosts that the CTO search was different because her team was looking for “someone who would be the face and voice for our channel, from their point of view and not corporate, not the company.”
Of course, in an industry where the national median farm income is often a negative number, the CTO’s six-figure salary for TikTokery is pretty shocking. But Zach Johnson, a content creator known to his millions of YouTube and TikTok followers as The Millennial Farmer, says a TikTok-first role like the CTO is a priceless asset in today’s media market.
“I really think that the value is there,” Johnson said via Zoom. “There’s a lot more work in that than somebody would realize.” It may not be hauling bales or fixing a combine, but it’s expected that the production behind Deere’s high-quality reels will take some elbow grease.
The CTO is expected to come up with quirky, out-of-the-box coverage that will engage younger eyeballs, or, in Hartmann’s words, “grab people by the throat and pull them in.”
And while this recent PR push has been a convenient distraction from Deere’s negative headlines this year — remember that $1.1 million racial discrimination settlement, or the wave of lay-offs, or the decline in revenue? — the company’s official position is much cheerier. Amidst a growing sense that young people are disconnected from farming, the CTO is expected to come up with quirky, out-of-the-box coverage that will engage younger eyeballs, or, in Hartmann’s words, “grab people by the throat and pull them in.” There will be a range of subjects in the coming video content, she explained. Maybe one features a potato farmer at a McDonalds where their potatoes are served as fries; maybe person-on-the-street style interviews testing non-farmers’ knowledge of how pistachios are grown; or maybe plowing through snow at the Buffalo Bills stadium.
“We want that person on a plane and out at the field when they’re clearing that blizzard,” Hartmann said.
Johnson, who has maintained a working relationship with Deere over several years, had a cameo in the CTO campaign launch video. He told Ambrook Research that in order to engage young people in the industry, it’s important to highlight how much of agriculture in the modern era is actually tech.
“The amount of tech going into today’s farming is unfathomable,” he said, giving the example of his team using electromagnetic waves in the soil to figure out exactly how much nutrients and water one tenth of an acre can hold.
“If people want to farm and be involved in agriculture but they don’t want to crawl around on their hands and knees, there are thousands of jobs out there,” he said. “It’s just such a diverse industry. So much of that would surprise the heck out of people.”
Of course, Johnson is more than a social media phenom: He’s a sixth-generation corn and soybean farmer in Minnesota who grew up on the farm he now owns with his wife. He started making videos for social media because of “misconceptions” he saw about the modernization of his family’s industry.
“To me it makes it so much more personal when you can really connect a human being to the brand.”
“It started in 2016 and it was one hundred percent trying to relate to people about what’s going on on farms,” he recalled. “As somebody who’s actively involved in farming and grew up with it, I wanted to give the view from the ground as a farmer, and show that we’re still the same families we’ve been for hundreds of years but we’re adopting the latest and greatest [tech] like every other industry.”
And though the average age of a farmer is 58 and continues to rise, according to the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture, the number of beginners who have farmed for less than 10 years is actually on the rise — a trend Johnson has observed anecdotally. His DMs regularly overflow with questions from outsiders who are curious about what it takes to work in agriculture.
“I have conversations everyday with people who want to get involved with farming,” he said.
As for the CTO position, there’s no way to know just yet the impact it will have on youth engagement in agriculture. But if the millions upon millions of hits on the John Deere hashtag on TikTok — a popularity that far pre-dates the CTO campaign — are any indication, there’s no shortage of interest among social media users in tractors and outdoor labor.
“We know the John Deere logo just like we know the Coca Cola and Nike symbol,” Johnson said, reflecting on the influence the CTO could wield on young people curious about farming. “But to me it makes it so much more personal when you can really connect a human being to the brand.”
