New Web site reflects client's new company

The third generation of the Latham seed company family recently purchased and combined company assets to form a new company, Latham Hi-Tech Seeds. The company's commitment to remain independent and provide an array of selective seed technologies to their customers was captured in a Des Moines Register business feature story, arranged through media relations initiatives carried out by AKC.

AKC also created a new Web site for the company. The site significantly upgrades the general graphic quality of previous sites, and adds new functionality for Latham's customers such as dealer product ordering and event registration screens, weather and commodity market access, searchable databases for yield trial results, head-to-head yield comparisons and other essential crop planning tools.

Dairy media take part in robotic farm tour

AKC Marketing client Lely USA embarked on a two-day tour of 5 dairy farms in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin that all milk their dairy herds with Lely Astronaut A3 robotic milking systems. AKC invited two key dairy industry editors--Karen Lee of Progressive Dairyman and Lana Olson of Hoard's Dairyman--to go along on the tour. The editors, plus a group of dairy farmers also on the tour, learned the intricacies of robotic dairy production...how cows are easily trained to freely visit the robot for milking. The group saw how one Lely robot can milk up to sixty cows three times each day, greatly reducing the manual labor stress on the farmer and his family.


Lely is the world leader in dairy robotic technology, having gained the leadership position in Europe where 60% to 70% of dairies are robotic operations. With its recent arrival in the United States, Lely is aiming to help U.S. dairyman realize the financial advantages, the cow-health improvement, milk volume increases--and the lifestyle enhancement--that come with quality-built robotics. R2D2 has nothing on these machines.

A PR masterpiece

"60 Minutes" recently ran a story in which reporter Scott Pelley accompanied an FDIC team on a takeover of an Illinois bank. The story was high-risk for the FDIC and, in a larger sense, for public confidence in government regulation and the security of our banking system. It's hard to recall when such media access has been granted to a high-test, federal regulatory enforcement action carried out in real time.

In our estimation, the story turned out to be a masterful PR execution. Any reasonable viewer leaves the story feeling assured that the FDIC depositer protection program works extremely well with minimal disruption, especially in this volatile economic climate. FDIC employees are portrayed as extremely competent, professional and assuring to bank customers. FDIC chair Sheila C. Bair also performs admirably in her leadership role. If "60 Minutes" ends up essentially paying tribute to a government agency, you know someone somewhere was very much on the ball.

It was great planning and preparation all the way around by the FDIC staff, which is the core of effective public relations.


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We're getting wind of something big in the Midwest

We recently attended the annual meeting of the Iowa Wind Energy Association. The meeting was held at Iowa Lakes Community College in Estherville, which has grown to become one of the premier sites for training and certifying technical pros who install and service giant wind turbines. Those machines cost upwards of $2 million a piece. Right now, wind-generated power accounts for 1% of all energy generated in the U.S. by public and private utilities. That 1%, however, constitutes displacement of 29 millions tons of coal and 90 million barrels of oil a year. The federal goal is to generate 20% of our power through wind by 2030.

As you can see from the photo, these turbine units are much larger close up than they appear from the farm fields. That's Al Zeitz on the right, director of ILCC's wind program, standing in front of a decommissioned unit. That big thing behind Al is the "nacelle" of a wind turbine, the enclosure behind the blades that houses the gear box and electronics of the turbine. As you can see, it's about as big as a fuselage of a small jet. Here's an interview with Al from Daily Kos that provides a lot of cool insight into the wind picture.

AKC was at this gathering because we're highly interested and involved in leading edge technologies and innovations, whether they're new traits for seeds, new robotic technologies for dairy farms, or new human nutraceutical ingredients and products.