During the exhibitiion of the annual Irrigation Association Show in San Diego on November 6-8, I was constantly reminded of  Federico Fasano’s blog post about how Cariboo’s new marketing tactic was to be more green and attract contentious customers, https://blogs.ubc.ca/federicofasano/. I remember my first reaction when it was showcased in class and it was something along the lines of, had the green movement gone too far? Could Cariboo possibly sell more beers because of this? I doubted their efforts because I personally would not change beers just because it is more “green.”

How this ties into my story is during the exhibition one of the dominant themes that I noticed was “water conservation, recycled plastic,” or in other words the “green” movement. It was new to me, even though I have been working as a sales associate in an international Irrigation Company, Irriline, for the past year I had not come across such strong green marketing strategies being used by various companies. At first I thought it was a possibly a useless tactic, just like Cariboo’s “Support Reforestation.” However as the exhibition began and visitors started entering, it became visible that those companies were getting higher volumes of attraction than companies without those types of advertising. Our entire staff team was confused, as to why all of a sudden green movement had grown during this event.

It soon became apparent that this years event farmers were invited as well as the usual distributers which I had been familiar with. This change the playing field, and the companies that knew it would, had the ability to change their market target efficiently by attracting the farmers, who were big on environmental contentious as opposed to distributers who only resold items for profits.

All in all this made me reconsider Cariboo’s effectiveness, I was looking at it subjectively and did not think of the other types of market segments that it could potentially bring it. Just like how the green Irrigation advertising did not necessarily attract new distributers, it brought in a different segment all together, the farmers. Lastly I noticed that this years website had even changed! the background had turned green, different pictures, all focusing on the environmentally friendly theme.

Irrigation Association Website:

http://www.irrigation.org/irrigationshow/