Narrabri farming families have been selected to be the face of an international marketing campaign for global machinery company John Deere.
Local videographers Josh Smith and Jamie Condon were contracted by John Deere management to ‘Australianise’ the US company’s marketing.
The latest campaign “The Colours of Your Land” features powerful short films of three farming families in the region, walking the viewer through the history of each property, how it runs, and the tradition of John Deere machinery over the generations.
Short films about the O’Regan family of “Koyuga” Edgeroi, and the Kirkby family of “Koiwon”, Bellata, are now live on John Deere’s global YouTube channel, with a third film featuring a local grazing family still in production.
Josh believes the Narrabri district was an obvious choice of setting for John Deere’s latest campaign.
“We are here in some of the most productive farming country on earth and it’s being worked by some of the best farmers in the world, and they’re right here on our doorstep.
“Farmers here are also quite passionate about their ‘green machines’, so they were happy to be a part of something like this with the company.
“We wanted to capture the process, not get in their way, they’ve got harvest and they’re massively busy, so we worked around them.”
Jamie Condon, who also works as an electrical engineer at Auscott, believes the farmers enjoyed the experience.
“They spend millions of dollars on this equipment, they’re fairly invested in it, and there is a long history of John Deere in these families so the recognition is nice for them, and it’s quite a personal journey for them as well,” he said.
The videographers were inspired by their subjects.
When filming Bruce Kirkby’s farming operations West of Bellata, Bruce’s 6 year old son, Boston, stole the show.
“It was quite amazing to watch a child that age who knows so much about that land and the machinery, Bruce certainly has prodigy on the way there, he’d be very proud,” Jamie said.
Bruce Kirkby’s passion for farming, and for John Deere, is very clear throughout the short film.
He explains why the brand holds special significance for the property.
“My father originally started farming here with a 1929 model D tractor," he says in the film.
“He bought everything John Deere... he handed the John Deere tradition on to me and it looks like I’ve already handed that onto my son Boston.”
The film closes with father and son speaking the campaign’s tagline, “We’re Australian farmers, these are the colours of our land”.
John Deere has responded very positively to the short films, which are so powerful they brought the company’s upper management to tears.
“Both times we submitted drafts to the John Deere hierarchy, they came back and told us they’d been crying all morning,” Josh recalls.
“Americans are emotive people and it really got to them, we weren’t going for that, it’s just very evocative scenery where we are.
“We also did try really hard to weave the heritage into the story.”
Josh and Jamie are shooting films that would normally require a production team of 10 to 15 people.
They also managed to cut costs by using a drone to film aerial vision, rather than a helicopter. The pair have been contracted to shoot six short films in total, looking at a variety of different sectors including cropping, cattle, horticulture, sheep and sugar.The short films can be viewed on our Facebook page, www.facebook.com/NarrabriCourier.