Kahntact Marketing collects major award at North American competition for tactic that crosses food, agriculture, and education

Kahntact Marketing continues to cook up wins at awards shows, this time taking a top prize at the Best of National Agri-Marketing Association annual meeting in Kansas City, MO.

The award for best “News, Feature Article or Persuasive Writing” was for work done on behalf of the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. Cooking by Degrees was a 16-story series published in the nationwide media network of the Toronto Star.

Rhett Hawkins was on-hand to receive the award at the Best of NAMA banquet in Kansas City

The Best of NAMA awards program honors the best work in agricultural communications across North America. Companies and agencies must first qualify through regional competition to advance to the national level. Cooking by Degrees advanced earlier this year by winning the same category in NAMA Region 6, which covers northeastern United States.

Cooking by Degrees was the result of an innovative partnership that linked like-minded partners right up the agriculture and food value chain. The project took coordinating 16 university chefs through the Canadian College and University Food Service Association, multiple beef producers from across Canada through the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (CRSB), and Owen Roberts, who did the interviews and crafted the stories. Roberts is a communications instructor and faculty member at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was a long-time agricultural journalist and instructor at Guelph before joining the University of Illinois last year.

The articles have a large – and growing – readership. The content is evergreen and can still be viewed on the web. Data from the Toronto Star showed that people spend more time reading these articles than other comparable content. The articles put a face to beef production in Canada and helped explain the sustainability measures producers take on their farms and ranches. Weaving stories of people on the farm made it more of a compelling story than just a recipe.

“Cooking by Degrees was a wonderful first-time introduction for many Toronto Star readers to the farmers and ranchers who dedicate their lives – many several generations over – to continually evolving sustainable practices,” says Andrea White, director, marketing and stakeholder relations at CRSB. “We’re anticipating more impact from this program as we publish a new round of Cooking by Degrees in 2022 with fresh new stories and recipes.”

“We’ve carved out a position as a nimble, client-first marketing agency that understands both agriculture and food marketing communications like no one else,” says Rhett Hawkins, president of Kahntact Marketing. “The marketing awards are just icing on the cake. The real win is satisfied clients and a growing roster of people we’re helping with measurable marketing that works.”