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The Labatt Brewing Company has teamed up with some Saskatchewan farmers as part of their new advertising campaign.
The advertisements are far from what you’d normally see around the province as they’re not a billboard, but rather, a “baleboard.”
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Placed along Highway 4 near Rosetown and Biggar, the eye-catching displays showcase plastic wrapped hay bales that are made to look like oversized Busch beer cans lying next to the road.
The lager-than-life ads were created alongside the new limited edition Farmer’s Pack of Busch beer that was recently released, which features artwork on the box and the cans inspired by the Prairies and fields that grow the barley that goes into the beer.
“We launched [the Farmer’s Pack] back at the beginning of July, but we wanted to launch it in a bigger, more compelling way,” explained Patrick Heembrock, the Director of Mainstream Brands for Labatt.
“We didn’t think it was going to be the best answer to do a standard billboard campaign that mostly shows up in cities or something like that, so we were trying to think of interesting ways of putting the can or the design in front of the people who we most wanted to see it in the first place.”
The reason they went with Busch was because out of the other brands Labatt brews like Budweiser and Michelob Ultra, Busch is “more rooted in rural areas”.
In the U.S., the Busch brand has been associated with farmer-specific advertising campaigns for roughly a decade, and Heembrock said it was an easy choice to bring that same effort north of the border.
“For us, it was the natural extension of the brand that we wanted to use to showcase our farming partners and recognize the farmers and their contributions to making our beer.”
Saskatchewan is Labatt’s primary source for barley as around 85 per cent of all barley used at their breweries is grown within the province, according to SaskBarley.
Heembrock said the baleboards that are currently on display actually sit next to the fields that grew the barley used in their beer, and added that the farmers were over the moon when asked to partake in the campaign.
“We looked for a combination of places where there’d be visibility for the baleboards, so near some more significant roads, and also farmers that were just really interested in participating and working with us. The farmers that we did connect with were all super enthusiastic about the idea, so it wasn’t much of a challenge to get them on board.”
As for what’s in it for the farmers, Heembrock explained that part of it is recognition as the campaign is a way to say thank you and to help make the connection between the work the farmers do, and the products Labatt makes.
The main initiative for the campaign, though, is they’re paying farmers for the ad placement instead of major corporations.
“We’re paying the farmers the cost of what we would have paid to run billboards [in the city], so they get a couple extra bucks in their pocket as well.”
For the future of the campaign, Labatt has committed ten per cent, roughly $100,000, of their national media budget to broaden the forms of the advertisements in 2027 to go beyond the wrapped hay bales, which could include wrapping grain silos, combines, barns, or even water towers.
“There’s a whole bunch of other creative ways that we could bring our brands to life in and around farms while supporting farmers.”
Heembrock continued that Labatt is in the process of searching for more farms to partake in the campaign this year in similar areas as the already established baleboards, but next year the company is hoping to expand further into the Prairies and possibly even beyond.
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