Was John Deere the First Proponent of Content Marketing?

John Deere: The Marketing Prowess You Probably Didn’t Know About

John Deere is a well-known, household-name farming equipment company that was originally founded in 1837. While the brand was well known within its community in the years between the 1830’s-90’s, John Deere took a big step in the late 1890’s that ultimately defined the trajectory of the brand: it started a news magazine.

This news magazine was called The Furrow, and it was meant to cater to farmers with “practical information devoted to the interests of better farming.”

Here is one of the earliest recorded images of The Furrow back in the 1890s:

The look evolved throughout the years, reaching an incredible peak in 1912, with over 4 million consumers avidly reading its pages. It’s still being published today, reaching about 2 million readers worldwide, in an ultimate testament to the power of incredible content.

Could this be the longest form of content marketing that’s been around? It very well could be.

The magazine was distributed to customers at no charge, and the only sign that it came from a John Deere dealer was a small inscription on the cover that recounted that the magazine had been sent “with compliments of your John Deere Dealer.”

With the exception of the small inscription, however, there was virtually no indication that John Deere published the magazine. The company ran no ads, and the articles included within the little magazine didn’t focus on John Deere’s products. Instead, they covered topics ranging from how best to address various farming challenges to trends in the agricultural community as a whole.

In 1912, at the peak of The Furrow’s subscriber quantity, John Deere actually purchased its first electric printing press to publish the successful magazine. It could print in two colors and publish 50,000 copies in eight hours: and back then, the cost amounted to what would be $850,000 in 2013 dollars. What an investment!

Look at the artwork on this edition:

And the classic look of the 1960 spread:

Here’s a look at a recent 2015 edition:

The magazine was a huge success and, today, it stands as one of the earliest and most durable examples of great content marketing. The Furrow still exists today and has since also been digitized into an e-version.

What John Deere Got Right

John Deere knew something very early on that many marketers are still struggling to learn: the best content is informative content.

Even in the late 1890’s, customers didn’t want big, splashy advertisements and “listen to how great our company is” rhetoric. Instead, they wanted helpful information that would assist them in addressing their problems.

The Furrow focused entirely on editorial content meant to be informative and helpful. Pieces ranged from scientific breakdowns to funny editorial pieces about the difficulties of living a farmer’s life. Throughout the magazine, John Deere’s name was interspersed on a rare occasion, encouraging customers to build an association between the helpful, informative content and the John Deere brand itself.

Successful content today is no different than successful content back then.

Here are the top six things that John Deere got right in The Furrow:

1. The content was engaging
2. The content was valuable
3. The content shared farming culture and information
4. The content built brand loyalty
5. The content positioned John Deere as a passionate, engaged brand
6. The content developed relationships between farmers and John Deere

Today, marketers who want to increase the effectiveness of their content marketing need only to look back to The Furrow and take some lessons from John Deere.