The high-price executives at the big companies don’t always read the public mood very accurately. So inevitably, their million-dollar ad campaigns can go splat, despite all the big promises that they’ll win market share.
It’s happened before. Ford’s gambit to become the safety leader with its cars in the 1950s is a case that comes to mind. At the time, North Americans hadn’t really begun to look at the climbing body count on their highways.
The Ford campaign changed that. But unfortunately for Ford, people were dying in Fords essentially as fast as in other cars. So the effort to sell more Fords by promoting their safety features failed miserably.
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Importantly, though, sensitizing the marketplace to safety still sells boatloads of Volvos today.
Now, something similar is going on in the farm machinery market.
It starts with the success of the fuel-economy messages coming from the big carmakers. Those messages have hit the mark dead on.
So the farm machinery makers want to play piggyback. Not all of them have built entire ad campaigns around fuel economy, but the message is there. It has also been the focus of more than a few announcements to the media, and now we’re hearing more and more about horsepower hours per gallon, which is the tractor industry’s equivalent of miles per gallon (or litres per 100 kilometres).
Over the past year or so, “Best-in-class fuel economy” has grown into one of the most common phrases in promotional materials coming from tractor manufacturers. And it’s easy to understand why.
For one thing, manufacturers have had to bump up the prices of their 2011 lines due to the costs associated with developing new, low-emissions engines. They hope messages about lower operating costs will go at least part of the way to ease the sticker shock, not to mention getting farmers to warm up to the new technologies.
Also, manufacturers are getting fewer sales based simply on loyalty to the colour of their paint. Increasingly, buyers of new machinery fall into the “professional farmer” category, large-scale producers who have very sharp pencils when it comes to managing their costs. When each sale is a battle, efficiencies like fuel economy can tip the balance.
That was what Paul Fortkamp, the Ohio farmer who bought the first Case IH, Interim Tier 4-equipped tractor in North America, says was a major factor in his purchasing decision. “I needed a tractor and Tier 4 compliance was a definite plus,” Fortkamp says. “I had heard that it would be more fuel efficient, so I figured why not try it? The initial purchase price is a bit higher, but I think the cost savings in the long run make it a good buy.”
Responses like that from buyers are exactly what the major brands seem to be hoping for.
But when it comes to fuel economy, just being good isn’t good enough. Owning the top fuel efficiency rating is now the holy grail of marketing advantages, and everyone seems to be chasing it.
Last winter it became clear just how much manufacturers now value that title. That was when AGCO kicked off its “We’re-number-one” ad campaign. The company used it to stake a claim on best-in-class fuel efficiency for its Massey Ferguson 8600 Series and sister line of MT600C Series Challenger tractors. To back it up, they pointed to test results published by the Nebraska Tractor Test Lab, the ultimate North American authority on the subject.
Inevitably, a few weeks later, John Deere responded by issuing a press release saying its 8320R tractor (in the same horsepower class as the Massey/ Challenger) was really the most fuel efficient.
Actually, both were right. The Massey had the most impressive results in some of the standard OECD test procedures used at Nebraska, while the Deere beat it in others. Despite that, neither company was willing to give up their claim on the fuel-efficiency title.
“Specifically against the 8320R we had the best results in six out of seven engine (PTO) tests,” said Jason Hoult, AGCO’s product marketing manager for high-horsepower tractors, when interviewed about the results last spring.
Chad Hogan, Deere’s division marketing manager, dismissed the PTO results as less relevant. “Tractors of this size aren’t used in PTO applications very often,” he countered. “We designed these to be efficient in drawbar applications. It’s a different flow of power.”
Both sides battled it out in the media for several weeks.
The January implementation of new, tougher emissions standards means manufacturers are now introducing an entirely new generation of engines, and all of them will see testing at Nebraska. So it looks like we’re in for more heavyweight bouts in the battle for fuel-efficiency titles as the results begin to come in.
In late December, New Holland joined the fray and claimed its own championship belt. “Results of PowerMix tests on New Holland’s T7 Series… officially confirm the tractors’ record-setting, best-in- class fuel economy in the 150 to 200 PTO horsepower class,” reads their press release.
There’s that “best-in-class” phrase again.
A month later, Case IH issued a press release that included preliminary data from the Nebraska Tractor Test Lab on two of its new Steigers and a Magnum. Clearly the company wanted to get those test results out quickly.
And Case IH also took the unusual step of emphasizing the significance of those results by directly comparing them to John Deere’s equivalent tractors.
When addressing those fuel-economy claims at a media briefing at the Ag Connect Expo in Atlanta a few weeks later, Barry Nelson, Deere’s manager of media relations pointed out their green tractors had impressive numbers well before the IT4 implementation date. “When a competitor says they’re going to improve by 10 per cent, we’re already there,” Nelson said.
“We’ve already made the change,” Nelson continued. And he pointed out Deere has not yet completed Nebraska testing on all its new models, so any claim on fuel supremacy may be premature.
“We achieved best-in-class fuel economy with many of our Tier 3 engines,” said Brian Brown, manager of worldwide marketing support for John Deere Power Systems, in a recent press release. “Other engine manufacturers are just now announcing the use of these technologies in their off-highway Interim Tier 4 product offerings.”
Because of those technologies, measuring fuel efficiency is a little more complicated than it used to be. Brands that have adopted cooled exhaust gas recirculation (CEGR) point to the fact that the competitive technology requires the use of an additional diesel exhaust fluid (DEF).
The extra fluid required to run those engines means there is more than fuel use to consider. “For Interim Tier 4, we’re not only looking at fuel economy, we’re taking into consideration total fluid consumption,” said Brown.
But even though CEGR engines don’t require DEF, there is another cost for them as well. To ensure diesel particulate filters remain clear, CEGR engines periodically need to burn additional diesel to ignite a flame in a chamber in the exhaust to clean out trapped particulates. That typically happens when engine temperatures are in the lower part of the operating range for extended periods.
All of this means there are many arguments for marketers to make when they climb into the ring. “Best-in-class” can mean a lot of different things. But no matter who you consider to be the winner, all of the contenders are offering some impressive engineering and — to switch sports for a moment — a look at the numbers suggests that playing for the championship has become a game of inches rather than yards.
Today’s fuel-consumption rates are remarkable when compared to tractors of only one or two decades ago. That’s good news for farmers who get to reap the advantage of lower operating costs in the years to come no matter what colour their tractor is, even if they have to pay more to get it.CG
