“We are truly farm-to-fork on a massive scale,” said Scott. “Our purpose is about feeding human progress, and if we want to be champions of that as we are internally as well as externally, we need to tell that story in big, influential ways.”
The activation, called The Copernicus Project, was inspired by Nicolaus Copernicus, “who in 1532 cracked the foundations of contemporary science with a powerful paradigm shift: Earth is not the center of the universe,” according to a representative for the brand. The project was meant to “challenge long-held beliefs about humans as the center of the modern food system.”
For this year’s activation, which is the third consecutive year Land O’Lakes has used SXSW to tell people something related to food or water, the company again worked with agencies Colle McVoy and Civic.
“We really want to be talking to a much broader audience than our traditional agricultural audience about the world of agriculture,” said Scott. “The activation part is to get people in the door and have them start thinking differently about agriculture, about technology, about the food system.”
By using an interactive experience—including a slide that drops you into an avocado ball pit—Land O’Lakes can subtly teach festivalgoers about the truth of the lack of diversity in the modern diet, like how much of what we eat is made up of very few plants, and that the food system is not a chain but a web.