Red Tractor would make Pravda proud

THOSE of you who can cast your minds back to the Soviet era will recall the name of Pravda, the official publication of the Communist party which became synonymous with the presentation of what the Trump administration would today describe as “alternative facts”.

The word Pravda means ‘truth’ - though you were always welladvised to add mentally “though not as we know it” when considering anything it announced.

It was famous for shouting the odds about the staggering success of civil engineering schemes, the output of tractor factories and the massive production records of collective farms, painting a picture of the USSR as a thriving, world-beating economy when the truth was it was throwing up shoddy construction projects and turning out machinery which came ready clapped-out while most of the population was struggling to survive on an appalling diet.

I didn’t follow it closely but I have no doubt that it would have managed even to turn the Chernobyl disaster into a triumph by trumpeting how well the evacuation plans worked.

Pravda crossed my mind the other day when through my letterbox dropped the publication Climb Aboard, the official propaganda sheet of Red Tractor Assurance.

My goodness me, once I glanced at the headline on the front page I thought all the industry’s troubles were over. What was this? Around 1.4 million more shoppers buying Red Tractor foods? Alas, not quite. As I picked it up and the text swam into focus, its true message became clear: “1.4m more shoppers intend to trade up to Red Tractor”. Not quite the same thing but here the news was, presented as though the purchases had already been made and the extra dosh was in the farmers’ pockets.

Let me just give you the real nub of the story: ‘The number of primary shoppers who say they will trade up and buy Red Tractor food instead of cheaper alternatives has jumped by around 1.4 million following the assurance scheme’s autumn advertising campaign’.

Yes, that’s it. The whole edifice of this story has been constructed on a piece of market research. An exercise which has a strong whiff of the farmyard about it. After all, a market researcher might decide to call me tomorrow and ask about my holiday plans and I could well respond that I intend to spend six weeks in the Caribbean this summer, while knowing full well that I’ll probably get no more than a day at the Royal Welsh.

This is, of course, the latest attempt by Red Tractor Assurance to talk up its credentials (and to justify the money spent on the advertising campaign) when every farmer knows what an undistinguished track record it has had as a marketing tool.

Personally I lost faith in the whole project years ago when I heard an NFU official acknowledging that the Red Tractor could be applied to imported foods as long as they had been produced to British standards, which was enough, in my book, to turn it into a completely futile brand.

Perhaps I am being unduly cynical. Perhaps I should listen to the words of the messiah himself, Red Tractor chief executive Jim Moseley, who hailed the findings of the market research as “fantastic” because as well as the “spike in purchasing intent” the number of shoppers associating the logo with “traceable food from farmers to pack” (pack? – his words, not mine) has nearly doubled to 62 per cent.

Now this sort of blather is fine but until that ‘intent’ is translated into hard cash tinkling into the tills, this story will remain nothing more than a tale of smoke and mirrors – but one of which Pravda would have been proud.

This piece of market research has a strong whiff of the farmyard about it