Ep. 018 - Brand & Butter of Agriculture with Maureen Ballatori
Maureen Ballatori
Founder & CEO of Agency29
Host of Spilled Salt Podcast
Show Notes:
Join host Kristin Demoranville on the Bites and Bytes Podcast as she welcomes Maureen Ballatori, the dynamic founder and CEO of Agency29. In this insightful episode, Maureen highlights the crucial role of branding in the food, beverage, and agriculture industries. Discover how to build strong, trustworthy brands and navigate the unique challenges faced by agribusinesses in today's evolving market.
This episode provides valuable insider perspectives on why understanding branding is essential for risk management strategies in cybersecurity, operational technology (OT), food safety, and beyond. Whether you're a tech-savvy professional, a cybersecurity expert, or an OT specialist, Maureen's expertise offers a fresh outlook on the intersection of branding and technology in the food industry.
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Episode Key Highlights:
(01:59 - 02:44) Connection to Dairy Farm Upbringing
(05:34 - 07:29) Brand Building for Food & Beverage
(09:14 - 10:20) Branding in Food and Ag
(16:36 - 18:04) Building Trust Through Transparency
(22:49 - 23:19) Handling Mistakes With Transparency
(27:24 - 28:05) Global Impact of Declining Dairy Consumption
(34:03 - 34:48) From Dairy Farm to Branding Success
(38:31 - 39:53) Importance of Niche Specialization in Industry
(41:46 - 43:08) Cybersecurity's Impact on Agriculture
(50:27 - 52:07) Building Trust in Food and Ag
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Show Notes:
Cornell University https://dairy.cornell.edu/
Apples varieties: https://waapple.org/varieties/all/
Bio-ISAC (Milk contimination) https://www.isac.bio/post/update-hpai-h5n1-avian-influenza-2024
BIO-ISAC (cybersecurity efforts): https://www.isac.bio/bioag
Dairy Conference speaking: https://www.maureenballatori.com/events/2024-northeast-dairy-convention
CPG = Consumer Packaged Goods
Ag Chat and Chew: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIocOGprj8qE9QpQq1QDw75aMj8liv75Jzt#/registration
Andrew Rose: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chesapeakesun/
Andrew Rose’s Bites and Bytes Podcast Episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-double-andrew-rose-special-insights-on/id1704061572?i=1000659643673
Grow New York: https://www.grow-ny.com/
Grapevine Powdery Mildew: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8307186/
AgriTech for Powdery Mildew: Robots fitted with ultraviolet light lamps that roam vineyards at night are proving effective at killing powdery mildew: https://cals.cornell.edu/news/robots-armed-uv-light-fight-grape-mildew#:~:text=Robots%20fitted%20with%20ultraviolet%20light,for%20many%20crops%2C%20including%20grapes.
World Agri-Tech – https://worldagritechusa.com/
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Maureen Ballatori’s Contact Information:
Spilled Salt Podcast
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Listen to full episode :
Episode Guide:
(00:22) - Brand Building in Food and Agriculture
(07:29) - Community Building and Branding in Agriculture
(10:20) - Building Resilient Brands Through Storytelling
(16:36) - Building Trust Through Transparency in Branding
(23:52) - Impact of Milk Contamination on Branding
(34:49) - The Importance of Niche Branding
(41:46) - Cybersecurity Risks in Agriculture
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Kristin Demoranville (00:01.244)
Great. Maureen, thanks so much for being here. I'm actually super excited that you're here because this is a topic that we haven't talked about on the podcast yet, like fully. We've talked around it. And I'm excited for the listeners to hear all of your wonderful wisdom nuggets that you're going to definitely drop on us. So let's...
Maureen Ballatori (00:19.182)
I can't wait to hear what comes out of my mouth on wisdom nuggets too.
Kristin Demoranville (00:22.972)
You know, I think we're all excited all around. That's great. So let's just start off with what I always start off and I actually really do adore this question. What is your favorite food and your favorite food memory? They do not need to be the same thing.
Maureen Ballatori (00:26.254)
Hehehehe.
Maureen Ballatori (00:37.998)
Okay, they don't have to be the same thing. So currently I love dairy and which is probably, you know, a controversial thing in today's day and age, but I'm discovering a sensitivity to fluid dairy, which is new and interesting, but I eat a lot of cottage cheese because it's so high protein. It's so versatile. It's great for breakfast, you know, so I would say that that.
dairy in general and cheese, right? Like who doesn't love that? So dairy is currently my favorite food and my favorite food memory. You hit this hit me with this right before we went on and I was like, my God, I don't know that I have one. I guess, you know, I grew up on a dairy farm and so maybe that's where some of my unders...
you know, secret love of dairy comes from is just knowing where it comes from and being connected to that experience. So perhaps mine are connected. and that just growing up on a dairy farm and being close to agriculture, like eating green beans off the, you know, out of the garden. And literally my dad would take the milk tank, like had this milk jug that he would go down to the tank in the morning and like fill it up with raw milk.
for our breakfast cereal. And like, I, I distinctly remember that as well. So dairy all around.
Kristin Demoranville (02:09.436)
Yeah, and unpasteurized milk or raw milk has a different flavor for sure. I mean, I realize that's a controversial conversation. Anybody from the food industry is probably cringing. Just chill out. We're talking about like a while back, right?
Maureen Ballatori (02:14.35)
Yeah. Yes.
The hippies will love it though because it's the new thing now is raw milk. Yeah.
Kristin Demoranville (02:24.188)
It really is. It really is. It tastes like liquid ice cream. That's the only way to describe it to you, because I've had it as well. And it's amazing. But again, I'm not advocating for anything, so nobody think that. And I love the use of cottage cheese, because I'm on a real cottage cheese kick right now too, because it's a quick snack too, and you don't feel guilty eating it. But apparently people become quite inventive with their cottage cheese recipes. I saw someone add.
Maureen Ballatori (02:34.798)
Don't come for us.
Maureen Ballatori (02:43.246)
Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (02:48.782)
Yes.
Kristin Demoranville (02:51.708)
cocoa powder to it the other day, blend it up, and it turned into ice cream. And I was like, okay, I can get behind that because I don't feel guilty eating that.
Maureen Ballatori (02:56.238)
Yes.
Yeah, and throw a scoop of flavored protein powder in there too, and you're doubling the protein and it's got more flavor and then it'll taste even more like ice cream.
Kristin Demoranville (03:09.532)
That's good, because I thought I was the only one who threw extra protein powder in there. So that's good to hear that you're doing that too. Because I feel like, especially as women, we just can't get enough protein. Like we are sneaking it into everything as much as we can. I even dump protein powder in the pancake mix I make my step kids on the weekends. And nobody knows. Well, now they do. But like nobody knows. I'm like, how are they going to know? I'm literally like, how are they going to know? They dump enough syrup on it. So why would they know?
Maureen Ballatori (03:11.918)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Very good for you.
smart. Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (03:32.398)
Yeah.
Kristin Demoranville (03:35.676)
But it's good for me because then I can have one pancake and not feel like I'm like destroying my day. Anyways, a dairy farm. That must have been just so, I don't know. I think everybody gets their own image of what that looks like. But you know, that must have been amazing. I'm sure you had your favorite cows and they had names.
Maureen Ballatori (03:53.742)
So I, yeah, I mean, I didn't know anything else, right? So, and I, but looking back now, I'm really grateful for that experience. And I'm sure it's one of the reasons why I landed in food, beverage and agriculture as our specialization at agency 29. But it was a lot of like just walking through the creek and.
you know, visiting with the cows and the chickens and, you know, all of that, walking through the barnyard. But I was, the thing that really stunk for me is I was allergic to hay. So my sisters and my cousins and our friends and everybody always loved to climb the hay bales and the hay barn. And I, you know, I'm, I'm not one to be told no in life. And it probably started there, probably before that even.
Kristin Demoranville (04:30.524)
boy.
Maureen Ballatori (04:46.798)
And so I would always go and just deal with the consequences later. And I would be like a sneezy, itchy mess afterward. And was it worth it? Probably. But it made for a challenging thing when all the kids were playing in the hay bales and I would come out just dripping.
Kristin Demoranville (04:57.212)
Yeah.
Kristin Demoranville (05:06.46)
I'm sorry. I feel that. I think I knew somebody who had a hay allergy when I was at, I wrote, I'm sorry, I rode horses when I was a kid. And obviously we were feeding them hay and things like that. I think someone said they couldn't touch it without gloves. Otherwise they'd break out into hives. And I'm like, that's really aggressive. But they still rode, they still dealt with the pain. They didn't care. They wanted to be there. So I completely understand that. But I never heard of a hay allergy until then. I was like, that's a weird thing to be allergic to. So makes sense though, based on, you know, all allergies that we have now.
Maureen Ballatori (05:14.51)
Mmm.
Maureen Ballatori (05:24.494)
Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (05:30.638)
Mm -hmm, yeah.
Kristin Demoranville (05:35.9)
you know, kind of the seasonal bliss that we all deal with. Anyways, Maureen, thank you for that. Will you introduce yourself since we've already kind of gone down that road a little bit?
Maureen Ballatori (05:38.958)
Hehehehe
Maureen Ballatori (05:44.91)
Sure. Yeah. So I'm Maureen Bellatorri, founder and CEO of Agency29, which is a creative brand building firm for food, beverage and agriculture brands. So that means we do strategy, identity and ongoing marketing work for folks who are in those industries. So sometimes we're working directly with ag producers. Other times we're working with industry folks. Like we work a lot with Cornell University. We just did a shoot at
Cornell University's dairy research barn down in Ithaca earlier this week. And then we also work in consumer packaged goods as well. So both food and BEV for CPG.
Kristin Demoranville (06:27.804)
Yeah, and I think we ended up connecting because I stalked you on LinkedIn. I'll just be honest about it. And because I noticed that you were working a lot with small vineyards and medium sized vineyards. And I was just like, who is this woman? I must know her now. Like, this is amazing. And the fact that you keep going on site. And I think it was that one post that you put up and you're like, look, I got gifts because my clients are awesome. But I was like, I was like, yeah, I was like a woman after my heart. I have to talk to her. So yeah, I think it's amazing what you do with these.
Maureen Ballatori (06:31.566)
Hehehehehe
Maureen Ballatori (06:46.862)
yeah, yes.
Kristin Demoranville (06:56.988)
companies and I think also watching the community building that you've done, I know it's like online and things like that and obviously, you know, that's what it is, but I can tell that it's really life changing and you could see it, you know, what's happening. And you also work with some restaurants too, right? Like restaurant brands.
Maureen Ballatori (07:17.038)
very minimally because restaurant margins are so slim that it's really hard for it to make sense for them. So we do work with a restaurant chain that has like 18 locations across the northeast, but we don't work really with any small independent restaurants just for that reason. The economics don't make sense.
but we do work with some breweries and wineries, like you mentioned too, which when they serve food is kind of a similar, you know, space. but I do want to go back to what you just mentioned about community building. That's a really important thing to me. not only in the grand scheme of being a member of my literal community where I live, but also like building community.
Kristin Demoranville (07:56.984)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (08:07.406)
online and creating a supportive place where sort of I was just talking with somebody earlier today about the new trend for building in public and sort of sharing what it means to be building a business and what goes on behind the scenes with that and the struggles and the wins, you know, and everything in between the mundane days, the should I do this, you know, inner dialogue that kind of tends to go through your head. And so,
I last fall started posting more frequently to LinkedIn to share more about that publicly, you know, in terms of just the stuff that's going through my head. Like I want to do more speaking engagements. And so that was a goal a year ago that I started. And then I got really vocal about it. And now I'm booking them left and right all over the United States, which is really, really fun.
But I'm also a what's the next thing on the horizon person that I feel like now that I've reached that goal and I'm very happy with where that sits, I'm thinking what's the next thing? Should I write a book? I feel like I should have a book. What should the book be about? And so I go to that well of community to get their opinions, you know, from the people who know me. And so like that's and those who don't write that are like finding me and learning about me and like I can hear from them. What's resonating is just.
a really fun thing for me. I love it.
Kristin Demoranville (09:36.284)
That's, that's great. And keep doing it because we need more of that, less of the crappy noise that we all deal with. But, you know, I, I like the positive vibes for sure. So I know that obviously everybody's like, why are you talking to a marketer? Like this is a technology podcast. Well, marketing is super important to technology. I don't know if anybody's caught that yet. I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of cyber security marketing. I shout out to anybody who's listening from that side of the house. but branding.
Maureen Ballatori (09:43.15)
Hehehehe.
Mm -hmm.
Kristin Demoranville (10:05.468)
to the food industry and the ag industry is super important. And that's why I wanted to have Maureen gone because I really want to dig into that and like what that means for us that's trying to protect the brand from a different side of the house. So in today's day and age, we'll just talk about that. Can you give us kind of a little bit more of what branding means to the ag sector now and the food industry now? And you can even give us a little timeline if you want, because the branding really kind of took off like in the...
I'm going to say the forties, probably a little before that, but we really felt it more after that. And what it means to the, what, what do brand means to these, these companies? What's important about it from a food and ag standpoint, because like, why do we need branding and food and ag? Like tomatoes, a tomato, right? Like, why do we need to brand the tomato? In fact, I can't even name a tomato brand. Actually, that was really sad analogy. I should have thought of something else. We'll talk about milk. We can talk about milk. There's so many brands of milk. Like why. There you go.
Maureen Ballatori (10:48.078)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (10:55.31)
Ha ha ha!
Maureen Ballatori (10:59.886)
Actually, we've done a lot in apples and that's an excellent example. Yeah, yeah.
Kristin Demoranville (11:04.892)
Yeah. And also what happens when a brand suffers and we could say from a cyber attack or an incident and what that does to the brand and how do people stay resilient through that? Do they stay resilient? Can they stay resilient? And I don't want to necessarily talk about like super crisis management because that's not a world I want to get into with you. But from your standpoint, where you've seen it, go ahead.
Maureen Ballatori (11:29.39)
Yeah. So, in terms of what a brand means, the first thing that I want to emphasize on that is that a lot of times when people hear brand, they think logo and there's so much more to it. That is like one minuscule part of your whole brand. It's important for your logo.
Kristin Demoranville (11:42.3)
Yeah, that's true.
Maureen Ballatori (11:53.902)
and your look and feel. So your visual identity, your logo is part of your visual identity, your visual identity is part of your brand. It's important for those things to be consistent, but they are just one piece of the puzzle. The important part of what a brand means is the story that you tell, the strategy behind what you're building and why.
how you intend for that to resonate with your target audience, who your target audience is, is there demand? Those are like some external factors as well, kind of mixed in there. But all of those alignments are what get to a strong brand. And so when you are consistent with that visual identity, as well as your story, as well as your strategy, that's where you have a strong cohesive brand.
Kristin Demoranville (12:44.764)
Mm.
Maureen Ballatori (12:48.398)
So I'll tell you a story of a client that whenever I reference them, this was from way back before I got loud with my voice of that's stupid. If somebody had a stupid idea, I don't say it in that way, right? But you know, like, yeah, yeah, I will, young me used to take instruction from clients and then say, that's what you want me to do? Okay, and go do it.
Kristin Demoranville (13:00.412)
god.
It's a learning moment. It's a learning moment.
Maureen Ballatori (13:18.478)
Whereas now we are advisors. Agency 29 is advisors, right? So like our role is to hear from you what you're looking to do or create or where you're looking to go or what you are trying to sell and who you think it's for and all that stuff and then check it, right? And provide feedback on it and do the market research to determine if the alignment that you think is there is actually there. We had a client,
who we, when we talk about them, we reference them as ReadyFireAim because they would, they pivoted their, they were, they are no longer in business. They were in business for about six years and they rebrand, not only rebranded multiple times in terms of changing their look and feel multiple times, but they also changed their core customer, their core offering. Like,
everything about it. It was a food, a food business, but like, are we this, are we that? And it just, it was like whiplash. So I think that whereas where you see strong brands, and one of the reasons why I love agriculture is that it's frequently generational, right? It's that there's a lot of learning from one generation to another that, you know, has a lot of, a lot of longevity in it.
Kristin Demoranville (14:16.7)
over the place.
Maureen Ballatori (14:43.31)
in terms of the lessons that are passed on and over time, right? To strengthen that story. So we were mentioning like, why do we need it? Why do we need a brand? And so it is in that vein of alignment that I was just talking about. So who is your customer and how are you trying to reach them? So we need branding to create that alignment and cohesion, right? With a potential customer.
Kristin Demoranville (15:11.932)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (15:12.046)
So it said apples, right? Like with something and it's especially in commodity products, right? So like apples, you could argue what's the true difference, right? Between this apple and that apple that you pick up at the grocery store, they're apples, they're by and large pretty similar across the board. But a honey crisp, which is an apple that many people are a variety, many people are familiar with and love.
tastes very different than like a Granny Smith or a Macintosh or an Empire, right? And so like Apples, I think is a really interesting branding story where the variety name has come through as something that resonates and people look for. I like this Apple. I don't like that Apple. And so the branding is what helps people find that differentiation between the products and alignment.
with what they're looking for. Now, one of the new things that's happened in the Apple industry in particular is premium managed Apple varieties. So that's your Snapdragon, Ruby Frost, Pink Lady is another one. There are licensing fees that the growers of those apples pay to specially market them.
Kristin Demoranville (16:21.724)
Okay.
Kristin Demoranville (16:27.004)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (16:36.302)
so that's where the managed part comes in and they're like an ultra premium apple. They're, you know, they're genetically bred to meet a certain taste profile and that sort of thing. So all that to say, that's probably more than these cybersecurity listeners ever wanted to know about apples, but.
Kristin Demoranville (16:53.948)
You know what? Everybody's really curious though. So I'm sure somebody was like, wow. And you got me thinking that it's like the opposite in wine. We know wine based on the brand name of the wine, not the grape that goes in it. So I always get sort of flustered when people ask me, well, what's your favorite wine? Cause they're expecting me to name a brand and I don't keep track of brands. I keep track of grapes. Like I love a petite for dough. That's like, that's my jam. I love that stuff, you know, and.
Maureen Ballatori (17:10.894)
-huh.
Hmm.
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Kristin Demoranville (17:20.796)
I can't name a brand that does petite Bordeaux because it's a blending grape in Bordeaux or Meridage if you're on the US side, something like that. But it's so funny how apples are sort of risen up as their actual name. I'm sorry, I just find that to be really fast. That's fascinating me already.
Maureen Ballatori (17:21.358)
Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (17:28.622)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (17:37.102)
Yeah. Yeah. And wine still has that, right? Like I like a Chardonnay or I like a Shiraz, right? Those are also varieties that are agnostic to the brand. And so there may be a brand that you enjoy of Chardonnay, right? It's the brand is what helps people find that alignment. And,
I think that's, I think it's a good way to explain it. So the other question that you asked was what happens when someone's stuck, when some, someone suffers and how to stay resilient. So like a bad thing happens and what do you do? How do you respond? One of the things that I think has been great about how today's founders and companies are typically conducting themselves is with a, an amount of transparency that didn't use to happen before. Right.
Whereas if a company makes a mistake or something happens, it is very common to publicly say this thing happened and here's what we're going to do about it. Because what does it all come down to is trust. Your brand is building trust with your consumer that you can know me for this product or service, and I will consistently deliver on that. And you can trust me to...
you know, that the apple is going to taste relatively the same. The wine is going to taste relatively the same. There's going to be those are agricultural products. So of course there's variation, you know, from the land and the wind and the rain and the sun, you know, year over year. But by and large, you are trusting that brand to deliver a consistency to you. So then when something happens that the brand falls short on that, whether that's a cybersecurity attack or that's.
something happened in the supply chain or whatever it is, it is common for companies to send a message out to their followers that is transparency first. This thing happened, we are sorry, we take responsibility, and here's what we're gonna do to make sure that it doesn't happen again. And I should also, I spent five years working at a law firm, so I should also preface that by saying, I shouldn't say, make sure that it's not gonna happen again because you can't,
Kristin Demoranville (19:58.044)
No, you can't guarantee anything.
Maureen Ballatori (19:58.126)
Promise that, right? Here's what we're doing to protect ourselves from this in the future. You know, something like that, right? From a legal perspective, I'm not an attorney, this is no legal advice, whatever, you know, but in the grand scheme of things, making sure that you're being transparent.
Kristin Demoranville (20:16.604)
I think that that's a very optimistic viewpoint of what's happening in the industry because a lot of times you can't talk about a cyber attack. It's like Fight Club. Usually there has to be a massive investigation. The lawyers get involved. There's possibly a privacy violation, all these things. And I think the founders of the companies that are small, medium, not necessarily large, maybe a little large, are more inclined to be more transparent because they can be, because they can be more agile. Right?
Maureen Ballatori (20:43.79)
Mm -hmm.
Kristin Demoranville (20:45.404)
there's less detriment. So if something like a larger brand, like, I don't know, one like JBS happened or Dolpega, I don't know, sorry, those, that's a different conversation because that's major, major dollars. That's major, major issues. and this is why, you know, I, I, I do love our big brands. Absolutely. But I love our small mediums because they need more love from us, both on a technology front and a marketing front, because they are doing this out of,
Maureen Ballatori (20:54.318)
Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (21:08.718)
Thank you.
Kristin Demoranville (21:15.1)
a major passion, like you said, it could be generational. It could be that they're sharing a generational recipe, depending on the product that they're making. So there's a lot more personal effectiveness, or you'll be affected personally more so if you're tied to the brand in that regard. I wish, this is what I wish cyber security in general would share more across the board. We tend to keep things really close to our chest. And for those who are listening, they know I don't have to like...
beat them. This is a dead horse conversation, honestly. But it's hard. And I love that the food industry, especially, and I know you've seen this, Marina, is really trying to be transparent, transparent in all aspects, food safety, food defense, the whole, they talk about it. I sit in these conferences and they talk about it. We're trying to be more transparent. They want to be so transparent that they actually go down to the exact seed that grew the product that potentially caused the problem.
Maureen Ballatori (21:45.87)
Hehehehe
Maureen Ballatori (21:54.734)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (21:59.95)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (22:09.486)
Yes.
Kristin Demoranville (22:10.652)
which I think is brilliant. And I really hope that that carries forward into technology more and more and more because we need it to, we desperately need it to. I think that how can a consumer trust a brand if they don't even understand what they're doing on a digital front, right? So that's the weirdness that's gonna start happening more is the consumers are gonna drive this, hey, I need you to be more transparent because...
Maureen Ballatori (22:18.286)
Mmm.
Maureen Ballatori (22:26.734)
Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (22:35.31)
Mm -hmm.
Kristin Demoranville (22:36.38)
look at what the company A is doing, they're doing that, right? Why aren't you doing that? You're bigger than them and badder than them. Like what's going on? I'm waiting for that moment. It's happening slowly, but I'm waiting for that moment, which makes it a unique challenge when you're building a brand, right? Because that's part of it, like consumer response. So how do you deal with consumer response to a brand, like negative or positively, I suppose? That's something I've always wanted to ask. Like, how do you...
Maureen Ballatori (22:38.19)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (22:42.542)
Yeah. Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Kristin Demoranville (23:05.148)
How do you negotiate that? How do you adjust the branding based on customers? Because what if they didn't like your apple?
Maureen Ballatori (23:12.302)
Hmm. Well, so it probably depends on what it is because taste, you just meant you just made a taste reference. Taste is first and foremost. If someone buys your product and it tastes like crap, they're not going to buy it again. So I mean, yeah, because that is the number one driver of purchase and repurchase is taste.
Kristin Demoranville (23:19.612)
Mm -hmm.
Kristin Demoranville (23:24.252)
Yes.
Kristin Demoranville (23:30.492)
That's correct. And they'll tell their friends, don't buy this.
Kristin Demoranville (23:40.252)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (23:40.334)
Everything else comes after that convenience price everything so
Kristin Demoranville (23:44.444)
Do you think that taste even comes before like packaging and coloring and that's really interesting.
Maureen Ballatori (23:47.662)
100 % it taste is number one. It is the do I think this is going to taste good? Studies have shown that that is the primary driver of purchase. Now packaging makes a difference. Sure. It can catch your attention on shelf, but, and so packaging may drive curiosity, which might compel the purchase, right? They're like, that looks kind of cool. I might want to try that. But if they don't think because of the way that it's
Kristin Demoranville (24:07.964)
I know.
Maureen Ballatori (24:17.07)
it's explained or the way that it's shot or the way that it looks in the bag. If they don't think it's gonna taste good, they're not gonna buy it because why would you? That's the primary use case of food is to consume it. So you want it to taste good, you know? And then there's all sorts of other drivers that are sometimes personally motivated, right? Like if somebody's like, I seek.
clean label or I choose vegan or I have a necessity to be gluten free, right? Like those things are also factors, of course, but what your question is more was more so about what do you do if something doesn't go right, right? And so like, I think taste is a little bit of a of an outlier of a scenario. If it's you screwed something up, it is that transparency angle, right? Of what?
what do you do to fix it? Now, a really interesting thing that's happening right now that I think we could talk about for a bit is the milk contamination, right? That's happening right now. I'm far from an expert on that subject. I'm far from even an amateur. I just know it's happening and I know it's bad. And so I have spoken with some friends at
Kristin Demoranville (25:25.724)
Mm.
Maureen Ballatori (25:41.39)
Bio Isaac, who are, I believe it's Bio Isaac. I just am double checking myself on that. Yes. Yep. Thank you. Who are working on that and they're aiming to make sure that the farmers are protected from a cyber security standpoint because it's a big question of where did this start and how did it scale and how big of a problem is it and how big is it gonna get and where did it come from? And.
Kristin Demoranville (25:46.492)
Yep, you're fine. You're right. I know you're right.
Maureen Ballatori (26:10.446)
The question being from the Bio -Isaac folks, I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't say that because I don't want to overshare, but it is a question of, like I said, where did that come from?
Kristin Demoranville (26:21.724)
And nefarious behavior, where did that nefarious behavior start? Was it human driven? Was it an accident of a fat finger? We don't know yet. Was it cyber physical? Was it digital? Was it intentional? Yeah, don't worry. You're not oversharing. We're all friends here. And I believe the entire operational technology security side of this listening house just went, mm -hmm. They all went. So.
Maureen Ballatori (26:25.934)
Mm -hmm.
Exactly. Was it accidental or intentional? Exactly.
Maureen Ballatori (26:45.902)
Mwahahahaha!
Kristin Demoranville (26:48.828)
yeah, the milk contamination thing is interesting because it's, it's in the media, but it's not really in the media. It's sort of in this like, we're not sure. Nobody wants to report yet till we have more findings, but we're all talking about it and we're all nervous about it. And it's funny because, in the last six months and it's funny, not funny. I should probably say it's not funny enough, you know, but, I've been saying like, what if a hacker or a bad actor decided to mess with the pH of milk?
Maureen Ballatori (26:55.246)
Right.
Maureen Ballatori (27:02.254)
Right? Yeah.
Kristin Demoranville (27:16.508)
I've actually said this on air multiple times. And here we are, milk contamination. I'm not saying I'm a fortune teller and I didn't have any insider information at that point. I just use it because milk is very prevalent in everybody's life. We put it in tea, we have it with cereal, we make pancakes with it. It's just kind of one of those things that we all know what it is. And if a milk supply was damaged in any way in a distribution front, we're in big trouble. That's a problem.
Maureen Ballatori (27:42.702)
And again, think about that from the brand perspective. The milk, milk as a brand. So not, I'm not talking about a brand of milk, right? Like Coca -Cola owns Fairlife. I'm not talking about Fairlife. I'm talking about milk, the agricultural product. What does it mean for an attack like that for the larger landscape of the milk industry? It means.
Kristin Demoranville (27:46.428)
Mm -hmm. Yes, please.
Maureen Ballatori (28:11.278)
exactly what we just talked about with the other issues. It means concerns of trust, right? For, you know, this new issue is just begging the question for people who were already consumption of fluid milk has been declining for a number of years. I want to say at least 10, it's been declining rapidly. Value added product consumption is...
Kristin Demoranville (28:16.316)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (28:39.15)
dramatically increasing. So like people are eating more cheese, more cottage cheese, more like butter, stuff like that. You know, like remember the whole butter thing with like the butter boards was a whole thing for a while.
Kristin Demoranville (28:40.796)
Yes.
Kristin Demoranville (28:49.98)
That was nasty, by the way. The fact that people were creating butter boards, I don't know if listeners know what these are. It was very popular in TikTok, especially during the pandemic. They were smearing butter on a cheese board, if you will, and then like sprinkling various topics and toppings on it, like honey, salt, whatever. And then they take crackers and eat it off the board. Now, if that was just a party of one, like a girl dinner, like no problem, you can have that. But if it's like a sharing thing, that's nasty. If you think about it, that's nasty.
Maureen Ballatori (29:04.174)
Yes.
Maureen Ballatori (29:12.814)
Hahaha, yeah!
Maureen Ballatori (29:18.478)
from a food safety perspective, there's a lot of issues with that. A lot of times that board is wooden. And so a lot of contaminants can hold. Exactly, exactly. So, but all that I digress. The point being people are consuming a lot more value added, but there's been a decline in consumption of fluid milk for the last 10 plus years. And so what will this mean? What will this scare mean for the consumption of
Kristin Demoranville (29:24.828)
Yep. Porous, very porous board. Yep.
Maureen Ballatori (29:48.366)
dairy products from the general public, what will this look like on the chart, right? When we look back at 2024, will we see a dip from this? Who knows? And I think that that will also be determined by what happens from here, because we're still new in the development of this, right? That it's what's, how is it gonna develop? Don't know yet.
Kristin Demoranville (30:07.708)
Yeah, very new.
Kristin Demoranville (30:11.996)
I don't know. We don't know. And also, it's not just a US problem, it's a global problem. This has happened in a couple other countries, like Japan is an example with kids in school. And milk is important to that culture as well. They have milk right after they leave an on -send, a spa. Everybody has milk. It's a thing. I don't understand it. I don't need to. It's great if you want to have milk. I remember being a kid. I drank milk after I would go running. I was a long distance runner. And
Maureen Ballatori (30:20.174)
Mmm.
Kristin Demoranville (30:40.572)
in college and high school. And it was always milk you went after because you wanted that electrolyte sugar hit, you know, that's what you wanted. And everybody's like, there's sugar and milk. Yeah, there's sugar and milk. Calm down. And, and those kinds of things. So this is going to change people's routines. It could change up a lot of things. And I think it's scary because I remember the milk ads when I was a kid, like the milk mustache, like all the different ads about being strong and drinking milk, got milk. Yeah, huge.
Maureen Ballatori (31:05.07)
Yep. The Got Milk campaign was huge when we were kids. Yep.
Kristin Demoranville (31:10.204)
huge and that was the brand identity. I mean, it still is in some ways. I think that they still do the gut milk in some aspects in some places. I have a good friend who lives in Wisconsin and he's going to probably be working his next job will be in a cheese factory.
Maureen Ballatori (31:13.614)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (31:27.054)
I was just gonna say Wisconsin Cheese, they've done a remarkable job branding themselves.
Kristin Demoranville (31:31.452)
They really have. I mean, I think having the football team with the cheese heads probably really helped quite a bit, but let's, it's be fine. But the Midwest in general is known for cheese. I mean, I lived in Minnesota for a while. I mean, cheese curds were a thing. Like I'm not fond of them. They just were like oversized cottage cheese to me. And I wasn't really okay with that. but whatever, more power to you. But if you, cheese is an important part of everybody's lives, whether you eat it or not, cause there's plenty of vegan cheese that's delicious.
Maureen Ballatori (31:36.014)
Hehehehehe
Maureen Ballatori (31:42.954)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (31:59.758)
Mm -hmm.
Kristin Demoranville (31:59.868)
And there's some controversy on vegan cheese. And I understand that because it did almost win like a major award this past year. And then something happened and it got bumped out. It was a blue cheese actually, which is even kind of more strange. But vegan cheese actually can be quite good. Like it just depends, right? And.
Maureen Ballatori (32:06.19)
Maureen Ballatori (32:15.47)
Yeah. Yeah. There's also a big controversy on milk for plant -based milk. What can be called milk? Why is plant -based? So I'm doing a talk for, a dairy convention here in a few months. And, I'm talking about consumer trends in the beverage industry. And one of the things I plan to reference is plant -based beverages. And so when I wrote my description for that talk, I put in,
Kristin Demoranville (32:21.276)
Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (32:45.262)
that will talk about the rising trends of plant -based milk and they said, you cannot refer to it as milk. You have to refer to it as a plant -based beverage.
Kristin Demoranville (32:53.148)
okay. I could see where people would be upset by that and it doesn't exactly reflect because it isn't milk. It is just a plant -based beverage. But nobody wants to say plant -based beverage. That's a lot to say.
Maureen Ballatori (32:56.558)
Mm -hmm.
Right.
Right. Well, it's one of those things that the brand sort of got ahead of the, the branding got ahead of the industry in that case, right? Where plant -based milk alternatives started coming into the market and no one said you couldn't call it milk. And then all of a sudden there's all these milk alternatives on the market that are plant -based beverages. And then the dairy industry was like, wait, there's,
Kristin Demoranville (33:12.092)
Interesting. Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (33:32.11)
Why can they call it? That's not milk. Why can they call it milk? But it was, you know, the regulation takes a while to catch up and right. So there's no, there's no one saying that you can't say that. And I suspect that what will happen is we'll get to a point where the government will say in order to call yourself milk, you have to come from an animal of some kind or otherwise you have to call it a milk alternative or something like that. Like we have a client that has a plant based cheese. It's a plant based Parmesan.
And so they have to, on the package, we had to designate dairy free. And so it says like in small letters, dairy free, and then big letters, Parmesan, and then below that, style. So dairy free Parmesan style cheese. Yeah.
Kristin Demoranville (34:17.372)
works. I mean, I'm sure somebody will accidentally mistake it for Parmesan, but that's okay. They'll be either surprised or not. I don't know. Most people can't tell that most people can't tell the difference. To be honest, sometimes the flavorings are so good, you can't tell the difference usually texture thing. But not everybody's palates are fine for texture. So you know, it's one of those things. But yeah, I never thought about it like that. Wow, that's and to think that the branding got ahead of it.
Maureen Ballatori (34:23.662)
Yeah. It's very good.
Maureen Ballatori (34:32.658)
Yeah. Mm -hmm. Yep.
Kristin Demoranville (34:45.788)
That's fascinating because that's a good way to take out a brand too. And if you think about it, if you were a nefarious bad actor, because social engineering is ultimately what we deal with in cybersecurity at the core, whether it's through malware and all these other things, you have to manipulate in order to get through. If you manipulate the branding that far, that actually could lead to a cyber attack as well. So if you think about it, it's all sort of part and part in the long run. And I realized everybody's like, that's probably far -fetched, Kristin. No, it's not. No, it's not.
Maureen Ballatori (34:56.782)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (35:10.574)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (35:14.414)
Hehehehehe
Kristin Demoranville (35:15.868)
Because at this point, nothing surprises me when it comes to what we deal with on a daily basis. So wow, that's fascinating. So lactose -free milk is still considered milk then, right? Because it's still a product of an animal. It's just they took the lactose out. OK, sorry. That was just for my own understanding. That was my own understanding. Sorry, everybody. I'm just curious.
Maureen Ballatori (35:20.174)
Mm -hmm, yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (35:30.638)
Yes, right, so like A2 milk.
Yes, A2 milk is a lactose free milk. And so yes, that is still milk.
Kristin Demoranville (35:44.284)
Wow, okay. Like I'm actually learning things today. This is amazing. I'm...
Maureen Ballatori (35:47.31)
And again, in terms of what the regulations currently say, plant -based milks can call themselves milk. We have a sunflower milk client. So it's sunflowers and water, and the way that they blend it, it is a milk, it's plant -based beverage. So they call it a milk and they are allowed to, but technically it didn't come from an animal, it came from a sunflower.
Kristin Demoranville (36:17.084)
I just, I'm so fascinated that we have literally taken almost every nut and seed because actually a sunflower is a seed, obviously. Most nuts are seeds actually. And we've somehow made them into these beverages like that. And that wasn't a thing we thought about 30 years ago. That was not a thing. I mean, you drank milk. That's what you did. And you had, you had a glass of milk with your spaghetti at night and that's what you did. Or with your, you know, grilled cheese or with your.
Maureen Ballatori (36:36.686)
Right?
Yeah!
Kristin Demoranville (36:46.332)
other various foods, I can't remember now. But yeah, that's, that's what I even still think about it when I'm having something like that. I'm like, where's a glass of milk when I need one? Or Oreos, how Oreo branded with milk, and they're now like, people are they're synonymous together, like you have a glass of milk with Oreos, which is brilliant, because that works out well. I'm not a big dunker, but I can respect it. So how, how did you take your your
Maureen Ballatori (36:47.566)
Totally.
Maureen Ballatori (36:53.59)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (37:00.494)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (37:04.366)
Mm -hmm.
Hahaha!
Kristin Demoranville (37:14.588)
you're living on a dairy farm as a kid and you're doing all these things, how did you stretch it all the way to where you are now with this branding moment? Because you obviously live the life, so you have this great angle of looking at things. And now you've moved into this branding conversation and dare I say anything to do with like social media and all that other fun world, how did we get there? How did we, because you even off your own podcasts, Spilled Salt, right? Which I think is a brilliant name because Spilled Salt's awesome. Like.
Maureen Ballatori (37:25.358)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (37:37.55)
Mm -hmm.
Ha ha!
Kristin Demoranville (37:41.852)
It's sort of like, it's sort of like, you know, tea, like spill the tea, you know, spilled salt. It's great. I caught the branding immediately, but maybe because I'm that kind of person, but, how do we get here? How do we get through all this? Cause the way you know, so many people too, we actually have common, industry friends, which, which is crazy. Cause we have this intersection here too. So I'm just interested.
Maureen Ballatori (37:44.622)
Exactly right. Yep.
Maureen Ballatori (38:03.374)
yeah so i went to school for graphic design and illustration from the time i was a kid i always loved art like i that was my favorite subject in school you know i won't talk about like you know you asked about a memory like a favorite food memory i have a favorite art memory i remember the first time my art was on the news when like that was a thing and like i had made this mask in
kindergarten or first grade or something and it was on the news and I just remember distinctly thinking this is the coolest. I was just so amazed at the art angle but I never wanted to be a fine artist because I loved business from a young age too. Like not when I was in kindergarten or first grade then I just wanted to like cut and paste things onto a piece of construction paper and you know it was all well and good then but as I continued to do art
through high school and college and I just always loved the business angle. And so that led me to advertising and marketing because I could apply my graphic design skills and art skills to a medium that I felt was making a difference. And so then I just really threw fuel on that and took it to a whole other level with agency 29. So really the reason why we focus in strategy, identity marketing,
is because the strategic direction is the most important part, right? I talked about that ready, fire, aim client, you know, if they had like planned first and aimed strategically, right? At who they were looking at, then they could have done the identity to align with that and the marketing would all fall in line. And that's how you build the brand. And that's how you build longevity, build strong businesses, grow top line revenue.
hire more people, grow more communities, right? That was what I cared about. And so after I went to school for graphic design and illustration, I started the Agency 29 as a freelancing side venture and did that for 10 years while I worked full -time in professional services roles. I was at a law firm, I was at a scholarly publishing company. And then after my two kids were born, my daughter's eight. So my son is...
Kristin Demoranville (40:04.092)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (40:28.654)
nine and my daughter's eight. And when my daughter was born, I just decided not to go back to work and take the freelancing side thing to a full -time thing. So that was eight years ago. And then we really saw the opportunity in food, beverage, and agriculture to niche down into those industries. I saw the writing on the wall like probably five or six years ago. And then it took me some time to get convinced that there was enough volume there, right? To make sense to...
support the business. Four years ago, we niched down. So that was in 2020. We niched down into food bev -ag. And the reason why we have like why I'm so connected and why I know people is because I make a point of anybody that I meet in the industry because it's so much of a community in food bev -ag that when I find someone who's doing that work.
Kristin Demoranville (41:17.756)
Yes.
Maureen Ballatori (41:22.254)
I just like, I call them or I email them or I DM them on LinkedIn and I reach out and like, hey, can we chat? Cause we both love this industry and it's rarely a no. Especially if it's agriculture, if it's food in Bev, you know, and like you're really focused on like scaling a CPG, you know, and your resources are limited and like every second matters. I have had nos from CPGs on occasion.
But if I ask a farmer, can I come out and see your operation? Can you take me through or a manufacturer of food or a beverage? Can I come through and see what you're building? They love to show it off. And so I've built connections that way and it's a true personal joy.
Kristin Demoranville (42:03.612)
yeah.
Kristin Demoranville (42:09.692)
I think it's so important to note that you realize that you needed to niche, because a lot of people think I'm crazy that I niche down in cybersecurity into food and ag. A lot of people are like, yeah, that's important. We probably should care about that, right? And I'm like, yeah, you eat, right? Because it's the second thing you do after you're born. You scream, and then you eat. So I think we kind of, as humans, we kind of focus off, because we're too busy chasing the prophet tail. And they don't.
Maureen Ballatori (42:28.238)
Mm -hmm.
Kristin Demoranville (42:38.012)
we don't realize that we need to focus on the things that matter, you know, keeping people fed water, you know, then you can move into electricity and all the other fun things that we deal with in our modern lives. But I think that the niching down is going to happen more and more in all kinds of industries because we need to target focus. We need to have that boutique experience, if you will, into some of these industries because they need our help. It's not you can't just have blanketed skills to go into some of these anymore. You need to actually know what you're talking about and walk the walk and talk the talk.
Maureen Ballatori (42:43.726)
Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (42:57.422)
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
Kristin Demoranville (43:07.26)
And I wanted you to say all that too, Maureen, and thank you, because I want people to realize that they can do that. They can come out of their own life experiences and they can move forward into what they're passionate about. They don't have to be restricted to, I'm just this and I only do this robot move. It can be more. It can be an impassioned moment. So as we're winding down here, I'm going to swing it back to cybersecurity. How important is cybersecurity in your opinion, from what you've talked to with your clients and fellow community?
Maureen Ballatori (43:21.838)
Mm -hmm.
Kristin Demoranville (43:36.444)
for food and ag brands in protecting their business identity and customer data.
Maureen Ballatori (43:41.358)
So I will answer that first from a personal perspective and then I will answer it from what I believe to be my, well, what is my perception of the industry from that perspective. So for agency 29, it's really important from a risk management perspective for us to make sure that we've got our T's crossed and our I's dotted.
And so some of our clients, especially those that are in more regulated industries, like banking, we have worked with clients that are in banking, insurance, you know, that sort of thing. They also have requirements for how we manage their data that we receive from them. So from that perspective, I've learned a lot about what sort of checks and balances are necessary for us to keep in place that it's like, well, and we don't treat anybody differently if, if the,
financial firm is saying our data needs to be managed in this way. It's okay, great, we had an opportunity to be educated and now we treat all of our clients' data in that way, right? Where it's, yeah, more protective. And then from the industry, it's funny, so we both know Andrew Rose and I'm sure he will be delighted to hear his name mentioned on this podcast. And...
Kristin Demoranville (44:46.972)
That's a smart way to do it.
Maureen Ballatori (45:03.054)
He and I know each other through Grow New York, which is an international food and ag competition that happens in upstate New York. He was a judge in some of the early years and I'm involved. So he does an ag chat and chew every other Friday morning, which is just like an open session of industry professionals. If you're interested in agriculture, like come and hang on every other Friday morning. I'll send you the invitation. You would love it.
Kristin Demoranville (45:13.692)
Mm -hmm.
Kristin Demoranville (45:31.548)
Okay.
Maureen Ballatori (45:32.91)
That really, he's a cybersecurity guy and as much as he is an agriculture guy. And so it has really opened my eyes in conversations with him and BioIsaac about the, how much cybersecurity actually permeates agriculture and food and bath. I had no idea. I really didn't know.
Kristin Demoranville (45:57.052)
It's like everything. Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (46:01.902)
what was possible there. And so it was blowing my mind in some of the early chats that I had in those meetings. And again, especially like I keep mentioning Bio -Isaac, but they've, they really opened my mind to this of how cybersecurity actually is a risk for agriculture and what that can mean. And especially for what I, the perspective I have about the food, BEV and ag industries, what we know,
is that their margins are so slim. Their risk is so high. Last year in the Finger Lakes, so in upstate New York, there was a late frost that wiped out a huge amount of the grapes in the Finger Lakes region. And there was nothing the farmers could do about it. They knew it was happening. Some of them have fans that they could, you know,
Kristin Demoranville (46:38.236)
Yes.
Maureen Ballatori (46:58.51)
put on the vineyards to try and like push some warm air. Some of them lit small fires in the vineyards to keep the grapes warm. There was a little bit that was mitigated from that, but on by and large, there was a huge, enormous impact to the industry as a result of that frost. And so I was aware from that perspective, I was not aware from the cybersecurity perspective how much that is a risk.
Kristin Demoranville (47:27.804)
It's too bad that they, first of all, that happened and I, my heart goes out because people don't realize how difficult farming is full stop. It's a very difficult job. It's, it's a lot of highs. It's a lot of lows, probably more lows than highs to be honest at times. But I'm sure some smarty pants on here are like, why don't they just make it into ice wine? Because that's not how that works. So, so.
Maureen Ballatori (47:39.214)
Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (47:51.022)
Right. Yeah, it's not.
Kristin Demoranville (47:54.204)
But there is great ice wine in the Finnegrin Lakes region if you're into that sweet syrupy stuff. But people are trying to make the best of bad situations like California with the fire and all the smoke taint that's coming off and hitting those vines. Now, some smoke taints okay, because they can still bottle it and sort of got that barbeque vibe to it. But you can't do that for a full load of like chardonnay or for Cabernet because ultimately ruins the crop. You can't remove that.
Maureen Ballatori (48:07.758)
Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (48:19.15)
Mm -hmm.
Kristin Demoranville (48:23.9)
taint either. It's literally a taint. And I think that this is where I think the technology is going to come in a lot more. It's already in the vineyards. It's already in agriculture. It's here. It's very much here. I had a conversation actually with a reporter yesterday talking about what type of tech is in vineyards. And I was like, a lot. And I started listening them all off. And I was like, you could have Googled this. But that's OK. I'm not mad that you're talking to me. But there's going to be more tech thrown at these problems to fix it, right?
Maureen Ballatori (48:25.998)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (48:42.094)
Yeah.
Kristin Demoranville (48:52.86)
With more tech, that means more internet connected. That means more people who are just going to connect without realizing that it's not going to be secure by design. Most products aren't secure by design because they're out to turn a profit. So they want to get it out quickly, right? They're not going to spend the time to necessarily make it secure by the hardware aspect. Now, I know the product security people listening just had a heart attack. I'm not picking on you guys. I know you're trying. But when it comes to these type of consumer commodity technologies, you know they're going out the door rapidly.
Maureen Ballatori (48:55.438)
Totally.
Maureen Ballatori (49:05.582)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (49:10.958)
Mm -hmm.
Kristin Demoranville (49:22.78)
And it bothers me because now these farmers have to become cybersecurity experts or IT experts. Sort of goes back to the John Deere tractor moment where they had to start hacking their own tractors just to fix them. Thankfully, that's now been changed and they can work on their own tractors. But they shouldn't have to do that. And I've heard from other type of ad companies and like soybean is very concerned about cybersecurity. I've heard from the corn, same thing, they're very concerned. But the problem is that,
Maureen Ballatori (49:32.59)
Yeah, right.
Maureen Ballatori (49:49.774)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Kristin Demoranville (49:52.604)
nobody specialized enough to start working on that. And this is where Andrew is super important and why the work I do, because we're constantly trying to be like, hi, hi, we can help. Just talk to us, please. Like we really want to help. And it's difficult because I don't want people to run around and think, it's a lot. We're all lost. We're doomed because we're going to have another frost and everything's going to happen. We can't fix the frost problem. But if we could prep people ahead of time with technology that's prepared them for it so they could potentially, I don't know, early harvest.
Maureen Ballatori (50:02.286)
Yeah. Yeah.
Kristin Demoranville (50:22.396)
or late harvest or whatever needs to happen. That would be great. Not that we predict weather, because I would like to say that cybersecurity is not going to do that, but the tech will help eventually to be able to get to a point where maybe this won't be as so devastating. Maybe it'll just be more of a bump in the road. But again, it's that aspect of everything's going to be connected to the internet because people want to sit in their homes on their iPad and be able to eat dinner with their family, but yet still be able to monitor whatever's going on.
Maureen Ballatori (50:23.502)
Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (50:32.974)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (50:45.486)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (50:50.478)
Yeah, yeah. And I think when it comes to the frost, it was not an early harvest, late harvest situation. It was, it happened at bud break. And so there's nothing to harvest there. You know, it was, and so I don't know. I mean, I'd love to see 20 years from now, 10 years from now, a product that exists that helps mitigate that.
Kristin Demoranville (50:56.508)
Yeah, it just happens bad.
off.
Kristin Demoranville (51:11.932)
heats everything around it without setting it on fire.
Maureen Ballatori (51:14.254)
Right. Yeah, I don't who knows, you know, like a little blanket that goes around every vine. I don't know.
Kristin Demoranville (51:21.596)
Or maybe there'll be like a little robot shell that like hits it. Who knows? Could be crazy. We could have like an Iron Man shield around the vineyard. Who knows?
Maureen Ballatori (51:24.238)
Yeah, there you go. Yeah. Yeah, like, yeah, exactly. But like one of the things that is commonly being developed for wineries is one of the issues that they typically deal with is powdery mildew, which is a predictive weather event that, you know, like the weather does what the weather does. And if the criteria meets these things, then powdery mildew happens.
Kristin Demoranville (51:40.956)
Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (51:53.198)
So there is some ag tech that's being rolled out to wineries that is helping with that, which is great. But going back to what you were saying about cybersecurity and kind of you're saying like, hi, I can help, I'm here to help. You know what I think the issue is with that of like why the farmers are not taking you up on that by and large is because of trust.
Farmers, they're so reluctant to trust. And again, that goes back to brand, right? That you can continue to build the brand to be like, we are a trustworthy organization, right? And the farmers can trust us, but they're very reluctant to do that. So when organizations reach out and say like, I would like to help you, you know, they're like, but why? But.
What's, but what's in it for you? Why are you trying to help me? What am I going to lose that I'm not? I don't know what questions to ask you to know what I'm going to miss out on by you winning whatever you is in it for you to come and try and help me with this. Right. But you're really coming from a place of like, I just want to like help you still exist. You know?
Kristin Demoranville (52:51.676)
Yeah. Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (53:09.934)
So I think that that's the issue. And I don't know what the answer to that is other than, you know, I think that the agricultural community in particular is you get one and then you get their neighbor and then you get their neighbor and then you've got the community and then you get the next community, you know, is that that's the way that agriculture tends to agriculture, you know, products and services tend to grow is, is that way because of trust. But I don't know how else you go about building it.
Kristin Demoranville (53:40.572)
Yeah, trust is a hard one. And once it's broken, it's complicated, right? Even when cyber attacks happen, regardless of if it's a product or what it is, you'd start to distrust that brand a little bit more. I'm not going to name names because it's not worth it. But you definitely are like, hmm, those people had a cyber attack. They're kind of shady. I might go with this brand instead. Or I think we're going to see that more and more. But also, kind of the running joke in the cybersecurity community is you're not really a
Maureen Ballatori (53:51.726)
Yeah.
Kristin Demoranville (54:08.988)
a company until you have been hacked because otherwise it's going to happen anyways, but sort of because it's happened to everybody now. So because of that, we kind of just joke that like, you know, you're real now, you welcome to the world, you've had this happen. But
Maureen Ballatori (54:11.246)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (54:21.614)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that the other, sorry to interrupt, but the other thing that is complicated there too, is that you're doing risk management, right? You are helping them try to protect themselves from these attacks, but you can't guarantee.
Kristin Demoranville (54:26.108)
You're fine.
Kristin Demoranville (54:38.268)
Yeah, no, there's no guarantee. There's never going to be a guarantee. You can't guarantee in this business. And if anybody says otherwise, please come find me because there's no way.
Maureen Ballatori (54:45.326)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that that's that's another factor of like, OK, well, if you can't if you can't guarantee to me that you're going to make it not happen, then.
Why should I?
Kristin Demoranville (54:59.868)
Yeah. I mean, there's even a term in cybersecurity called zero trust, which is basically not allowing anything to come into your network. That's ultimately what it means, but that's such negative branding. If you think about it, because zero trust to people who don't understand what that is, what, what, what does that mean? You know, and I could see people getting really upset by that. I don't like the term. I don't use it if I don't need to, but, I think that in general, cybersecurity needs a rebrand in itself when it comes to food and ag. And I've, and I'm so glad that we talked today because.
Maureen Ballatori (55:14.542)
Mm -hmm.
Maureen Ballatori (55:21.422)
Mm -hmm.
Kristin Demoranville (55:29.916)
You've definitely echoed that for me. How are we going to do that? We need to come in maybe with more peace offering. Like, hi, we come here as friends. Take me to your farmer. I mean, I don't know, right? And I have met a lot of resistance, but I'm also meeting a lot of people that are really interested in helping and want to be supportive. Like the food protection teams are all about this. They're like anything we can do to help food safety. And we understand that cybersecurity is part of it now. So we want to help you get there.
Maureen Ballatori (55:39.502)
Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (55:55.662)
Mm -hmm.
Kristin Demoranville (55:59.868)
That is such a great community that I've started with and that's actually given me a lot of hope that eventually food and ag in general will break down a little bit better so we can get in. Ultimately, yeah, it's about the product, it's about the safety of people, but yeah, we're all here to make money too, right? So that's not, I don't hide that fact and I don't think they should hide that either. Just because you grow 15 different varieties of genetic myelodified apples doesn't mean that they're not viable. They're still all gonna be awesome and delicious.
Maureen Ballatori (56:16.27)
Yeah.
Maureen Ballatori (56:28.558)
Mm -hmm.
Kristin Demoranville (56:29.052)
And I realized that people might be triggered by genetically modified, but that's a different conversation for a different day.
Maureen Ballatori (56:35.31)
And it's also not, they were not, I'm talking about the breed, like genetically bred, right? Which is different than GMO specifically. Yes.
Kristin Demoranville (56:40.86)
Reading. yeah. That's very true. See, this is why it's important to get the right information. We don't want any disinformation going around. Absolutely.
Maureen Ballatori (56:48.202)
Yes, right, right. Let me just make one other point too about that trust and like how you come in from the top, right? And like how you come into a community and build trust. I was at World Agritech in San Francisco in March. And one of the suggestions that somebody had made was making sure that you have a great relationship with the local farm bureau.
Kristin Demoranville (57:14.14)
Mmm.
Maureen Ballatori (57:14.254)
and extension agents because they're the ones that are in the community that are trusted, that are the responsible for bringing the new innovative ideas to the community in a trusted way. So I thought that that was a really interesting way to avoid, right? It's not feasible to go farmer to farmer to farmer, take me to your farmer, right? But it is possible to go through channels like that, like the...
local farm bureaus and extension agents to get a baseline of trust.
Kristin Demoranville (57:46.844)
I think that's brilliant advice. For anybody who's listening who's trying to break into that area, definitely, for sure. It's right up there with getting to know your FBI field office so you can report these things as well. That's a whole other conversation again. Anyways, thank you so much for being here.
Marina, like I've learned a lot. So I hope the listeners have to, because this has been a fascinating episode. And I definitely think we're going to have to have you back probably with Andrew so we can like completely geek out about all the things in Ag Tech for sure. we'll be all right. We'll be all right. And I will make sure that all of Marina's information is in the show notes so you can reach out to her and her company. And if you have questions, obviously she loves to meet people. So don't feel shy about reaching out to her on LinkedIn and beyond. Thank you so much, Marina. Anything you want to say before we go?
Maureen Ballatori (58:17.646)
We'll need a translator for that one, but thank you for having me.
Kristin Demoranville (58:35.004)
Anything you could come up.
Maureen Ballatori (58:35.022)
No, thank you for the opportunity. This was wonderful. I appreciate it.
Kristin Demoranville (58:37.884)
Great, thanks so much.
