By ANDREA MCCANN
Indiana Correspondent

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — A two-month campaign by Indiana corn and soybean growers to educate 18- to 24-year-olds on the benefits and realities of biofuels reached several thousand college students and their friends, and it raised money for the Central Indiana Gleaners Food Bank.

Funded by the Indiana Soybean Alliance (ISA) and the Indiana Corn Marketing Council (ICMC), the “Ask Questions Please” campaign employed an “Ask Force” team comprised of recent college graduates with non-agricultural backgrounds to respond to questions about renewable energy.

Its message was four-pronged: biofuels are good for the economy; biofuels are good for the environment; biofuels are a clean renewable energy source; and farmers can raise enough corn and soybeans to supply all markets, including both food and fuel. The team took advantage of the social networking site Facebook, an “Ask Questions Please” website, blogs and campus visits.

“We wanted college students to be able to relate to the team members, so it was important that they were in the same peer group,” said Megan Kuhn, ICMC/ISA communications director. “We worked with the team for several weeks before launching the campaign so they learned our key message points, and they had a massive amount of resources they could go to if asked tough questions.

“ISA and ICMC monitored both the on-campus visits, as well as the Facebook site to maintain control of the message throughout the campaign.”

As of Dec. 22, the Ask Force had visited eight campuses and talked to 5,500 college students face-to-face through 23 campus events, according to Kuhn. At that time, she said, the Facebook site had more than 3,000 fans, with the target group making up 74 percent of that number.

Males made up 57 percent of the fans; 43 percent were female. The website at www.AskQuestionsPlease.com had more than 1,300 page views.

“We launched the Facebook page and started campus visits at the very end of October – October 29th, I believe,” Kuhn said. “While the campus visits have stopped, we’re continuing to post on the Facebook page and are looking at ways to keep the momentum of the ‘Ask Questions Please’ campaign going.”

Kuhn explained that ISA/ICMC targeted the 18- to 24-year-old age range because large numbers could be reached effectively through social media and campus events in a short period of time.

“Since we had a limited budget – much less than many of those working against biofuels – we decided we needed to be very focused on our target audience and chose the 18-24 demographic because of being able to reach them easily online,” she said. “However, we also know that most college students have a large group of ‘friends’ online, and that group includes all ages, so we knew our message would spread virally to many more age groups.”
ICMC/ISA challenged fans of the Facebook page to find 1,000 new fans during the campaign. If they met or exceeded that goal, the organizations would donate 10,000 cans of food to the Central Indiana Gleaners Food Bank. The page’s fans came through with three days to spare.

“We’ve had countless myth-busting conversations and fact-based discussions on our ‘Ask Questions Please’ Facebook site about renewable energy,” said Ask Force team member Ryan O’Shea. “The extent to which our farmers can grow products to provide fuel for our vehicles and food for our families made us realize that a food drive was a terrific way to illustrate production agriculture’s vast capabilities.”

Gleaners Food Bank serves food pantries in 21 Indiana counties, where hunger is a critical issue. More than 225,000 residents of these counties live in poverty – 80,000 of them children. According to Gleaners, the recent economic crisis has hit the elderly, working poor and children particularly hard. Gleaners President and CEO Pamela Altmeyer said the purchase of 10,000 cans of food would provide the equivalent of 7,519 meals for Central Indiana families.
“Our farmers want to assure Hoosiers that providing crops for renewable fuels like ethanol and biodiesel can be done at the same time that abundant food supplies can be produced,” said Mark Henderson, executive director of ISA/ICMC. “No one should go to bed hungry.

“The generosity of Hoosier farmers has always been extraordinary. We want to show that, as farmers, we have the energy to provide assistance for needy Hoosier families.”

The social consciousness of the “Ask Questions Please” target group didn’t escape ISA/ICMC’s attention. Kuhn said the organizations wanted to engage the students and involve them in supporting renewable energy in the form of biofuels.

“We encouraged them to invite their friends to become fans on our Facebook page; to print and post flyers around campus; and to ask questions and learn more about biofuels,” she said. “We deliberately went the route of encouraging the students to ask us questions they have about renewable energy – especially biofuels. We realize that most often those that are against biofuels – especially ethanol – are more vocal to the general consumer.

“Our campaign allowed college students to pose questions about information they have heard and allowed us to answer them with fact-based information. It was really exciting to see that many of the questions were along the lines of asking what they could do to help move renewable energy forward.”

Kuhn said “Ask Questions Please” isn’t ICMC/ISA’s only biofuels consumer outreach program, and the other programs have a much wider target audience.

“We also have the Hoosier Horsepower program with the Indianapolis Colts,” she said, “as well as an online biofuels newsletter and a website with great information about biofuels – www.indianabiofuels.com

“We found in some consumer surveying we did in the summer of 2008, that many Hoosiers don’t dislike the idea of biofuels, they just don’t know a lot about them. There are some really good educational opportunities out there, and the ‘Ask Questions Please’ campaign is one project to raise awareness.”