Apr 7, 2007

Farm Tour Corrects Writer’s Misperceptions

A recent tour of New Jersey orchards and farm markets reinforced my belief in the difference between perception and reality, and the role marketing can play in creating that difference.

The June tour was hosted by the International Dwarf Fruit Tree Association (IDFTA) and was meant to put a spotlight on diversified farm marketing in New Jersey. It included a brief stop in New York City – a major market for New Jersey farmers – to visit the Union Square Tailgate Market, one of the city’s many farm markets.

The tour – two buses filled with dozens of passengers – also stopped at Ground Zero, what’s left of the World Trade Center. It’s basically a large crater in the southern part of Manhattan.

It was a surreal experience. Ground Zero looks like a construction site.

This is where two planes destroyed two of the tallest buildings in the world? This is the source of all that dramatic footage? It can’t be. It looks so… small. The reality of the scene certainly didn’t fit my previous perception. Maybe the camera makes everything look bigger.

Of course, I’d never been to New York City before, or seen the twin towers in their prime. As a local woman told me, it wasn’t the buildings’ circumference that boggled the mind, it was their height.

The trip corrected a couple of other misperceptions I’d acquired over the years. For example:

“Foster’s” is not Australian for “beer.” That’s right. I asked one of the Australian lads I met on the tour, and he said it was a myth. They don’t drink as much Foster’s in Australia as we think they do. It was all part of a clever marketing campaign on the part of the beer company, and it worked.

I felt betrayed. If the commercials claimed Foster’s was Australia’s beer of choice, how could it not be true? I felt foolish. I explained to the bloke that Americans have learned most of what they know about Australia from Crocodile Dundee movies and beer commercials. It’s a distorted image created, in part, by creative marketing. My new mate suggested I visit the real country and get the real story, and I agreed. Then we ordered another round of Heinekens (this was after the tour).

New Jersey is a beautiful state. Surprised? I was. What little I knew of New Jersey, gleaned mostly from gritty songs and movies, made me picture a state full of turnpikes, refinery towers, casinos and dirty beaches.

My first impression upon leaving the Newark airport confirmed that picture. In every direction, I saw ugly refineries, highways and ports. New Jersey is exactly the way Bruce Springsteen described it, I thought.

But that’s only a small part of the state. As the tour wound deeper into New Jersey’s agricultural heartland, I saw an unexpected sight: rolling green hills, colonial style houses, cute farm markets, tidy orchards and charming little towns and villages. It was picture-postcard perfect. How come nobody told me about this?

Well, the local woman told me, Jerseyites have been telling outsiders for years, but they don’t seem to be getting the message. It’s hard for reality to compete with the powerful perceptions created by songs, movies and commercials.

I guess you have to be on the scene to find the truth of the matter. If you get your information secondhand, you’re probably not getting the whole story.