Penton Previews Sharper Focus On Agriculture

NEW YORK, March 21, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Five months after purchasing Farm Progress and becoming North America's largest and most diversified agriculture information company, Penton is poised to unveil its new agriculture group at the National Agri-Marketing Association's (NAMA) Agri-Marketing Conference April 17-19 in Kansas City, MO.

The new organization combines the editorial, sales and marketing strengths of two long-standing industry leaders into a single powerhouse that matches best-in-class industry coverage with a unified database to deliver precision-targeted value for America's farmers, ranchers and the companies that serve them. Penton will focus on serving the distinct business information needs of regional agriculture communities, and creating corresponding opportunities for agricultural suppliers to easily and efficiently reach any or every segment of the national agriculture market. 

"We acquired Farm Progress last November to accelerate our growth in this strategically critical market sector, and since then we've been working to align our combined assets with the best opportunities for success," said Penton Senior Vice President for Agriculture, Food and Restaurants, Dan Bagan. "The organization we will proudly unveil at NAMA next month is the product of a lot of hard work by two smart, experienced teams to maximize the return on our shared investment by providing an unprecedented array of content and marketing services to this industry."

Under the leadership of Editorial Directors Forrest Laws and Willie Vogt, Penton and Farm Progress content teams will intensify their regional and vertical industry coverage to provide the most relevant information to each audience.

"It's a formula that works," said Vogt.

In a few geographic areas where the combined businesses overlapped, primarily the south, Farm Progress's Carolina-Virginia Farmer, Southern Farmer, Mid-South Farmer, The Farmer-Stockman and California Farmer will be closed.

Penton's Farm Industry News will be recast to cover technology for production agriculture.

Market Leaders Greg Frey and Don Tourte will direct a reorganized sales and marketing team focused on creating comprehensive, turnkey programs to make it easy for marketers to buy any or all Penton and Farm Progress products and services. "While dynamics of the agriculture market can be complex, the goal of our organization is to simplify the process for our partners, and make it easier for them to connect with farmers and ranchers across each of our dynamic platforms," said Bagan. 

Audience development, technology and production support for the combined business will be consolidated under existing Penton operations. A unified approach to these functions, along with the combined data assets, will leverage the scale of Penton's capabilities to deliver micro-targeting market research and insights to clients.

"Five months ago, in line with our strategy to increase investment in existing sectors that offer strong long-term growth potential, we doubled-down on ag," said Penton CEO David Kieselstein. "Today the exceptional efforts of our business integration teams effectively ups the ante. Our new organization isn't a Penton solution or a Farm Progress solution. It's a unified solution that leverages the industry's strongest brands to provide turnkey ease, efficiency and impact in every category for our users and marketers."

About Penton
For millions of business owners and decision-makers, Penton makes the difference every day. We engage our professional users by providing actionable ideas and insights, data and workflow tools, community and networking, both in person and virtually, all with deep relevance to their specific industries. We then activate this engagement by connecting users with tens of thousands of targeted providers of products and services to help drive business growth. Learn more about our company at www.penton.com.

CONTACTS:
Chris Meyer
Director, Corporate Communications
Penton 
Phone: 212.204.4259
Email: [email protected] 

SOURCE Penton

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