A Marketing Masterclass Via Pumpkin Picking in a Muddy Field at Farmer Copleys

If you’re local to West Yorkshire, especially the city of Wakefield and the five towns, then Farmer Copleys might ring a bell. If you’re not local, then allow me to introduce you. Farmer Copleys is, no doubt unsurprisingly, a farm, a very nice one, but what I think is most interesting, is it’s a farm with one heck of a marketing machine behind it, believe me.

If you’re looking for a marketing masterclass in how to deliver an unfathomably good return on your investment in marketing, let me tell you about my Sunday session of pumpkin picking. Picture the scene: it’s October, it’s been raining pretty consistently for the last few days, it just stopped raining only a few hours earlier the same day in fact. You turn up to a farm. It’s, you guessed it, muddy. Not quite the quagmire levels of the previous year, at least so far as my aunt tells me, but muddy enough that I’m regretting my choice to wear Docs instead of walking shoes that’s for sure!

It’s Farmer Copley’s Pumpkin Festival for which I paid £8 for the privilege of attending. So I suppose you might think I’d be justified in being perhaps disappointed… but you’d be wrong! I paid £8 to traipse about a muddy field and it was worth every penny, why, well because of their marketing, branding and design to be honest. 

Here’s the details: £8 entry, £10 to “borrow” a wheelbarrow - there was a light debate on the value for money here if you actually didn’t return it, lost your tenner but walked away with “quite a nice wheelbarrow”. We didn’t do that though, we did return it and get our tenner back I promise! Then we paid an additional £5 per person to have a bash at archery (which I’ll add to the list of things I’m not good at later). Tally up a go on the dodgems, the teacups, the carousel and the hook a duck, sorry pumpkin, at about £3.50 a pop, and finally the cost of our barrow full of actual pumpkins (thankfully we chose a selection of small to large ones and not a jumbo pumpkin at £12.50) and I think we must’ve spent around £150 for my family team of eight to have a fun few hours!

So when you think about it, you might wonder what that £8 entry was for. Ultimately, nothing tangible, but absolutely everything experiential. And this is why I think their marketing, design and branding is so successful, and this is absolutely why that £8 entry fee is worth every penny. 

It’s what powers the machine.

It’s why there were super useful directions from the entrance, through the extra car parking, to the covered ticket entrance, both in the form of cute little pumpkin festival signs, as well as actual people positioning the cars. It’s why there were amazing photo ops created throughout the festival grounds. My personal favourite had to be the pumpkin house by the way, I’ve just never seen anything like it. 

It’s what pays for great ideas like borrowing a wheelbarrow - no way we were carrying our pumpkin haul back up the fields without it! But it’s not just the experience on the day either, it’s before and after too. 

For example, I bought my tickets well in advance, so obviously they got buried in the myriad of spam and marketing emails I get every day. So much so it was bothering me a few days before attending about whether or not I could find them in my inbox. And right when I’m in that frame of mind, a handy little event reminder email landed in my inbox with the QR code for my tickets included.

Honestly it was such a relief and saved me the half an hour of frantically filtering my inbox to find the original email and the wondering what on earth to do with it so I could find it easily two days later! (Just for the record, when I’m my most organised self, I remember things like Apple wallet, bookmarking and folders but this wasn’t one of those times). 

In the end, I guess what I’m trying to say, is that the £8 ticket price is what allows the team at Farmer Copleys to do the extra little bits, the “ooo”, “ahh”, “nice” bits that really do transform a muddy field full of pumpkins into a family friendly festive fun day that for my lot at least, is becoming something of annual tradition. 

So the next time you pay an entry fee for an event and question what you paid for, take a moment to stop and think about the experience. The seamless ease of arriving, enjoying and leaving. The great ideas that create the small joys and the magical moments that make memories. In short, think about the marketing, design and branding because great ideas cost money but are well worth paying for.