Land O'Lakes Is Way More Than Butter at Its Updated SXSW Experience

Land O’Lakes, Inc. is back at SXSW for a second year with “The Copernicus Project,” an immersive, Instagrammable experience that aims to educate festival goers on the importance of farming and the modern food system.

“They truly want to learn, and that’s a huge opportunity for us to tell the story of agriculture in a different way,” Tim Scott, chief marketing officer at Land O’Lakes, tells Muse about why SXSW is a good fit for the brand.

The activation includes different stations that challenge perceptions about food and farming, including an art installation where you weave a string around different spokes to make choices about food. The more strings that are added to the piece, the clearer the data picture becomes.

The space also includes an immersive video experience that focuses on the importance of biodiversity, one of many new additions since last year’s festival. 

“We’ve grown it from last year, and I think last year was such a phenomenal success,” Scott says. “We had 8,000 or 9,000 people come through the space in three days. We donated 8,000 meals, and we did so many good things. We look at it and think, ‘How do we grow it every year? What’s next?’ ” 

The space also hosts panels and discussions with leaders in agriculture and food innovation. 

“Everybody knows us for butter, but what they don’t know is things like we feed 100 million animals in the U.S. a day,” Scott tells Muse. “We’re truly the farmer-to-fork company that sells the seed and then sells the butter on the other end, so we want to tell that story.” 

The Copernicus Project is open through Sunday at SXSW. 

CREDITS

Client – Land O’Lakes
Creative agency – Colle McVoy
Design agency – 10 Thousand Design
PR agency – Exponent PR
Experience design – Civic Entertainment Group