Land O'Lakes Farm Bowl Sends Jason Brown to Battle a Drone
Land O'Lakes Farm Bowl is a January 2018 integrated campaign created by The Martin Agency in which former NFL offensive lineman Jason Brown attempts to operate a drone on a working Land O'Lakes farm in the United States, crashes it almost immediately, and runs away — transforming agricultural authenticity into a shareable sports-entertainment moment timed to the Super Bowl window.
The campaign launched on January 29, 2018, anchoring a broader Farm Bowl event scheduled for February 1, 2018, at 3M Arena at Mariucci in Minneapolis, according to reporting documented in the archive. That event staged current and former NFL players alongside working farmers in a series of farm-related challenges — including a milk-pipe puzzle, a tractor-tire change, a hay-bale backup, a drone drop, and a concluding big feed run — broadcast as a 90-minute livestream. The film featuring Jason Brown served as the campaign's hero content, directing audiences to thefarmbowl.com to extend the experience into a digital destination, as noted in Clapboard's archive.
Land O'Lakes positioned the Farm Bowl squarely within the confectionery and snacks category in the United States, using the cultural gravity of professional football to draw mainstream consumer attention toward its agricultural heritage. By casting Jason Brown — a former NFL player who famously left professional football to become a farmer in North Carolina — the brand collapsed the distance between sports celebrity and farm credibility into a single, coherent casting decision. The campaign comprises two verified media assets, combining broadcast-ready film with digital distribution designed to compound reach across the Super Bowl period in the US market. The Clapboard Score for this campaign stands at 64 out of 100.
Land O'Lakes anchors its brand identity in cooperative agricultural ownership, a structural differentiator in a United States snacks and dairy-adjacent market dominated by multinational corporations. In 2018, PepsiCo held approximately 7.09% global market share in the broad confectionery, snacks, and ready-to-eat category, with Mondelēz International close behind at approximately 6.99%, according to market research cited by adsspot.me. Neither competitor carries the farm-ownership narrative that Land O'Lakes can credibly deploy, and the Farm Bowl campaign exploits that gap directly.
The strategic rationale behind casting Jason Brown is precise. Brown left the NFL to operate a farm in Louisburg, North Carolina, a story that received wide US media coverage and gave Land O'Lakes a spokesperson whose agricultural credentials were publicly verifiable rather than performative. The Martin Agency translated that biography into a comic tension: a large man who blocked defensive linemen for a living cannot manage a consumer drone on a farm, crashes it, and retreats. The joke works because Brown's farming authenticity is established before the technology fails him, keeping the brand's agricultural positioning intact while generating the kind of shareable embarrassment that drives organic social distribution.
The Super Bowl adjacency is a deliberate strategic lever. By scheduling the Farm Bowl livestream event for February 1, 2018 — days before Super Bowl LII — The Martin Agency placed Land O'Lakes inside the same cultural conversation as vastly better-resourced advertisers running in-game spots. The 90-minute livestream format, as documented by dairybusiness.com, turned the event itself into media, compounding the reach of the Jason Brown film without requiring in-game broadcast spend. In the United States, where Super Bowl advertising commands premium rates, this represents a structurally efficient approach to cultural relevance for a cooperative brand operating outside the spending range of its category competitors.
The Farm Bowl film deploys a single, compressed comic premise with professional economy. Jason Brown, a physically imposing former NFL offensive lineman, is placed on a working Land O'Lakes farm in the United States and handed a consumer drone to operate. The sequence that follows — attempted flight, immediate crash, panicked retreat — functions as a sight gag built on physical incongruity, the contrast between Brown's professional composure on a football field and his spectacular incompetence with a piece of recreational technology that most viewers would associate with hobbyists rather than farmers.
Production credits for the Farm Bowl: Jason Brown vs. A Drone campaign are not publicly documented beyond the confirmed agency credit. The Martin Agency, based in Richmond, Virginia, holds the creative credit for the work as verified in Clapboard's archive, and the agency's established capability in narrative-driven brand film informs the execution's tonal confidence. The film does not oversell its joke; it allows Brown's reaction — running away from the downed drone — to carry the comedic payload without additional editorialising, a restraint that reflects craft-level decision-making in the edit.
The campaign's creative architecture extends beyond the film itself. The Farm Bowl event at 3M Arena at Mariucci in Minneapolis structured five distinct challenges — milk-pipe puzzle, tractor-tire change, hay-bale backup, drone drop, and big feed run — each designed to generate its own visual content moment within the 90-minute livestream format, as documented by bowstring.tv. The drone challenge appears in both the standalone film and the live event, creating a content thread that connects the broadcast-ready hero asset to the livestream experience. Directing audiences to thefarmbowl.com as a digital hub, as noted in Clapboard's archive, completes a three-layer content architecture: film, live event, and owned digital destination operating in coordinated sequence across the Super Bowl window in the US market.
The Farm Bowl campaign generated nearly two million livestream viewers for the February 1, 2018 event, as reported by dairybusiness.com. The Jason Brown drone film accumulated more than 400,000 views according to Clapboard's archive, a figure that reflects meaningful organic distribution for a brand film outside of paid in-game placement. The campaign's broadcast listing is documented by iSpot.tv, confirming television distribution in addition to digital reach.
These figures establish that the Farm Bowl strategy succeeded on its primary distributional objective: placing Land O'Lakes inside the Super Bowl cultural moment in the United States without purchasing Super Bowl inventory. Nearly two million livestream viewers for a 90-minute cooperative brand event represents an audience scale that is difficult to achieve through owned-channel content alone, suggesting that the NFL player participation and the Jason Brown casting generated pull beyond Land O'Lakes' existing audience base.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness derives from the precision of its casting and the efficiency of its content architecture. A single film asset performs multiple functions: it seeds awareness of the Farm Bowl event, it establishes Brown's farming credibility, and it delivers a shareable comic moment that incentivises forwarding. The three-layer structure — hero film, live event, digital hub — maximises return on a production investment that remains well below in-game Super Bowl advertising spend. The Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its strategic brief competently and achieves verified audience scale, while stopping short of the creative distinctiveness that would place it in the top tier of Super Bowl-adjacent advertising in the US market for 2018.
The Farm Bowl drone ad is a January 2018 film by The Martin Agency in which former NFL player Jason Brown attempts to fly a drone on a Land O'Lakes farm in the United States, crashes it immediately, and runs away. The film directed viewers to thefarmbowl.com and accumulated more than 400,000 views according to Clapboard's archive.
Jason Brown left the NFL to operate a working farm in Louisburg, North Carolina, giving Land O'Lakes a spokesperson with genuine agricultural credentials. The Martin Agency used that real biography to create comic tension between Brown's farming authenticity and his inability to operate a drone, keeping the brand's cooperative farm identity intact.
The Farm Bowl livestream event on February 1, 2018 generated nearly two million viewers, according to dairybusiness.com. The event ran for 90 minutes at 3M Arena at Mariucci in Minneapolis and featured current and former NFL players competing with farmers across five farm-related challenges including the drone drop.
The Martin Agency created the Land O'Lakes Farm Bowl campaign, as confirmed in Clapboard's archive. The Richmond, Virginia agency produced the Jason Brown drone film and structured the broader campaign architecture connecting the hero film, the Minneapolis livestream event, and the thefarmbowl.com digital hub across the 2018 Super Bowl window.
The Land O'Lakes Farm Bowl campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100. The score reflects competent execution of a well-defined strategic brief and verified audience scale, including nearly two million livestream viewers, while indicating the campaign does not reach the top tier of creative distinction in US Super Bowl-adjacent advertising for 2018.
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