Busch Canada is turning an unlikely piece of farmland into advertising space, and paying farmers for it.
In Saskatchewan, the beer brand has wrapped hay bales in the design of its limited-edition Farmer’s Pack, effectively transforming fields into giant pieces of outdoor advertising.
The campaign, called “Baleboards,” goes beyond a visual stunt. Participating farmers are being paid the same rate Busch would normally spend on a traditional urban billboard, redirecting part of the brand’s media budget toward the agricultural communities behind its beer.
From Beer Packaging to the Fields
The campaign builds on Busch’s Farmer’s Pack, a limited-edition release designed to celebrate the Canadian barley used in the brand’s beer.
Its packaging takes direct inspiration from the Prairie landscapes where that barley is grown. Baleboards extends that idea into the real world, taking the visual identity off the can and placing it directly in the fields.
The Farmer’s Pack is available in limited quantities through select retailers across the Prairies, making the hay bale activation a natural extension of the product story.
Patrick Heembrock, director of Mainstream Brands at Labatt Breweries of Canada, explained the thinking behind the campaign simply: rather than buying another billboard in a city, the brand decided to build its own.
The difference is that the media spend now goes to farmers rather than traditional outdoor advertising owners.
Farmers Become Part of the Media Plan
Before rolling out Baleboards more widely, Busch tested the concept with farmers in Saskatchewan.
Positive feedback encouraged the brand to push the idea further, with Busch Canada now planning to allocate 10% of its national media budget to this new agricultural advertising channel next year.
That commitment turns Baleboards from a one-off activation into something closer to an alternative media network built around farms.
Labatt says it purchases roughly $30 million worth of ingredients from Canadian farms every year, while 98% of the barley it uses is sourced domestically.
The campaign therefore gives visibility to an existing relationship between the brewer and Canadian agriculture while creating an additional revenue stream for participating farmers.
The Supply Chain Becomes the Media
Beer brands have increasingly looked toward farming and provenance as a way to differentiate their marketing.
Hawkstone has built campaigns around its farming community, while Corona has experimented with unconventional outdoor advertising by using natural shadows rather than traditional media placements.
Busch takes the idea in another direction. Instead of simply putting farmers in an ad, it turns their land into the advertising platform itself.
Created by Citizen Relations Canada, Baleboards connects product, provenance and media buying in one simple idea — while sending at least some of the advertising money back to the people at the beginning of the production chain.
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