3.4. THE FURROW - CONTENT MARKETING IN REALITY Yeah, that’s right. This one also exists. While we’ve said that content itself must be able to be distributed, we never said it has to be online. Of course that the majority of it is online today, but it doesn’t have to be. The example of The Furrow is included in this ebook to clarify the philosophy of content marketing even further, to paint the clearer picture that it doesn’t necessarily have to be online. So, what do you get when you combine agriculture and brand publishing? Back in 1895 when its first issue was published, The Furrow wasn’t even close to the idea of content marketing in terms of the time period it was first published in, but the idea for starting that magazine (that still exists today) basically has the same root idea as does content marketing. But why is The Furrow so special, there was a ton of magazines and other print materials published before that one and all across the world. Well, as you probably know, The Furrow was first published by John Deere, one of the world’s most famous companies that manufactures agricultural, construction, and forestry machinery, as well as diesel engines, drivetrains, etc. Instead of just placing their ad, poster, logo or something else in a popular magazine (where they have some form of targeting enabled - if the magazines know its readers well), they’ve created their own magazine made specifically for agrarian workers where they talked about what and how their products can be grown but never forgetting to mention that that’s their respective product they’re talking (and writing) about and not anyone else’s. You can only imagine how popular it became very soon. The circulation of The Furrow magazine skyrocketed in 1912, reaching more than 4 million consumers. Today, of course, agriculture is not nearly as popular, but The Furrow still counts 570,000 consumers in the U.S. and Canada + 2 million readers across the globe. Today, the Furrow is available online, of course, and probably read that way the most, but at the beginning, the magazine represented a truly revolutionary idea of marketing. Content marketing which wasn’t called that. TOP EXAMPLES OF A SUCCESSFUL CONTENT MARKETING 29.