What to say

The voice is a capable person telling you what the machine does, handing you the arithmetic, and letting you decide.

Everything else on this page follows from one fact: the people buying this will know within a season whether what you told them was true. So do not say things a farmer could disprove in his own paddock.

The one rule

Never tell a farmer what he will get.

You can say what the machine does. You can report what a named trial found. You can say what we believe, as long as you say that is what it is. What you cannot do is predict the reader's result on his farm.

Nearly all the risk sits in that one move.

Three things that are always safe

Say what the machine does. "Applies less nitrogen, more often." "Carries lime, trace elements and seed in one pass." "Dissolves 1 part urea to 2 parts water." These are facts about the gear. You do not need a source and you can say them as often as you like. Most of what you write is this.

Report what someone found. If you are quoting a trial, name who ran it and who paid for it, and say what it did not find as well as what it did. Never let "the trial found" slide into "so you will".

Say what we believe, and flag it. "We think foliar is the way forward" is fine. The test: take "we think" off the front. If what is left is an opinion, it was fine. If what is left is a number someone could check, the wrapper did not save it.

Say this, not that

Say	Not
Manage your nitrogen down to work within your limits.	Cut your nitrogen by 40%.
Get your fertiliser on when the plant can use it.	Grow more grass.
We will come and run it on your paddock. Book a demo with us today.	Contact us to learn more.
Line them up against it and the gap speaks for itself.	Far better than other sprayers.
Check it against your fert records and your adviser.	Guaranteed results.
2,500+ farmer community.	Thousands of happy customers.

The pattern: the left column describes something, the right column promises something. "Up to" does not rescue a promise.

The animal health line

This one is not obvious and it is the sharpest.

You can name what you are applying and say how the machine puts it out: "applies causmag, magnesium oxide, selenium and cobalt through the machine, dissolved or suspended, spread even with no dust."

You cannot say what it does in the animal. Not "for your springers", not "prevents milk fever", not "for animal health", not "the cows do better on it".

The test is easy: ask what the word "for" is pointing at. Pointing at the pasture, the soil or the plant, you are fine. Pointing at the animal, stop.

This is not us being cautious. Animal health claims are regulated in every market we sell into, and a machinery company has no standing to make one. A disclaimer does not fix it, and neither does a photograph.

It also costs you nothing, because the farmer already knows what causmag is for. Naming it is the whole message. Him finishing the thought is fine. Us finishing it for him is not.

A farmer's own numbers

If a grower says what happened on his place, in his words, with his name on it, that is his to say.

What you must never do is lift his figure out of the quote and put it in a headline, a caption, a social tile or a thumbnail. In his mouth it is his account. On its own it becomes a Tow and Fert performance claim.

This is the most common way a good story turns into a problem, and it almost always happens when someone is designing the piece rather than writing it.

If his number is on the page, put a line near it: "Every farm's different, and [name]'s numbers are his own."

Do not add several farmers' results together into a typical result. Thirty true stories do not add up to a claim you are allowed to make.

Green claims

Vague environmental lines come out. "Better for the environment", "reduce your impact", "improved environmental outcomes" all say nothing and all invite a challenge. If you have a specific figure from a named trial, use that. If you do not, leave it.

The small stuff

Item	Rule
The name	Tow and Fert. Three words, no ampersand, no hyphen.
The models	Multi 500, 1000, 1200, 2800, 4000, and MultiCrop 4000.
The maker	Metalform (Dannevirke) Ltd.
Spelling	New Zealand English, so fertiliser and litres. The US market is the exception.
Units	Metric with a space: 2800 L, 22 m, 40 ha. Never mix metric and imperial in one sentence.
Exclamation marks	Not one. Anywhere.
Dashes	Use commas, full stops or "and".

Habits worth having

• Safe does not mean vague. "Using less fertiliser" is safe and clear. "Optimising your input load" is mush. Find the plain word.
• Specific does not mean promised. "You can save 50% on your nitrogen bill" is over-claiming something we cannot guarantee, whoever is saying it.
• Say the reason, not the refusal. "We can't give you an exact number, because it'll be different on every farm" beats "we won't tell you what you'll get".
• If a limitation matters, put it where it happened rather than in a block of small print at the bottom. Written in, it reads as someone being straight with you.
• Talk about Ballance and other competitors respectfully. A lot of our customers are their customers too.
• End on the fact, not a flourish.

If in doubt

Send it to the team before it goes out. Flagging something is not a failure, and getting a second read costs a great deal less than a correction.