1

Case 3-1

John Deere

The week before Thanksgiving in 2018, Mara

Downing was attending a Quad City Mallards

hockey game in Moline, Illinois, with other members

of the John Deere executive team. Heading

down the hallway on the way to her seat, Downing

ran into her boss, Marc Howze, Chief Administrative

Officer for the company, who asked her if she

had a second to chat. After exchanging a few pleasantries,

Marc cut right to the chase: “Mara, you did

a remarkable job leading our brand re-imagining

study, and the CEO staff has decided you’re the

perfect person to lead both brand and communications

as our new Vice President of Global Brand

Management and Corporate Communications. I

have to run to drop the game puck, but we do hope

you’ll accept soon.”

Mara had sensed that she was going to be tapped

for such a position but was surprised to have the

news sprung upon her in the hallway, on her way

to her seat, right before puck drop. As she hurried to

her box to get settled in for the start of the game,

though, her mind was already well past whether she

should accept (an easy yes) but onto exactly how to

structure the new department, create a strategy for

the function, and which issues she would need to

tackle on her first day in her new role.

A STORIED COMPANY

John Deere traces its roots back to 1837 in Grand

Detour, Illinois, where founder John Deere worked

as a blacksmith. Hearing farmers’ concerns that

their plows, designed for the sandy soil of the eastern

United States, weren’t holding up in the thicker

prairie soil of Illinois, Deere fashioned a sturdier

plow from steel and a broken sawblade. At first

just making a few plows for local farmers, Deere

found himself needing to fulfill over 100 orders by

1842. To keep up with ever-increasing demand,

Deere moved the nascent company to Moline, Illinois,

in 1848, building a water-powered factory

right on the Mississippi and doubling production

in that first year. Over 170 years and just eight CEOs

later, John Deere was still headquartered in Moline

in 2018. By then, the company’s operations had

expanded well beyond producing a single plow to

include equipment for everything from construction

and landscaping to forestry and the military and

enjoyed a market cap north of $45 billion.

Like many other corporate communication functions

at Fortune 100 companies that can trace their

roots back nearly 200 years, Deere’s communication

function faced challenges in adapting to an increasingly

fast-paced, digitized world while remaining true

to its heritage.

SHARED HISTORY

As a third-generation employee who had joined the

company more than 20 years ago, Mara Downing

could easily relate to the communication challenges

John Deere faced in balancing its desire to respect

its family-oriented history and its loyal fan base

with its need for modernization. With a background

in accounting and finance, Mara had originally

joined the company’s tax department, later moving

to a lobbying position, and then from public affairs

to corporate citizenship. Throughout the years, Mara

continued to move up the ranks, and by 2015, she

was named Director of Global Brand Management

and Corporate Citizenship, as the company sought

to more directly link its brand with the soul of the

company and its understanding of corporate citizenship,

identity, and responsibility.

STRONG HEADWINDS

When Mara took over as head of brand and citizenship

in 2015, the company was facing brand and

communication challenges on a variety of fronts.

Deere was no longer ranked on Fortune’s World’s

Most Admired Companies List or recognized on key sustainability rankings; media buzz about the company

was at an all-time low; and the communications

department was struggling to support the

many functions that turned to them to articulate

Deere’s purpose and vision. At the same time, then-

CEO Sam Allen turned to Mara to find opportunities

to build on the company’s success in past

sponsorship events. For example, the company had

sponsored the John Deere Classic for the PGA Tour

since 1998, and it had done much to grow the business’s

golf and sports turf segment. Thus, Sam

turned to Mara wondering what Deere’s next big

sponsorship event should be. Something for college

football? For Disney? For some other overlooked

segment?

GETTING TO THE RIGHT DIAGNOSIS

Mara was hesitant, however, to double down on corporate

sponsorship. Aware of the complex dynamics

that feed into morale, brand, and reputation, and

also not wanting to misdiagnose the problems Deere

was facing, Mara sought to comprehensively, and as

much as possible quantitatively, get to the heart of

what had led to the company’s issues.

Mara began by bringing in some external assistance,

turning to researchers from the Tuck School

of Business to conduct over 30 interviews at Deere to

better understand what challenges and opportunities

existed for the corporate communications and brand

functions. Across the board, a key theme emerged:

that while, internally, Deere employees understood

and believed in the company’s mission, externally,

they were failing to effectively communicate that to

the outside world. As one interviewee noted, “John

Deere has a good message. Shame on us for not getting

that out.”

Mara knew, however, that she needed to supplement

this qualitative assessment with a quantitative

one, turning to the RIG tracking system to more

concretely measure gaps in the company’s performance.

Just as had emerged during the qualitative

interviews, the areas where Deere was falling short

were largely ones where they effectively remained

silent.

STARK RESULTS

With the results of the survey in hand, it was abundantly

obvious to Mara where the greatest work

needed to be done. Clear gaps emerged between

what information was viewed as most important to

share from the perspective of shareholders, employees,

and the general public, and the actual information

Deere put forth. The company needed to finally

start talking about gender and people of color in its

employment base; to more fully articulate its commitment

to sustainability; and to make it clear that

diversity and inclusion were topics they weren’t

afraid of discussing. Moreover, Mara quickly realized

that resources were not being effectively allocated.

The communications department was also facing

major issues, in terms of its tone, structure, and process.

The department had been dominated by more

traditional voices, who often turned to long form editorials

and utilized a more formal tone of voice,

regardless of which audience that sought to reach,

including employees. Additionally, the department

operated in a very reactionary matter, almost like a

classic news desk waiting for information to come

into them. Other than knowing what events the CEO

was going to be attending and preparing remarks for

him, there was no editorial calendar and no sense of

who else needed to be supported from a communications

perspective.

Another consequence of this more reactionary

approach was that common themes in terms of concerns

or challenges brought to the department were

being missed. For example, five different members of

the Human Resources team might come to the corporate

communications department in a day with

similar questions around statements on company

purpose, but the corporate communications team

was not stepping back to analyze trends in issues that

were being brought before them.

Thus, Deere faced an issue not only of resource

mismanagement but of fundamental misalignment

between purpose and practice. Mara knew, then,

that keeping the brand and communications

functions separate was no longer a viable option

for Deere. PUCK DROP

As Mara rushed down the hallway to make it to her

seat on time, her mind turned to her new role,

and the challenges she knew she would face in leading

the newly combined brand and communications

departments. How would she handle the

budget constraints she knew Deere was facing?

How would she organize this now much larger

department that was gluttonous in some areas and

starved for support in others? How would she gain

credibility with the far larger number of staff for

whom she was now responsible? All these questions,

and many more, raced through her mind as

she made it into her seat just in time for the puck to

drop, signaling the start of the game and a far more

challenging stage of her career.

© 2021 Trustees of Dartmouth College. All rights

reserved. For permission to reprint, contact the Tuck

School of Business at 603-646-3176.

CASE QUESTIONS

1. Given the pain points outlined in the case,

would you advocate for a centralized or decentralized

communications structure at John

Deere? Explain.

2. Within an organization like John Deere, who

should be responsible for handling external and

internal communications? Should the responsibility

lie within the communications department, or

should the C-suite play a role in execution?

3. Consider the results from employee surveys at

John Deere. Based on these insights, how do you

think Mara can use both internal and external

communications to improve the brand’s image

externally?

4. If you were in Mara’s position, what communications

activities would you prioritize first to

enhance cohesion between the brand and communications

departments? Why?