Gills Onions

Gills Onions makes, well.. onions, lots of them. The gentle giant owns and operates the largest fresh onion processing plant in the world along with 15,000 acres of fully owned and managed farmland. Now I love onions as much as the rest, but the reason I really love Gills Onions has less to do with their onions and more to do with their leadership in sustainability.

The company generates 1.5 million pounds of onion waste per week, and converts 100% of it into ultra-clean, renewable energy and high value cattle feed. The Advanced Energy Recovery System (a moniker paid to their process of onion-to-energy conversion) generates enough electricity to power 460 homes annually. Not too shabby for an agribusiness Goliath!

Can Images Communicate Complex Information?

Gills Onions approached Venture Visuals and our friends at Westlake Marketing Works in need of a communication strategy that would clearly articulate the company’s impressive environmental commitment. Together with the company’s Sustainability Director, Nikki Rodoni, we identified the following requirements for all planned media investments:

Media must raise national awareness of their breakthrough innovation leading to an increase in customers and partnerships.
All assets must tell a succinct and concise “sustainability story” in a way that is both compelling and understandable in laymen terms.
Media must position the company to receive a government-issued grant for early green energy adoption.

Venture Visuals set out to capture a family of images that would convey the beauty and importance of the company’s green technology to a non-technological public and political audience. In an industry that is notorious for highly pollutant and dirty processes, we purposed the photographs to elude a feeling of cleanliness and minimalism. By working with a color palette of greens and magentas, the imagery reinforces the core brand colors while bonding a connection to their “green” technologies. The final family of images included:

Portraits of the company’s CEO, Steve Gill, in a beautiful onion field at sunset.
Industrial images of key components in the energy conversion system revealing its engineering brilliance.
Action shots of the company’s team interacting with the friendly technology.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

In the end, we delivered a batch of photographs that enabled the company to not only tell their story, but to actually show it – a key difference that often spells out the success or failure of any communication. The imagery was prominently featured at the glitzy technology launch party along with a media release drawing countless political leaders and industry heads.

The project ultimately led to $2,700,000 in Government grants, coverage by most nationally recognised news channels, and accolades from California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. So I guess in this case, a picture is worth a thousand words AND $2,7000,000!