Rosie Thoni: Public Relations, Content, and Agency Life

AgGrad Podcast

A native of western Canada, Rosie Thoni had always grown up around agriculture and had been heavily involved in 4-H and junior cattle associations. Despite her love for Canada and the nearby, world-famous Calgary Stampede, Rosie knew that she was going to have to take a chance to follow her passion of being an agricultural communicator. A passion that was recognized by her father when she was very young as she would write junior members’ agriculture stories on their auction bid cards.

Work at agencies like AdFarm is diverse and can include strategic planning, account services, project management, creative, media planning, public relations, content creation & management, marketing automation and customer relationship management, marketing perspective, production research, search strategy, and web development.

“I thought I wanted to be more of a generalist, maybe an association job,” says Rosie about what direction college-Rosie would have thought her career would head. “While I think that’s still an excellent career choice, what I discounted is that I would get to do all of those different [career aspects] but I would have subject matter experts and highly trained individuals at my fingertips.”

Rosie’s prediction is that agency life will move towards specialist freelancers that can help on specific projects within industries and she encourages agricultural communication students and graduates to find their specialization, hone it, and broadcast it. For example, Rosie was interested in public relations and, while OSU didn’t have specializations at that time, she stated that she was a specialist in writing and built her resume through college on freelance writing.

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