Life through the lens
A fifth generation dairy farmer who made a video as an experiment three years ago now has 203,000 YouTube subscribers across the world and is turning their interest into income.
Tom Pemberton has a slogan on his iPhone that simply states: ‘Do It Now’.
Sitting around his kitchen table as he scrolls through endless statistics informing him who has been watching his latest YouTube video, it’s hard to imagine a more apt motivational motto.
In 18 months, the 28-year-old’s self-shot clips of agricultural life around Lytham St Annes in Lancashire have exploded in popularity.
Over 200,000 people have subscribed to the Tom Pemberton Farm Life YouTube channel, keen to consume his twice-weekly updates on calf handling, milking, machinery, flooding and everything else besides.
“It’s crazy what has happened,” he said with a smile. “I never set out to be a social media influencer, but that’s the way it’s gone.”
What started as a simple way to explain to customers how to use the farm’s milk vending machine is now morphing into valuable income to be reinvested.
The Pembertons have been farming for more than 130 years, and Tom is the fifth generation to be involved in the business based at Birks Farm.
The 280 head of beef and dairy cattle graze 90 hectares of owned and rented land just a stone’s throw from the north-west coast.
Produce is sold direct to customers through Pemberton’s Farm Shop and Dairies – an enterprise which aims to shorten the supply chain as much as possible.
The farm shop had a similar experience with a huge surge in customers. Staff quickly put in place social distancing measures and systems to keep themselves and customers as safe as possible.
Tom said: “We’ve got five delivery vans that go out daily delivering milk. Each van has between 250 and 500 doorstep customers, plus shops and cafés.
A happy accident
“This all started completely by accident,” Tom said. “We did a video on how to use the raw milk vending machine we installed, and we wanted to promote it locally.
Tom started shooting videos every fortnight, then every week, then twice a week. “That’s when it really started to grow,” he added.
“It got 11,000 views on Facebook and 200 on YouTube. We thought those numbers were OK so we did one on how we look after the cows, then tail trimming. YouTube started to grow faster than Facebook so that’s where I started to take more interest.”
At the time of writing, the YouTube page with the largest following on the planet has 143 million subscribers, and all those individuals are notified every time a new video is available to watch.
While Tom remains grounded as to the relative size of his band of followers, he is rightly proud of how far and fast he has grown.
“Getting just 1,000 subscribers took me six months, then it grew to 3,000 and 10,000 fairly quickly,” he said.
“Now we’re at 200,000 which I find incredible. For UK farming, that’s a big audience.”
Similarly, he remains wed to the sole objective of his efforts – to gain publicity and income for the farm business.
With an ever-growing audience, he has been able to start to monetise his efforts by inserting adverts into each video.
“I want to make money for the business and get people through the door of the farm shop – it’s not about being an influencer online.
He said: “Once you get to a certain level in terms of people watching you, you’re able to start making money from advertising and the revenue is really important.
“With the challenges of farming, I’m glad to be growing an alternative income stream.
Brands looking to attract farmers frequently contact Tom to ask for their products to be featured on his videos, too.
“I’ve had to become a lot more business-like about the offers I get and I’m not afraid to ask to be paid for it. To get to this point has taken a lot of time and effort and I don’t want to under-value what I do.”
An Easy Swing cow brush was gifted and installed for the farm’s cattle in exchange for being featured on Tom’s channel and the resulting video has been watched more than 500,000 times.
“I say ‘no’ to lots of stuff because I don’t want to sell myself out. You have to be natural talking about the products you use on the farm so if I don’t use it I can’t really be convincing and my viewers will be able to tell,” he said.
Shooting videos capturing a day in the life is the easy bit, Tom says. With editing, uploading and tagging on YouTube, each video can take four or five hours in total – sometimes more.
He also works with Can-Am quad bikes in a similar arrangement.
“Every minute I’m not farming has to be caught up on, and there’s a cost involved in that.
“If I do it well then I will make money from it and I want to put money back into the farm.”
His efforts to publicise were recognised by the industry with a Digital Innovator of the Year accolade at the British Farming Awards in 2018.
Tom Pemberton’s Farm Life in numbers
82%
male audience
18-44
primary age of audience
16%
of subscribers are in the USA & India
209k
subscribers worldwide
5.7m
views in the last 30 days
Committed to the cows and the camera
Creating the videos, much like his attitude to farming, has become “an obsession.”
“If you’re not excited about what you do then what’s the point? I have to be passionate about the videos in the same way as I am about the cows. I want to do the best for them so they do their best for me,” he said.
But he realises that there is a limit. Even with a team of about 25 employees, there is a lot of work and responsibility involved in the business.
Tom said: “I’ve got to the point where I can’t do everything, but the problem is I don’t want to stop what I do – working with the cows and creating the videos.
“It’s hard to set objectives because things happen so fast on the internet but I would like to keep growing. In America, the Millennial Farmer has 537,000 YouTube subscribers and I would like (if possible) to keep pace with the way he is growing, because we both do similar things.”
“Don’t put it off. It’s easy to procrastinate but you could be using your time more wisely.”
“Some people will get hung up on the negatives of being something of a public figure, but it hasn’t been too bad for me,” says Tom.
“People can see that I’m honest and that I put everything into what I do. You get some nasty comments but that shouldn’t stop you.
“My father was never interested in social media but now he understands and responds to how it is all changing. These days it is easier to watch than read, and farmers have never had such an opportunity to promote the amazing things they do.
Tom’s advice to other farmers who might be pondering whether to start using videos to communicate with their customers and the public? “Do it now.
“They are a mix of long-standing customers, new ones who found us before the Covid-19 lockdown and some who watch my videos on YouTube.
“When we do lamb bottle-feeding or letting the cows out in April, we might get 200 people coming to the farm to see it. We want it to become a destination for customers.”
Tom says the pandemic sent milk deliveries and farm shop sales into overdrive.
“In the middle of March, when it looked like a lockdown was coming, we had two people on the phones just handling milk delivery orders,” he said.
“By the time they had done one call there would be voicemails from other people trying to get through.
“After 10 days we had to stop taking orders as we had reached capacity. Some customers have started to drift back to the supermarkets now, but we are hoping to retain a good percentage.”
“Our buildings need investment and I’d like to be in a position to do that for the business. The farm does OK, but there is always something that needs a lot of money spending on it.
2.2m
views on the most watched video
51,000
Instagram followers
10.3m
minutes watched this month
Watch Tom's most viewed video!
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