A casual get together with friends has had an unexpected outcome for Kansas University student, Greg Peterson. He and his brothers have become a YouTube sensation with a parody of the LMFAO hit song “Sexy And I Know It”.
Peterson was listening to the song with his friends, and began rapping along with his own words. When he got home to the family farm where he and his brothers lived, he persuaded them to make a video with him called “I’m Farming And I Grow It”. Previous parodies of the same song include:
– Sesame Street’s Elmo and I Know It
– Santa and I Know It
– I’m Average and I Know It
The Peterson video, aimed at the brothers’ city friends in a tongue in cheek bid to educate them about farming, has had more than 3.2 million views since it was posted on YouTube on 25th June this year. Furthermore, the video has been featured in the press, hailed as a success by farm groups, and resulted in the brothers appearing on Fox News Channel during an all expenses paid trip to New York City.
Greg Peterson is majoring in agriculture communication and journalism, and minoring in music performance at Kansas State, and produced the cleverly done YouTube hit with Apple Mac’s iMovie and GarageBand software. It shows the Peterson Brothers doing what they do on a normal farming day, such as driving combines, jumping on hay bales and doing chores – all to the beat of the LMFAO hit and including lyrics about hungy cattle and passions for plants
Peterson admits the sudden fame and attention has been a bit overwhelming for the whole family and they’re doing what they can to keep their feet on the ground so they can get on with the business of farming. Social Media is used on a regular basis by many businesses to promote themselves, but until now farmers have been slow on the uptake. However, the Peterson Brothers’ video has now changed all that according to the President of the Kansas Farm Bureau, Steve Baccus. He said agriculture groups have long been urging farmers to use social media so they can show consumers the faces behind agriculture.
Tech-savvy animal rights groups and environmentalists regularly use the internet to put out their hard hitting messages about issues like the quality of drinking water for the animals and cage sizes for hens, as well as many other issues. Agriculture Industry groups and farmers have started using Social Media platforms like Twitter and YouTube to counter these “attacks” and get their own message out to consumers. Baccus thinks the Brothers did a fantastic job with their video, especially the way they incorporated humor into it to make it more appealing. If you want to see more videos about the Peterson family, you can find them on YouTube. The Brothers confirmed they are going to make other videos and Greg Peterson confirmed he occasionally pulls out his iPod Touch and films while he farms.
RJ Herbert always like to see clever and entertaining ideas from the farming industry, and are planning their first YouTube hit already!
