The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2025–2026
Tra Mongkut's Soil Stay lets farmers pay with soil — Spikes Asia 2026 Grand Prix
Instead of product ads, Tra Mongkut matches Thai farmers with model farms on identical soil — guests pay with a soil sample, not money.
Tra Mongkut Fertilizer
What it had to solve
Thailand's 13 million farmers work land with little time to rest or upskill, and soil-knowledge gaps reduce yields. Tra Mongkut had spent over a decade building Thailand's largest soil database — more than 300 soil types — plus model farms for each, but farmers never got direct access.
How it works
Tra Mongkut Fertilizer, one of Thailand's leading plant-nutrition names, launched Soil Stay with VML: a first-of-its-kind B2B farm-stay program that lets Thai farmers rest, learn and rejuvenate their land. The twist is the currency — instead of money, guests pay with a soil sample.
The program rests on a decade of invisible investment: Tra Mongkut had built Thailand's largest soil database, capturing more than 300 soil types, and developed Model Farms tailored to each condition to test the best techniques. Soil Stay is the first time that knowledge was opened directly to farmers.
Working like agri-tourism's Airbnb, Soil Stay analyzes each farmer's sample, matches them with a model farm sharing the same soil profile but demonstrating higher productivity, and hosts them through the off-harvest season to learn proven methods hands-on. The aim is to fix overworked soil, raise yields and give Thailand's farmers a genuine break.
More than 10,000 farmers registered for the next phase, and the idea traveled: showcased at the Thailand Sustainability Expo 2025, it won the Creative B2B Grand Prix at Spikes Asia 2026 and the Sustainable Lotus Grande at ADFEST 2026.
Why it lands
- It gave farmers an experience of the brand's knowledge instead of another product claim.
- Paying with a soil sample made the decade-old database the currency and the proof at once.
- Matching like-for-like soil made the advice feel personal — nothing generic, nothing salesy.
- Rest-and-learn answered a real constraint: farmers have almost no off-season time for training.
- The idea turned a fertilizer company into a long-term partner in sustainable farming.
What it did
More than 10,000 farmers registered for the next phase; Soil Stay won the Creative B2B Grand Prix at Spikes Asia 2026 and the Sustainable Lotus Grande at ADFEST 2026.
What you can take
When a decade of data is the real product, let customers experience it: match each person to proof drawn from their own conditions, and the pitch becomes a service.
Since then
Tra Mongkut continues Soil Stay with more than 10,000 farmers registered for the next phase. The program was showcased at the Thailand Sustainability Expo 2025 with support from agricultural organizations, then collected a Creative B2B Grand Prix at Spikes Asia 2026 and a Sustainable Lotus Grande at ADFEST 2026, becoming a regional benchmark for data-driven B2B creativity.
Sources
- Tra Mongkut Fertilizer, VML launch 'Soil Stay,' Thailand's first data-driven farm-stay program
- VML Thailand Named Thailand's Agency of the Year at Spikes Asia 2026 with Grand Prix Win
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