Month: November 2011

Recently we posted several articles about “collective marketing,” the whole idea of having an industry-wide “got milk?” type of campaign. The general conclusion these posts arrived at was that such an initiative would simply not work as we currently define it.

But rather than give up, OpenHort has 3 ideas that can change the green industry. Here they are:

Play to our strengths.

One of the major reasons “collective marketing” won’t work is because the industry is so fragmented…regionally, climatically, horticulturally…the list goes on. As the ANLA posted on the Knowledge Center Facebook page last week, “efforts…were always harmed by the industry’s diversity and fears that “flower growers would benefit more than tree growers,” or… “what if promotion peaks during Minnesota’s spring but I’m in Georgia?””

Instead of fighting an uphill battle, what if we played to this strength, in fact seeking to increase the diversity? OpenHort envisions a future with many more people actively selling plants for a living. We see an opportunity to form an army of individuals advancing the same cause: getting people excited about plants. It is our belief that the biggest change we can effect is through an emerging but ignored sector of the industry: the personal garden coach.

Huh? What is a “personal garden coach?” You’re probably already aware of the phenomenon of the “personal trainer” for fitness.  A large percentage of Americans have the desire to get in shape, but not the knowledge or the drive to do it alone. Gardening and landscaping are very similar. Many homeowners and potential gardeners do not have the first idea how to get started. Our industry has made success very complicated for the average person with an average interest in plants

We have given the American consumer two options: call a landscape contractor and they will come to your house with a truck full of Mexicans or go to a garden center and blindly pick out plants as best you can. Trucks or shelves. Take your pick. [This is perhaps THE KEY insight we can offer, and we will visit it again. Trucks or shelves.]

Could it be that our sales are flat or declining not because people don’t care for plants but because they don’t particularly like the solutions we offer them? What if they don’t want trucks or shelves? What if they want a person to help them?

The third option is beginning to take root already. There are landscapers finding that their target customers are choking at $30,000+ landscape quotes, but eager to pay for a multi-year project done in stages. There are garden centers finding that the people coming through their doors (or not!) are intimidated and lack even a basic understanding of how to select, install and care for plants…but they are willing to pay  for “personal shoppers,” to have their hands held and be guided through the life-long process of enhancing their homes with beautiful plants.

It is time for the industry to legitimize and encourage the emerging role of “personal garden coaches” by creating a national certification program. Such a program could bring many hundreds of new professionals into our industry. But existing firms do not have to worry that this will increase competition or shrink the existing pie nor their slice of it.

Retailers can have their staff become certified, and benefit from selling an additional service as well as selling more product. Landscapers, likewise, should not see this as a threat but rather an opportunity, either from offering this level of service themselves or by becoming “subcontractors” for an army of garden coaches out there independently spreading the gospel of gardening.

One objection to this idea: “Certification should be done at the state level.” Another objection: “We already have horticultural certification at the state level.” Take a moment to imagine something different. We imagine it as national in order for it to be more visible, powerful and normal. We imagine it as very different than simply a horticultural knowledge exam. One might know plants, but do they know how to “coach?”

By offering a national certification program, it will encourage this sector to grow tremendously by legitimizing it, professionalizing it, defining it and ensuring that it grows in ways that benefit the industry.

Once this national certification is in place, common or “generic,” easily-customizable sales, marketing and support materials could be developed and deployed via this network.

If you’ll forgive a Christian gospel analogy…instead of relying on converts to somehow show up at church and listen to one single preacher, let’s equip the congregation to go out and make disciples.

That’s our first idea on how to “sell more plants.” We have two more we’re ready to share.

Get creative(s).

The future belongs to the creative class, and its ranks are swelling quickly. The tools and distribution platforms to create and publish creative content have been democratized so greatly in the past 5 years that only the invention of the printing press can compare with the societal impact we will witness. Today, for less than the cost of a used car, a student can obtain the means of making a feature film that can rival Hollywood. With blogs, social media, desktop publishing, apps, mobile computing and video broadcasting platforms, the traditional media gatekeepers have lost their power.

OpenHort believes our industry has a tremendous opportunity before us. We can exploit this change. We can lead it. We can rehabilitate our image and reinvent ourselves faster than we can imagine. We can change the perceived value of plants.

OpenHort encourages every green industry firm to hire a creative. Every grower, garden center and landscaper should make it a priority—right now—to hire a talented multimedia creative producer. Do not look to your current staff to “fill in” like you always have done.  And do not out-source the creative process to an expensive, established marketing firm. Hire your own creative.

It doesn’t have to be a full-time position, though that would be ideal. And it doesn’t have to cost a heart-stopping amount. There are many thousands of design and film students, amateurs and semi-professionals willing to work for as little as $10 per hour. True, many are only worth $10 per hour, but now, while the upheaval is still occurring, there are many talented creatives that are undervalued. OpenHort will help you find them by telling you how to advertise, what to look for and how to put them to work.

We want to see a massive infusion of new creative ideas into our industry, and we want OpenHort to be a connector, facilitator and inspiration to these creatives in the green industry. We believe that if as little as 20 firms made the commitment to hire a creative, and to task those creatives with promoting the basic fundamental value of plants…the innovation would be staggering. We would go a long way forward to understanding what we as an industry should focus on to “sell more plants.”

Tell stories.

The way forward is not through clever slogans or slick brands. To focus on these is to get distracted. Slogans and brands are fine and well, so long as they connect emotionally with the people we want to buy more plants. The way to be relevant, the way to engage an audience, the way to move people and inspire them…is nothing new. We must tell stories. We should make it a priority to become world-class storytellers.

Whether it be through recruiting and equipping garden coaches or though finding and hiring creatives, we must make sure that they realize their #1 goal and primary skill should be in telling stories.

OpenHort has a modest proposal to begin a project that will point us forward in how we should tell stories.

We propose to make two documentary-style videos that tell the personal story of a gardener (end consumer) in an emotional and relatable way. The idea is a simple one: have real gardeners explain why they love plants. Not just for the results, but for the whole process. The experience. The lifestyle.

Once the format, tone and style of these videos are established and refined, we can make plans to produce and distribute them in a concerted way. Imagine if in a few years’ time we had 1,000 such videos made. It is possible. Even if the only viewers of these videos were their friends and family, which would happen naturally without paying for network airtime, the number of people impacted with a positive message for gardening would perhaps be close to 1 million. How much would this cost? We don’t know. Perhaps as little as $200k.

This is what we imagine: A garden center asks some of its customers to give testimonials to why they love plants. Depending on the garden center’s unique priority, they could choose the demographic that would most benefit them (GenY or BabyBoomer? Female? Middle-class suburbanite? Urban hipster? Tropical, xeriscape, vegetable?) The “creative” connected with the garden center makes the videos, producing two versions: one that specifically promotes the garden center and another that is generic and able to be used by the entire industry. What could be unleashed if we give voice to those most passionate about our products?

How can we encourage and nurture those with an average or immature interest in plants to pursue this interest further…and in a safe and credible way? We need to make it seem normal to have people talk about plants.

To move forward, OpenHort is asking for help. It is our goal to have 100 individuals contribute $20 to have these two pilot videos produced. It’s not that it will cost us $2,000; we don’t know what it will cost. And we don’t care about the money. OpenHort isn’t about money. We would gladly pay for this ourselves, but this is a test. We are tired of wasting our time. If we can’t convince 100 people to give up 20 bucks freely, without a guarantee that it will ever end up helping their business directly…then the whole concept of “collective marketing” and industry-wide participation in the common goal of selling more plants is…well, never gonna work.

If you’re tired of hearing people say, “We should have a campaign like GotMilk,” but never doing anything to make it happen. If you wish there was something we could do, here’s your baby step. We’re willing to work on this very hard, but we’re not willing to work alone.

In summary, OpenHort proposes that we:

1)      Play to our strengths. Lay the groundwork for a massive influx of “personal garden coaches” by creating a national certification program. This would increase diversity and distribute the power and control, but in a way that could allow for common marketing messages.

2)      Get creative(s). Encourage and guide all green-industry firms to hire creative individuals from outside the industry, and then put them to work.

3)      Tell stories. Donate $20 to OpenHort to produce 2 pilot “Why I Garden” videos. To support us, send me an email: art[at]openhort[dot]com.

 

We are eager to hear your response to these ideas, and willing to support any others that may be superior. As with everything that OpenHort produces, you are free to use, borrow, improve upon or do anything at all you’d like to do with these ideas. We plan to post them on the blog later this week, so if you have suggestions or comments, please send them our way soon.

Thanks!

Art Parkerson for OpenHort

 

 

“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.” -Francisco d’Anconia, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

We have backed ourselves into a corner, and we run the risk of either continually going in circles (wishing that we could have a national marketing campaign but doing nothing to make it happen) or of going out in a blaze of glory (trying to force an involuntary program on the industry). Let us reevaluate our assumptions.

We assume we want to sell more plants. No argument there.

We assume a national marketing campaign similar to “got milk?” would cause us to sell more plants. A naive assumption. Advertising is risky business. It doesn’t always work. This is not my main point, but I can’t resist pointing out that this is not 1990. If the milk folks had started today instead of in the previous century, would they be able to achieve their results with the funding they had? It is a far different media landscape. Network TV is dead.

We assume the way to tell our story to the world is via paid advertising. It is not the only way. It may be the most effective way.

We assume collective marketing is moral. Obviously, there are many in the industry that believe compulsory confiscation of their monies to fund collective advertising is not moral.

We assume if we all got our act together to get this done, the USDA and Congress’ approval would be a formality. Think again. It appears that conservatives such as the Heritage Foundation will thwart anything they view as a “tax,” as seen by the recent Christmas tree marketing effort that has been in the news.

In summary, a collective marketing campaign in the style of “got milk” will not work.

So, what are we to do? Give up? Forget about it? We say no; let’s check our premises again to find the way forward. Let’s make some new assumptions.

1. We believe plants are more valuable than they are currently perceived to be.

2. We believe the way to increase the perceived value of plants is by communication. In other words, we have a story to tell: the value of plants.

3. We believe if we tell this story (more) effectively, it will increase the perceived value of plants, resulting in higher prices and increased demand (volume).

4. We believe we can tell our story more effectively than we currently do, even without a “got milk” style national marketing campaign.

5. We believe the industry is diverse and fragmented, and that this diversity is a strength, not a weakness.

6. We believe the time is right to organize ourselves to ensure we tell our story, together, in harmony but with diversity.

Does this all seem philosophical to you? Do you think I’ve said a lot without saying anything? I hope you will think about the problem deeply. It matters much how you pose the question, “How do we sell more plants?” There is a way for us to move forward as an industry, for independent firms to act in concert, benefiting themselves and the entire industry.

OpenHort has three proposals, which we will present in the next section, Part Eight.

Thanks for reading!

~Art

 

Australian Edward Linacre, a student at Melbourne’s Swinburne University of Technology, has invented the Airdrop irrigation system. The Airdrop claims to harvest moisture from the atmosphere by channeling  air underground, where the change in temperature produces water through condensation. Yesterday Linacre’s design won the James Dyson Award. In an article in The Guardian, James Dyson says that his award competition shows “that ingenuity is alive and well.”

 

 

 

Microsoft’s video vision of the future came out last week, and its all about plants.

The 6 minute video tells the story of an architect arriving in South Africa. We see her collaborate with different people via amazing-yet-believable technology. The project they’re working on?  A green wall.

According to Microsoft, in the future people will want to use their fancy high-tech “Minority Report” monitors to look at…plants. Whether they actually want to get their hands dirty or strain their backs, that’s another matter. It used to be future visions left plant life completely out of the picture. Did the Jetson’s have a yard? But now that we’ve passed 1984, left 2001 in the dust and are now living in what was once imagined as the “Future age” we see that humanity isn’t comfortable leaving the outdoors--a connection to nature--behind. We need plants. Pretty cool that Microsoft agrees.

Watch the full video if you have the time. Below are some excerpts that interested me the most.

 

 

“I never worry about action, but only inaction.” –Winston Churchill

Its time for OpenHort to chime in on the perennial debate regarding a national marketing campaign for the nursery industry. By the end of this series of posts, I will ask you for money. Along the way, I hope to lay a foundation for us to have a common understanding of the key decisions we have to make.

“There is nothing new under the sun.” –Ecclesiastes 1:9

Every generation in the nursery business has faced similar problems, from labor supply to government regulations to eroding prices. And each generation has met these challenges and overcome them. Sometimes it has called for united, organized efforts, and at others the solutions were found by individual businesses working alone.

One solution that all previous generations have failed to implement is the “national marketing campaign” or “promotion order” for the nursery industry. I do not say that they failed to address it. They did; and they decided on inaction.

This debate is nothing new, but there are new things to say and consider. If we have any hope of success in creating a viable plan for industry promotion, we must move the conversation forward. For too long, the proponents of national marketing have been stuck in neutral, saying little more than, “Gee, wouldn’t it be great if we had a campaign like ‘Beef: What’s for dinner,’ or ‘Got milk?’”

To move past square one, we must first completely understand the square we’re in and make some critical decisions on what direction we should go.

Firstly, to those who say, “We should have a national marketing campaign,” we must ask: WHY?

 

“How can they know unless someone tells them?” –Romans 10:14

The purpose of promotion.

Marketing is often misunderstood. It is not a facet of business; it is business. When you bring something to the marketplace, you’re marketing. It is simply presenting your goods or services to the world. You have to ask for the business; it will not come to you. Asking is marketing.

There is a natural, inborn value that humans have for plants, just as there is for food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, and countless other things. It would be foolish, however, to assume that this value is strong enough to consistently provoke action. The world will not value plants as much as we would like if we do not tell them why they should.

As an industry, we have successfully relied on the individual efforts of retailers (garden centers) and service providers (landscape companies) to convince the buying public that our product is valuable. The past recession has led many to conclude that these individual efforts are inadequate, or at the very least could be enhanced by a different tactic. At the extreme, this new direction is to shift the power and the message centrally, to a single unified marketing slogan. Instead of thousands of lone voices, there would be one loud voice, speaking for all. As problematic as the issue of funding is, the idea that the industry as a whole would cooperate—to sing the same song in harmony—is perhaps even more of a stretch to imagine.

Are we prepared for that kind of change? Losing money makes you want to change. Being hungry makes you want to find food. Throwing away millions of dollars worth of unsold plants makes you wonder what you could have done to sell them.

Wisely, we all first look internally at our own businesses for the answer to how we can sell more and be more profitable. But when our current retail and service sector customers (and all prospective customers) uniformly want to purchase less and pay less for the product, it leads us to a sense of helplessness to solve the problem on our own. This has led many to say and think, “We should have a national marketing campaign.”

Depending on your philosophical bias, this desire to find an external solution (a savior) is either akin to socialism (take someone else’s money for my benefit) or it is teamwork at is finest (a united effort will benefit all).

In my opinion most of the voices proposing a national marketing campaign are growers, and this makes sense. What they are really saying is that their retail and service sector customers are not doing their jobs well enough. They aren’t upholding their end of the bargain. If the garden centers and landscapers were effectively marketing the manufacturer’s products then they would be selling more at higher prices.

Also, you don’t hear many nurseries with prominent brands clamoring for this. Why? Because these growers don’t want to promote plants in general as much as they want to promote their plants specifically. But the thing is, these growers, by having brands, are addressing the same fundamental problem. They concluded many years ago that the supply chain was doing an inadequate job of representing their plants to the marketplace, so they have taken on some of the responsibility of selling more at higher prices. These large nurseries deserve a lot of credit for their foresight (but also some scrutiny as well).

We will address the question of funding later, for it is where most of the problems with this scheme will be found. Before we get sidetracked by the issue of money, let us define as clearly as we can the reasons why we would want a national, unified message from our industry to the world.

1. Purpose: Why have a national marketing campaign?
   1. Volume: Sell more plants.

      We are not content to retreat as an industry, to reconcile ourselves that we will sell less and less every year. The “new normal” should not mean that we slide downhill until enough of us go out of business that the survivors can begin to see slight regrowth.

      OpenHort concludes that this is the most logical goal and the easiest to define and understand.

   2. Margin: Higher price for plants

      We are not content to retreat as an industry, to reconcile ourselves that our products and services will be worth less and less each year. We do not want a small price increase. We want to drastically raise the perceived value of our plants, and to charge accordingly.

      OpenHort believes that this is a good goal, but secondary to volume. It should be the goal of individual businesses to raise their prices, margins and profitability. (But we’re willing to consider otherwise…)

   3. New Frontiers: Introduce new generation to plants

      The curtain is closing on the generation that we have all relied on to buy our products and services. The time is now, while we can still rely on the Baby Boomers, to prepare for the future. Our primary goal should be to convince Gen Y of the the value of plants. We need to make gardening cool, or—at the very least—something normal to do.

      OpenHort believes that our efforts could take a decade or more to really pay off. The focus should be on the demographic that we want to love us in 10-20 years.

   4. Therapeutic: Make us feel like we’re “doing something”

      Let’s be honest, this is a strong reason motivating the call for change. Inaction in the face of challenges is uncomfortable. We want to DO something. We may not be able to prove that this solution will help, or that it will return value on our investment. But we’d sure feel better about the world if we knew that someone was doing something.

      OpenHort believes this is a lousy reason to spend millions of dollars.

   5. Defense: Stave off a challenger

      The most successful “industry marketing campaign” in history is worth understanding. The dairy farmers launched the “got milk?” campaign because they were being killed by sodas. They had a clear competitor to defeat, a competitor that went head to head with them on the retail shelf and was able to spend massive amounts in advertising. The situation demanded they do something or die. (I don’t know what the green industry’s direct challenger is for the American consumer’s time, interest and money.)

      OpenHort believes we do not have a direct challenger to do battle with. Our enemies are many. We should instead focus on internal, not external, challengers—the fact that we make things so complicated and difficult to grasp for the average person. (In other words, let’s assume that we’re our own worst enemy.)

(I don’t imagine that this list is complete. What other reasons can you think of FOR a national marketing campaign? Please let me know so that I can include it!)

Before we can really move forward, we must first decide what our goal is, and then we must decide how we will measure to see if we achieve that goal. The measuring will be difficult, I think, but probably necessary to consider before we can begin asking for/demanding investment.

How will we know if we are selling more, or for higher prices, and that it is a direct result of the efforts of the marketing? The Beef Board claims to have research that shows that for every dollar (involuntarily contributed per head of cattle sold) the price of beef is raised $5. How do they know this? How long will the marketing have to prove itself—to take hold?

These are tricky issues, and I am not qualified to answer them. I just know they need to be asked.

In summary, OpenHort proposes that the defining reason for action is to sell more plants, with a particular emphasis on GenY.

 

“You can’t please everyone.” –cliche

The green industry is amazingly diverse, without any true dominant powers able to influence the market. The most powerful player is probably Home Depot, but I really have nothing to say about them or any of the big box retailers.

The diversity isn’t just in numbers, it is also diverse in function and area. This is a challenge that must be addressed. If we consider other industry promotion efforts, we see that most of the successful ones had a clear, simple product: milk, beef, raisins, nuts. If you encourage an audience to get milk, they can easily understand how to act on that suggestion: buy some milk and drink it. That’s not really the case with plants. Which plants? Flowers? Shrubs? Trees? Does it matter? Also, its pretty complicated to plant and grow something. There are a lot of things you need to consider, prepare and then maintain. (Another salient point is that the other products we may compare ourselves with are used regularly—weekly purchase/consumption decisions if not daily. Our opportunity for sales is seasonal at best, once a lifetime at worst.)

Who’s interests would the marketing serve? Is it best to have as broad a representation as possible? Or should it be narrowly focused to one market segment?

Another thorny issue is the regional diversity of plant material. If an azalea is shown in an advertisement, would some members of the industry be upset because they don’t grow and sell azaleas? Its kind of tough to imagine a national campaign that would work for everyone.

Here is the breadth and depth of the green industry:

1. Scope: diverse group
   1. Growers
      1. Nursery
      2. Greenhouse
      3. Cut flower
   2. Retailers
      1. Big Box
      2. Independents
      3. Mail order/online
      4. Florists
   3. Landscape services
      1. Landscape architects
      2. Landscape contractors
      3. Interiorscape
   4. Turf
   5. Arborists

 

OpenHort suggests the focus be on landscape ornamental plants: trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials. I would exclude turf, arborists, floral, indoor plants and also vegetables. (Of course, that’s what I grow and sell, so you may find I’m biased!)

What do you think? How big should the tent be? Can a single marketing message be crafted that would transcend the regionality and amazing diversity of our plants…or will dumbing down the message to the lowest common denominator make the message weak?

 

“Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.” -Ronald Reagan

Who would control this national marketing campaign? Who would make the decisions? How would these decisions be made?

There are three alternatives. The first is that an existing association like ANLA makes this happen under their umbrella. The second is that a new association is created specifically for management of this campaign. The third, which is what either one would likely end up becoming in the end, is that some advertising firm would really make all the decisions for us and we’d just foot the bill.

I have really very little to say about this, other than that I hope I get a seat at the table and the opportunity to influence the outcome. Probably you hope for the same. What do you think? Who should have the power?

“Economics in Eight Words: There ain’t no such thing as free lunch.” —El Paso Herald-Post, June 27, 1938

We now arrive at the heart of the issue. How much money will we need? And who is going to pay for it? How will the money be collected? Who will decide how it is spent?

According to my internet research, milk, beef and cotton all spend between $20-40 million annually to get their message out to the world, and they enjoy a recognition of 80-90% of Americans. One to two million dollars is considered to be a nominal amount, so insignificant that the impact makes it not really worth the investment. The figures above are just the cost of the advertising. There are many other significant expenses of administration and research.

They raise the money involuntarily; the producers are compelled by law to pay monies to the respective ad boards.

This is where the reality hits us. To make an impact in the way that milk, beef and others have done, we must have a staggering amount of money. And the only way to get that much money is by an act of Congress (literally).

Before we go any further in the discussion, we must answer the question, will this campaign funding be voluntary or not?

I think the reality is, until we can prove that it will work, it has to be voluntary.

If it is voluntary, three things will happen: a very small percentage will contribute (the amount will be perhaps as much as a million but probably far less), the impact will be small, and the freeloaders willing to have the other suckers foot the bill for them will say, “See, I told you it wouldn’t work.” Can we doubt that without the force of law the vast majority of nurseries will not contribute? Consider the appalling lack of participation in the ANLA now. A shocking number of growers are willing to let a small percentage of firms pay for all of the lobbying efforts. If it weren’t for the innovative Lighthouse program, our representation in Washington would be non-existent because we wouldn’t be able to voluntarily fund it.

Given the limitation of funding, we have to reevaluate the goal (sell more plants) and see how this might be achieved without a big glitzy full-blown campaign.

What do you think? Should we push to pass a law that says all nurseries must pay for marketing? Is there anyone at all willing to propose that? Or is that the kiss of death? Is there some other way of policing this, of punishing those who don’t contribute?

 

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” -Linus Pauling

Let’s examine some ideas that currently exist, have been tried before or have been proposed in the distant or recent past.

Perhaps I will explore each in depth at a later time, but for now a simple list should suffice

1. America in Bloom: Some may argue we already have a national marketing campaign in AIB. Why not work with what we already have? America in Bloom is valiantly trying to fight two (losing?) battles: advancing the cause of gardening and encouraging community involvement.
2. Fall is For Planting: This was an old, and still used by some, promotion by the ANLA. The genius was that it focused on extending the season of prime demand for plants.
3. Plant More Plants: a current consumer-awareness campaign by the Chesapeake Club.
4. Life. Plant life.: an idea proposed by Laurie Scullin and Frank Zaunscherb of ZMI in 2010.
5. You can grow that.: a really inspiring blog post by C.L. Fornari.
6. forgot p(L)ants?: a rather silly idea, actually.
7. GARDENING–It’s right in your back yard.: a slogan proposed by my pal, Lloyd Traven.

I’m sure there are more ideas that I have ignored. What did I miss?