“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:
- Scope: diverse group
- Growers
- Nursery
- Greenhouse
- Cut flower
- Retailers
- Big Box
- Independents
- Mail order/online
- Florists
- Landscape services
- Landscape architects
- Landscape contractors
- Interiorscape
- Turf
- Arborists
- Growers
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?