Category: OpenHort

Our last post, 5 Reasons Why Business Education Conferences Are Dying, was a product of thinking about the future of the American Nursery & Landscape Association’s Management Clinic. We had originally thought to title it, “Why the Clinic Failed,” but decided to make it a more general article because we thought it might apply to more than just the Management Clinic. Now, we want to spend a few minutes forgetting the past and looking toward the future of the Clinic. Will it return? What will it look like?

We don’t possess any secret, inside knowledge. We assume the Clinic, if it does continue, will not be in Louisville. It may not be in late January. It may not be called the Clinic. It will most likely be a joint venture between ANLA & OFA. And, if you aren’t a business owner, you might not be invited.

One of the ideas we have heard mentioned over and over was that perhaps the next Clinic would be for “owners only.” Let’s examine why this could work, and why it might be a bad idea.

Why Owners Only Could Work.

1. Owners make decisions. They are the ones who control the purse strings. Managers, salespeople and buyers all may love the Clinic, but they aren’t the ones who decide whether they will attend or not.

2. Owners are willing to pay more. This has yet to be proven, actually. But the theory is that owners control the money and are willing to pay more for their own development and for high-level networking.

3. Owners need to meet for industry association business. Hey, there’s a lot of work to be done for associations, and the leaders need to meet in order to get things moving. Most of the industry leaders are also owners, so it makes sense to bring them together for both education and association business.

4. Owners can let their guard down when employees aren’t around. It can get uncomfortable to have your team listening to speaker after speaker catalog how business leaders are doing a poor job of leading and managing their teams. It is also more difficult for owners to share their struggles, doubts and failures when employees are around.

5. “Owners only” would mean a more focused, less complex conference. There wouldn’t need to be so many concurrent tracks. Fewer meeting rooms and speakers means a more cost-efficient conference.

6. There are fewer middle managers in the industry than there were a few years ago. Not sure I can prove this, but I suspect many have left the industry as companies have down-sized.

7. Timing is not as big of an issue. There’s no day on the calendar that isn’t somebody’s busy season. But the time of year is less of a concern because it’s easier for an owner to get away for a couple days than it is for several key employees.

8. A large room of business owners would be a high-value audience for sponsors. It wouldn’t matter if the conference were smaller if the all the attendees control the checkbooks. (Is that true?)

9. Owners only would probably lead to a more balanced mix of representation across the supply chain (retail/landscape/grower/greenhouse/distributor). The Clinic has for a long time been dominated by the retail sector.

10. An “owners only” conference may be easier for the OFA membership to understand; they may see the value more easily. How do you begin to explain the Clinic to someone who has never been? Maybe “owners only” helps to communicate the value.

11. An “owners only” conference may lead to better understanding/integration between the ANLA & OFA if the business owners have an opportunity to mix. Bringing multiple people from a single company can mean there is less interaction as folks from the same company spend time talking to themselves. Owners only would be more of a mixing bowl.

12. Exclusivity. An “owners only” conference may be able to be sold as an exclusive privilege to be able to attend. Perhaps there could be a cap placed on attendance…say 150. Maybe OFA could get 50 spots, ANLA would get 50 spots. They could be sold for, say, $1,000-3,000 each on a first-come-first-served basis. Then the remaining 50 could be auctioned off to the highest bidder. People want what others can’t have.

 Why “Owners Only” Might Not be a Great Idea.

1. It looks like a clique. An “owners only” conference gives the appearance of a “good ole’ boys” network. Is that the way we want to begin the joint venture with the OFA and ANLA? By saying only the anointed may participate?

2. You have to sell the value of the Clinic to more people. An owner who believes in the value of the Clinic may bring 4, 6 or more people. If those folks aren’t allowed to attend, we’ll have to convince more businesses to participate to make up for the folks left at home.

3. Owners are often not the true leaders…the ones who actually get things done. Owners are not often the buyers. They like to think they are the decision makers, but many have delegated most important decisions to the managers they’ll leave behind at home.  This will lead to ineffective networking. Buyers may be more important than owners.

4. Old dogs, old ground. Take a look around and you’ll see there are not that many “young” owners, and very few folks under 40 who have started their own business. This is very different than it was in the 80s. Are the same “old” owners the ones who have new ideas to drive change in our industry? We don’t want the Clinic to be a social club of semi-retired business owners. We need a majority of the attendees to be envisioning a brighter future, not trying to preserve the past.

5. Where do we train and inspire our bright up-and-comers?

Summary

We hope the Management Clinic returns in 2013, and we will support an “owners only” model. (But we won’t really like it.) We hope an “owners only” model would be temporary, a way to refine and reinvent the Management Clinic.  We think it is less important to have only owners in the room as it is to have the “best and brightest.”

The goal should not be to find 1,000 people willing to pay for an educational conference. Let’s not settle for that. The goal should be to get the 1,000 best, smartest, most exciting people in the industry together in an open, sharing environment where they are inspired to dream big and equipped to lead change…who wouldn’t want to attend that meeting?

Thanks for reading! Let us know what you think by posting a comment. If you’re not brave enough for that, you can send me an email too!)

~Art

 

 

Are conferences a thing of the past? Low attendance is no longer just a trend, a temporary response triggered by a tough economy. Lethargic industry-participation is the new reality. Once packed ballrooms and busy, electric hallways are becoming ghost-towns at many conferences. How long will the remaining attendees keep coming back for more? How long can conferences struggle to survive before they are put out of their misery?

If you are a conference organizer or loyal attendee and your event is failing, how can you dramatically and quickly bring back the crowds and the excitement? And if your event is thriving, an exception that proves the rule, how do you avoid losing your momentum like so many others have done?

I don’t have the answer, but the way forward must surely start with understanding the root of the failure. I humbly submit my…

Top 5 Reasons Conferences are Dead.

1. Misery Does NOT Love Company.

It would be easy (and obvious) to say, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Why over-complicate things? Businesses can’t afford to do everything they once did. They have cut back. Some have dropped out of conferences altogether; others have scaled back. When the good times roll, they’ll be back.

But I don’t find this explanation satisfying. It may be true, but it doesn’t help conference organizers know what they can do to fix the problem. It’s basically an abdication of responsibility to forces outside anyone’s control. It is far more useful, yet less comforting, to admit, “The people we want to attend don’t see value in what we offer. If they did, they would come.” The marketplace has spoken. The bad economy has forced businesses to prioritize. Guess what? Business education and conferences weren’t a high priority. Why is that?

They must not see the value.

We should not give in to the temptation to blame the reluctant customer, even though it’s justified. Yes, business decision-makers are foolish to put the brakes on education, innovation and progress. Why stop the flow of new ideas when what you need most is new ideas? It is irrational to retreat into isolation at the exact moment the opposite is called for. But if your industry is suffering through a “Dark Age,” you’ll make little progress in sparking a “Renaissance” by castigating the non-participators.

The “Age of Enlightenment” starts with shining light on that which is most valuable. Return to first principles. Rediscover why it is you have a conference to begin with.

Action steps. You have a decision to make: do you attempt to convince the non-attendees or do you refocus on the attendees? Who’s value do you seek to uncover, understand and enhance? If you want to get non-believers to participate, you must find out why they don’t see value in your conference/association/event. And what do they value? If it’s not worth their time, they won’t attend. At the same time, you can’t neglect what your core, loyal attendees value. They may not be the same. It is probably unwise to try to truly understand both.

Also, consider how you can sell your conference to decision-makers when the value is most clearly seen. This is likely to be during or immediately after the event itself, before the notepads full of great ideas and the dreams of change are buried back at the office. Post-conference euphoria and its sudden decline is well-known, and it is the root cause of my second reason Conferences Are Dying.

2. Disillusionment: It’s not what you know; it’s what you do.

Many business leaders decide against attending a conference because they haven’t put into practice all the things they learned at the last conference they went to. They think, “Why go get more ideas, however good they are, when I still haven’t implemented all (any of) the good ideas I got last year?” Ideas are cheap and easy to come by. It’s what you do with ideas that matters. If your past attendees can’t point to tangible improvements your conference made in their business or personal lives, why should they return for more?

A corollary to this problem is repetition. Same topics. Same speakers.  Same people.  Same information. Do your session titles sound like this? “Your people are your greatest asset.” “Time management: reclaim your life.””Engaging your team.” “Revitalizing corporate culture.” “Facebook and social media: what does it mean for business?” As important as these topics are, it can be a turn-off if people think they’ve heard it all before.

Action steps. How do you ensure attendees implement what they learn, and remember they learned it from you? Is there a way to have specific goal setting and ongoing accountability (which lasts past the post-conference euphoria) a part of their conference experience? How do you make them hungry for more, not overwhelmed by their inability to digest what you’ve already given them? And how to you make them interested in a meal they’ve already tasted? It is important to also consider making the social and relational aspects as important or more important than the education/content. Build and maintain a sense of community. Church attendees keep going back every week not because they’ll hear something new (since the Truth is timeless) but because they know they need to hear it again and again…AND they have a community that helps them on their journey. How can you build a supportive, sharing community? Answer these questions and your conference will prove its value and stave off disillusionment.

3. Unsocial Networks.

Connected. We are always connected. Smartphones and WiFi, texting and status updates. Email, Facebook and Twitter constantly bombard us. We follow and are followed, but where is “Social Networking” really leading us? While technology allows us to connect with more people more frequently, our expanding connections have spread us thin, shortened our attention spans and allowed us to retreat into an isolationist stance with a veneer of participation. We are lurkers online, voyeurs happy to observe from a comfortable distance.

Potential conference attendees think: “I can read the blogs of the speakers. I can watch them on YouTube and follow them on Twitter. I can network more effectively on LinkedIn. I can connect more deeply on Facebook than I can during a five minute coffee break between sessions. I don’t need to go.”

Here’s the irony of social networking: it tends to make us unsocial.

Action steps: Social media and its constant connection isn’t going away, but there will likely be a backlash from many who feel the need to connect old-school style: face-to-face. Be ready for this awakening. How can you position your conference to be the logical place for web-connected networks to gather in real life? How can you co-exist with social media, not in competition with it? Find a poster child or two. Can you identify a few key people who became somewhat dissatisfied with the depth of relationships they had online, and your conference allowed them to connect on a deeper, more meaningful level with people they cared about–not strangers but people they “sort-of” knew from the web? And how can you tell their story? And what do you offer that can’t be found on YouTube or in blogs?

4. Uncomfortably Commercial.

One way over-connected people are dealing with the deluge of data, updates and emails is by tuning out the noise. We’ve got spam filters, caller id, Tivo and Netflix. They’re defense mechanisms to keep us from going insane, and the only way you’re going to get past someone’s defenses is to invade their lives, trick them or get their permission to enter. (I think it’s obvious which one you should choose.) But the net result is we are now more annoyed when presented with unavoidable, unwanted commercial messages. We are used to fast-forwarding through ads, bouncing unwanted emails and hitting the ignore button. So when an attendee sits through an infomercial disguised as a keynote speech or a “lunch and learn” that’s really a “sell-my-stuff to a captive audience,” it’s not going to go over too well.

Many conferences, faced with declining income from attendance fees and hotel rooms, have loosened the constraints on their sponsors and speakers. This is understandable. Get more sponsors and let them have more time to sell and you get more money. But it’s probably the wrong decision.

Who wants to be a captive audience? If your conference has become more sponsor dependent and controlled, you are probably losing  your credibility as quickly as you’re losing attendees.

Action steps: Forget about sponsors. Sounds radical, but you should try it if only as a mental exercise. Focus on the value your attendees get from your conference. Care first about their experience. Make it work for them. Delight the audience. If you have a conference that exists for the benefit of sponsors, you have it backwards.

5. Accidentally Inflexible.

The number one reason conferences are failing? Hotel contracts.

Healthy, sustainable conferences must be able to grow and contract. Suppose there is a life cycle to events and conferences. They start small, with a core group of impassioned, true-believer attendees. It becomes obvious to the outside world that something special happens when this group gets together. More firms flock to attend. Sponsors gladly sign up to get their names in front of the audience. At some point, perhaps over several years or even over decades, the core group that was the heart of the conference moves on, or are diluted to such an extent that the life leaves the party. Attendance wanes, until either the conference finally dies or re-invents itself with another, smaller core group of impassioned true-believers. And the cycle continues. (It may very well be possible to avoid the decline by ensuring the core is healthy and constantly improved.)

What keeps a conference or event from scaling down, retrenching and reinventing? Their hotel contracts. Somebody signed a five-year agreement to fill a thousand rooms and rent a large conference space. And that’s not the only constraint preventing change. The sponsors have been promised big attendance numbers. And what about the speakers? How can we afford the big-names if we don’t have a lot of attendees? How can we get a lot of attendees if we don’t have big name speakers?

All the commitments (contractual and implied) that organizations and conferences make probably seem like good business. Cheaper rooms. Better speakers. More sponsors. But when you don’t plan for decline–when you can’t scale down–you are inflexible. Which means you’ve lost control. Which means you’ll fail.

Action steps: Kill your sacred cows. Don’t worry that others will think you’re desperate. You should be. Right-size your conference.  How can you assemble the best and brightest of your industry? Consider making the conference exclusive, maybe even by invitation only for a few years. Raise the price of admission. Comp the most influential people who are guaranteed to amaze their fellow attendees. A bit too radical? Maybe start a new conference as a sort of life raft for your larger, struggling conference. Maybe it should be an “unconference?” Focus less on getting a lot of people willing to pay to attend. Instead, focus on getting the right people.

Summary

Are conferences a thing of the past? Probably not, but yours might be if you don’t understand the value you offer attendees, not sponsors. Define the value, communicate the value and scale the event down to as few attendees as possible. Then get ready to grow.

Thanks for reading! Share your thoughts with me by leaving a comment or sending me an email.

~Art

in·spi·ra·tion: The infusion of ideas into the mind.

I cannot praise the American Nursery & Landscape Association (the staff, the industry volunteers and the Board leadership) enough for the amazing event that was the Management Clinic. Over the past decade, the Clinic has meant more to me and my company than any other thing I can think of, and the 2012 edition was as rich a mix of brilliant, insightful ideas, mind-expanding opportunities and meaningful networking as ever. I wish you had been there. You simply cannot understand the excitement, the energy, the passion and the fun that filled every hallway, meeting room and social gathering. Many thanks to all who worked hard to put on the Clinic and to every single attendee who generously chose to leave their business and family for three days of learning and sharing.

Here are some of the many people who inspired and “wow-ed” me this year:

Joe Baer

Joe Baer and his team of “Visual Merchants” from Zen Genius were deservedly the talk of the Clinic for their wonderful concept/display of re-purposed pallets cum garden boutique. Besides being clever, resourceful and beautiful, the truly remarkable thing was how it served as the perfect metaphor for the times: “More with less.” How often have you heard this cliche, or said it yourself? But it is rare to see it so plainly demonstrated in a tangible way. For me, it was a parable into which I could walk and linger, touch and absorb. It seemed to say, “Yes, we have all been humbled by difficult times. True, we cannot afford the standards we once thought essential. But, with creativity and discipline, we can embrace our humility and actually…truth be told…raise the standard higher than it ever was before. All we have are a bunch of busted pallets? Let’s make it awesome!” Well done, Joe!

Chris Hansen

Chris Hansen of GreatGardenPlants.com was amazing. This guy is killing it. His business is so dialed in on success, he didn’t mind sharing exactly how he is selling tons of plants online. I have so much respect for his openness: he literally showed us all the nuts and bolts (including the money side) of how he uses Google and its metrics to drive his business. If OpenHort had an award for “Going Above & Beyond to Share Knowledge with Potential Competitors,” it might just be named after Chris Hansen. He was also a judge for the “Garden Idol” where he showed a keen sense for the potential market viability of the new plants being introduced. There aren’t many “plant geeks” equally as passionate about the business numbers as they are the newest cultivars. You rock, Chris!

 

Garden Idol

If you don’t know, Garden Idol is like American Idol, but for new plants…and it is wild.

This year’s winner was Hort Couture‘s Jim Monroe for the “Under the Sea” collection of coleus. They are pretty cool plants and I look forward to growing them.

Congrats to Hort Couture for the win and lots of respect to Jim Monroe for his emphatic statement from the stage: “These plants will NEVER be in a box store. Over my dead body.” I think he really means it, too. It will be interesting to see how he and a newly-resurrected Novalis will be able to secure unique genetics and prevent them from ever crossing over to he mass-merchant channel. Can it really be done? We’re glad someone’s trying! Atta boy, Jim!

 Spring Meadow Nursery

Spring Meadow deserves a “wow” mention for deciding to NOT compete in this year’s Garden Idol, despite having many worthy plants. Instead, they paid for everyone’s drinks! It was a classy move, and the “party with a purpose” raised several thousand dollars for nursery research and breast cancer research. Well done, Spring Meadow!

Stephanie Stockton

Not only did Stephanie Stockton organize a great Clinic, she also raised a lot of money ($4,000 I think?) at the “party with a purpose” by getting folks to donate to see her have all her hair cut off. Wow. This is the level of commitment and participation we have come to expect from our association staff, and we shouldn’t take it for granted. Remarkable, Stephanie!

The OFA

Speaking of association stuff…I was really glad to connect with several OFA members at the Clinic. The OFA president, Mike McCabe of McCabe’s Greenhouse & Floral, was visible and immersed himself in the whole Clinic experience. In light of the “joint venture” between ANLA and OFA, it was important to have their leadership present. Kudos to Mike! However, I can’t pass up the opportunity to point out that none of the OFA staff attended. I’m sure there are good reasons for this, but I think there are better reasons for why somebody from the OFA staff should have been there. How are we to integrate our two organizations with one of the key goals being to “Further expand and offer more robust educational programs” if they don’t know what our main educational program was really all about? Don’t get me wrong, I am not really upset here. I’m confident the OFA cares about the Clinic. Just consider this a gentle call-out, a simple observation. We expect a lot from our staff, and that’s a good thing!

Bailey, PDSI & Conard-Pyle

It’s interesting to see these three great companies partnering together and finding synergy where there could be isolation. Their brands are complementary, and it was really cool to see them all displayed side-by-side. They aren’t merging or losing their individual identity, but they are very smartly combining their efforts where it makes sense. These guys get it!

 Jonathan Matteson

I’d never heard of Jonathan or his employer, Kellogg Garden Products, before the Clinic, and he wowed me basically because he wore a scarf and fingerless gloves the entire time. Seriously, Jonathan is way more hip than most of us in the industry. But he offered more than just cool, eccentric style. He had a lot of great insights–especially about Twitter, Facebook and all the social media stuff, which were perhaps the most-frequently mentioned topics at the Clinic. Everybody was talking about connecting with their social networks, but Jonathan did it better than the rest, I think. So, he gets a “wow.” Stay warm, Jonathan!

Marcus Sheridan

He calls himself the Sales Lion, and his presentation style was abrasively forceful…but his schtick was backed up by some really brilliant-yet-simple insights into Google, the psychology of buyers and the very nature of business and marketing. This guy was smart, and he didn’t mind sharing all of his strategies and tricks. Whoever found Marcus and invited him to the Clinic: way to go!

 Sid Raisch

I’m a big fan of Sid, so him getting a “wow” is not surprising. At this Clinic, I only heard him speak for five minutes during a “Speed Round,” but his simple appeal to eliminate the word “bid” from our business vocabulary was right on. There are a lot of smart people out there, but Sid stands out because he has something more: wisdom. You can check him out at his website, Advantage Development System. Keep thinking, Sid!

 

Kellee Magee

Honestly, Kellee Magge deserves a lot more than just a few sentences at the end of a blog post. Our industry owes her a lot of thanks for her many years of service. The Clinic is her signature event and this year appears to be her last. If you haven’t already, check out her new venture, MonkeyBar Management. Besides having a cool logo, Kellee and her new company provides “the skills that you need to bridge the gap from where you are to where you need to be.” Specifically, she is offering her services for event and business retreat organization, business development, strategic facilitation and basically just being her amazing self. Thanks, Kellee, for all you have done for ANLA and for all the love you have poured into our companies! Hope you have fun managing your own monkey-bars!

What “wowed” you?

These were just a few of the “wows” I got from Clinic 2012. I’d love to hear what “wow-ed” you. Feel free to share yours here by commenting, or post on Facebook so everyone can see it!

But…

But despite all the fun and valuable learning, the 2012 Clinic will be remembered less for the people who were there than for the people who weren’t.

hu·mil·i·a·tion: Descent from an elevated state or rank to one that is low or humble.

There was a sadness overshadowing this Clinic, for it just may be the last. Attendance was at an all-time low.  So low, in fact, many of us wonder, “Will it return?” I hope so, but it probably won’t be in Louisville and it may never be the same again. (Perhaps it could be better?) Why was attendance less than half what was needed? The green industry is suffering through our own Dark Age, where negativity, blindness and disinterest prevails. Our hope is in the handful of firms that see and are even now leading an exciting, new Renaissance in their businesses and in our associations.

I plan to post later this week my thoughts on why the Clinic “failed” and what we can do about it. Drop me a line if you have anything to share or just to let me know you want to hear what I think! I would really appreciate it. Thanks!

~Art

My children get excited for December 1st, for that’s when they get their advent calendars. Each day they open a small door in their calendar and get a piece of chocolate.

Last night at dinner I asked, “If you were designing an advent calendar to sell, what would it be like?”

My 8-year-old son Josiah said, “I’d make the doors and numbers extremely hard to find. It would be like a puzzle. You’d have to work for your reward.”

My six-year-old, Julia, said, “I’d make an ADVIL calendar. It’s for grownups.”

To which my 12-year-old quickly added, “Cause the holidays are such a headache.”

Creative ideas don’t come to smart people; they come to those willing to have fun with their thoughts, to make connections that are foolish, childish, even silly. If you need a creative idea, go ask a child.

May the love of Christ bring you peace as you celebrate His advent!

~Art

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.