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
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
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.
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.
Plant More Plants: a current consumer-awareness campaign by the Chesapeake Club.
Life. Plant life.: an idea proposed by Laurie Scullin and Frank Zaunscherb of ZMI in 2010.
I just found the coolest website I’ve seen in a long while, one which reminds me of all the reasons I started OpenHort. Lisa Takao-McCall of Takao Nursery says her blog “is about stirring up a stagnant way of thinking in the horticulture industry in the hopes of cultivating new ideas and bonds between its members in an effort to benefit us all…” Wow! That’s so cool!
I stumbled across her blog when I went to their company website to get a little background for a blog post I am going to write, chiming in on an article that Lisa’s father, Danny Takao, wrote for Greenhouse Grower magazine. Mr Takao’s article is titled, “Danny Takao’s National Promotion Idea,” and I was going to, well, basically rip it apart because it’s not much of an idea beyond “Gee, it sure would be nice to have a ‘got milk?’ campaign for plants.” But now that I see what the Takaos, and especially Lisa, are thinking and doing…I think I’ll go easy on him!
Our industry is in desperate need of a national marketing program similar to the “got milk” campaign. Why? Because we aren’t making any money.
We’re seeing a shocking drop in demand, and we can’t just blame the economy. Why are our products falling out of fashion in the midst of the largest environmental movement in history? This is entirely our fault. We haven’t been making any effort to market and promote the value of plants.
Our biggest obstacle is ourselves. We are such a diverse and fractured industry. We must join together or we are all going to continue to sink together.
We should have started this twenty years ago!
The time is now to get this going. Even if it takes an act of Congress to get this off the ground, we must do this.
This is what’s supposed to save us? A movie star in his underwear? No doubt the ad agency we hire will come up with something that gets people’s attention, but how on Earth is that going to make us money? Big-time national advertising campaigns are lotteries for wealthy corporations. Their chances of failure are infinitely greater than the chances of success. This is a great way to lose a bunch of money. We’re struggling for survival and you want a donation so you can flush it down the toilet called network TV? And as we can see from the billboard above, the end result will probably be insulting.
Just calm down and take a deep breath. Things are tough now, but it’s going to be OK. We don’t need a national marketing campaign because we have something the others don’t. The basic fact of the matter is that people will always want to have a pretty nice yard. We can count on that never changing. It’s inconceivable that a day is coming when the American people would want their yards to be barren wastelands.
The sky’s not falling. Get a grip.
And keep your hands out of my wallet.
The complete poster.The poster hanging at the 2011 ANLA Clinic.
Creator’s Commentary: Who hasn’t heard someone say, “What we need is a national marketing campaign like Got Milk?” But the thought never advances past wishful thinking. I’ve never heard a rational debate by parties for and against. And who has ever actually made a prototype of such an ad campaign? (Laurie Scullin and Frank Zaunscherb came up with “Life. Plant life.” but other than that I haven’t seen anything.) This poster was my attempt to have that debate pro and con and to imagine what such a campaign might look like.
My starting point was to imagine that I was an advertising creative director with no green-industry bias and given the task of coming up with a campaign for plants, because the reality is if we were going to spend millions on a national ad campaign it shouldn’t look anything like our current “safe” marketing in the green industry. The concept is simple: have celebrities pose in their underwear while holding plants. At first, I was going to have the words “got pants?” in normal san-serif font with an “L” added in with red script to make the message “got plants?” The TV commercials would be something like: “Hi, I’m Brad Pitt and I’d rather forget my pants than to forget about plants and all the great things they do for our world, making our homes and neighborhoods more beautiful and saving the planet…”
Two versions: I went with the straight "got plants?" just to avoid confusion.
How stupid is that? But I think it’s just the type of thing that an ad agency would give us for a few million dollars. It has all the necessary components: celebrities, sex, unexpected humor and environmental consciousness. I enjoyed the irony: as a consumer, I would personally hate this campaign, but I also thought it was brilliantly clever and that it would resonate and get a lot of attention. The other thing I like about it is the way it subtly says, “Hey, world. You’re forgetting about plants.”
Ultimately, as much as I love this poster, I think it failed (so far) since to date no person has had anything to say about it. The idea was to make a place at the ANLA Clinic that would spark conversations. It was called the “Conversation Station.” The question continues to linger in my mind, “Is this what we need to get attention?”
~Art
PS: Another thing I noticed from a design standpoint that I really like: the double/reverse message of the title words. The first thing my eye sees is the bolder words that say, “WE NEED ATTENTION,” which implies that we need to do this. But the full text is “Is this what we need to get attention?” which implies that maybe its not such a good idea to throw a few million dollars away on a campaign like this. Tres cool.
I took this photo this past summer, at the OFA. I really like everything about it. The packaging is fun. My boys have suggested to me countless times that I should grow flytraps. “Kids would buy a lot of them,” they tell me. I have no plans to do so, but I thought this was interesting to pass on in light of our most recent video, Spooky Plants. ~Art
"Hello lunch!" these plants say. Love the personality.
Chris Beytes of Grower Talks magazine has a weekly email newsletter called Acres Online. In the most recent one he mentions our latest video, Spooky Plants. Thanks!
Acres Online is pretty much the pulse of the industry, so if you aren’t already one of the 18,079 (wow!) loyal readers, you’re missing out. Check out the latest edition here, and sign up to get it in your inbox here. ~Art
Chris and Ball Publishing have been very supportive of OpenHort. Thanks!
In plenty of time for Halloween, we have our newest OpenHort video, Spooky Plants, ready for you to use. Last year, we had a lot of success with our Plants vs Zombies video, so we thought we’d follow that up with a look at some creepy flora that scares the plants off us. (There’s just something about Halloween that gives you permission to be cheesy.)
Want to use this video to promote your own company? You have three options: 1) simply link to the video on YouTube, 2) download a free copy that you are welcome to customize in any way you’d like (right click this link and select “Save Target As…”) or 3) hire Moche Media to customize it with your logo for $75.
We encourage you to “do-it-yourself.” It’s not that hard. If you need to be pointed in the right direction, you might want to check out the tutorial we made for the video “Shovel Ready.” We’ve never offered this service before, but it seems that some folks need a little more help. Moche Media is a company we’ve set up because I don’t want OpenHort to be commercial in any way. Send us an e-mail if you’re interested or have any questions.
Thanks to the ANLA and their awesome Clinic, I’ve been enjoying Trendhunter all year. Here, they report on horticulture making a splash on the runway in Milan. ~Art
