My lost month of January is over. I’m back from the ANLA Clinic (which was awesome beyond words) and I am energized to get this year rolling. After being on the road every week of January, I’m ready to actually do some work.
We’re chock full of ideas. In a couple weeks, I should have a really cool parody trailer of the movie TRON…a futuristic computer world where the only thing illegal is…gardening and plants.
In the meantime, here’s an odd article about robot-assisted gardening. Check it out.
OK. So, if you’re at the ANLA Clinic (and you should be if you’re smart) then you might see a collection of some pretty cool posters with some fairly bold statements. And you may be thinking, “What is OpenHort?”
OpenHort is not a business. We don’t charge anything.
OpenHort was started after last years’ ANLA Clinic with the idea that we should be sharing green-industry marketing a lot more than we do: photos, videos, articles and ideas.
Our main business is a wholesale container nursery. We wanted to make marketing materials that our customers (independent landscapers and garden centers) could use via social media to promote their businesses. We decided to share these to everyone and anyone via a open-source community. Hopefully, others may want to do the same and OpenHort can build into a grass-roots national marketing campaign.
Would love to hear your thoughts!
It’s nice to meet people at tradeshows, and I’m looking forward to the upcoming ANLA Management Clinic. But, if our interaction doesn’t happen here, or some other site, where it is in the open and archived--it likely won’t push innovation forward. Why?
Have you heard of TED? It’s an organization that has really smart people give talks chock full of “ideas worth spreading.”
I’m not a TED fanatic, but I’ve watched a few talks. They’re good stuff. But I want to share with you a TED video I’ve watched several times. I think it contains a crucial lesson for our industry.
The director of TED, Chris Anderson, has given two talks. The first was titled, “A Vision for TED,” which he made long ago in 2002 prior to taking over TED leadership. His second came this past July: “How web video powers global innovation.” Basically, he says that naturally innovative people will put their talents into overdrive when they have three things: an audeince, an open stage and talented competition.
Watch this video and ask yourself, “When it comes to convincing the world the value of our plants, do we need to step our game up?”
So, what’s the prospect for the Green Industry? Do we have talented innovators in our industry? Do we have the desire?
Anderson says, “The hardest part is the light, because it means you have to open up and show your stuff to the world. It’s by giving away what you think is your deeepest secret that [others] are empowered to improve it.”
What is “light?” Andersen says that light is “comments, links, Facebook, Twitter, number of views.” This is where we stink as an industry. We are absolutley lame. Yeah, I’m calling us out. We think of ourselves as being perhaps the most “open” industry, where we share trade secrets and swap propagation techinques. But, according to TED, that kind of “good-ole-boy” openess is not what drives innovation. It’s light, and as he defines light, we are almost completely in the dark.
OpenHort is a site that wants to be a source of light. The innovators in our industry need (as Anderson lists) commenters, trend-spotters, cheerleaders, skeptics, mavericks and super-spreaders. Which one are you going to be?
You’re more than welcome to do it right here at OpenHort! Leave a comment to let me know that you are willing to do your part. I ask, not to build my ego or to make money off of you, but because for innovation to accelerate we need light!
Wow, Todd Davis is a cool guy! His recent editorial about OpenHort has brought a lot of new traffic. Thanks, Todd!
For those new to our conversation, this site is intended to be a place for “open-source” green industry marketing--a place for us to share what we’re doing and what’s working (or not). Our industry is great about sharing growing techniques and cultural practices, but we need to step up our marketing abilities--and our openness in this area.
I started this site after the 2010 ANLA Management Clinic. I was a moderator for a session called the “Swap Shop,” where the central topic was along these lines, “Okay, growing these plants is the easy part now. How do we sell them?” I wanted to continue and broaden the conversation we started then…and to actually do something instead of just sit there and say, “somebody ought to do X,Y and Z to promote this industry.”
Every generation has had it’s effort to create a “national marketing campaign,” and each time it’s suffered an ugly abortion. What I hope for us to do here is sort of a “grassroots national marketing campaign.” With the media tools we have, the creativity we possess, and the great story we have to tell--what’s stopping us? We don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. Before we get consensus, let’s get diversity. We don’t need a budget (yet.) Let’s see if we can get something rolling. (I will post at a later time on what will cause us to fail in our efforts, so you can look forward to that!). I’m doing what I can…and I hope you’ll join me!
I want this to be a collaborative effort…I didn’t call it OpenArt. In fact, I’d prefer to remain annonymous as much as possible. And at risk of seeming like I think I’m the only one who has anything to say, I’m determined to keep posting and not wait for others to step up and do this. But this site is very Open. It’s in the name! If you have an idea…Let’s do it!
Much of what I’ve contributed over the past few months have been videos. Here’s a few that I like:
Shovel Ready.This one was made in February, right after the Management Clinic. The idea came from Dan Mulhall of Omaha, Nebraska.
Mother’s Day.This one has a simple message: Get her something as beautiful as she is.
Snapdragons. My daughter Julia promotes a very kid-friendly flower.
Father’s Love: I give my daughter a rose. Message: Grow some love.
Plants vs. Zombies: ever heard of this video game? I’ve posted on it a lot!
Fall is For Planting: dusting off an old slogan.
The Pansy: my first video-poem in honor of a great flower.
Thanksgiving is such a great holiday. As I prepare to sit down to two family meals today, I’d like to thank all the farmers out there who work so hard to produce my food. I’m also thankful to the researchers in land-grant universities and many extension agents for their vital contributions. Also, to all the tractor and combine companies out there. I’m even thankful for the big, “evil” seed and chemical conglomerates. What a bounty they provide us!
There probably aren’t many who are thinking what I’m thinking.
Today, our world and culture are divorced from the soil. We don’t know what it means to plant with hope, to wait for rain, to weed, prune or harvest. So even at Thanksgiving, most Americans are either oblivious to agriculture or even worse, they are hostile to it.
Here’s an example of an “un-thankful turkey” I stumbled across. Have you heard of “vertical farming?” Dickson Despommier, a professor at Columbia in NYC, has written a book called The Vertical F
arm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century. According to the Vertical Farm Project website, this concept “has excited scientists, architects, and politicians around the globe.” I notice that they make NO MENTION of excited farmers, horticulturalists or anyone with any knowledge of agriculture.
The basic idea is that agriculture is dysfunctional and unable to meet the future needs of our world. Despommier isn’t thankful to our farmers or the agriculture industry. He proposes that we abandon the concept of the family farm and build massive skyscrapers in urban locations to grow our food hydroponically and organically.
Most of us could poke a lot of holes in this idea, but it’s already been done for us. Check out this interview of the author on the Colbert Report:
| Dickson Despommier | |
Pretty funny, but consider that Colbert’s act is to mock things that he and his audience agree with. Here’s the lesson I take away: an alarming number of intelligent leaders in the fields of education, politics, economics, planning, design and architecture do not understand our world of farming. They think agriculture essentially rapes and poisons the earth. Their ideal world would be one without farms, without tractors, without pesticides, fertilizers, and overhead irrigation.
I wish we could laugh this “vertical farming” off, but I have a feeling the philosophy at its heart will persist.
There are many things going on right now that we are inclined to ignore or dismiss. With “Plants vs Zombies” I was trying to point out that a game we think is irrelevant actually reveals our own irrelevance to the current culture. With “Vertical Farming” I want to suggest that when it comes to solving future agricultural/horticultural/environmental issues we are not seen as having solutions…in fact, many think we are the problem!
~Art
PS: I haven’t actually read the book. Think I should?
PPS: One last comment. Think this topic isn’t on anyone’s mind? Go to Google. Type in “farm.” Click “images” on the left-hand column. What I find is that two of the images are of concepts for this “vertical farming.” I believe that this idea is on someone’s mind.
It seemed like a no-brainer to make a video using the old slogan “Fall is For Planting.” We posted this a couple weeks ago and a few of our customers have used it. Let me know if you have any constructive criticisms!
To link to the video on YouTube, here’s the address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ErHQ8rGWx0
To downlaod the file so that you can customize and/or upload to your own video channel, right click this link as select “Save Target As…”
Many thanks to Todd Davis and NMPro magazine for putting the spotlight on OpenHort in their current issue! If you haven’t seen Todd’s editorial, you can read it here.
Todd says:
“So let’s get to work. We have the knowledge and creativity to get this done. Let’s crank out clever videos that also tout our products…Then start forwarding those videos to friends and family. All it takes is for one or two of these videos to go viral, and we’ll receive as much exposure as those expensive Super Bowl ads.”
We can create messages and distribute them via social networks for a very low investment. But I’m not sure if we can call success having a video or two get a few million views, although that would be great.
My vision is to concurrently build a sytem to regularly produce compelling messages and a distribution system to get those messages out. I can’t do any of this alone! So, thanks to all of you reading and especially to those like Todd that are helping to spread the word…contributing their vision here.
~Art
(New idea: where can I get some monkeys?)
I’m about ready to drop this Zombie thing and move on, but before I do, I want to thank everyone reading and following this discussion, and I want to specifically thank Matt Edmundson of Arbor Valley Nursery for this really thought-provoking comment he sent in:
Not to disrespect our elders here but go to an industry function, look at the folks standing in the room, the owners, upper level management (and well, heck when I look in the mirror), what do we see? Old guys/gals or young people who are raised by the old school. How is gardening or ornamental plants relevant to our culture? Who “needs” our products like they need the latest Apple product which will be obsolete in a year? Our marketing is from the stone age and our products and lifestyle activity is focused on the generation that just saw their retirement age extended another 10 plus years.
I interviewed a guy the other day who worked in a distribution center for cheap junk from China that no one needs, novelties really. You know how much a Whoopie cushion costs imported from China? The Landed price to the DC in NE $0.02. They retail it for $4.50 BEFORE shipping. Shipping costs them less than $2 anywhere in the country yet they charge $7.50. They sell 200,000 per year. People “have to have” Whoopie cushions but not plants? Why cant we sell a daylily for $224 before shipping and handling? Or do we have to find a way to push down the cost of making it to $0.02 landed? I just bought pumpkins for Halloween which we will essentially use for a few nights then pitch for more than I sell a #5 shrub which took a heck of a lot more than sowing seeds, watering and harvesting to produce. Obviously if I were a marketing genius I would have sold 200,000 daylilies for $44 million!
Wow. Thanks for the kick in the pants, Matt!
Why can’t we get more value for our plants and services? Is it because of waste? That our product doesn’t objectively have enough value? Or that few “perceive” the value? Can we fix that “perception problem?” Is it possible that we could make an argument that could lead us to $224 Stella d’Oros? We laugh at that outrageous price, but then I wonder, How profitable do we want to be? Is our goal reversing the trend of profit erosion or making profits soar? I don’t have any answers, but I do know there’s no get-rich-quick-and-easy solution. Let’s get to work!
~Art
As with our previous videos (Shovel Ready, Mother’s Day and 4th of July) we’d like to share them with any green-industry company that would like to use them. We think we’ve made it easy, and we’re giving you options.
Hope this is of use to somebody out there! ~Art