Should We Market our Industry in a Down Economy?

It is an interesting phenomenon to see how most companies have no problem spending money during the busy cycles of their business and then cut back during the leaner times. While on the surface this seems to make sense, when you probe a bit deeper questions start to surface. If the purpose of marketing is to increase customer awareness and result in more purchases, then logically when those purchases start to fall off more effort should be made to prop them back up again. Marketing is how we typically accomplish this feat and marketing is what we will need to do in the coming months to help our industry survive.

I do not want to dwell on the obvious gloom of our troubled economy and how this will affect our sales, but rather ask you what we can do about positioning ourselves to better ride out the storm. We have a great story to tell and the more we remind folks about it the more we will benefit. This is what marketing is all about.

Plants have often been considered a luxury by many people and organizations. The argument is that they are ‘nice to have’ but not actually needed to live our lives and operate businesses. There have been attempts in the past to bridge this gap into ‘necessity’ by researchers and scientific studies which have hailed the extra benefits plants bring to the table. The NASA research was a good starting point many years ago, and the later studies showing plant’s psychological benefits added to the argument of the need for plants.

This argument was formalized and packaged by an organization originally called Plant at Work and later renamed Green Plants for Green Buildings (GPGB). They have been marketing our plants for over 10 years now with much success. People in elevators and on the street will comfortably talk about the benefits of plants for both our bodies and the environment, as a direct result of the thousands of articles, stories, editorials, advertisements, and TV spots GPGB has facilitated over the years. But these talking points are getting a bit tired and new sound bites are needed for us to stay in the game for the consumer’s shrinking discretionary spending.

What is needed is some compelling new information that we can launch new marketing initiatives with. We need to tie into the whole ‘Green ‘movement and get plugged in better with the US Green Building Council (USGBC) and their LEED certification program. It is ironic that as ‘Green’ as our industry is, we have been pretty much left by the side of the road in the latest green movement!

Funding is a critical part of keeping that message out in front of the public, and during lean times folks tend to cut back. I am suggesting that now more than ever is the time to invest in marketing our plant products. We need to fund new research proving that plants remove Carbon from the air and can help reduce our carbon footprints. We need to show that plants should be a required part of any ‘green’ building. We need to convince the decision makers that incorporating live plants into their living or working spaces is the right thing to do!

These things cannot be accomplished by one organization or a few committed people. It will take the efforts of all of us who count on plant sales to feed our families. I urge you to support organizations that support our industry, whether it’s GPGB, NFF, FNGLA, PLANET, PIA or any other group. Now, more than ever, we need to market ourselves to the ever changing ‘green’ world we live in.

Michael K. Lewis, CLP

Executive Vice President

Foliage Design Systems