pull marketing rejoinder

**D* G* <d*@xplornet.com>**

>  

Kirk Brown wrote
> We, as garden communicators, are doing a terrible job of pulling through the
> new varieties to the purchasing public. 

Kirk - let me point out a few other options rather than "terrible job".
The first of course is that I'm hired by my newspaper to write a column
that's entertaining.  They hire me so that they can sell more
advertising.  I'm not hired to be a pull marketer and if the newspaper
editor thought I was doing that, then they'd be charging me for the
pleasure of filling their space.

My full time income is writing and entertaining people with that
writing.  I'd like to think there's some educational component of that
as well but my responsibility when writing public information is to my
reader and the company/person paying that bill.  It isn't to any other
company/nursery and pulling their plants through to market.  

Having said that...

I love new and interesting plants (and am about to unleash a brand new
component of Internet new-plant publishing) :-)  but I can count on one
hand the number of nurseries that have sent me material and/or plants
this spring.  They aren't getting their message out to this writer.
Walters perennials sent me a cd and I immediately uploaded it to the net
as a flash presentation - the downloads are now in the 5 figure range
and I'm no longer keeping track.

I did a free ebook for PPA winners and I stopped counting after it too
passed into 5 figures.

The demand for good information is there on my readership; and even
though I'm Canadian, the bulk of my readership is from the US.  Some US
nurseries look at a Canadian address and assume the border stops the
flow of information on the Internet. Silly companies :-)

Naturally, I write about and endorse through pictures and
recommendations that plants that I grow.  But if I don't know about it,
I can't tell anybody about it.  And I rarely do a serious promotion
lending my credibility to a plant that I haven't grown (or product I
haven't trialed) - so the regular breathless news releases are not
usually taken very seriously.

So that's the first part of the rant.  The second part would be the
economics of producing weird plants.  Been there, done that.  But that's
a subject for another day.

And the third part would be the role of p.r./marketing in the hort
industry but that too is a subject for another day.

So Kirk, I'm not doing a terrible job of "pull marketing" - heck that
isn't even my job. :-)  

Doug

p.s.  I'm doing a great job of entertaining readers though as my
Internet stats confirm. 

-- 
Doug Green
Internet Publishing for the Garden
Home: http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com
Blog: http://www.douggreensgarden.com

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