Summit gets ball rolling on national marketing program

The first National Green Industry Summit met in June at Bailey’s Nurseries in St. Paul, Minn., with most participants agreeing that more dialogue is needed and with leaders promising to reconvene the group before the end of the year.

The two-day summit was the first attempt in more than a decade to forge a national marketing program for the horticulture industry. Mandatory check-off programs like “Got milk?” and “Pork, the other white meat,” along with voluntary programs like the National Rifle Association’s safe-gun storage campaign, were held up as examples.

Three different approaches to industry promotion were vocalized at the summit:

* Big-picture program with a long-term impact on the state of the world. Example: touting horticulture as the smart solution to global climate change.

* Defensive message. Example: when local and provincial governments in Canada began outlawing pesticides intended for “cosmetic” purposes, the green industry was caught unaware and was forced to play catch-up with public relations programs to explain its view.

* Program aimed at driving immediate sales in a short period of time.

Summit participants were undecided about which of these approaches to pursue. They are three very different goals that would require very different tactics.

The group agreed to hire a professional facilitator who can guide participants through the process of writing a mission statement and then lead the group toward selecting a program message everyone can get behind.

It was not determined how startup money to hire the facilitator would be raised. As Montana wholesale nurseryman John Lawyer said: “We have to raise the money so we can afford to raise the money.”

The summit was organized and facilitated by Project EverGreen, a 4-year-old, Minnesota-based nonprofit that develops national marketing initiatives to consumers about the importance of managing green spaces.
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For more: Project EverGreen, (877) 758-4835; www.projectevergreen.com.

August 2008