Today’s post takes a slightly different twist then most of
my past posts. Today I want to talk about an idea that has been rolling around
in my head for a while now. I get all kinds of ideas some of them are good
others of them are worthless, but tonight I need to get this idea/string of
thoughts out there so that I don’t go nuts!
When I started this blog a couple months ago, I was working
on projects to create better marketing strategies that catered to Generation
Y. I came up with what I thought was some
good stuff, and Social Media played a large role in a lot of those strategies.
However, one thing really stood out to me when it came to how to cater to
Millennials (Gen Y): Music. In horticulture it’s almost the one element of
culture we don’t mess with all too often. We talk about food, self-expression,
art, and even fashion. We have done a great job of being connected with those
areas of human lifestyle as an industry, but the one area we hardly even touch
is music.
In the last few months there has been a lot of buzz around
the topic of marketing to younger people. Our industry has been trying to come
up with ways to make gardening hip and cool. I say we find a way to tie plants
and gardening into music. Music is something that all young people love. Music
is the basis for almost every subculture in our society. It helps people relax.
It gives people a status. It even helps people form opinions. Music ties into
the youthful lifestyle in almost every way. So why haven’t we found a way to
break into this scene.
For a long time I couldn’t really think of anyways to do
this, hence why I haven’t told anybody about this concept (an idea without a
spark for integration is about as useful as a busted pair of headphones).
However, today while driving, and yes listening to music, I came up with a few
different ideas in which different areas of the marketing chain could get
plugged in to the music world.
The first thing I thought of is how come big companies that
control brand advertising aren’t advertising on internet radio. Millions of
people listen to Pandora radio everyday so how come Proven Winners or Wave
Petunias hasn’t started advertising on there? Of course I don’t know the
pricing of an advertisement like that but I think they would be surprised by
the return.
For the smaller venues like IGCs, I thought why not have
local bands come in on the weekends and play a couple sets on a Saturday or
Sunday afternoon. People want to experience something when they come to your
business. If you have live music you take your garden center from “a place to
buy plants” to “a rockin’ garden experience”.
These are just a couple tipping points to get our industry
thinking about incorporating music into our marketing strategies. If we are
trying to market to Millennials we have to try to meet them and express that
our industry fits in with a hip music culture. Again this is something that our industry has
yet to dabble into, and I would love to hear from anybody with any kind of idea
on how to incorporate the two concepts.
Reach me here:
Email – mday55@gmail.com
Twitter - @mday55
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