It's All About the Pretty

Woolly Pocket Booth 1536 

In LA where I live and where I do most of my work 80% of the kids in enrolled in the school district qualify for free and reduced lunches.  About half of them are overweight - obesity is an epidemic.  Maybe you’ve heard of Jamie Oliver?  There ARE a few tenacious teachers and parents and volunteers are trying to fight this trend and get kids to grow and eat more veggies.  They build school gardens.  And while I see lots of vendors “pushing the latest version of pretty” plants, trying to catch the imaginations of homeowner consumers across America, I don’t see anything special that speaks to my millions of school parents and teachers (consumers) that says, “we care.”    I don’t see many saying, “we are a great community partner.”  I don’t see companies marketing to parents (who care deeply about their children) that they care about, frankly, kids. 

Now you are in business to be in business.  But only focusing on the latest variegation in a hosta introduction or probiotic compost formula is pretty, well… geeky.  That’s right, the IGC Show is full of plant geeks.  That’s a great way to be broad in appeal?  No.  But as a plant geek I’m chill with that; but is that all we are?  I’m also a plant geek that thinks that every kid should be able to grow a tomato and be on a first name basis with a butterfly.  To do that we need to build and sustain school gardens and, yes, that makes me a school garden geek.  But as someone with a sizeable voice and a huge social media audience (you can follow me on twitter@cocoxochitl) I’m adored by millions of parents, aka consumers.  Can you say your marketing and business practice puts you in a place to say the same?

A few companies on the show floor can say they are adored. Woolly Pockets, Doctor Earth, Renee Shepard and Seeds of Change.  They all have a history of support for school gardens.  IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.  But it’s also a wonderful story: getting 4 year-olds to grow sunflowers IS a no brainer photo op?  School gardens are also where many city kids get introduced to being a “plant geek” and like corporate marketers at Disney and Toyota know where to start building brand loyalty.  And as far as pretty goes to marketers, that IS all about the pretty.

Mud Baron

Exec Director, http://schoolgardenshovel.org

next post: how a scrappy school garden campaign used twitter marketing to raise $5,000,000