Before
AfterThere’s been a bit of green-fingered, grow-your-own food renaissance around the developed world in recent years, to the point where the approximately $600 million New Zealand gardening market is one of the few retail sectors currently moving in the right direction. To help those numbers keep growing, Hotfoot and Tangible Media have chucked a bit of fertiliser on the Nurserymen and Gardeners Industry Association and launched a one-year long Go Gardening campaign that aims to get more Kiwis in the garden.
The NGIA is 107 years old, has more than 400 members—from big behemoths like Mitre 10 and Bunnings, to small independent shops—and represents over 75 percent of the industry. And Linda Geary, strategy client services at Hotfoot, says the campaign, which includes TVCs under BrandWorld’s Discover umbrella, point-of-sale, a consumer website www.gogardening.co.nz and a newly relaunched magazine, needed to be relevant to all of them and grow the whole green-life products and services sector. So they’ve decided to try and give more confidence—and guidance—to consumers who understood the social, health and economic benefits of gardening but don’t really know what to do.
From erectile dysfunction pills to Telecom broadband packages, there’s a wealth of informational advertising on TV at the moment (so much so that BrandWorld, which also operates brands like Family Healthy Diary and Eating Well, is TVNZ’s biggest client). And, as Geary says, this is a little bit like the gardening equivalent of Watties Food Minute.
This campaign is part of the NGIA’s five year development plan and it hopes to create a movement—or, given that gardening is ranked by SPARC as the country’s second favourite leisure activity, catalyse a movement that has already begun—and the halo effect of that will benefit all of the association’s members. And while she says there’s been a bit of a wait and see approach from many of the brands that have been approached to feature alongside the brand, the first instalment featuring Tui Vegetable Mix, Zealandia and Seasol has been very well-received.
