Increasing Floral Consumption
Because I jumped the gun and wrote about funeral flowers
in my April column, I won’t bore you with another sermon on how to
build or improve relations with your funeral director. But I would like
to share a thought.
In the ’70s I was a junior high school student in Halifax and we were taught this weird new system of measurement used in Europe called the metric system. It would change how we measured distances, weights and volumes, as well as the weather. This new system was actually more logical than the old imperial system, but it was different, so while we learned the new system we continued to convert things back to the imperial system in our heads.
Eventually I no longer converted kilometres to miles, then Celsius to Farenheit: the kilos to pounds is taking a little longer. My point is that it did happen. And while this generation is living with the “in lieu of flowers” double standard and still sending flowers, the next generation probably won’t. Our children will have grown up reading this message and will soon not bother to add it because it won’t be necessary. They will have adapted to funerals without flowers.
The choice before our industry is to try to solve the current trend by working with the funeral industry, or to find another venue where flowers can so eloquently express the emotions of the day. We get flowers when we’re born, when we marry and when we die; surely there must be another life milestone we can build up to the level of floral purchasing volume that funerals represent? Probably not, and even if there is, it will take years to build the demand. Let’s save what we have.
On a completely different topic, the cessation of the Floral Marketing Initiative Funding Coalition (see page 6) is unfortunate news. This initiative was to develop a funding mechanism to support any floral marketing activity. Citing pressures in the marketplace, the American floral importers have asked the coalition to cease activity until after Valentine’s Day 2008.
There is always consensus on the need, but dissension on the how. As Wilja Happé, chairperson of California Cut Flower Commission told Florists Review in April, “we are all 100 percent in agreement that there has to be more funds available for the promotion of cut-flower consumption in the nation…but we are not all in agreement yet on who should fit the bill.”
The most successful programs in recent years have come from the Society of American Florists (SAF), which has funded four consumer research studies and six public relations programs with money they raise through voluntary donations from 2,000 retailers, wholesalers, suppliers, importers and growers. Their strategy of using third-party experts as their spokespeople to add credibility to their message has resulted in the “Flowers in the Workplace Study,” as well as the “Home Ecology Study” by Dr. Nancy Ectoff, of Harvard Medical School. This type of activity has netted them 744 million consumer impressions through national magazines, TV, radio, newspaper an online coverage. This kind of success is what we need to mimic in Canada. We already benefit from the spillover of the SAF studies, so let’s get our associations on board with some complimentary studies for our industry. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”
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