Helping Your Business > Marketing and Promotions > Life Is a Garden
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Life is a garden consumer marketing campaign
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Introduction
The first phase of the consumer marketing campaign, ‘Life is a garden’, was launched in August 2006. The campaign is primarily aimed at halting the decline in the garden and particularly, the retail sector.
Highlighting gardening as a great way to make the most of any outdoor space – from an inner city balcony to a suburban backyard – the campaign encourages consumers to purchase plants and participate in gardening.
The consumer marketing campaign comprises a range of activities aimed at both consumers and industry. These include:
Developing the ‘Life is a garden’ brand
Consumer and trigger research undertaken in early 2006 clearly showed that greenlife, gardens and gardening are important in ‘creating the space to enjoy life’.
From this research, it was found that consumer advertising to promote gardens and gardening had to be:
- Young and exuberant
- Hip, trendy and inspiring, and
- Stylish, with a range of ‘looks’
Lastly, the advertising had to involve new ideas, plants and colours.
‘Life is a garden’ was the brand developed for use across a wide range of media, particularly lifestyle and non-traditional media.
2006 Spring advertising campaign
The Life is a garden campaign launched a series of magazine advertisements in Spring 2006. These funky new ads were featured in major lifestyle magazines around Australia.
The primary target market of the initial consumer campaign was women between 29 and 49 years of age. The main magazines used were:
- Woman's Day
- Women's Weekly
- New Idea
- That's Life
- Take 5
- Body and Soul Magazine
- Sunday Magazine
- Good Weekend
The magazine campaign ran between August and November 2006 using six creative executions.
It was well supported by members of the nursery and garden industry, who were offered access to all the print creative, a 15- and 30-second television commercial and a series of radio advertisements. Industry initiatives ranged from competitions such as the NSW ‘Win a Dirty Weekend’ competition to giant roadside posters, catalogue covers, truck sides and in-store point-of-sale material.
Public relations campaign
A national PR campaign was launched in July 2006 to reinforce and boost the Spring advertising campaign.
Traditionally, the industry has focused its communications on the gardening media. The 2006 public relations campaign identified the need to speak to a wider audience to secure the future of the industry. With this in mind, the campaign targeted lifestyle and general media, emphasising the significance of gardens to the Australian lifestyle and driving positive garden messages into new media targets.
The aim of the consumer public relations campaign was to re-engage lifestyle media. The campaign was launched in July to communicate with the long-lead media in time for their spring stories and coincide with the launch of the Life is a garden website www.lifeisagarden.com.au.
Part of the strategy also included working with garden experts such as Meredith Kirton and Brendan Moar as spokespeople positioning gardens as funky and desirable to a younger audience.
The campaign will continue to work with lifestyle media to increase coverage of the benefits of gardens and build recognition of Nursery & Garden Industry Australia as the peak body and industry expert.
Life is a garden consumer website
Launched in July 2006, www.lifeisagarden.com.au is one of the primary vehicles through which the promotion of gardens and gardening through the national advertising and PR campaigns is reinforced to the Australian public.
Directing users to their local accredited garden centre for inspiration, advice and products, the site contains a wealth of information, including the latest garden trends, health and safety information and quick and easy garden design and recipe cards. Consumers are also able to purchase NGI Gift Cards online via this site.
The site is frequently updated to keep pace with, and lend support to, developments in the overall consumer marketing strategy and/or more specific event-based consumer promotions.
The site also offers information about NGIA’s consumer-oriented programs such as Our Environment, Your Backyard, Flora for Fauna, Wise about Water and KidsGrow.
Your nearest accredited garden centre or NGIA-member retailer can be located by name, postcode or state using the online search engine.
Consumer response to 2006 campaign – Newspoll results
Newspoll Market Research was engaged to monitor the first phase of the consumer marketing campaign.
Overall, the research indicated that the Life is a garden consumer campaign is well liked, has succeeded in filtering through to consumers on a national basis and is a positive undertaking in raising awareness of the importance of greenlife.
The research generated the following recommendations:
- Continued exposure of the Life is a garden brand and message
- A stronger call to action
- A message that more directly encourages greenlife purchases
- Continued take-up of creative collateral by the industry
- An on-going integrated Life is a Garden PR campaign
Click here to download a summary of the 2006 Newspoll Research
2007 Mother’s Day advertising campaign
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The consumer advertising campaign for Mother’s Day will continue to run under the Life is a garden banner.
Promoting the benefit of purchasing a plant for Mother’s Day, the advertisements will be featured in the following publications:
- The Sunday Telegraph (Sydney)
- The Sunday Mail (Brisbane)
- The Sunday Herald Sun (Melbourne)
- The Sunday Mail (Adelaide)
- The Sunday Times (Perth)
- The Sunday Tasmanian, and
- The Northern Territory News (Saturday edition)
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The advertisements will be buttressed by a gift card campaign for Mother’s Day, commencing with a half page ad in Woman’s Weekly, which goes on sale April 28. This will be just one of the promotional vehicles promoting the gift cards under the heading of ‘Make other mothers green with envy this Mother’s Day’.
Click here to find out more about NGI gift cards.
Advertising for Mother’s Day will again be supported by an extensive PR campaign and promotions on the Life is a garden website.
For more information
For more information about the Life is a garden campaign contact NGIA National Public Relations & Communications Manager Tracey Wigg, ph: 02 9876 5200 or email: tracey.wigg@ngia.com.au.
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