Flower Council of Holland applies to EU fund for promotional campaign
Joint application on behalf of six European organisations
The European Union (EU) has established a 10 million euro emergency promotion fund for sectors that have been seriously affected by the coronavirus. This includes the floriculture sector. The Flower Council of Holland (FCH) has submitted an application to this fund on behalf of six parties to create a joint international promotional campaign for flowers and plants in 2021.
A one-off sum of 10 million euro is available: 5 million euro for campaigns in a specific country, and 5 million euro for international promotional campaigns. The emergency fund will finance 85% of promotional campaigns; the other 15% must be funded by the applicant(s). The subsidy is intended for campaigns in 2021.
Joint forces
National floriculture promotion organisations contacted one another shortly after 1 July, to agree on a joint subsidy application. Five partners were found to be willing to invest alongside FCH:
- Blumenbüro Österreich (Austria)
- VLAM (Belgium)
- BAOPN (Bulgaria)
- FloraDania (Denmark)
- Val’Hor (France)
A joint international application not only combines our chances, but a joint application is also complex - partly as a result of the short application period - and therefore perhaps less popular. Our subsidy application is for a total amount of 1.9 million euro (incl. 85% EU funding). Alongside the Netherlands and the five other countries involved, the campaign will also target Germany.
FCH coordinating
The deadline for the application, 27 August, created extreme time pressure. The Flower Council of Holland coordinated the process at the request of everyone concerned, and arranged the application. This was done with support from an advisory council which was specially convened for this application, consisting of: ENA (European Nurserystock Association), Union Fleurs (International Flower Trade Association), BGI Germany and the Italian organisations ANCEF and ANVE. VBN (Dutch Flower Auctions Association) also supported the entire process and the application. The five partners were kept updated on a weekly basis.
Excellent collaboration
“We are proud that these parties have so much confidence in the Flower Counsel’s expertise,” says Dennis van der Lubbe, managing director of the Flower Council of Holland. “Both to come up with the right creative campaign concept, and to deal with the formalities of the application. We therefore took on this role with pride and enthusiasm. We are very pleased with the collaboration with the partner organisations, who all provided the required information in record time. The collaboration with Royal FloraHolland for market analysis and with our media and creative agency also ran very smoothly. In addition, this application would not have worked on such a short timescale without the support from Paul Ras, consultant from Sense marketing & more.”
Timeline
The EU funds will be allocated at the end of October 2020 when we will find out if we can develop yet another campaign to encourage European consumers to keep buying flowers and plants. Nothing concrete has been done yet in terms of campaign creation; the development of the campaign can only start after the subsidy has been awarded. However, there is already a good basic concept for an effective international flower and plant campaign. If the subsidy application is approved, FCH will develop the campaign as quickly as possible in collaboration with its partners.
Further information
If you would like to find out more, please contact Simone Dussine, country manager Netherlands, at: s.dussine@bloemenbureauholland.nl
