Flower Council presents future plans during Year Presentation
Power of collaboration resonates in results and plans
On Tuesday 21 June, we hosted the annual Year Presentation of the Flower Council of Holland (FCH). During the course of the day, our colleagues shared our achievements and future plans. We also welcomed Ruurd Hielkema, Senior Research Consultant at Motivaction. He shared insights into how the consumer perspective for flowers and plants have evolved since 2018. Finally, our new Managing Director, Yvonne Watzdorf, introduced herself and shared her vision for the future at FCH.
Recap
The Flower Council of Holland is responsible for year-round generic promotion of flowers and plants. This is a combined effort in collaboration with growers, trade companies, and others in our sector. We organise campaigns and shopper activations that boost sales and the consumer’s buying intent.
Our campaigns are intended to increase the overall awareness of flowers and plants. They are created in close collaboration with the sector, through stakeholder sessions where we invite growers and traders to give input, which is taken into account in our campaigns. During his presentation, Ruurd Hielkema showed the results of our promotion activities over the past few years, which confirmed that consumers appreciated these efforts. They have awarded our campaigns an average of 8 on a scale of 1 to 10.
Shopper activations have a more short-term orientation. These promotions are created with growers, retailers, and their suppliers. The result is a tempting offer for the end consumer, resulting in higher sales, less waste, and better product displays. An example of a shopper activation with Blumen Risse in Germany in autumn 2021 led to a 114% increase in sales of weekly bouquets. Or our December shopper activation with supermarket chain Jumbo, for which we were nominated for the ISMI Shopper Marketing Award.
Our main objective is to increase the consumer’s buying intent. Motivaction’s evaluations show that our communication always has a positive influence on the consumer’s buying intent, particularly with our main target audiences: the Aesthetic Explorers and Status Seekers. That is why campaigns and shopper activations will continue to be key in collaborations with the sector in the coming years.
Watch this video for an overview of our campaigns and activities in 2021.
Looking ahead
Our appealing campaigns are aimed at catching the consumer’s attention. To ensure that we keep doing so, we come up with fresh, new campaigns adding to existing campaigns that have been running for a longer period of time. While we are still fleshing out the details of new campaigns for both flowers and plants, we were able to share some general directions for new campaigns. For plants, this will link to how nature provides for us, while for flowers, it will tie in with how they are a source of happiness. See our Communication Calendar 2023-2025 below for the current planning of our campaigns in the coming years.
Collaboration is key
As Yvonne said during her closing speech, change is the only constant factor in our work. We see how recent events in the world have caused consumers to understand the (added) value of flowers and plants. And we see the difference we can make together. Therefore, we’d like to invite you to the discussion to find out how. Together, we can effectively keep flowers and plants top of mind with our consumers. It might take a radical new approach, or only require slight adjustments. At any rate, we can achieve it together.
July 2022
