FPO’s Flowers. Alive With Possibilities Campaign Reaches Atlanta
The Flower Promotion Organization’s (FPO) Flowers. Alive with Possibilities promotion campaign has reached the Atlanta market through a partnership with the Atlanta Metro Flower Delivery Cooperative.
“The campaign is in excellent shape,” said Will Carlson, FPO managing director. “We’ve developed a partnership model that will make the campaign sustainable for the long run. We partner with local retailers and wholesalers. We provide creative materials, and with minimum levels of sustainable ads, get very decent results at affordable rates that local markets can maintain on their own.”
The campaign was developed in five initial markets, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Detroit, Houston and Philadelphia. (San Diego ads were pulled because the gubernatorial recall election would have pre-empted ad placements.) “We really learned how much it takes to sustain a successful campaign, what we need to do to get awareness up,” Carlson said.
The Atlanta campaign promoted consumer flower purchases through billboards, cab toppers, cable and local network television and radio ads and a TV design demonstration. Ed Coen, owner of Robins Nest Florist and a member of the Metro Atlanta Flower Delivery Cooperative executive team, commented on FPO’s partnership approach to floral promotion. “By pooling resources, we now have the ability to reach more consumers than we have in the past, acting as individual retailers. The FPO’s ‘home decorating with flowers’ message will help drive traffic to our stores and give us the opportunity to develop relationships with these consumers that we can leverage throughout the year.”
Response to the campaign has picked up as the holiday season approaches, Carlson said. Also, he said that the response to the FPO Web site (www.flowerpossibilities.com) has been exciting, with consumers requesting free brochures and downloading pictures of floral arrangement recipes. FPO also promotes live demonstrations of floral decorating on local TV shows in key markets. Its holiday home decorating design segment (with its TV spokesperson Jill Slater) will air throughout the holiday season on HGTV’s “Carol Duvall Show.”
FPO currently is reaching more than 90 of the top 100 markets, Carlson said, with small and local markets picking up FPO releases. Currently, FPO is meeting with floral associations in Michigan and Connecticut to discuss partnering for major market initiatives.
The FPO is an alliance of U.S. and Colombian fresh cut flower growers, formed to increase consumer demand for fresh-cut flowers and to expand the U.S. market for the industry. The Flowers. Alive with Possibilities campaign was launched in 1999. The campaign positions flowers as a natural, easy, simple and inexpensive way to improve and freshen up the home and office. For more information, go to www.flowerpossibilities.com.