A post at Garden Rant today pointed me to an article at Garden Center Magazine titled, "Branding Company looks to   re-vitalize bulb market".  According to the article, "Brand revitalization agency, Woodbine, has been selected by a group of 17 flower bulb trading companies to develop and execute a marketing campaign to invigorate consumer demand for flowering bulbs throughout North America." According to Woodbine "North America accounts for 30% of worldwide flower bulb demand, indicating a growth opportunity here. In 2008, a North American market study undertaken by Knowledge Networks, Inc. identified opportunities to increase demand among current bulb gardeners, while introducing bulbs to a whole new generation of potential gardeners." As we have talked about before bulb sales have taken a nosedive in the last decade.  As people choose to fill their time with other activities, bulbs which require planting before the spring season has arrived, have gotten left behind. To remedy this Anthos, the Royal Trade Association for Nursery Stock and Flower Bulbs headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands has decided to throw some money at the problem. They have committed to a three year, $1.9 million campaign. According to Peter Mitchell, Woodbine President & CEO, "we believe our campaign has the potential to do for the flower bulb industry what ‘Got Milk‘ has done for the milk industry".

Remember the "Got Milk" Campaign from 1993? It was a $23 million a year campaign that is credited with, " greatly increasing milk sales in California though not nationwide." These bulb companies are going to spend 1/12 of what the Milk advisory board did back in the 90's, yet Woodbine say's it will have the potential of doing the same thing "Got Milk" did 25 years ago. Remember the "Got Milk" campaign only increased sales in California, so Woodbine has it's work cut out for it to do the same thing for bulbs.

It's amazing that we are still pointing at an ad campaign from  the last millennium, a time before The Internet and social media existed, as the way forward. It would be nice to think we can change people's behavior with a ad campaign, and bulb sales will increase. Not sure if bulb sales will increase with this ad campaign, but it does show that there is still money to be made with bulbs. Just not the way most of us expect.

Read the comments for the article by Garden Center Magazine for a clue as to what the problem really is with bulbs.