Strike up the brand

Our industry isn’t exactly a hot-button haven. I’ll go on record right now and say that’s a good thing. Oh, you might get a rise from some garden center operators discussing the merits of natural products vs. anything that isn’t. And you’ll almost certainly boil a little blood with the mention of the words “Big Box.” By and large, though, there isn’t a lot of putting up of the dukes among those retailers prone to peddle plants.

That said, we apparently struck a nerve last year—September 2009, to be exact —when Garden Center ran a story on branding. The piece, written by my colleague and friend, the great Sarah Martinez, revealed that if there’s a consensus on the subject, it’s that EVERYONE has an opinion on the merits of branding.

Win/Win Situation 
The article was an editor’s dream. It generated dialog that stretched over several months, what with the bevy of volunteers signing up to do guest blogs and columns so they could offer various perspectives. It also won Sarah an Azbee Award of Excellence from the American Society of Business Publication Editors, showing that I wasn’t stretching things earlier when I told you she is great.

This month, she gets to be great again. In our cover story on page 8, Sarah’s revisiting the branding issue to show how it has evolved in roughly a year—and how it is being embraced and adapted in ways not fathomed in the recent past.

yyoungblood@gie.net