Do you have a response to this article? Send an e-mail to Carol Miller.

In the future people may forget that Yogi Berra was a great baseball player. But Berra's wit and common sense will never be forgotten.

His Yogi-isms -- like "It ain't over till it's over" and "This is like deja vu all over again" -- have found their way into almost everyone's conversation at one time. So here's a collection of Yogiesque observations I made over the last 12 months that hopefully will help you make '08 your best year ever.

"You give 100 percent in the first half of the game, and if that isn't enough, in the second half you give what's left."

One thing became obvious during visits last week to two garden centers, Fantastic Gardens in Aruba and Abide A While garden center in Charleston, S.C. In places where it's hot in the summer, shoppers don't mind the heat.

While not as busy as during the spring, these centers had cars in the lots on the days I visited. People were shopping in each plant department, and the ones heading for the registers had their carts completely full.

A lot of garden centers' seasonality results from how previous generations coasted to a stop once the peak of spring was over, sometimes as early as after Memorial Day. You can blame the heat, lack of rain, school being out and people focused on vacations for your lower-than-desired sales after May. But unless there's an exciting place to shop, full of fresh, exciting stuff to buy, don't be surprised when even your best customers find something else to occupy their time.

The two centers where I was working were more than ready to provide their customers with plenty of reasons to shop. And guess what? They did.

"It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much."

First, eggs were bad for you, and then they weren't. Meat supposedly made you fat then some guy named Atkins said it helped you lose weight. Now the holy grail of marketing, word of mouth (with a newly accepted acronym ,WOMM - word-of-mouth marketing) is coming under suspicion. It seems a researcher named Duncan Watts discovered that even the most sought-after influencers, the people companies hope will be the nucleus of viral campaigns, have very little impact beyond their own immediate neighborhoods.

That means companies may have to spend real money on real marketing after all. I've always had the uneasy feeling that people who believe the best marketing is word of mouth were people who just didn't know how to effectively advertise. Or people too tight to spend money promoting their business.

Sure, a few good comments can help sway a few people now and then, and no one wants people bad-mouthing their company, but counting on other people to do your marketing for you to make your business a success is like hoping the next big discovery is that ice cream makes you thin and smart. If only life were that easy.

"I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early."

Just as we all like new products, people involved with marketing like new avenues for message distribution, sometimes for no other reason than being bored with what currently exists.

Take blogs, for example. For some reason, a few industry magazines and e-news editors recommended a garden center-focused blog as the future of customer/retailer relationship building. While blogs have a place in the world, given that there's more than 70 million with more added hourly, to say that this low-key marketing effort is the "future of retail" wafts with an inflated degree of self-importance.

But I signed on to take a look. Sure enough, even the blog editor says that the garden center industry just doesn't get it. Traditional marketing and centers not attuned to the new age of marketing will soon be pushed aside by the grass-root campaign of small, neighborhood centers that not surprisingly forego traditional marketing efforts and instead rely on electronic messaging to connect with consumers.

As proof, he linked us to a review of centers in the Austin area posted by another blogger. After reading that blogger's review I noticed that the two largest and nicest centers in Austin weren't even listed, ones that most likely do more sales on a busy weekend than all the other centers combined.

While I'm the first to agree that big doesn't equate to good, I also know that small doesn't have a lock on nice, no matter what type of marketing they do.

In the same vein, new marketing isn't better than old marketing. It's just a different method to keep your company in front of the right type of customers. As in any business, the true measure of success comes from customer support at the register.

Should your center maintain a blog, send an e-newsletter to interested customers and maintain a well-designed Web site? The answer is, of course. Just make sure the quality of each closely reflects the image your company wants to project.

Should you drop all other forms of marketing because something new and "improved" becomes available? Keep in mind that the guy responsible for a series of new-age marketing tactics while at Chrysler (car giveaway stunt on "Oprah"; product placement on "The Apprentice"; new model introduction only online) left with zero repositioning of the Pontiac brand he was supposed to help. Pontiac sales were down 14 percent the first half of '07.

So blog away and, when confronted with a choice, take Yogi's advice: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

"The future sure ain't what it used to be." On a busy Saturday this spring, Dave Williams from Williams Nursery in Westfield, N.J., called to tell me about a question a customer asked him.

"I'd like to buy some flowering plants but I'm afraid to shop in your greenhouse," said the customer.

"Afraid?" Dave asked. "Why would you be afraid? It's a little hot but not anything to worry about."

"But I heard that greenhouse gases were the cause of global warming. That's why it's so hot today. If they're strong enough to hurt the ozone and the planet, what will they do to me while I'm shopping?"

Williams said he had a difficult time trying not to show a dazed, open-mouth stare and an "I can't believe you said that" look. He said he wanted to say something about volcanoes, an overabundance of cow flatulence and that greenhouse gases don't come from actual greenhouses.

Instead he took a deep breathe and offered: "I'm sure it's safe for you to go inside. We've had the doors open all day and all the bad gases have already gone."

The lady then held her breathe, ran into the greenhouse and grabbed an 8- inch pot of annuals. Dave paid $2.50 for it and had it priced at $9.99.

If there's going to be a green movement, make sure it makes you some money.

Let me leave you with one more Yogi quote: "If you don't know where you're going, you will end up somewhere else."

Make sure your plan is taking you in the right direction.

Send this article to a friend

Enter your e-mail address:


Enter your friend's e-mail address:


Click the image below to send:

© 2007 Branch-Smith Publishing