Last week I attended my favorite (I attend about six) meeting of the year, the Seeley Conference. It means three full days of intense “Think Tank” activity at Cornell Univeersity. Each year about a hundred retail florists, growers, wholesalers and educators including Canadians and Colombians, in the field of horticulture gather. It was a great mix of people and ideas. The days are spent with a lot of lectures and plenty of time for discussion. In order to permit openness and get people to say what they think, cameras are out and no idea may be attributed to any one person in the trade press.
Yes, the discussions get hot and heavy at times.
This year the program revolved around you, the customer. We wanted to explore why you bought flowers or loved to receive them. What did flowers do for the recipient? The thought was, of course, if we could determine what flowers did for you we could alter our marketing and advertising to do a better job of getting you into the stores or garden centers. As usual, there were no conclusions; only a tremendous amount of information.
For example, it has been found that people who send flowers are perceived to be intelligent and thoughtful while recipients displayed a higher sense of enjoyment in their activities and were more satisfied with life in general.
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