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Products, services, companies, even people can be branded, but is your garden centre a recognised brand? Asks Andy Campbell
YOUR GARDEN CENTRE AS A BRAND
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his is not branding in terms of creating a major national or global consumer brand like Coca-Cola; simply establishing your garden centre as a destination of first choice in the minds of the population within its catchment area. The true test being, where they would drive past a competitor to visit your centre, or to walk away from the eCommerce site on their device to come to you. Never has this been more important than in a post-Covid-19 era. What we really mean by a brand is something that everyone can latch on to, buy in to, believe in, and develop some form of emotional attachment to. The ideal starting point is to establish something that is unique about your business as far as the consumer is concerned. Something that cannot easily be replicated by anyone else; an element of your total offer that no one else has. At the most basic level this involves the absolute positioning you adopt on the major elements of the marketing mix namely choice, quality, service, price and promotion. However, it becomes harder
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and harder over time to find a position that is uniquely different. Therefore, what you need to seek to genuinely differentiate yourself from everyone else are the less tangible elements such as the style, design and innovation credentials of your offer which constitute the “look” and the experience you offer which contributes to the “feel” of the business. WHAT YOU STAND FOR Successful branding is not really about designing a logo and then spending vast amounts of money placing it in front of the consumer repeatedly. It is about the essence of what you stand for that is believable and then ensuring that wherever existing and potential customers come into contact with it, the message is consistent. These customers build their perception of your garden centre based on an amalgamation of all their contact with it and experience of it, including word-of-mouth referral. It is not limited simply to the products and prices on offer, but includes external advertising and promotion, building design
HORTICULTURECONNECTED / www.horticultureconnected.ie / Winter 2020
and frontage, initial impressions on arrival, the ambience and shopping environment, internal signage and point of sale material, the approach to merchandising and display, staff uniforms, the customer service experience, interaction at the information desk and final impressions at checkouts; as well as the performance of the products and services themselves. The key message is that this long list of elements has to be right for the brand to be truly successful. The right products on the right display equipment in the wrong environment won’t work. A great offer in a fantastic shopping environment but with non-existent or unhelpful customer service equally will not strengthen the brand; it all has to be there and pointing in the same direction. The only way this can be achieved is if everyone working within the organisation believes in the brand and what it stands for. This will then manifest itself throughout the business from how messages are communicated in written form such as promotional leaflets, how the telephone is answered, right through to a positive ex-
