Teleflora isn’t the only company competing for Valentine’s Day commissions or sales the wrong way this year. GivingPlants.com, which teams with growers to bring flowering potted plants to consumers, deliberately attacks the Colombia cut flower business–a V-Day competitor–in a video that appears on its website and YouTube.
You can view the 60-second video titled “The True Story of Cut Flowers” here. The video is just another example of an ad campaign of one company that attempts to undermine another segment’s product without promoting the benefits of its own.
GivingPlants.com has a great website and beautiful products, and it should build a campaign centered around that. It’s unfortunate many U.S. cut flower growers have been affected by the growth of the Colombian market, but the Valentine’s Day message we should be delivering is to buy more plants and flowers, regardless of who supplies them.
If a consumer chooses to buy cut flowers that happened to derive from Colombia this Valentine’s Day, so be it. That purchase still bodes well for floriculture. It might not directly impact your sales. You might simply have to reposition your own products better as Valentine’s Day worthy.