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Views from Across the Pond

Local-level Advertising Can Make You a Star

By Trevor Cole

We partnered with WHNT 19 News as the local gardening expert. (Courtesy of Jeannie Cole)

Now consider what you could do locally on a smaller scale to recreate such exposure without the extreme financial commitment. With a little creativity and the courage to reach out, you can star in your own regional reality show and reap the benefits.

In our case, a local television station expressed interest in developing an outdoor weather station. We offered the idea of teaming up as the local gardening experts.

By getting several vendors to donate materials and contractors to donate services, we built two weather gardens that WHNT 19 News can use as a weather set and for outdoor newscasts. After the initial pitch, the project took several months to design and implement, culminating with a champagne reception hosted by WHNT 19 News for the "Big Reveal."

The "Big Reveal" generated a lot of publicity and garnered a great deal of goodwill with our vendors and suppliers. We all got to be stars.

Our three-year contract guarantees us at least 12 uses of WHNT 19 News' garden per week where they mention our name and show our logo onscreen. It is prime-time television exposure.

WHNT 19 News also features a “Gardening Expert” spot twice a week on the show and on the website. We choose what and whom to feature.

During hummingbird season, we might do a spot on how to attract hummingbirds to the garden. If we want to acknowledge our best hardscape supplier, we might feature a segment on their pavers. If our garden center advertising partner wants to talk up its annual pansy festival, it might do a piece about fall flowers. We also receive several extra spots throughout the year.

As a bonus, WHNT 19 News produced a half-hour HGTV-like feature showing how we put it all together. This reality landscape show will run several times over the next few months, and WHNT 19 News provided us with DVD copies to show at our stores and give to our sponsors.

All the contractors and vendors who participated in the Backyard Makeover for WHNT 19 News gathered for this picture during the station-hosted "Big Reveal."  (Courtesy of Jeannie Cole)

Design an eye-catching water feature, as simple or elaborate as your time and budget allows. When marketed correctly, the television stations can and should reward you adequately.

In past years, we partnered with another local television station to sponsor an Extreme Backyard Makeover Contest. WAAY-31 solicited handwritten entries with up to four photographs from viewers seeking a backyard makeover.

We judged the entries and choose a winner whose yard could best feature our products and services. Again, we partnered with vendors and contractors before producing a 30-minute how-to video as we transformed the lucky winner’s back yard into a showplace. 

We could not have paid a big-name advertising company or a high-paid actor to do a better job. Unsolicited, our first winner hosted a large garden party for her church to show off her new garden and continues to write glowing reviews about us and our work. The winner also has welcomed various garden clubs and educational groups to visit her yard. She is not shy about plugging our stores.

Her back yard gave us a blank canvas on which to showcase our offerings in hardscapes, landscapes and water features. You can be a star too. HGTV, eat your heart out!

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