A Mini-Surge for the Market?

We were in North Carolina last week visiting major clients and playing bad golf at some nice courses. Aside from hacking up a few clubs, it was mainly a "listening tour" to see how companies are faring this spring and get a sense of their marketing needs for 2011. A few things were clear from the trip:

1. The market has definitely picked up. Everyone we talked with reported good to strong first quarter sales that were continuing deep into the second quarter. Clearly, better weather (both for golf and for disease pressure) played a big role, but there's also a sense that the excess inventory issues have resolved themselves. In fact, shortages of several key chemical products and some popular mowing units seemed to be the biggest problem.

2. People are already fully engaged in strategy/marketing plans for 2011. No one is taking this upswing for granted and the idea of getting ahead of the game is very appealing.

3. There was excellent response to our basic message of being a creative partner for integrated marketing strategies across the board in all the green markets (golf, lawn, greenhouse/nursery and even pest control). We outlined our capabilities in multimedia/video, social media and traditional print media and every client we spoke with seemed to like the approach. In short, we can be one-stop shopping for vitually any strategy at a time when marketing managers need all the extra arms and legs they can get.

One marketing manager at a very large company said this following a very productive gete together last week: "We've been waiting a long time for a publishing company to come in and meet with us like this." You should wait either...get in touch now to begin talking about your needs for the rest of 2010 and 2011. And maybe you can join us for some bad golf while we're talking business.

Speaking of bad golf, here's one of our hosts, Mike Brown (red shirt, right) from Starmount Forest CC in Greensboro. Like a growing number of superintendents, Mike has emerged as the club's general manager thanks to business savvy and an understanding of what really makes members tick.

We also visited Mike Haq at Brier Creek CC in Cary. The big takeaway from talking with Mike was the big upswing in rounds at his place. He is projecting nearly a 50% increase in play if conditions continue on pace. "People are ready to play again," he said.

Create a Flood of Business in July

I will spare you a long set-up about the importance of water in our business and just tell you that GCI is on top of it. Once again in our July issue, we'll be showcasing the products, innovations and ideas driving irrigation and other water management practices in the golf market.

The 2010 Smart Water Supplement will create a perfect editorial environment to put your products top of mind with superintendents, developers, architects and others who'll read this special report. We're covering, among other things:

• Irrigation controllers and software


• Moisture sensing systems


• Wetting agents in and out of fertigation systems


• High-efficiency heads


• Water treatment products, drainage, remote management and more...

If you're in the business of moving, managing, treating or conserving water on golf courses, you should contact me or your GCI rep to get your ad in the pipeline before June 15.

The TOCA Meeting

Most of you probably know that TOCA is one of the Green Industry's alphabet soup acronyms for the Turf & Ornamental Communicators Association. The group was founded 21+ years ago to promote better relationships between editors, PR people, corporate communicators and brand managers in our happy little business. I think that Cindy Code, Den Gardner (man of mystery) and I are the remaining TOCA "founders" who are still active in the industry.

TOCA has a limited but good agenda:

• Host an annual meeting every May featuring education and schmoozing;


• Conduct an awards program to recognize excellence in publishing, multimedia, advertising and other forms of marketing;


• Host interim breakfast event at GIS and GIE+E (or whatever the hell its called these days)

TOCA just held its 21st annual meeting in Tucson last week. A few observations:

• There were 50+ attendees, including editors from most of the major golf/turf publications, agency folks from the big chemical and equipment makers and lead business managers from fertilizer, chemical and iron companies. Pretty good turnout considering the economy, a West Coast site and the fact that total membership is about 150.


• The education focused largely on social media like Twitter and Facebook. The key takeaway from the seminars was that we should all be heavily engaged in social media because...well, just because. I personally think Facebook has merit as a communications tool but I secretly hope Twitter dies a painful, lonely and unlamented death.


• The TOCA awards program is a conundrum. Some publishers and ad agencies take it very seriously and enter a pile of stuff. GCI entered a total of five submissions and took firsts for best 2-page+ article layout (Andrea Vagas), best original Web story (Marisa Palmieri) and best column (guess who). I'm delighted to say that Andrea also won best of show for her layout of our article, "Is Social Media Right for Your Career?" Very cool. The other magazines did well too and some companies like Deere and Syngenta took home a lot of hardware for creative ads and media relations campaigns.


• Every year, one organization seems to dominate the awards. This year, our friends over at TurfNet entered and won about six zillion awards for their doggie calendar (again) and a video about a TurfNet-sponsored trip to Ireland. Good for them -- they were smart enough to enter in a bunch of somewhat underutilized categories -- but I'm honestly not sure how stuff like this helps advance the art and science of golf course management.

The problem is that after 20 years and a vast expansion of the number of categories ("Best Use of Editorial or Opinion in Video/DVD"????), there still aren't enough companies that take the time to enter and make the awards more competitive. A bunch of big and mid-sized companies need to join TOCA, participate in the meeting and enter their best stuff in the contest. I'm not saying the work that was honored wasn't great...but why not see where your marketing stuff stands versus others in the industry?

But, far more important than the awards is the opportunity presented by the annual meeting. The great thing about the TOCA meeting is that editors and people who want to talk to editors are all in the same place and there's no trade show or busy conference agenda. We can actually all schmooze each other and get things done. I had five very productive side meetings and could have had more if I'd planned my time a little better. For the cost of one trip -- maybe $900 total -- I was able to do business, hear some great story ideas, attend a couple of interesting education events and even play some bad golf in the desert.

In short, I think if TOCA isn't part of your business mix, it should be. It's a great meeting to begin your marketing planning for the next fiscal year, compare notes with colleagues, hang out with magazine folks and see how your creative stacks up against the rest of the market.

Find out more at http://www.toca.org/.