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/.