GroMor 2020 was launched in April, after a good deal of changes brought on by the COVID 19 situation and considerable alteration of the website. The initial campaign message started out as ‘Get Out, Get Healthy, Get Growing’ to reflect the closure of garden centres. This changed back to ‘Visit Your Local Garden Centre’ on May 18.
The highlight of the campaign activities is ‘Gary’s Gardening Tips’ which are based on interviews carried out by campaign champion Gary Graham with garden centre and nursery owners; this has been well received on Facebook and Instagram and Gary was interviewed in the Sunday Business Post with a good regional pick up. The series has a reach of over 20,000 per episode on social media.
With most of the country being at home during the lockdown, there has been an increased interest in gardening in general – visits to the GroMor website are up 100% from this time last year, with visitors also spending more time per visit.
The GroMor promotion is scheduled to continue until the end of August to aid the gardening sector hit hard by garden centre closures and no doubt the hosepipe ban as well. A gardening promotion started on June 1 on The Ray D’Arcy Show on RTE 1 sponsored by GroMor and featuring Gerry Daly started on June 1, and is garnering a lot of attention. It will run until late August.
Supergarden is now an integral part of the gardening promotion strategy. This year it was a one-hour show (up from 30-minutes previously) and had a greatly increased focus on horticultural content as a result of Bord Bia’s plant budgets. The audience for the show this year was 400,000 – double the average in previous years. ✽
