The magic is back

#themagicisback That is Tong Garden Centre’s Christmas hashtag, which accompanies their TV advert, portraying the role that Tong plays in creating the perfect Christmas… While Timmermans Garden Centre is taking the magic further with a new twist on Santa, – Afternoon Tea with Santa It is also worth noting Timmermans also have the circus in…

This is what great customer care looks like!

In the northern market town of Beverley, Wilko are moving from the centre of town to a new out of town retail park. This post has just appeared in the Beverley Facebook Group, showing how quickly great customer service is shared to local people, and of course, how quickly bad customer service is shared as…

Wild about Gardens – A marketing opportunity

The 15th – 21st September 2014 is Wild About Gardens Week, which will focus on the plight of the UK’s 1,500 species of pollinating insects. The aim of the week is to encourage people to do more to support our vital pollinators over the winter months. The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and The Wildlife Trusts (TWT) are…

What a wonderful of way of showing both respect and integrity…

The commemoration of the start of WW1 is a hard one for a business to commemorate and get right.

Thirsk Garden Centre showed good taste and sensitivity in their Facebook post.

This is marketing, community involvement and plain old fashioned common sense of the highest order.

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A shed load of facts

Did you know? 1 in 5 Brits admits to spending time time in their shed to get away from their partners.  9% store secret unhealthy snacks 8% store secret cigarettes 7% store secret shopping receipts 4% store secret love letters from an ex-partner 11% of Brits even admit to using their shed to make secret…

RHS offers £100 000 to community gardening projects in Yorkshire…

The Royal Horticultural Society has is inviting community organisations to apply for funding for the second of year of its grassroots gardening programme. £100,000 is currently (at the time of posting) available to community gardening projects in Yorkshire to encourage sustainable gardening. The fund, which is supported by Kärcher is also promoting their new range…

How to engage customers and increase sales the John Lewis way

Like many people at Waring Stewart Towers we receive the John Lewis marketing email. In todays email is a link to their Sheffield Store, which is celebrating its 50th birthday. They are doing this by holding workshops, These allow them to Gain credibility as experts Engage customers Give customers a reason to visit (which is…

What shade of green are you?

Everyone is trying to be green these days. As we know much of it is greenwash. However many Garden Centres are leading the way in green retail. Biomass Boilers and the RHI grant to make them affordable springs to mind. But are we sharing our sustainable journey with our customers? (I ought to add we…

Have you run out of things to say on Facebook?

One of our client Garden Centres has developed a daily post on Facebook by highlighting their delicious sounding daily specials and giving a weather update. What a great way to promote the cafe specials, and provide a useful service to all of their gardening customers. Why not check them out on Facebook Here is todays…

10 Great ideas from Chelsea to use in your Garden Centre today! #4

We know that customers are interested in our green message, the green stories we can tell about our products and what we are doing to help wildlife…

So we loved this sign at Chelsea.

Just imagine a display at the entrance to your centre that could say this…

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Have you thought of running your own TV Channel?

Cramden Nurseries in Northampton have their own youtube channel – geraniumtv It is beautifully promoted on the nursery… …and effective with over 17000 views in under a year… They also have a great facebook presence… We ought to add we set everything up for them – the videos and the success however is all their…

It’s all about community involvement on the High Street

Tesco are working hard on showing that they are engaged with their local community… However in this competition it is Starbucks who win the community involvement prize for their Cirencester cafe We would love to feature your community involvement POS or board in thei blog, so please email us (doug@nullwaringstewartassociates.co.uk) or visit our facebook page…