While many high-profile companies, including Google, Facebook and Amazon have delayed reopening their offices until 2022 in response to the latest surge in COVID-19 cases, many other businesses will soon welcome back employees after nearly 18 months of remote work. Enter a marketing opportunity: “back to the office” plants.
In a recent article for Associations Now, one woman shared her “green” back-to-the-office shopping list, which included reusable cutlery and dishware (gone are the days of communal kitchen supplies) and “some little plant friends to bring a touch of home to my office.”
Known to boost productivity and innovation and reduce stress, plants have compelling selling points to bosses; they also fit nicely on desks.
“We have one client who is buying every employee a welcome back succulent that will be sitting on their desk when they return,” said Nicole Palazzo, director of marketing and new product lines at City Line Florist in Trumbull, Connecticut.
Georgianne Vinicombe, co-owner of Monday Morning Flowers and Balloon Company in Princeton, New Jersey, already has an order for 35 jade plants to welcome workers back to a pharmaceutical company on Sept. 13. She’s delivered a lot of back-to-work balloons, too.
Even if companies continue operating remotely, there’s still an opportunity to do business with them, Vinicombe says. In spring and summer 2020, when the many office parks surrounding her shop were vacant, the shop’s corporate business remained robust. Managers sent flowers to employees who were working at home, most of them under difficult conditions, Vinicombe says.
“Our corporate clients have been very loyal to their people and to us throughout this crisis,” she says. “I don’t know what we would have done without them.” (Click here to read how Vinicombe and others build and nurture relationships with corporate clients through LinkedIn.)
Interested in tapping into the plant market? Check out the Society of American Florists’ “Great Big Plant Event.” The series has more than two dozen on-demand videos that demystify the plant world and demonstrate how florists can capitalize on the plant trend.
Katie Vincent is a contributing editor for the Society of American Florists.
