Advice for Gardeners (and Marketers)
I caught him out of the corner of my eye while pulling weeds along the boulevard—an older gentleman, slowing from a jog on a beautiful August day.
He stopped, looked at me, and asked with surprising seriousness:
“Do you have a minute to talk?”
My stomach tightened. Had I done something wrong?
He pointed toward the perennial bed that blooms from the corner of my small front yard in Duluth.
“Your garden,” he said, pausing.
(Oh no. Did my motion-detecting DeerBlaster sprinkler catch him off guard?)
Then he smiled.
“It brings us so much delight. Thank you. When friends visit from out of town, we bring them here to see Lake Inferior.”
A sigh of relief. Mission accomplished.
That 10’ x 20’ plot—a pond, a flowerbed, a few quirks—had achieved its purpose. It slowed people down. It inspired them to stop, return, comment, and share.
Neighborhood kids feed the fish (and grab a sucker or a dog treat while they’re at it). Two boys run a “shipbuilding company” from behind a hosta, launching their creations into Lake Inferior. And yes, I admit it: I hid a motion-detecting camera in a birdhouse so I could spy on my visitors and share in their joy.
Digging Into Marketing
This little garden doubles as a metaphor for promotion. You can’t inform or persuade unless you first captivate.
Marketers pour wheelbarrows of money into tidy, predictable materials—emails, brochures, ads, slogans, billboards. Neat lawns. Manicured shrubs. Everything just as expected.
But no one stops. No one looks.
In higher education, I see it constantly. I “secret shop” dozens of colleges each year, and my 17-year-old daughter’s inbox is flooded with their mailings. Most of it goes unopened. Email gets ignored. Billboards fade into the background. Social ads are scrolled past. “Apply today!” echoes from every direction—bland and forgettable.
Meanwhile, we obsess over tools and tactics: new CRMs, redesigned websites, custom print runs, SEM/SEO, photoshoots, color palettes, data dashboards. Important, yes. But none of it matters if your audience never notices you.
You can mow your lawn all you like—but if you want people to stop, you need something unexpected, emotional, delightful.
The Lesson
Years ago, a consultant once held up one of my pieces and declared: “Publications do one of three things: inform, persuade, or entertain. This one only entertains.”
She was wrong. A successful campaign must entertain (engage), inform, and persuade. All three.
Chip and Dan Heath, in Made to Stick, nail the formula: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories = SUCCESS. My little Lake Inferior garden embodies the unexpected, the emotional, the story—and so should your marketing.
It’s not easy. My garden took 16 years of tinkering, trial, and error. Marketing takes the same: missteps, risks, disagreements, and persistence. You’ll face naysayers. Some will never get it. But if you test ideas, take risks, and nurture bold creative work, you’ll grow something worth stopping for.
So keep tending. Try new seeds. Track what blooms. Stand out—or be ignored.
Go big, or stay home.
Notes
I was recently chatting with a colleague—a man with a green thumb for marketing—who reminded me to emphasize that the focus of this post is on promotion, the visible bloom of the much deeper work of marketing.
Gardening, after all, is not the flower. It’s the planning, the soil preparation, the research, the sowing, the weeding, the nurturing, the dirt under your nails—and then, eventually, the blossom. In the same way, marketing is strategy, data analysis, planning, and persistence. Good promotion stems from this foundation.
And yet, as in gardening, you can carefully tend every stage of the process and still fall short if your work doesn’t stand out in a crowded field. Marketing is both science and art—measured and methodical, but also creative and surprising.
Of course, delight doesn’t look the same for every product or service. Whimsy may be perfect for a greenhouse, but it would be out of place for a funeral home. Context matters.
LOOK WHAT I DISCOVERED A related article in Forbes.
FOR GARDENERS Photos from the garden.
CAUGHT ON CANDID CAMERA A few fun videos of the audience via the Lake Cam.
A FUN NOTE A note from a frequent garden visitor.
Additional Explorations in Delight
RaftU Postcards, posters, multimedia, digital and social ads. (Retired campaign)
Explore more: College on a Raft
Red Desk How about we paint a desk red and send it around the campus, the country and the world to showcase the learning experiences of our students? (Retired campaign)
Explore more: Red Desk Viewbook
Big Red Box Kicking up the acceptance letter just a bit. Give your audience a reason to talk.
Explore more: The Brochure and The Box
Responses from the Audience
Minnesota Public Radio Story (Early drone video work.)