Great Grow Along (GGA), an annual ten-day virtual festival, aims to connect and inspire gardeners with influencers worldwide while educating them on cutting-edge content. The 2023 festival, which ran in March, featured sixty+ educational sessions and virtual garden tours. A record-breaking 56k people logged in to see the speakers and chat with the community.

This event is for gardeners of all experience levels and is free for live streaming during the event. Every day of the festival is packed with expert education, practical advice, and creative inspiration from industry leaders and top influencers.

Now that the event has passed, viewers can subscribe for an on-demand session here.

Catchy names for each day, such as Wildlife Wednesday and Sustainability Sunday, aim to bring attention to the topics covered. Big-named brands like Park® Seed, Sunset® Plant Collection, and Garden For Wildlife™ sponsor the event to keep the content current and free of charge for viewers. 

Whether this was your first year attending or your third, everyone left the event with a wealth of information about various gardening topics. Sessions presented ranged from water-wise plantings to supporting hummingbird species and creating a healthy gardening ecosystem.
 
One of the festival's creators, LaManda Joy, believes the world would be better with more gardeners. "I am thrilled to empower individuals to reach new heights in their gardening journey," says Joy. "This festival allows us to share our expertise and advice and puts education at the forefront, giving new gardeners the confidence and tools they need to succeed."

Read on to learn more about the Great Grow Along and highlights from a few sessions!

Move over Miller Lite, craft beer is here to stay.

Craft breweries are becoming a big player in the beer industry. With over 4,000 breweries nationwide and an increasing share of the beer market, there’s definitely something to learn from the booming success of craft beer over the last five years.

Besides selling tasty cold beer, what factors contribute to this success? With craft breweries popping up left and right, plus having national and international beer distributors as tough competition, it can be hard to stay afloat.

Craft breweries are staying relevant by personalizing their brands, offering a wide variety and using a lot of creativity.

Continue reading to see what your garden brand can learn from the craft beer industry.

With the internet at the tip of our fingers, having a strong online social media presence is very important for garden brands. Consumers’ first impressions are often based on the brand’s social media platforms, making it extremely important for them to be attractive and easily accessible. An easy-to-use website and friendly brand persona can make all the difference when trying to retain support from your target audience. 

Read on for 4 tips on how to create your social media persona.

Charlie Brown’s pal Linus once told us, “There are three things that I’ve learned never discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.”

We’re not so sure about the Great Pumpkin, but we know the religion and politics piece no longer rings true. Especially with the anonymity of social media, people are not afraid to publicly voice their opinions on political and social issues.

So, how do brands take a stand?

Well, the answer might be – they shouldn’t.

Pepsi is under attack for launching an ad that tried to tackle social injustice and racial inequality. The company faced such strong backlash against the ad that it was pulled shortly after its release. However, the damage was already done.

No, Pepsi wasn’t trying to be insensitive. But perhaps they were trying too hard to relate to younger generations and the issues they care about the most.

Cause marketing can be beneficial for brands when done correctly. However, it is important to approach the subject with great sensitivity.

Continue reading to learn how your brand can successfully utilize cause marketing.

With more than 6 billion people in the world, it’s pretty incredible to think that there are only 16 distinct major personality types. 

According to 16Personalities, an incredibly accurate (in our opinion) and free personality test website, there are a lot of factors that make up someone’s personality. 

So what do personalities have to do with PR? A lot!Understanding your clients, coworkers and even audiences’ personalities can have a huge impact on how we interact with others, achieve success and build meaningful connections.

After all, we’re all about making connections in this business, aren’t we?

Continue reading to learn more.

Millennials, the largest generation to date, has officially surpassed Baby Boomers to make up the largest
 share of the U.S. workforce. Having grown up fully immersed in digital technology, Millennials are often snubbed as narcissistic, “selfie lovers,” when they are in fact the most tech-educated generation thus far.

 Just as Baby Boomers have for the last several decades, Millennials will dominate the consumer sector. It has become increasingly important for marketers and PR specialists to recognize their unique characteristics and adapt business practices to establish effective relationships with this demographic.

Here are five tips for targeting millennials.

The holiday season may be behind us, but there is one more day of recognition just around the corner, National “Fall off the Wagon Day.”

The New Year is a time when motivation is at an all-time high, with promises of a lifestyle change. A year full of exercise and clean eating.

This “new year, new me” mantra might be enough to carry you through January, but once February 4^th comes around, according to FourSquare, there are officially more “Check Ins” via social media at fast food restaurants than the gym.

Here is how some of consumers’ favorite green brands are taking strides to keep people involved and motivated well past February 4^th.

Continue reading to learn more.

Every good pr professional knows that building solid relationships with the media is key to having a strong list of contacts to can call upon when needed. PR pros can meet new contacts via pitching, conferences and networking.

This Fall, GMG traveled to The Big Apple for a media tour with Costa Farms.

Find out how we made this tour a success.

Jargon: special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand.

Those who work in PR are all too familiar with this term. How many times a day can someone hear the word “influencer” before they’re completely bored?  

No one – especially journalists and consumers -  likes buzzwords.  So why does our industry love to use and overuse them so often?

The good news is that there’s always time to unlearn the drab words that drag our copy down.    

Read more to unlearn these overused words.

We know by now that even long-term wildly successful campaigns receive major overhauls. How else are brands supposed to keep consumers on their toes?

What happens when a major brand decides to expand  its product set in order to suck in – pun intended – a new kind of customer?

That's exactly what Dyson with the release of its Supersonic Hair Dryer over the summer. Even with the $399 price tag, customers seem to be flocking to this revamped version of an essential appliance.

How?

Dyson's diversified product line shows that the company is successfully avoiding corporate drift.  

Continue reading to learn how brands successfully pivot.