HOW WE DO IT - Working with the Local News at the Chalet

In the green industry, many of us are viewed as experts in lawn care and landscaping. At Chalet in Wilmette, Ill., we’ve expanded that trust to a wider area of potential customers by working with our local television news.

Every two weeks, our company is featured in a gardening segment on a local news channel’s morning show. Once a month, an anchor from the station’s morning team comes to our facility and we broadcast live from our nursery, greenhouse or retail center. Two weeks later, our horticultural information specialist visits the station to do the morning segment live from the studio.

The news affiliate we work with broadcasts their morning show from 5 to 7 a.m. everyday. Chalet’s garden segment is featured every other Tuesday and is coordinated with the weather segments because weather and landscaping are so closely connected. Our three segments are usually at 5:45, 6:20 and 6:55 a.m. However, on days when we broadcast from our facility, our horticulture information specialist meets the camera crew at 4 a.m. to unlock the facility and let them set up the cameras and satellite feed. Because the segments start so early, we always prepare the plants, materials or equipment we need for the broadcast the night before.

Depending on the season, we share information on a number of different aspects of horticulture, lawn care and landscaping. In the fall, we’ll discuss topics like planting bulbs, or we may talk about core aeration and have a member of our lawn care staff demonstrate how to use an aerator.

After working with the news station for six years, the anchors and producers respect our topic choices for the segments. To keep everyone informed, we provide them with a 12-month calendar every January that lists appropriate topic ideas for each month, including indoor and outdoor topics. Broadcasting from outside can be refreshing and looks good on camera, but if the weather doesn’t cooperate, we always make sure to have an indoor alternative in place about a week in advance.

For each show, the gardening segments have nine minutes of airtime, which we split into three-minute interviews. For a discussion on bulbs, we’ll spend the first three minutes on bulb selection, the second three minutes on proper planting and the final three minutes on details like bloom time, fertilization and mulching. Splitting up the topics allows us to cover each aspect in sufficient detail and keeps viewers tuned in.

As a result of our work with the local news, our company has become more recognized in and around the Chicago area, and business has increased in all divisions. Customers regularly tell us they saw us on the news and want to find out more about how we can help them with their landscapes. Also, during our weekly education seminars, we survey attendees to find out how they heard about us. We have an 85-percent return rate on those surveys and 30 percent of the people who respond say they heard about us through the local news.

While we do not get paid for the garden segments we host, they also don’t cost us anything. In fact, we’ve looked at different advertising rates for our area and determined that the nine minutes of airtime we receive every two weeks would cost us $80,000 to $120,000 each year if we purchased television advertising space.

Though our horticulture information specialist had existing relationships with local news organizations, these relationships are easy to create by contacting shows’ producers with topic ideas that you are knowledgable about and comfortable with. And while "stage fright" might be an objection to doing live, on-air segments, we have found that being interviewed by a television anchor is much like having a one-on-one conversation with a customer. However, through the local news, we are able to reach numerous potential customers at once and maintain our status as experts and professionals in the green industry for our area. – Jennifer Brennan