Client Overview
Greenline Growery, based in Pretoria North, is a wholesale nursery run by André and Mart-Marie Both. They are the real deal. They love plants, and they know their stuff. Greenline’s plants are grown to thrive where they are planted, not just look good in the shop.
The Challenge: Bring fresh energy and drive into a decade-old business to reach its potential
You can just feel it; The authenticity, the hands-on love for growing great plants. When you arrive at Greenline, you can’t help but relax as you wander through the wide range of plants being grown.
After ten years, the business plateaued due to market shifts, but also, having done what the company does well for so long, it was not easy to see where to go next from inside.
Our mandate was to help widen the awareness of Greenline, bringing new customers into the fold, and re-energise existing customers.
Our Solution: Be Known. Get Sales. – Bringing the passion, knowledge and heart of the business into the limelight through brand storytelling
Phase 1 – Clarity: We defined what made Greenline unique.
Apart from their growing techniques, location and logistical abilities, we identified André’s genuine passion and incredible knowledge as a key, yet unmined resource to bring value to new and existing customers. We re-positioned the brand around him as the face of the business with Mart-Marie positioned as the operational backbone, pretty much, how it really is:)
Phase 2: Craft – We penned the business’s story, from which we found inspiration to redesign the brand’s visual image to match the feel of the nursery and tweaked the name to also reflect the intentional growing approach to Greenline Growery.
We got up a simple website, and realigned their social media to convey the story visually.
Phase 3: Strategy – Get André known!
André needed to be better appreciated for his knowledge, passion, and just being the great guy he is. Moving him from an over-travelled, hard-selling owner to a positive voice that people follow and go to for guidance was our strategy.
So, next up, we started creating video content, letting André do his thing, and took this to social platforms the business had not made use of before, like TikTok and YouTube, as well as getting the content out as reels and stories on Facebook and Instagram.
This we backed up with a relatively mild brand awareness social media advert campaign as well as getting Greenline’s show stand in line with the new visual ID, and used their appearance at shows to create more in-person and online engagement.
Vehicle branding, corporate stationery and all the tick-box stuff followed where appropriate.
The Results: Increased Engagement, New Customers and Sales Up!
Despite starting our work with the brand slightly later than the annual sales pattern would have liked, we saw an immediate increase in sales, even in months that previously underperformed being considered slower periods.
We’re now moving towards the end of the first 12 months and running a campaign through what was previously their slower period to ensure the brand and products are top of mind for a growing audience ahead of the spring buying period.