196 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
PAUL C. LINDLEY, POMONA, N. 0. 
The Newly-electecl President of the American Association of 
Nurserymen 
REPORT MARKET DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE 
By F. F. Rockwell, Chairman, to the American Association of 
Nurserymen, Detroit, June, 1922 
The instructions given to your Market Development Commit¬ 
tee a year ago at this time, were brief: 
“Get the most publicity you can for the least money”—with the 
emphasis on the “least money.” 
It was pointed out to us that production in this fair country 
of ours has been given a great impetus in the last two or three 
years, that there would soon be some additional millions of dol¬ 
lars’ worth of nursery stock to sell, and that it would be a splen¬ 
did thing to go out and create a market for it, for which purpose 
$4,000 was placed at our disposal—provided we would not spend 
all of it. 
Well, we haven’t spent it all. 
But it does not give us so much pleasure to report that fact, 
as to be able to report that we have attained a very satisfactory 
measure of success in inducing many people to join in making 
“America More Beautiful and More Truthful” by giving them 
the inspiration to “Plan to Plant another Tree,” as our good 
friend, Jim Young, of Aurora, has so well put it. 
Building the List of Mediums 
The basis for any publicity must be the mediums through 
which it is to be distributed. 
We have, to start with, a list of a few hundred newspapers 
which had previously been used in market development work. 
This list was rather out of date, and was not at all evenly dis¬ 
tributed over the country. Our first task was to both increase and 
improve it. 
In this work, we must confess, we met with unexpected diffi¬ 
culty and delay. It would seem reasonable to expect that any 
nurseryman would at least take time to send in a list of ten 
or twelve newspapers in his selling territory, when he under¬ 
stood that the Market Development Committee would supply 
these papers with the publicity articles without any expense or 
trouble on his part. 
It proved, however, to be like drawing teeth to get these lists. 
Repeated letters, articles in the trade papers and entreaties and 
in the “Booster” covering a period of many weeks, were neces¬ 
sary to get even a fair response and with all our effort, it was 
not until after the Kansas City convention, that you men, in¬ 
cluding some of the biggest firms in the country, really “came 
across” with the lists we so badly needed. We now have lists 
of over 4000 newspapers, fairly evenly distributed over the en¬ 
tire country. There is the solid foundation of which our Market 
Development work is being built and which if properly culti¬ 
vated, should be worth tens of thousands dollars to the mem¬ 
bers of the association during the next few years. 
Preparing the Material 
The next step in developing our market is to provide the right 
kind of ammunition for our batteries. It is comparatively easy 
to get material published. It is much more difficult to get ma¬ 
terial published which will stimulate action on the part of the 
reader after it is published Mere bits of planting information 
will not do that. 
Every article should be prepared with three things in mind: 
First—to attract the reader’s attention, so that he will be lead 
on to read it; second—to give him (or her) real information— 
even nurserymen can’t get something for nothing—though they 
often get nothing for something; third, the “story” should cre¬ 
ate a definite desire on the part of the reader: it should leave him 
with the mental resolution that sooner or later, he will possess 
himself of the tree, plant or flower described. 
When that is accomplished that reader is “SOLD,” and once 
he is sold, sooner or later he will BUY. It may not be at that 
moment, it may not be until next Fall or next Spring: the next 
time a nursery agent stops, or a catalogue arrives, to find him 
in a receptive and not in an indifferent and an antagonistic frame 
of mind. 
Betting Distribution 
After you have got your mediums and prepared your material, 
the next step is to get the mediums to use the material—to “get 
it across” as the phrase is. 
This is something of a business or an art, in itself, just as is 
the production of “preferred” nursery stock, or the growing of 
12” one year Toppenish Norway Maples. 
The newspapers are so used to having the attempt made to 
“put something over” on them that they are suspicious of all free 
material, whether it is of real interest and value to their read¬ 
ers or not. 
For the purpose of getting distribution for our publicity ma 
terial, we have used “The National Planting Service” 
(Show letterhead: Read letter) 
Someone has remarked that the purpose of the “National 
Planting Service” is to “Make America More Beautiful and the 
Nursery Business More Fruitful.” We admit it, and if there is 
anyone in the room who has any objection to either of these 
two most worthy aims, we would like to hear from him. 
In send out our material under the heading of the National 
Planting Service rather than by the “Market Development Com¬ 
mittee” of the American Association of Nurserymen” we are not 
camouflaging our work, we are merely putting our goods up 
in an attractive package. You may succeed for the moment in 
“putting something over” in the way of publicity, but unless you 
have the goods to deliver your efforts will prove futile. The 
attractive package may help to make the first sale, but it can 
never get a repeat order. 
Our experience in this year’s Market Development work shows 
that the press is ready as never before, to use material on garden¬ 
ing. Many of the largest papers in the country have used every¬ 
thing that has been sent out by the National Planting Service. 
The papers that have been using the Market Development ar¬ 
ticles have an average circulation over 5000. The articles have 
been sent to over 4000 papers. Assuming that only 25% of them 
have been used, that would mean an average circulation of 
5,000,000 for each article, or of about 125,000,000 for the series. 
Some of you may think that our estimate of the actual use of 
the article is high. We do not believe so, but there is no way of 
positively checking it up; we have done what we could in that 
direction. At the beginning of the year’s work we sent out this 
post card to the 1500 papers then on our lists. Here are some 
of the replies. They amounted to over 20%. 
At the end of the campaign we sent out another letter (read 
letter). This letter went to the entire list. Out of the replies re¬ 
ceived to this letter, — % have said that they would like to 
receive the articles again next year, and have used the articles 
already sent out. 
Even if these returns are very heavily discounted, we believe 
that the American Association of Nurserymen is getting the 
most economical business building publicity that we know of in 
the country. We think that any of you who may be familiar 
with the game will grant this to be a fact. 
The Cost 
The Market Development Committee has spent on this year’s 
work, in round figures, considerably less than $4000. This, how¬ 
ever, includes the expense of running advertisements in the 
trade papers for the purpose of getting new members for the 
National Association, and also are getting out the Booster. These 
