To my readers, friends and colleagues:
I sincerely wish everyone a safe and Merry Christmas and all the best for the year ahead.
Christmas is not only a time to celebrate our Christian faith with friends and family, but a time to relax and enjoy all that the season has to offer.
Whatever Christmas means for you, may the season be filled with joy and peace. I wish you an enjoyable and rewarding year ahead.
Regards,
Surely one of the most successful marketing decisions of 2011 has been the “Share a Coke” advertising campaign?
Coca-Cola Amatil, who manufacture Coca-Cola in Australia, have pioneered a campaign where the 150 most popular Australian names have been randomly printed on bottles and cans of the beverage. This has been a stroke of marketing brilliance as people have searched for ‘their’ bottle including those who don’t even drink Coca-Cola.
Last week, whilst in company I discovered my own name printed on a bottle that was sitting at the front of a drinks cabinet at a local bakery.
Of course I was inclined to buy the bottle and I don’t even like Coca-Cola.
In all honesty I don’t know why I bought it, especially because I consider myself to be quite resistant to “marketing ploys”. Regardless, I can’t argue that the novelty value is there, even if I gave the beverage away.
The “Share a Coke” campaign was the work of Ogilvy & Mather and commenced in September 2011 with the 150 most-popular Australian names. Following the launch of the campaign it is believed that Coca-Cola have experienced a substantial increase in sales as well as invaluable social media and news exposure.
For those folk with less-conventional names or nicknames, Coca-Cola visited shopping centres where people could queue and get a custom name such as Udaya, Khuntoria, Chibi or Skyro printed on their can of Coke.
The campaign was so successful that in November Coca-Cola announced that a ballot would be held to add another 50 names to the mix in 2012. That ballot has now been completed and the names announced.
Following the success of the campaign in Australia, Share a Coke will be expanded internationally in 2012.
As regular readers of the Grapevine will be aware, I have made a few horticultural visits of late, including Gardenworld in Braeside and the National Rhododendron Garden.
The last of these visits was Cloudehill Nursery and Garden in Olinda, which is located in the picturesque Dandenong Ranges.
The last time I went to Cloudehill was in 1996, so it’s been a while. Being based in the Dandenongs, it is a pleasant drive to get to these gardens which can easily be spotted from the road by the bright green fence and prominent sign.
Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by plants.
From the age of three, I was digging nasturtium and tomato seedlings out of Dad’s compost bin and planting them in the garden. That interest never waned and so as I was growing up, one of the very special treats I got to enjoy on certain school holidays was a trip to Gardenworld in Braeside.
Gardenworld is a sprawling horticultural complex established by the Jackson family and consisting of seven independently-owned businesses that each specialise in different products or greenlife. For a small child fascinated by plants, it was like a theme park full of places to explore and all sorts of peculiar plant species.
By far the most iconic part of Gardenworld was the enormous cactus that stood at the main entrance to the complex, near the Gardenworld Café. It was absolutely enormous, and I assume it must have been quite old because it was propped-up with an elaborate assortment of steel poles, stakes and ropes.
What used to fascinate me as a child in the early 1990′s, sitting in the café with my meat pie and iced coffee, was the string of Japanese tourists who would come via bus and have their photos taken beside that cactus. For whilst Gardenworld was certainly well-known to keen Melburnian gardeners, it seemed odd in a pre-internet age that foreign tourists would even know of the existence of Gardenworld, let alone make a visit in a bus.
I’d often heard about the splendour of the National Rhododendron Garden in spring, but had never been there before.
On account of the lovely weather today, I decided to make the trip out to the small town of Olinda in the Dandenong Ranges to see the famous garden for myself.
I have to say that it was one of the loveliest gardens I have ever visited.
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