Leveraging Spring Fever!
Shared by Waldoch Farm's Andrew and Doug Joyer
This past week I saw a video (actually 2) Andrew and Doug Joyer of Waldoch Farm made. Keep in mind Waldoch Farm is about 20 miles northeast of Minneapolis, Minnesota. It's a fun video showing how to plant pansies in the snow! The video, that pokes fun at having spring fever, has received lots of views. I asked Andrew how they got the idea. Here's their story:
"Spring has been off to a less than ideal start this year. With the cool to cold temperatures with still frequent snows folks have become a little stir crazy. We haven't uncovered our perennials and shrubs we winter over because we haven't had a warm enough stretch to melt all the ice and snow from our coverings.
When this storm was announced we knew it would push everything back another week.
Saturday came and we saw how much snow was still coming and all we had done for the day was plow snow. We brainstorm ideas frequently on what to do with our social media presence, sometimes there are good ideas, other times bad, and occasionally silly. Last year, during our final weekend of the Corn Maze we had a snow storm come through and we thought it would be silly to take the internet on a tour of the maze in the snow, showcasing how truly beautiful Minnesota can be in the fall. Here's a link:
https://www.facebook.com/WaldochFarm/videos/10155003707972267/
We thought it did pretty well, didn't really make it beyond our personal and professional circles. We learned that Facebook Live had to be filmed in Portrait mode and not Landscape.
So, this latest snow storm inspired us to do another video, try our luck again. I suggested that we do some sort of how to garden video outdoors in the blizzard.
Minnesotans can become pretty boastful of their winter tolerance to the cold and we thought we could embellish upon that fact. It was towards the end of the day and Doug called and said the blizzard conditions were picking up and we have a good idea, we should act on it. I told him, 'if we are going to do this, you'll have to pick me up, there is no way my car is making it out of my driveway.' While he was on his way, I decided that I should put on my best Spring outfit, because in MN we dress for the season we want.
We put together some tools and props to really sell the idea, went over what we were going to try and say. Discussed staging, practiced the cellphone camera trade off for a couple blocking maneuvers. We knew most of it was going to be improv, we wanted it to seem natural. Showcasing the fact that it was snowing wasn't going to stop our 'planned' pansy demonstration video.
It went pretty well, though loosing WiFi cut our filming into two segments. Which may have even helped, keeping them at a more digestible length.
We set out to have some fun, show a little optimism, knowing that Spring will be with us soon.
Ultimately, we feel we had a fairly captive audience because most of the Midwest was trapped by this same snowstorm which added to our exposure."
As of this writing on Friday, six days after Andrew and Doug posted the video, their "pansy planting" has had 48,000 views! As Andrew implied, maybe when everyone is at home snowbound, there's a captive audience!
Congratulations to Andrew and Doug Joyer at Waldoch Farm for their approach to making this video. It really does represent spring fever at its best!
Danny Summers
