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May 19, 2003 - Strategy Magazine
Regular Features

Campaign Spotlight
How green does your garden grow?

by Kristen Vinakmens
page 4

A squirrel gets zotzed by a rogue, gargantuan acorn in a new campaign for Greengate Garden Centre by Calgary-based Highwood Communications.

The message, conveyed in print and outdoor that launched mid-May, is that if you use Greengate's products, you will have one extremely healthy garden, since everything from the store is guaranteed to grow.

This is the second campaign by Highwood for Greengate. The first ran last year and was an awareness campaign for the newly launched gardening store. The current effort, which includes newspaper, magazine ads and an outdoor bench advertisement, works on the idea that people know Greengate by now, says Highwood CD Steve Williams. "Now we're pitching the notion that if you want to have the heartiest trees and shrubs, come to Greengate," says Williams. "The ads show some humorous side effects of having the perfect garden."

One print ad depicts a fire hose attached to the side of a house instead of the regular garden hose, while another has a person breaking a pair of garden shears while trying to trim a mammoth shrub. The outdoor component has an ad on a bench that shows a woodpecker whose beak is busted, which is juxtaposed next to a real tree.

Williams says the lush greenery in the ads was tough to recreate, as they shot in Calgary in mid-March. They managed to improvise, however: in the studio, photographer Jean Perron used wheat grass and even found the necessary roadkill for the acorn ad.

Client: Greengate Garden Centre

Agency: Highwood Communications

Creative Directors: Steve Williams, Robert Sweetman

Copywriters: Bryan Collins, Dan King

Radio Copywriters: Robert Sweetman, Dan King

Art Director: Robert Sweetman

Photographer: Jean Perron

Production House: Six Degrees

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